I have two. The Ritual and Drowning.

The Ritual is pure smut. 61 chapters and every one contains a graphic, demeaning sex scene. I’m convinced the author was an adult film screenwriter and decided to try their hand at writing a novel. There isn’t a single likable character in this book.

Drowning isn’t a great work of literature. I felt that the characters were very two-dimensional. I hated how naive the author made the protagonist. It made me have a lack of sympathy for her. The ending was series finale of Dexter bad.

  • elainethelovewitch@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabrielle zevin. Part of the office book club. Shocked at the rating it has on good reads. It contains one of the worst sentences I ever read

    “She leaned in to kiss him, and he kissed her, and then she put her hand between his legs, wrapping her fingers around the cylindrical chamber of blood sponges that was his (and every) penis.”

    • YogiCCD@alien.topB
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      I’m feeling so validated to see this one at the top, it was far and away the worst thing I’ve read all year. I’ve always taken Good Reads with a huge grain of salt but the reviews here were shockingly positive. To each their own, art is subjective, etc., etc., but I really can’t help but think anyone who truly loved Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow has never read something that couldn’t be adapted into a Hallmark movie. That’s the only explanation I can think of that would make the non-linear character development seem groundbreaking or even interesting. As OP highlighted, the prose wouldn’t even be graded well in a high school level creative writing class.

      • elainethelovewitch@alien.topB
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        1 year ago

        Yeah I can’t believe it has a higher rating than a lot of actual good books on GR. one thing is liking the story and the plot or wtv but this is objectively badly written. “X did a. S felt like this. They went out.” It’s all exposition, just terrible. And she is a English major for Harvard… idgi

    • MeTieDoughtyWalker@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      That is not only the BEST book I read this year, but the best in quite a few years. But I respect your opinion. I’m sure I would dislike a lot of books you’ve read.

    • i-want-chipotle@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      I just finished the audiobook of this and I gasped at that line lmao. I didn’t hate the book but it was very meh to me; also thought it was incredibly overhyped

    • OnceUponAPizza@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      Man I actually loved this book a lot, but I also audibooked it.

      Like other commentors have said, though: that sentence contextually makes sense from the POV of the character.

    • HaMerrIk@alien.topB
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      THANK YOU, so relieved I didn’t have to scroll far for this. I DNFed it and genuinely couldn’t understand all the praise.

      • Few_Yak_5834@alien.topB
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        1 year ago

        Same here! Its one of those books where I really am like…am I reading the same book as everyone else???

    • trihard12@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      She also throws in random obscure words that you would only find in a word of the day calendar.

    • _Royalty_@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      That’s such a ridiculous thing to write it actually makes me more excited to read this.

    • Balzaak@alien.top
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      Straight up sounds like it’s out of Rick and Morty.

      Rick: “L-l-look Morty you know whatever whateves if you wanna just date Jessica so you can satisfy the cravings of that cylindrical chamber of blood sponges you call a penis…

      Morty: “Jesus, Rick! Why would you call it that? T-t-that’s disgusting!

      Rick: “Its the human body Morty, get used to it… and anyways back to this whole Jessica thing…

    • juice_kebab@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      Omg I heard so many good things about this book and the cover is so pretty that I was planning on buying it… not anymore lol

    • lIlIllIIlllIIIlllIII@alien.topB
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      Gotta disagree with this one, I loved this book. Was the writing perfect? Well, as we can see from your example, definitely not, but I thought the story was beautiful and the characters were interesting enough to keep me going until the end. Totally get why it wasn’t your cup of tea.

    • FeedWatcher@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      I didn’t even get that far into the book.

      I was 100 pages in and felt NOTHING for any of the characters. The book yadda-yadda’ed through their backstories, in a big hurry to go nowhere, apparently.

      I took the book back to the library that very day to let someone else on the 75+ wait list have their chance to be disappointed.

    • zipiddydooda@alien.topB
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      Haha amazing example! I made it about 2% into this hot mess before quitting. It is truly awful.

    • tikhonjelvis@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      This was one of the worst books for me too. Doubly so considering the hype and online reviews it’s gotten! The plot was just a big string of soap-opera-level contrived situations and cliches; the characters’ personalities were inconsistent part-to-part and wholly unconvincing; the writing was patronizing and pretentious, making sure to tell you the point of each episode in case you missed the generic, heavily telegraphed moral message.

      Also, the book’s treatment of video games and game development was just bizarre. There were some interesting ideas—one of which was apparently lifted from Brenda Romero with no attribution—but the gaming particulars were often either superficial or didn’t make sense. There was a chapter towards the end that was supposed to be describing a game; it was a neat idea at a high level, but the execution was not even wrong. What that chapter was describing was, in a fundamental way, simply not how games work because it would simply make no sense for games to work that way. And I say this as somebody who is very open to experimental and indie games!

      It’s always wild to read books where there’s such a delta between popular perception—so many people online gush about Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow as if it were the best work of literature they had ever read—and actuality. Hell, I understand when it goes the other way around; some books are very much an acquired taste. But how does something so bad in every relevant dimension get such praise?

