[ SECRET POST #2256 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2256 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[The Most Popular Girls In School]


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[Rust and Bone]


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[My Mad Fat Diary]


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[Sailor Moon]


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[Harvest Moon: A New Beginning]


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[American Horror Story Asylum]


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[Homestuck]


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[DC Comics]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 021 secrets from Secret Submission Post #322.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Disappointing books - what is yours?

[mekkio]

Yesterday we had books that you detest. Now is the question what books have disappointed you based on whatever reason, be it the hype or the interesting blurb in the back?


Mine had to be Beautiful Creatures. I had heard it was supposed to be a breath of fresh air after the Twilight books with an interesting plot and well developed characters to give a flip about.

But really the whole thing was one cliche after the other. I guessed what was going to happen fifty pages in and it's 563 page book. All the characters are stereotypes. Mind you, they are not negative stereotypes...mostly. But just characters I've read about and have seen before over and over again. There was even a genderswapped Star Wars, "Luke, I am your father! Join me in the dark side," type scene in it that just made me groan because you could see it coming a mile away. I was hoping for something different.

(The ironic thing is, the main character has this talent for guessing the correct ending of any mystery before it barely even starts. I couldn't help but think, "Dude, I am so Ethan here.")

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[rosehiptea]

It's not a particularly famous book, but Stardoc. I love science fiction medical themed stuff, and ordered eagerly from Amazon, but it was mostly a big mess of a totally implausible romance and darker stuff handled very badly. The author had a note in it about how she had to revise it a huge number of times before the publisher took it and I think she really should have given it a few more tries.

(Also I hated The Horse Whisperer because I wanted more horses and less adultery. Not that I have a moral objection to fictional characters committing adultery I suppose, but in this case I couldn't even get into their motivation for doing it.)

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[galerian-ash.livejournal.com]

The first to come to mind is Peace Breaks Out by John Knowles. I loved A Separate Peace, so I was expecting great things (the book takes place at the same school, making it a sequel of sorts) -- but I ended up hating it.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[greenvelvetcake]

I hadn't heard of Beautiful Creatures until I saw a trailer for the movie. It looks like a prettier, better version of Twilight, but a Twilight knock-off all the same. The question is, is it better than Twilight?

Every now and then on reddit, people will post threads like, "What's the most disturbing/creepiest/scariest book you've ever read?" and one of the top answers will invariably be House of Leaves. The premise and execution sounded really interesting, so I bought it and read it.

It was so very underwhelming. There were a few unsettling moments, but they were lost amid the ramblings of our three unreliable narrators. Some of the unconventional approaches to story-telling used by the author worked, while others felt gimmicky and unnecessary. It just kept going... and going... and going... and saying absolutely nothing. So disappointing.

That said, I really, really want to see someone try and adapt The Navidson Record (the movie the book House of Leaves is about) to film.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

I thought I would love the game of Thrones and I didn't ;-; I didn't even like it.

I was very sad as it hits all the "things I enjoy" list. Ended up giving the boxset away

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

The most recent one was AGoT.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

Harry Potter immediately comes to mind. I absolutely loved the series up until the 5th book. It really went downhill starting from OoTP and then probably had one of the most disappointing endings of any books I've ever read. Granted, there were aspects I enjoyed of those later books, but they just could have been so much better.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

The Magicians by Lev Grossman. So very disappointing. It had such awesome people backing it up and reccing it, and a really awesome premise, but overall just a really disappointing bitter emo-kid feel to the whole thing.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

Games of Thrones was terribly boring to me, and I don't think I'll keep reading.
Also, House of Leaves wasn't as good as Tumblr made it to be.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron by Kim Newman. I loved the original Anno Dracula, so I went out and bought this sequal...and I still haven't gotten past chapter two of it. It isn't bad, it just didn't capture me the same way the first book did, and that's really disappointing. Maybe I'll give it another go after I finish the two I'm reading now.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

People at the communities I frequented were praising Cat Valente and Palimpsest up to the skies, so I read it. I found it just insufferably precious, in a self-regarding way--like I could feel the author rubbing her hands over every phrase.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[kamino_neko]

Lord of the Rings.

