Category Archives: Shitty

Display only books that are shitty.

The Dog Walker

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by Leslie Schnur
Atria Books 2004

Selection method: Went looking for the worst book title I could find. Instead got the worst author’s name I could find. Schnur is a Pokemon character. Schnur! Schnur!
First: Nina Shepard was in love with a man she’d never met.
Worst: It was funny how she could know more about a man she’d never met than all the men she had met put together.
Most profound: After thirty-five years, she liked her legs.
Misspelled word used to describe Lenny Kravitz on page two: white-bread

Leslie Schnur likes hyphens. She wants you to know. She uses them to construct witty-and-familiar-but-not-that-familiar-and-not-that-witty adjectives. They’re easy to spot, like a curly black pubic hair in a bowl of warm cream. And good thing because I was not going to read more than three pages of this shitty book. Here is a selection, which I swear I didn’t make up:

  • soon-to-be-ex
  • way-too-long life
  • only-in-New-York sight
  • lovely-to-look-at alt-lifestyle junkie
  • irony-is-dead-or-not-dead argument
  • cinematographer-libertarian-vegetarian-qigong-expert ex-husband
  • real-life-adventure-tragedy-on-Everest-in-Antarctica-in-Krakatoa-with-sharks-with-fire stuff

She also desperately wants you to know about her dog. He is the best dog in the world, and his name is Charlie and he is a mutt from the ASPCA and he apparently is great enough to be listed in her dedication right next to her flesh and blood children. Thanks, mom. Happy to know we’re as important to you as a dog from the pound.

It is also important to know that Leslie Schnur has been an editor and publisher for over twenty years, and this is her first novel. In writing this wonderful piece of shit, she gives us further evidence that editors don’t know how to read. How could she even approve her own work? Cosmopolitan Magazine wouldn’t print this. Fake Chinese Teen Cosmo wouldn’t print this. And the label “chick lit” is too high a compliment, as it implies “literature” which this is not. I suggest instead the term “curdled festering placental tread marks on society’s sweaty undergarments” (which I think was also a song by Carcass).

This is a New Yorker clearly infatuated with her life and her city, which she thinks are crazy and vibrant, respectively, but which in fact are both alcohol dumpsters. I’m not saying Leslie Schnur is an alcoholic, just that there were a lot of wine stains on the cover and I got contact drunk while holding it.

The offending publisher here is Atria Books, which is where Simon & Shuster flushes everything not good enough for their flagship imprint. We last met Atria Books in Jennifer Weiner’s unputdownable (no hyphens necessary) Goodnight Nobody. We are far from surprised, then, that Jennifer Weiner lends the first puff quote to the back cover — the shitty pot calling the kettle shitty. But no less than the esteemed US Senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, also claims to like this book (he’s lost his mind, and my vote….when I get my illegal absentee ballot from Minnesota). I’m looking into whether Atria Books is really a business front for a meth lab.

I would like to round up every person who read this all the way through (start with her own list of acknowledgments), put them into a rocket ship, launch them into space, and drop them all on the Moon. Then blow up the Moon, impeach Al Franken, blow up Minnesota, and finally mix the Moon debris and Minnesota debris into a giant ball and make a new Moon. Then fire this second Moon directly into the Sun using futuristic ion rockets. Then burn the factory that made the rockets and have a party.

Other reviews: The Romance Reader, Trashionista, Curled Up, The Best Reviews

(Support this site by purchasing this shitty book through one of the links below.)

The Pale King

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by David Foster Wallace
2011 Little, Brown, & Co.

First sentence: Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the AM heat: shattercane, lamb’s-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spine-cabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butterprint, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek.
Words in that sentence that are also names of bluegrass bands: cutgrass, foxtail, wild oat
Words in that sentence that are also names of shitty rock bands: shattercane, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, muscadine, goldenrod, creeping charlie, ragweed, vetch, blacktop, downriver,
Words that are shitty metal bands: nightshade, rust 
No. of children in Africa who died of malnourishment while David Foster Wallace was writing that sentence: One zillion.

The reason David Foster Wallace hung himself in 2008 was that he had written most of this book and finally realized that it was shitty. That first sentence takes up half of the entire first chapter. The first three pages are mostly white space and I was forced to read a whole extra page just to get a sense of where DFW went wrong. I can reasonably say he went wrong by exiting his mother’s womb.

The first character we meet is named Sylvanshine, which I believe is Elven, or if not, then very very gay. From what I can tell, this is a story about an accountant. Wow. DFW is a genius.

I have never understood the cult surrounding this man. The guy wore bandanas and his books are shitty and I say that having read not just one, but zero of them. It is amazing that a man can write so much and have so little to say. This book would be better shredded into packing material — more entertaining, too. The publishers should have left this unfinished novel unfinished and not besmirched DFW’s name further.

I feel a little bad trashing a dead guy, but last I checked, corpses couldn’t defend themselves, and suicide is cheating.

Other reviews: Literary Sluts, Writerly Life, 26 Books, Of Books And Reading

(Support this site by purchasing this shitty book through one of the links below.)

