Annoying Novels I Know (and possibly love)

[imagegod]

From my perspective, being an annoying novel isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm reading 'Youngblood Hawke' (which I highly recommend to anyone interested in a Novel about a novel writer), but it annoys me to no end...it's wonderfully written and Youngblood is an absolutely terrific Main Character, but there are so many tangents...far too many for my taste.
But there's no way I'd stop reading it...and I refuse to skip the tangents.

Any thoughts?

[triceretops]

I don't know what it was about Dune, but I staggered and got hung up about midway through it on two ocassions. I know that it deserved further reading, since it has been so highly acclaimed. That book sends regrets up and down my spine. I'm thinking that it was the politics that turned me off. I craved action. Although, I believe that the scope and majesty of the world-building was the true jem, and I never gave it a chance to digest the whole thing. I think Dune is the sum of all its parts. I wished I'd had more patience to discover that.

Tri

[imagegod]

I don't know what it was about Dune, but I staggered and got hung up about midway through it on two ocassions. I know that it deserved further reading, since it has been so highly acclaimed. That book sends regrets up and down my spine. I'm thinking that it was the politics that turned me off. I craved action. Although, I believe that the scope and majesty of the world-building was the true jem, and I never gave it a chance to digest the whole thing. I think Dune is the sum of all its parts. I wished I'd had more patience to discover that.

Tri
Yeah, me too...it's been a (very) long time since I read Dune, but your assessment really hits the mark for me.
Definitely annoying...definitely a must read.

[AndreaGS]

Oh jeez, I LOVE the politics in Dune! That and the world-building. To each their own, I s'pose.

For me it was Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Great book, but oh my goodness it was difficult keeping track of the characters. How many names do they each have? I did a lot of page-flipping, trying to figure out who was who.

[lfraser]

Foucault's Pendulum. About a third of the way through I decided I was just too stupid to understand it, but ploughed on, thinking that I must finish it anyway, since it seemed to have the resonance of a Great Novel about it. About fifty pages on I decided that it was merely incomprehensible, and chucked it in.

[PeeDee]

Charles de Lint stuff. I spent half my time reading his novels and complaining about little things, and yet.....I never stop reading 'em. Don't know why.

[KiraOnWhite]

Flavia Bujor's Prophecy of The Stones...kind of annoying at some parts, especially the ridiculous 'love at first sight' thing, but I can't help but still enjoy it. Guilt pleasure, maybe?

[IrishScribbler]

Possession by A. S. Byatt. I'm reading it now, and it's a bit heavier than I expected.

I really love it thusfar, it's just been slow-going.

[Gabriel]

Star wars, I enjoyed it but certain things reduced me to chewing on my fist.

[CaroGirl]

Foucault's Pendulum. About a third of the way through I decided I was just too stupid to understand it, but ploughed on, thinking that I must finish it anyway, since it seemed to have the resonance of a Great Novel about it. About fifty pages on I decided that it was merely incomprehensible, and chucked it in.
I read it too, but I might as well not have bothered. I get more entertainment out of reading a cereal box.

[Marlys]

For years I kept reading a certain author's mysteries (hey, I'm under my own name here, and don't want to be caught by Google dissing another author in public--but I will tell you her initials are E.G.), even though I thought them hopelessly melodramatic and owing a LOT to Dorothy Dunnett (plus, they contained a character who was so useless and annoying that the only possible reason for her existence was to be killed off to torment the hero...and yet, book after book, she didn't die). There was enough good in them that I kept thinking if she could get a hold of herself, she could write a really great book. Finally, it paid off in the ninth book in the series (the one where the supporting character was given center stage) I read and thought, "Wow--this is the book I've been waiting for." Terrific read.

The next book was okay, but the one after that was so dreadful and unlikely that I gave up on the author altogether. Too bad--I hear she finally killed off the character I didn't like, but too late for me.

[jess b]

Against my better judgment, I recently started The Clan of the Cave Bear. It's all right--moderately entertaining--but then I got to the whole thing about how the clan members have giant occiptal lobes that make them telepathic, and all the scientific credibility kinda went out the window. Preposterous. But I'm sort of into the story, now, so I'll have to keep going....

