hated it | Reading Backwards book reviews

The Linnet By Elizabeth English (aka Elizabeth Minogue) Read: June 2010 Rating: Sigh. I have been waiting to read this book since I read The Prince (Jan ’06). I loved that so much that I immediately set my sights on the only other book under this name. Alas, The Linnet does not live up to The Prince’s [...] Full Story	Defiant Spitfire By Kay McMahon Not Read: April 2010 Rating: AUGH Coming out of Beyond Heaving Bosoms, I naturally wanted to indulge in some of the best/worst of the genre. I swapped for this book a short while ago and figured it was as good a place to start as any. But the Smart Bitches have just [...] Full Story	Movie vs. Book: Ella Enchanted Once upon a time, I discovered a wonderful, wonderful book. Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted is immerses you in Ella’s world, giving you a best friend as well as an adventure. Then Hollywood got their hands on it. And THEY RAPED IT. Below is an off-the-cuff rant I wrote in 2004, before the movie was [...] Full Story
Amazon By Barbara G. Walker Not Read: Feb 2010 Rating: zones out I’m trying to be good, really I am. But 50 pages out of 170 isn’t such a bad run… The book is awkward and boring and it reads like what it is–a work of fiction by a feminist scholar that has been described (by [...] Full Story	A Knight in Shining Armor By Jude Deveraux Attempted to Read: January 2010 Rating: AUGH Wot the shit is this?! Today, RB stands for RIDICULOUSLY BAD. Hey Jude don’t make it bad Take a sad song and make it better Remember to let her under your skin Then you’ll begin to make it better Better, better, better, better, better, Yeah,Yeah,YeahNa [...] Full Story	Wuthering Heights By Emily Bronte Read: March 2009 Rating: Poison I give up. I quit. I want nothing more to do with this torturous mess. I decided it was time to try Wuthering Heights because my TiVo had picked up a documentary on the Bronte sisters, which was of course full of people who think they’re the [...] Full Story
Wagner the Werewolf By George W. M. Reynolds Attempted Read: Feb 2009 Rating: Goddamn. Just… goddamn. I saw this at Strand Books and spent MONTHS hemming and hawing over whether or not I should put my money toward it. Pro: It’s a book from the 1800s about a werewolf in the 1500s. HOT DAMN it’s historical fiction^2 with [...] Full Story	The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe Read: May/June 2008 Rating: UGH This was recommended to me for my senior capstone project. I dutifully made it to the end, but gawd was it painful. Exemplifies all that I hate in a certain kind of writing, usually seen in short stories. Only this was longer. Unjustifiably so, in my opinion. [...] Full Story	The Subtle Knife By Philip Pullman Read: August 2008 Rating: Disappointing Gentle readers, it is a sad day for my bookshelf. I am usually very good about finishing the books I pick up, I hate stopping partway, unless they’re really trash. Even when something becomes mediocre, I see it through, if only to see how bad it gets. [...] Full Story
Sex and Scandal in England (Guest Review) by Melody Thomas Guest Review by Sreya Read Shen’s review here. For the time being (the duration of this review) I’ll be taking over for Shen — no rotten tomatoes, please! — and I’ll be reviewing a novel that she lent me. She reviewed it herself, so I guess this is simultaneous. Shen and I [...] Full Story	Beautylicious!: The Black Girl’s Guide to the Fabulous Life By Jenyne M Raines Read: May 2008 Rating: Appalling. Somehow this book wound up in the teen section of the public library. Keep it away from your impressionable young women. The advice is not black-specific, it’s very general and you could find most of it in a myriad of similar titles. The most ‘black’ thing [...] Full Story	Sheikh’s Ransom By Alexandra Sellers Read: November 2006 Rating: BLECH. (This one has some bad language. Sorry.) Remember that school project about Christian Romance Novels? Well, I got an A on it. But my punishment was having to read this garbage. I’m not a stranger to fantasies that involve the dangerous, the forbidden, submission, and the otherwise [...] Full Story
