Title says all. Monkeys, what was the worst book you have ever read? The book that made you regret the money you spent on it. The book that made you angry for wasting your time. The book where you just wanted to fucking strangle the author for being such a dumbass no-good, horrible wordsmith.
For me, it was Gary Shteyngart's "Lake Success", yes, the one advertised by Ben Stiller. I saw it in the book store when I had a 16h plane trip before me and thought, funny hedge funds hijinks, a road movie (or book) about a middle-aged guy learning to love life again, I love that stuff. Read it in one sitting at Charles de Gaulle and threw it in the trash after I was finished. Not only did the quality of writing drop significantly during the book, the author completely lost the point of what he was trying to say. It basically changed from a funny midlife crisis story with some hedgie fun to "rural people bad" and "nothing matters lmao". And I don't even want to think about the ending again. Big yikes, as the kids say. Not bussing ong, indeed.
So hit me with your best shot. What was the book that made you regret ever learning how to read?
Jordan Peterson’s 12 rules for life. Don’t hate JP and I’m not an SJW (actually far closer to a conservative). But that book is really just truism on top of truism. A whole lot of pages dedicated to a lot of rules that really aren’t that wise. If you want real wisdom that draws from true erudition read Talebs Incerto. Any one book by Taleb squashes the entire Jordan Peterson fandom in my opinion. You see what a real intellectual looks like.
Obviously 12 rules was a marketing effort to capitalize on the success of his YouTube channel and I understand that. One unfortunate drawback outside the book is that it has created the very public and blatantly political JP we have now.
Sorry for lengthy answer but god damn. That book just really opened up my eyes to the drivel that is the self-help genre.
I agree. Although I have not read "12 Rules", I have been exposed to quite a bit of his work, and since 2016, Prof. Peterson has a clear case of PUSSI (problems of unwarranted sudden self-importance). Had he stayed in his highly educating lane of explaining myths and dabbing on materialists, he would have had a quiet and uneventful academic life, leading thousands passively to CG Jung and eventual rediscovery of true masculinity. But alas, he burned too bright, and now he's in bed with those IDW weirdos, who think they can just reset society to some Popperian fantasy if they own the libs hard enough. And the worst thing? He really believes the moralistic drivel he preaches, the stuff about being nice and respectful as a driver of success, etc.
Anyways, read BAM by BAP. Also, great note on Taleb. He's hit-and-miss, but when he hits, he hits like a sledgehammer.
BAM by BAP?
You need to realize that 95% of the people on this board are not the intended audience.
I read the audiobook and don’t think it was as groundbreaking as people say it is, but it wasn’t a bad read imo
I get what your saying in that he is a stepping stone for many who are really struggling. That’s why I don’t hate the guy. At one point when I wasn’t that confident intellectually I really admired him and thought he was a towering figure. I thought he’d be an intellectual remembered in the same way Nietzsche is remembered when I was truly ignorant. I now realize he’s little more than an angry politicized Dale Carnegie. See his Marxism debate with Slavoj Zizek if you want proof. Again this is coming from somebody who agrees with a lot of the political stuff he supports.
The beauty of self-help books and other entry level texts is that they direct a beginner toward the classic and more heavy duty literature since those beginner level types of books commonly reference the big thinkers. You probably haven’t heard or taken seriously the theorems of Gödel or ideas of Plato and Nietzsche until you read some of that entry level literature. College and high school certainly avoid talking about those big figures, especially in business school.
But after a few of these books you realize that most self-help and business books really only have 15 pages of content, one core takeaway, and 300 pages of fluff. And ALL of them reference the same keystone studies and foundational intellectual figures and movements. That’s when you graduate to the big guys and give up (and forgive) the philistinism of the business and self help genre. You realize they are a gateway to the better stuff and not to be returned to except for leisurely pleasure.
Watch this if you want a better explanation about JP from an intellectual I deeply respect.
I'm a bit puzzled by your assessment.
Your disappointment with this book seems to stem from your discovery of more profound content that perhaps dives deeper into morality, metaphysics, epistemology yada yada. You seem to have since graduated to a higher level of literature and intellectualism and look down on 12R as a simplistic book of platitudes. But to compare 12R to a Beyond Good and Evil (or something of that sort) is bizarre to me.
12R is not trying to be a profound intellectual exploration of a select philosophical topic. It's a self-help book that distills, simplifies, and organizes old wisdom (and common sense) into simple, applicable, and immediate advice for a mainstream (ok, somewhat educated) audience. In that regard, it is a very solid book that has helped a lot of people. I found it both logically convincing and emotionally persuasive, well written, and decently supported. It's not perfect, but it is a book effective at what it aims to do. And per Aristotle, something that effectively accomplishes its' purpose or goal is 'good' ;) (Joking on the last point, I'm not an Aristotelian dogmatist. Just a perspective)
Again, JP's goal with this book was to help everyday people, not to reach an intellectual summit for academics or intelligentsia to masturbate to. Same with other self-help books or business books. I would say you are scoring this book per a wrong set of criteria. Like comparing a textbook to a philosophical masterpiece
Also consider that what might seem a truism to you, might be a revelation to someone else. Some people are clueless.