Lord of the Fucking Rings.

Lord of the GODDAMMIT ENOUGH WITH THE SCENERY PORN, GET ON WITH THE FRIGGING STORY Rings.

this is probably emotional enough to be a fandom secret, but...

[(Anonymous)]

Mine was Accidents of Nature. She'd been one of my disability rights heroes for quite a while and I adored Too Late to Die Young, so when I found out a few years ago that she'd also written a YA novel, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.

And then when I did it ended up feeling like a huge betrayal. It isn't even that the book was bad- I enjoyed almost all of it, and there are some scenes that were just perfect- but in the midst of this story that's all about young people with disabilities coming together and developing a sense of community and pride, the way my disability was handled was completely different from all the others and it felt really dehumanizing.

It may have just been an attempt to write characters realistically for the setting and time period, but I honestly couldn't tell from the narrative framing whether it was just their opinion or hers, too. And since I only discovered the book after she died, I'll probably never know.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[deadtree]

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman... the premise is so fun, and I actually liked the characters, but I never really felt drawn into the story, and I couldn't finish it :\ It seems like such a shame that dull writing dragged it down.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

Life of Pi. Hated it when it was first published, hated it when I re-read it now that the movie came out. I don't like to throw the word pseudo-intellectual around, but bleh. What drivel.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[lex_antonia]

Anansi Boys

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

Neverwhere.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[ariakas]

The Difference Engine.

How did two incredible authors manage to write something so awful?

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

Time Traveler's Wife - It was supposed to be romantic. Annd beautiful.

And it was just...not. The wife sat around while the guy was douchey the entire time.

Also, I dislike the word 'cunt' used in what are supposed to be tender, sexy scenes, because that word is not tender and definitely not loving. It just throws me out of the scene.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

the anne mccaffrey books where her son is the coauthor or the only author. They're really bad...

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

Divergent.

So much hype around that book. People I know irl rave about it, too, BUT I *HATED* IT. I found the writing and characters 2 dimensional, and though I'm usually willing to suspend my disbelief (my go to genre is fiction), I found most of the goings on of the book completely unbelievable in a new kind of way - maybe because it just read as stupid to me for a number of reasons.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[charming_stranger]

The Secret History had been so unbelievably hyped to me, so I thought it must be the BEST BOOK EVER and I HAD TO READ IT. Borrowed it from the library, started reading, and ... no, it wasn't that good. I'd probably have liked it more if not for the hype backlash, but now it just seemed pretty bland. I had to return it before I could read more than a few chapters, and I didn't really miss it.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

ASOIAF and Hunger Games.

Granted I didn't expect amazing levels from HG but I thought maybe I'd enjoy it like HP. The first part was interesting, but I just thought the author really dropped the ball making the whole thing about this fake romance between Katniss and Peeta rather than exploring the dystopia for what it was and how it came to be. It's like the author decided to make Katniss the rebel leader just because she was there, literally no reason or rhyme to it.

ASOIAF, however I was expecting to be really awesome because I got into the show a lot, but they were just so boring. I never even got through book 2.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[(Anonymous)]

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. The writing is really quaint, but fuuuuuck it's long and the plot is slow.

Re: Disappointing books - what is yours?

[darkmanifest]

I read Beautiful Creatures and I remember not disliking it, but finding it so forgettable that I made no effort to seek out the next book. And now there's a movie, and I realized I don't actually remember what the story was about anymore. Something about a fucked-up family and magic. And a house. There was definitely a house.

I've been finding N.K. Jemisin's books really disappointing. I fell in love with her short stories back before she published big, she wrote such amazing characters, situations, and worlds, and then she put out her first books and it was one huge letdown after another, except for maybe The Kingdom of Gods and The Killing Moon. For one thing, she puts a chokehold on her great sense of humor for most of her novels, for reasons I can't comprehend. For another, she has this strange knack for taking a female character, making her stunningly smart and awesome, and then having her fall for some absolute fuckup of a dude. The Shadowed Sun pushed me past disappointment to rage. Fucking Hanani and Wanahomen. Fuck that noise.