Goodnight Nobody

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by Jennifer Weiner
Atria Books (Simon & Schuster) 2005

Method of selection: Asked the librarian directions to the restroom. This was the book I found in the toilet.

First sentence: “Hello?” I tapped on Kitty Cavanaugh’s red front door, then lifted the brass knocker and gave it a few thumps for good measure. 
Types of diabetes I came down with trying to slog through this: Type 1 (body does not produce insulin), Type 2 (body ignores insulin produced), Type 9 (only affects people who read this book, and cannibals who eat the brains of people who read this book. I did both, so now I also have Type 12 diabetes).
You will like this book if: you’re a hospice patient with nothing to do but wait for death.

Why do authors write books about normal people doing normal things and complaining about it? I know how boring life is already. I do it every day, and complain about it. Where’s the robot fellatio? Where are the Templar Knights travelling through time to have sex with you? And how long must I wait to get to the murder parts? Nobody I ever know gets killed. Life sucks! We know!

The first three pages of this are about a suburban mom and her sad lonely life raising three kids and a husband who ignores her, and the sexy cool moms who are sexier and cooler and less Jewish than her. My hope was she would bury her three children alive in the yard and then go rape the sexy moms, but she hardly did any of those things.

The publisher’s synopsis calls this book “unputdownable”, but I didn’t have any trouble putting it down, which means either the publisher is lying, or someone drove a 1/2-inch bolt directly through her palms and into this book, and used a locknut on the other side. That story would have made for a more interesting read, as do most instructions on playing billiards.

Other reviews:  The Infinite Shelf, Tiny Little Reading Room, Capricious Reader

(Support this site by purchasing this shitty book through one of the links below.)

A House of Secrets

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by Patti Davis
Birch Lane Press 1991

Method of selection: Set a cow loose in the library. This was the book she was munching on when they shot her.

First sentence: I am the child of storytellers.

Worst sentence: …I’ve seen questions scurrying away, frightened by the light.
Worser sentence: Reaching my arm up at just the right moment, I could graze the edge of the moon; velvety and pale, it would leave a fine dust on my fingertips.
Word I hate in that sentence more than any: velvety

Do you know who Patti Davis is? I didn’t. She isn’t the Patti Davis named Patti Smith, which is what I thought at first. But it turns out I’ve seen her naked, which is probably why this is such a shitty book. She was too busy getting naked to learn to write.

Patti Davis is Ronald Reagan’s daughter, and notorious in the family for being a liberal, and something of a libertine. She appeared in Playboy in 1994, in all her Mr. Universe-armed glory. I’m not sure why she thought she could write a novel, but people do crazy things on steroids.

The talking points on the front flap say this is a book about a woman “coming to terms”. This is the first warning that this is a shitty book. Unless she turns out to be coming to terms with her gigantic penis, or coming to terms with her insane desire to kill people and fuck their corpses, you can be sure this book isn’t going to be very interesting.

The second is how every sentence is written out to be a big deal, such as:

My father waited until my mother’s shape no longer filled the doorway, until the sound of her footsteps had disappeared.

You know what works even better? “Mom left.” Even better than that is to not write anything, and go to bed. I really don’t care that the woman’s parents are really Ronald and Nancy Reagan. They’re old and they’re dead. But I suppose they were still alive in 1991, sorta. It should be pointed out that this book is very, very out of print. So now it’s collectible!

(Support this site by purchasing this shitty book through one of the links below.)

Bless the Bride

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by Rhys Bowen
Minotaur 2011

First sentence:
“I think I may be in a spot of trouble,” I said.
Worst sentence: I had had my fill of danger and was ready to admit that had I been a cat, I would have used at least eight of my nine lives.
Number of people murdered in the first three pages of this mystery novel: 50, by me, to overcome the boredom brought on by this book.
Number of people murdered in the first three pages of the actual story of this mystery novel, not by me: 0. But in my imagination, 4, including the flower girl, who was murdered, processed, and canned.

If I ever teach a class on fiction writing, I will teach a lesson on the best way to kill your reader from eyestrain as he searches vainly for a story. Example A will be the first three pages of this book, in which the protagonist, Molly Murphy, sits and sews wedding garments for her wedding while she talks to her stepmother-to-be, who is also sewing, about the coming wedding.

Being that this is supposed to be a mystery, I waited and waited through three entire pages for the stepmother to pull out a switchblade, or for Javier, the long-lost Argentine cousin to show up with a coded message, or even just a dead body to fall from the sky (mysteriously). Maybe I read too many Hardy Boys books growing up (where dead bodies fall from the sky on almost every page–I’m serious, go back and read them. You won’t believe this shit.) but I simply didn’t feel the least bit compelled to keep reading.

I picked up a few things, which wasn’t easy to do because my eyes kept trying to jump out of my face and run for help: Molly Murphy is a Manhattan detective with a quick temper (she said so), her brothers are freedom fighters in Ireland, and that’s all I could figure out. Perhaps had I read the other nine novels in this series, I would find this scene funny. Instead I just found it sad. So sad that I called the suicide helpline to complain. They recommended I try Wicked Prey, which only made things worse.