      I did rather like the cover design though, so there’s that :)

      • elainethelovewitch@alien.topB
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        1 year ago

        Yeah it didn’t get lost on me Gabrielle goes on and on about Sadie’s struggle in the industry because she is a woman and then goes on and steals an idea from another woman without even giving her any credit in the acknowledgments

    • jadekath@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      I didn’t like that book AT ALL! I didn’t get the hype or the ratings and the relationship of the main characters infuriated me

    • smallmalexia3@alien.topB
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      I literally started and DNF’d this yesterday. I only check reviews after I’ve read or given up on a book, so I was astounded when I checked Goodreads and saw that it has a score of 4.2/5. It was sort of infuriating to see *this* rated so highly when other more deserving, actually well-written books tend to hover around 3.7. It’s so baffling.

    • leela_martell@alien.topB
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      Is that an actual quote from the book? 🫣 Is the reason George RR Martin hasn’t finished Winds of Winter because he ghost wrote the sex scenes for Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow?

      (I DNF’d that book so never got to that part.)

    • blahblahgingerblahbl@alien.topB
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      oh no. …. that is so wrong, and so odd, but also weirdly close to actual anatomical terminology that i wonder if the author wasn’t looking through medical to inspire some adjectives …. not good

    • AfterTowns@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      I tried to listen to the audio book, sharing earbuds with my so. I had to apologize for the book about 20 minutes in and return it to the library. It was so boring and cliché.

    • shunrata@alien.topB
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      Our book club read it too which is the only reason I finished it. I spent the whole book waiting for something interesting to happen.

    • cannotfoolowls@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      She leaned in to kiss him, and he kissed her, and then she put her hand between his legs, wrapping her fin

      Going good so far

      the cylindrical chamber of blood sponges that was his (and every) penis.

      uh, technically accurate, I guess

      • IamBenAffleck@alien.topB
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        1 year ago

        It elevates the scene from “bad” to “just plain weird.” I’d like to play a game where we guess the next line:

        “When she grabbed his penis, she grabbed all penises.”

    • tabshir_a0@alien.topB
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      omg i gasped when i read that sentence bcs it was so bad… and i do agree that the book was overrated. It gave fake-deep.

    • Coffeemomma@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      I genuinely do not understand the hype around this book. The characters had no defining qualities and were so one dimensional.

    • TheGhostOfSoManyOfMe@alien.topB
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      I loved some of her earlier books but I couldn’t get into this one and then I read that there was a claim of plagiarism/intellectual property violation around the game featured in the book. Definitely worth googling. The woman who created that game, Brenda Romero, even got the added insult of having her husband named in the acknowledgments of the book (he’s also a game creator). So disappointing that a book centering women and how they have a hard time getting recognition in gaming and it’s ripping off one of the very women it should uplift.

    • choirandcooking@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      I loved this one when I read it and still have some very fond memories of it, but yeah… the sheen has worn off a bit.

    • VBHEAT08@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      Good lord that’s rough, I could see a description like that working if a character was asexual or otherwise sex averse to make it seem alien or gross. Somehow I doubt that’s what they were going for

      • Grothas@alien.topB
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        1 year ago

        That’s exactly what they were going for, I can understand a fair bit of the criticism for the book, but this was fairly true to the point of view character here.

      • meeeehhhhhhh@alien.topB
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        1 year ago

        I would definitely read a book that focused on several men and had the connecting plot be what was happening when they received a phantom hand job

      • Hartastic@alien.topB
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        1 year ago

        Hey, try not to give a hand job to all of humanity on the way through the parking lot!

    • aimredditman@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      That’s poetry, I love it.

      If the whole book is as good as that sentence it’s the best thing ever written.

    • Hunter037@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      Is that (and every) actually in the book or did you add that? If that’s actually canon that’s totally bizarre!

    • HowardHenryHolmes@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      Joey Tribbiani back at the thesaurus…

      “They are humid prepossessing Homo Sapiens with full sized aortic pumps”

    • furiousfran@alien.top
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      that was his (and every) penis.

      Oh man, I had no idea they were all like that. Thanks Gabrielle Zevin!

    • spawn3887@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      I liked it overall. It was too long, and some of the reasons for doing things made little sense, but start to finish I thought it was good.

      • Dry_Manufacturer_200@alien.topB
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        1 year ago

        As countless people have said, it makes complete contextual sense from the POV of the character. It is meant to come across as weird because that’s how the character views it

        • darkwitch1306@alien.topB
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          1 year ago

          I still think in the context of just about any kind, this is not well written or something most authors of any kind, other than really bad porn would think this is writing at its best or even good. It comes across as “ instead of penis or cock or dick or any other word for the male appendage, I should find something so ridiculous that everyone will like it because they don’t know better”. I find that if one person agrees with something that is so outrageous as to be silly, others will think that it is really smart and different.

    • colliesforever@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      I hated it. The friendship was force fed to us over and over again when it had very little development.