I’ll go with the low-hanging fruit: Mein Kampf. I’ve read it, cover to cover. As a piece of propaganda, it’s good. As an example of good writing? Absolutely not (though I will admit I have only read it in translation). Oh, and the whole fascist, racist, and generally shitty worldview of the author that he infuses into the text. And the fact that the author is literally Hitler. You 5-star that book? You’re a Nazi. Period. And as a Jewish person, I don’t look too kindly on them.
Besides the obvious books that promote racism, bigotry, capitalism and genocide (or all of that at once), I’d have to say the following: Any person that unequivocally and unironically says that Brandon Sanderson is their favorite author and only ever reads his books, or requests recs for similar books, would get a hard no from me. I’d have to assume they have some serious issues. These (mostly, it seems like) dudes ruined the Fantasy subreddit (and this one) for me. Someone let me know if the furor has died down yet.
I feel like for the longest time 80% of the posts on these subreddits were titles like “I just read (Insert series title here) by Brandon Sanderson and OMG. What next?” Of course they’d get told to read all the rest of his books, follow his YT account, recommended to read Robert Jordan’s books next if they haven’t already, etc. 🙄
My next swipe left is the person that LOVES Robert Jordan’s books.
It depends. I love the first book in the Wheel of Time series (I read it so long ago that I see I don’t even remember its name). I read five or six of the sequels, and yeah, they’re problematic in many ways, and also somewhat boring (one of them was a six hundred page book taking place in something like three days or so).
So I guess my point is, if that person has read the start of the series and thought it great is far less of a red flag than him reading most of the series and thinking it great. Although I’d be super impressed with the latter for keeping track of all those characters!