Other reviews: Mystery Maven, Judith Starkston, Buried By Books

(Support this site by purchasing this shitty book through the links below.)

Wicked Prey

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by #1 NYT Bestselling Author John Sandford!
G.P. Putnam Sons (Penguin) 2009

First sentence: Randy Whitcomb was a human stinkpot, a red-haired cripple with a permanent cloud over his head; a gap-toothed, pock-faced, paraplegic crank freak, six weeks out of the Lino Lakes medium-security prison.

Most meaningless sentence: She was a good-looking woman of no particularly identifiable age, who’d taken care to make herself mousy.
Even worse entire paragraph: description of complete contents of character’s wallet, including “a variety of wallet detritus”.
Things I’d rather do than read page 4: eat as many human babies as there are commas in this book.

I like swear words, if not used too gratuitously, and I love swear words directed at children. John Sandford understands this. John Sandford understands me. But unfortunately he put all his work into the first few sentences because the story falls apart before page one is over. He haphazardly shifts the focus from Randy Whitcomb to a tall bearded man and his companion and some sub-sub-sub-story about being in England too long, then to Brutus Cohn, whose name is John Lamb on his passport, then to Rosie Cruz, who is Brutus Cohn’s companion (or is he really John Lamb? Who knows? Who cares?). I was not sure who I was supposed to be paying attention to.

Perhaps the book eventually circles around to the swearing human stinkpot. Hopefully so because Sandford takes care to point out how unremarkable all his other characters are (she was wallpaper, she was background).

Coincidental best use of this book: wallpaper background

On the front flap, The Washington Post says John Sandford’s novels are beloved (which is 1 less than loved) for their “ingenious plots, vivid characters, crisp dialogue, and endless surprises”. I would like to share a sample of this “crisp dialogue”. The background to this crisp dialogue is that there’s a Toyota Camry.

“Ugly car,” he said, as he lifted the suitcase into the trunk…
“The best-selling car in America, in the least attention-getting color,” Cruz said.

If I were a slime mold, growing on a different slime mold, which was itself growing on a stack of putrid rotting cow guts in the soggiest part of the deepest chasm at the bottom of the ocean, I still would not call that “crisp”.

Other reviews: Sonia Reviews, True Crime Book Reviews 

(Support this site by purchasing this shitty book through the links below.)

Fall of Giants

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by Ken Follett
Dutton (Penguin) 2010

First Sentence: On the day King George V was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London, Billy Williams went down the pit in Aberowen, South Wales.
Worst sentence: This was how the world appeared on the second day of Creation, Billy thought…
Even worse-than-that sentence: Inside the room there was even less to look at.
Gratuitous words that let you know this is historical fiction: gramper, underdrawers, mam, diphtheria, whooping cough, dram (“one of the wheeled tubs that carried coal”), moleskin, skullery, bath night, Ethel
Alternative uses for this book: 1. use to beat children (when they ask for more porridge), 2. use to beat grampers (when he asks for a new wheelchair), 3. flotation device (in the event of water landing, if you survive, which you won’t), 4. insulation

First, if you don’t already know that Westminster Abbey is in London (England) then put this book away now and go check on your baby, because the thing is likely dead in the tub. Remember: a baby can drown in even an inch of water.

Second, if you already knew that Aberowen was in South Wales put this book away because you will feel pandered to. (I thought it was in North Wales, but I was actually thinking of Blaenau Ffestiniog, which is a mistake everyone makes.)

The first character we meet in this book is Billy Williams. That would be William Williams as his Christian name. It’s as if Ken Follett was thinking up character names, and, realizing he has already used every other name in the world in his nine hundred other works, he thought “William….” then got stumped and said, “Aw fuck it. Good enough,” then went for a swim in his money pool.

The second character we meet is Willy William’s father, who he calls “Da”, which is probably a typo caused by Follett’s noiseless typewriter, and therefore the most important artistic contribution to his 5.5 million page oeuvre, or possibly a Welsh dialect. I don’t have time to check. I’m busy.

That’s the first three sentences.

The three pages that follow are mostly description of the poor miners’ humble home, introduction to some issues of masculinity and manhood, and some other stuff I can’t even remember or care to.

The back flap has the following paragraph, by the publisher: “In future volumes of The Century Trilogy, subsequent generations of the same families will travel through the great events of the rest of the twentieth century, changing themselves and the century itself…” I admire Mr. Follett for taking on such an ambitious project. Too bad he writes like an illiterate homeless man with AIDS. Looks good in a tie, though. A little bit better than a homeless man with AIDS. Also, how does he already know it’s a trilogy if he hasn’t even written it yet? Explain that, Mr. Follett!

Other reviews: Sam Still Reading, Bippity Boppity Book, The Lit Witch

(Support this site by purchasing this shitty book through the links below.)