Lambert’s Pride By Lynn A. Coleman & Rachel Hauck Available most cheaply @Heartsong Presents Read: November 2006 Rating: WEAK. Welcome to another edition of “I had to read it for school!” Tonight we delve into the perplexing realm of “Inspirational” (ie, Christian) romance novels. Yes, it’s true–religious fundamentalists are now publishing whole lines of romance novels featuring [...] Full Story	The Twentieth Wife By Indu Sundaresan Read: August 2006 Rating: Lackluster. I love historical fiction. I love romance. And I love Philippa Gregory, despite not always liking what her characters do. So I should be able to get through a book like this, right? I’m still barely a quarter of the way through, and I’m putting it down. [...] Full Story	Wizard’s First Rule By Terry Goodkind Darest thou to try for it @Amazon.com? Rating: CEE-RAP. Read: Yonk ago, during high school. This is the worst first novel attempt I have ever had the misfortune of trying to read. No, seriously. Terry Goodkind gets his name up all over the place but I don’t care. I have a serious [...] Full Story
On The Road By Jack Kerouac I’m not going to tempt you with a link. It’s too awful. Rating: ERLACK. Read: March 2006 It’s not really true to say that I’ve read this… I stopped after 40-some pages because it was just too awful. It’s Fitzgeraldian–and that is not a compliment when coming from me. Full Story	x2 Review: The Trial, and Genealogy of Morals Here’s something new. I had to read these for class. I hated both. So you’re going to get DOUBLE the fun in one review! Yay! The Trial Franz Kafka Get it if you dare @Amazon.com Rating: Ugh Read: Feb 2006 I am now quite certain Kafka was on snuff. Or something. You know those dreams [...] Full Story	Sex & the City By Candace Bushnell Cheaper than the DVDs: Amazon.com Rating: Typical Read: July 2005 I adore the show to BITS. But, I read Bushnell’s 4 Blondes perhaps two years ago and was thoroughly unimpressed. She’s the Fitzgerald of her generation in that she writes about the American ‘aristocracy’, which is a thoroughly jaded, degernate, and utterly [...] Full Story
Idoru By William Gibson Don’t send the nanotech after me! Amazon.com Rating: Evasive. Read: Freshman year (00-01), reread march 05 There are two people who may be upset that I did not enjoy Idoru, but I’m afraid I have to be honest. I found Idoru to be scatter-brained and evasive. I’ve never been a fan of [...] Full Story	The Stranger By Albert Camus Rating: Poor. Read: March 2004 Category-ReqSchool Category-Ugh For Rebellion & Conformity, or whatever it is we’re studying right now, we’re reading The Stranger. We’re maybe two chapters from the end, and I am not moved. Meursault is the most apathetic character I have ever read about. This makes him boring. He doesn’t [...] Full Story	The Bumblebee Flies Anyway By Robert Cormier Rating: Traumatic. Read: 7th grade, 1998-99 I was assigned to read The Bumblebee Flies Anyway for class in 7th grade. And I have loathed it ever since. As I am now in college, it is difficult for me to remember specific details, but I will try to define why Barney and I [...] Full Story
The Shape-Changer’s Wife By Sharon Shinn (WHY, Sharon, WHY!?) Rating: Poor. Read: 2003/2004ish I had high expectations for Shape Changer’s Wife, since I began with Shinn’s Summers at Castle Auburn and the Archangel/Samaria series- all of which are stellar. Unfortunately, SCW fell very, very short of what I had hoped for. There simply is not enough action to [...] Full Story	This Side of Paradise By F. Scott Fitzgerald Rating: One big fat middle finger up Fitzgerald’s arsehole. Read: Over the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, 2001. Frankly, the most self-indulgent piece of tripe I’ve ever been forced to read. It was a summer reading assignment, and one of two terrible books I brought on a visit to [...] Full Story