[Jamesaritchie]

From my perspective, being an annoying novel isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm reading 'Youngblood Hawke' (which I highly recommend to anyone interested in a Novel about a novel writer), but it annoys me to no end...it's wonderfully written and Youngblood is an absolutely terrific Main Character, but there are so many tangents...far too many for my taste.
But there's no way I'd stop reading it...and I refuse to skip the tangents.

Any thoughts?

Great novel.

[The Lady]

I read and loved all the Dune books .way way way back. Nothing annoying about it at all and a great great read.

I recently gave up on the latest Stephen Donaldson book in the Thomas Covenant series though. Having read all the others, I was delighted to see The Runes Of The Earth appear. Oh dearie me, I haven't analyzed it, but either Stephen Donaldson has fallen off as a writer or I was a wonderfully accepting reader years back, but that book was a solid trudge of nothingness.

Most boring book I ever completed, Love In The Time Of Cholera. I found it totally unexciting yet I persevered for some reason. I'm glad I finished but I will never read a book by that author again. I can still remember the main character in the book though so I guess that's good.

[BlueTexas]

Most boring book I ever completed, Love In The Time Of Cholera. I found it totally unexciting yet I persevered for some reason. I'm glad I finished but I will never read a book by that author again. I can still remember the main character in the book though so I guess that's good.

I couldn't finish this one. About half in, I realized I just didn't care what was happening.

[The Lady]

I couldn't finish this one. About half in, I realized I just didn't care what was happening.

I didn't care either. I don't know why I finished it. It's an unexplained mystery in my reading life.

[Jamesaritchie]

I read and loved all the Dune books .way way way back. Nothing annoying about it at all and a great great read.

I recently gave up on the latest Stephen Donaldson book in the Thomas Covenant series though. Having read all the others, I was delighted to see The Runes Of The Earth appear. Oh dearie me, I haven't analyzed it, but either Stephen Donaldson has fallen off as a writer or I was a wonderfully accepting reader years back, but that book was a solid trudge of nothingness.

Most boring book I ever completed, Love In The Time Of Cholera. I found it totally unexciting yet I persevered for some reason. I'm glad I finished but I will never read a book by that author again. I can still remember the main character in the book though so I guess that's good.

The Dune novels annoyed the heck out of me in one way. You have a desert world with an oxygen atmosphere. This is impossible. I simply couldn't get past this.

[Yuallica]

The Dragonbone Chair. I enjoy reading it when I remember to, but when I put the book down, I can't really be bothered to pick it up again. I do like the story though (even if it does make Lord of the Rings seem fast paced to me) and I'm determined to finish it one day. I've been about halfway through for about a year and a half though... got distracted by some (many) other books.

[The Lady]

The Dune novels annoyed the heck out of me in one way. You have a desert world with an oxygen atmosphere. This is impossible. I simply couldn't get past this.

Ah, how much simpler life is when these facts don't jump out at you. I'm glad I didn't know that cos I really enjoyed those books. I don't get it though. We have deserts and we have an oxygen atmosphere. What is the science behind the impossibility?

[The Lady]

The Dragonbone Chair. I enjoy reading it when I remember to, but when I put the book down, I can't really be bothered to pick it up again. I do like the story though (even if it does make Lord of the Rings seem fast paced to me) and I'm determined to finish it one day. I've been about halfway through for about a year and a half though... got distracted by some (many) other books.

Slow paced. Very. I came close to the, throwing it across the room, cliche.Worst part was when I realised it had taken someone four pages to put on a jacket. Strange thing though, is that the man can write very succinctly. He wrote Child Of An Ancient City. A very beautiful little story with scarcely a superfluous word.

[virtue_summer]

All of Jean Auel's novels. I enjoy the story but she has such a habit of going off on tangents about the flora and fauna that sometime's I just want to scream. She does the same thing with love scenes. If she would cut out these pages upon pages of nonessential description, I think the stories would be much better for it.

[andracill]

"Ivanhoe" -- yikes! Totally annoying: 'Blessing' by Anna quindlen -- wanted to burn the thing when I finished!

[Inkdaub]

DaVinci Code is annoying for obvious reasons but I loved it because I'm a sucker for that sort of subject matter. Ditto for all the Brad Meltzer books I've read.

