So Bad It's Horrible/Literature: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"Get away from the book by any means you can. Or, if you've been unfortunate enough to pay money for it already, [[Wall Banger (Darth Wiki)|fling it against the wall]]. It'll make a really satisfying thwack! when it hits. Just make sure no [[That Poor Cat|pets]] or toddlers are in the way."''|'''Smart Bitches, Trashy Books''' on "[http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/books/extras/top-ten-signs-youre-reading-a-very-bad-romance-novel Top Ten Signs You're Reading A Very Bad Romance Novel]".}}

 

{{examples|Examples (more-or-less in alphabetical order):}}

 

* ''[[Alfies Home]]'' is an attack on homosexuals thinly disguised as a story about a boy who was molested by his uncle. There are holes in both the plot and the logic. The drawings look like drunken [[School House Rock]] concept sketches, seem to defy all perspective, and could have been done in [[MS Paint]]. Even worse, it plugs therapy based on a [[Cure Your Gays|scientific theory]] that had been discredited decades earlier. And it was aimed ''[[What Do You Mean It's for Kids?|at children]]''. But don't take our word for it: a member of [[That Guy With the Glasses]]' forum [http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/blogs/latest/entry/the-worst-childrens-book-ever-alfies-home will fill you in, along with the entire book's contents.]

* Alphascript Publishing and Betascript Publishing have published over 300,000 books. Sounds pretty interesting, until you realize that all of them are just a bunch of Wikipedia articles. "High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA Articles!", the cover of each book states. It gets worse:

* On the subject of horribly written non-fiction books, as much as we [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|want to be neutral on this author's views]], ''America's Most Dangerous Nazi'', A.J. Weberman, is a blatant a hit piece on a controversial politician <ref>The one who's name rhymes with Pon Raul</ref> is one of the most biased, one-sided, slanderous non-fiction books one will ever find. The cover is a entirely Photoshopped image of said politician behind a Nazi flag. And the back cover? a Photoshopped picture of Hitler replacing Hitler's face with said politician's face. [[Godwin's Law|Sound familiar?]] The book itself is full of one-sided arguments that try to generalize all his supporters into the ones who are considered a [[Vocal Minority]] and is written in an informal, biased, slanderous, profane and vulgar hit piece(the book uses words like "crap", "filth", "bastard" and "scum" to describe the supporters of the politician that the book is attacking) that dosen't even try to be neutral or examine issues objectively. The author believes that said politician changed his views on Israel when he sent him his book in order to hide antisemitism, forgetting the fact [[Did Not Do the Research|said politician has defended Israel's actions once at a time when most other politicians in America condemned it in a resolution when it bombed Iraq]]. In short, while said politician may be one of the most divisive figures in America, this book is [[Godwin's Law]] at it's very worst.

** The author's way of advertising this book is just as horrible. He spams every single article about said politician and whenever he finds positive comments, he links to this book as if in an attempt to "convert" supporters. Unsurprisingly, most of these comments were flagged for spam.

** A little tidbit of horror — Robert Jordan's ''[[Wheel of Time]]'' series has a total of 4,012,859 words, and that consists of ''fifteen'' books all qualifying for [[Doorstopper]] status. ''The Blah Story'' has '''11,300,000''' words!

* ''Blood: The Last Vampire: Night of the Beasts'' by [[Mamoru Oshii]] is a continuation of the anime film ''[[Blood the Last Vampire]]'', which stars a vampire hunter named Saya fighting monsters. Given that the film involved a lot of blood, monster-hunting, and gory action, you'd think the book would be more of the same. Instead, the novel is less of a story about vampire-hunting and more of a clumsy collection of essays that fail to form any semblance of a coherent narrative. Rather than focus on Saya, the story focuses on a bland male student who goes from location to location listening to people have philosophical discussions and debates on increasingly uninteresting topics such as body disposal, the hunter hypothesis, and religious conspiracies. Saya, meanwhile, briefly appears only three times in the entire book and barely interacts with the protagonist, if at all. The novel is such an ill-conceived mess that one can only feel sorry for the translator who had to translate Oshii's incoherent and incredibly dull ramblings.

** The worst part of all of ''Revelation'' is the general message that Force-users are dangerous, disgusting, and incapable of doing ''anything'' right. In the end, the book's message concludes that all force-users should never be allowed to develop their talents or be allowed anywhere near weaponry or government for the simple fact of them being force-users, [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|who should be shunned for something they have no control over]].