John Connolly writes some good books about murderers and supernatural type things. Very dark stuff. However, it annoys me that Charlie Parker is always 'suffering' for his actions and his girlfriend...who knows the score going in...is always on the verge of leaving him because she just 'isn't sure she can do this'.

Robert Jordan writes some of my favorite fantasy out there...probably my second favorite current series. Yet the man takes forever to get to the point. I sometimes feel like opening his books in the middle and starting there. Of course, his books reward patient readers as the payoff is better after reading all the hundreds of pages of buried hints...even if the payoff is often of the 'I knew it' variety. The last page of his last book reveals something Jordan fans have strongly suspected for many years. Well...sortof reveals it. I wouldn't be too surprised to find it's a small bit of misdirection, but I hope not.

[Mr. Funktastic]

Terry Goodkind's more recent novels. I loved his first four novels, the fifth was iffy, and the sixth was really good, but ever since he's just babbled about his philosophy and such. I'm glad he's finally ending it. Or so he says.

[beezle]

Terry Goodkind's more recent novels. I loved his first four novels, the fifth was iffy, and the sixth was really good, but ever since he's just babbled about his philosophy and such. I'm glad he's finally ending it. Or so he says.

Yeah, no kidding. I was so into the early ones it was scary. And now? *sigh*

[Jamesaritchie]

Ah, how much simpler life is when these facts don't jump out at you. I'm glad I didn't know that cos I really enjoyed those books. I don't get it though. We have deserts and we have an oxygen atmosphere. What is the science behind the impossibility?

We have deserts, but we also have hundreds of millions of acres of vegetation, an ocean, etc. Dune was supposed to be a world with no water and no vegetation. This means there's nothing to produce oxygen. You need plants, lots and lots of plants, mainly trees, but lots and lots of green plants, to make oxygen. And for plants, you need lots and lots of water, which means enough rain to keep all the plants growing.

To have plants, you must have rain, and to have rain, you must have oceans. Most rain is water than has evaporated from the oceans.

Nevertheless, if you overlook this, the original Dune novels were darned good reading.

[The Lady]

We have deserts, but we also have hundreds of millions of acres of vegetation, an ocean, etc. Dune was supposed to be a world with no water and no vegetation. This means there's nothing to produce oxygen. You need plants, lots and lots of plants, mainly trees, but lots and lots of green plants, to make oxygen. And for plants, you need lots and lots of water, which means enough rain to keep all the plants growing.

To have plants, you must have rain, and to have rain, you must have oceans. Most rain is water than has evaporated from the oceans.

Nevertheless, if you overlook this, the original Dune novels were darned good reading.



http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005AGUFM.P41D..08Z


Ok, so I googled it, and I should have better things to do with my time, but on the plus side I have learned a little something extra about oxygen. The above link seems to think Dune is viable. Admittedly, I am not a Science Fiction writer and if hard science were ever needed for my story I would run screaming. On the other hand, do you think Herbert did the research and just made faulty assumptions, or did he just invent his world without any regard to science? (Which I know is a huge sin in SF)

[Jamesaritchie]

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2005AGUFM.P41D..08Z


Ok, so I googled it, and I should have better things to do with my time, but on the plus side I have learned a little something extra about oxygen. The above link seems to think Dune is viable. Admittedly, I am not a Science Fiction writer and if hard science were ever needed for my story I would run screaming. On the other hand, do you think Herbert did the research and just made faulty assumptions, or did he just invent his world without any regard to science? (Which I know is a huge sin in SF)


Trouble is, Dune didn't just have a dry equatorial region. It was a desert planet. If it had enough water to matter, they would simply have piped it in from other regions. A desert planet may well have life on it, but it can't have an oxygen atmosphere that would support humans. It simply can't, at least according to scientists I've talked to, or heard discuss it.

I think it was just one of those things Herbert didn't think about, and it certainly didn't harm the number of readers he had.

And in some ways, Dune was as much fantasy as science fiction.

[The Lady]

Can't remember enough about Dune to get into a real learned conversation about this. But thanks for the information.

A couple of years ago I started spotting plot holes in nearly ever book I read and every film I saw. Losing your plot innocence is a terrible thing. I could nearly cry with relief every time a book sucks me in now. Thank God I read so much before that happened.