* In 2000, Nancy Stouffer claimed that her 1984 or 1986 (she disagreed with herself there) book ''[[The Legend of Rah and The Muggles (Literature)|The Legend of Rah and The Muggles]]'' provided the inspiration for ''[[Harry Potter]]''. She said, among other things, that the fact that there was wooden doors in both her and Rowling's books was evidence of this. The case was notable partly because of the [[Frivolous Lawsuit]] (which she lost comprehensively) and partly because the book itself was unspeakably awful; a full list of its failings would at least double the size of this page, so [http://www.magespace.net/mugrev.html here's a handy plot breakdown] should you wish to subject yourself to them anyway. Once news from the lawsuit started spreading, a small-time publisher tried to cash in on [[No Such Thing As Bad Publicity]] and did a small printing run; said publisher quickly went bankrupt.

* ''Mein Kampf''... as translated by James Murphy. It took what was something already derided as being [[Doorstopper|overly long]] and [[Purple Prose|hideously thick]] in its original form and somehow made it worse. [[Adaptation Decay|The writing style was changed drastically]], [[Cut and Paste Translation|alterations and expansions were blatant and hackneyed]], and [[Obvious Beta|spelling and grammar were all over the place]]. The book resembles a bad fanfic of the original; its clunky, dull, flowery prose results at least partially from the author's habit of [[Blind Idiot Translation|looking up the words he didn't know in a German-English dictionary and picking the first definition he saw]]. Worse, it was submitted incomplete when Murphy changed his mind about the Nazis and fled Germany, meaning the press had to finish translation. Perhaps fortunately, the few copies that the Nazi press produced were lost until 2008, effectively destroying any chance for this abomination to become anything more than a bizarre curiosity.

* ''Mission Earth'', a decalogy <ref>(novel in ten volumes)</ref> by [[L Ron Hubbard]]. Weighing in at nearly 4,000 pages, this was Hubbard's idea of clever [[Sci Fi]] satire. The story moves at an incredibly-slow pace and showcases every sexual perversion you could think of and then some. Rampant misogyny abounds. The story's nothing more than a thinly-veiled pamphlet for Scientology and keeps hitting you over the head with its messages against psychology and psychiatry. [http://www.modemac.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/Mission_Earth Here's a highly-detailed overview.]

* While [[Vanity Publishing]] has long been known to be a haven for the worst attempts at semi-literate [[Purple Prose]], ''Night Travels of the Elven Vampire'' by LaVerne Ross is painfully bad even by that standard. But it does provide [[Snark Bait|excellent fodder]] for [http://crevette.livejournal.com/113659.html a truly hilarious review.]

* ''No Touching'' by Aileen Deng. Let's put it this way — the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, [[Old Shame|who were responsible for its very commissioning, would kindly like to forget it ever existed]]. The only way to express it would be Elizabeth the Gray's review [http://www.amazon.com/No-Touching-Aileen-Deng/dp/1449900313 here.]

** Note that the book has a 3.5-star average on Amazon. Elizabeth gave it one star, and two people who haven't reviewed ''anything else on the site'' gave it four and five stars. Suspicious...

** The book is even worse than previously thought established. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/glenn-becks-new-novel-abo_b_613861.html It turns out] ''The Overton Window'' is a blatant retread of the 2005 thriller ''Circumference of Darkness''. ''Overton'' was even ghostwritten by ''Circumference'' writer Jack Henderson. The only difference is that the names are swapped, and the bad guys in ''Overton'' are left-wing lunatics instead of right-wing lunatics.

* Pacione, Nickolaus. He is a horror writer known for self-publishing unreadable, barely literate, mistake-riddled prose, but even better known for picking fights with everyone on the Internet that dislikes his work (up to and including threatening murder, the rape of their children and the like). Read any sentence of his writings, if you dare.

* ''The Sacred Seven'' by Amy Stout is a deservedly obscure fantasy "epic" which is nevertheless only novella-length. The plot's a [[Cliché Storm]] in which a [[Big Bad]] [[Evil Sorcerer]] is trying to take over the world and playing [[MacGuffin]] [[Gotta Catch Them All]]. The attempts at "originality" are things like forest dwarves and the [[Big Bad]] being a female elf leading a troll army instead of the traditional orc army. But what makes this book special is that it has over two dozen point-of-view characters over its meager pagecount in a large font. Most ''pages'' have at least one POV switch, which can be to a character in a completely different geographic location having completely different adventures. As you might expect, none of the [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] have [[Flat Character|much of a detectable personality]]. The whole thing reads like an internet round robin written by a bunch of teenagers. Oh, and there's a sequel called ''The Royal Four''.

* The written sequel to [[George Lucas]]' fantasy movie ''[[Willow]]'', ''Shadow Moon'' (No, not [[Kamen Rider Black|that one]]) by [[Chris Claremont]], is a [[Doorstopper]] written in such a mind-numbing style that enduring the lengthy bland descriptions to get to the mind-numbing plot about the new adventures of Willow requires endurance few readers possess. The rest of the trilogy is supposed to be even worse, but confirming this is difficult for obvious reasons.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:So Bad Its Horrible (Darth Wiki)]]