Ask yourself whether out of every book you have ever read this is truly the worst, or if you were trying to rock the boat a little bit (as well as peacock your refined and superior tastes that elevate you above the realm of self-help books, which, according to you, were once inspirational and helpful in learning about more complex content)
Considering the sheer number of accounts crying about women and minorities taking their FT offers, I beg to differ...
I got through half of it and it just wasn’t very good. I don’t hate JP but I do not like that book.
Comparing JP's 12 Rules to Taleb's Incerto is like comparing apples and suspension bridges...
The Bible
Moral lessons of the Bible condensed are great....actually reading it page by page is pretty tough.
The Torah is worse as is the Talmud. Garbage.
???
Since when are war, intrigue, divine fury, passion, incest, and deep cuts into the human psyche (Hiob, Kohelet) not interesting?
Am just not a massive fan of fiction books
Found the Rabbi
As-salamu alaykum Brother
The great gatsby. Boring and overrated
Edit: lol at all the yuppies tossing me MS. Yes, liking this book makes you boring as well
I remember having to read this in 11th grade - didn’t read one page and still passed the test lol
Bro you don't get it it's about alienation in the American Dream (TM) bro it's about the tragic of love bro it's Byronic social critique you just don't get it
broooooooo
The Original Wolf of Wall Street
Project Hail Mary from Andy Weir. It is without a doubt the most cringe book I have ever read. It also had me question the collective intelligence of the whole goodreads userbase. How such a poorly written cringe inducing hot garbage can have a rating of 4.5/5 star (!!!!) is truly beyond me.
Goodreads is a great idea that was taken over by activists on both sides. Honestly its not surprising when you think about it. Book recommendations from the masses are going to suck because the masses don't read good books. When they do read its popular self help books and other low brow crap.
glad someone else thought it was crap
I didn't read this book, but I was not a huge fan of The Martian at all. Took me forever to get through, and I still don't understand all of the hype. And this is coming from someone who has a pretty strong interest in chemistry / science.
It’s on my TBR list, why was it so cringe? I agree about Goodreads it’s a good place to build a list of books/organize, but I do not read reviews on there.
My math textbook
Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffet
Thought that the book would be an introspective view by someone who has been all over the world and has done all kinds of interesting things. The book read like the thoughts of a guy from the suburbs writing about his love for Bahamas vacations. Made me realize that Jimmy Buffet is not an authentic beach bum....just some corporate loser from the suburbs and that's probably why he appeals to other corporate losers from the suburbs. That's fine and all. Just don't want to read a 300-page book by someone like that. Think I stopped about halfway through which was way too far.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Couldn't finish it, felt like I was reading the same blog post rewritten in different ways to fill pages. No research / references, just anecdotal bullshit. Don't understand why it's so highly thought of.
Eh, I get what he's trying to say, but he could do with less. 100% on the point of it being a (decently insightful) blog post stretched too thin and peppered with too many swearwords.
The book was absolutely horrendous, one of the very few I stopped less than half way through, +1 SB
The Bible, shit was some trash, totally unrealistic
Controversial one:
Wasn't a huge fan of Marx's Communist Manifesto
Definitely an unpopular opinion on this sub
that's anti-Semitic
Kafka on the Shore, Murakami
Any book by Kazuo Ishiguro
When Breath Becomes Air, Kalanithi - full of self-conceited BS, hard to feel sympathy for the guy which is quite sad given the topic
Second Ishiguro.
“Never let me go” was actually pretty decent but his other books suck
I thought To Kill a Mockingbird was dogshit when I had to read it in HS for how hyped up it is.
it has a lot of N-word and my high school teacher read it very out loud every time she sees it lmao
It's definitely good for classroom giggle material in that aspect
based
I hated every book I had to read in school, and I loved reading physical books growing up. I realized it’s because English teachers, for the most part, are fucking idiots. I had one teacher for 3 years in high school who was horrible and gave girls better grades than guys. Some parents actually went to the principal and superintendent about it.
Anyways, she gave me an 88, 88, and 89 those 3 years. We didn’t do plus / minus, so it fucked heavily with my GPA. There’s no reason to not use that grading system, but we did it straight up.
She was always trying to draw parallels and other bullshit to make it seem like her job was actually worth anything. Like no, the blue sky doesn’t symbolize the yearning for deeper meaning, it’s just a fucking sunny day with no clouds
I enjoyed To Kill a Mocking Bird my second time around. My highschool teachers weren’t that bad though, just a bit pretentious when it came to “literature” I’d did fucking hate The Awakening thought that book was ass.
Maybe “The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner.
Interesting. It's certainly disjointed - and was intended as such. I genuinely enjoyed it though.
Agreed, Faulkner always wrote in the stream of consciousness style. Although, I would say "As I Lay Dying" is an even more extreme example of this. When an entire chapter is simply "My mother is a fish", it takes you out of it a bit trying to decipher what the author meant. That being said, stream of consciousness is easy to read because it feels almost conversational whereas many of the authors you're forced to read in school feel overly verbose, bordering on unnatural
1. Man searching for meaning
2. 7 Habits xxx
3. Cal Newport's "don't go online" book
Habit formation:
I find Atomic Habits and BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits (James Clear specifically quoted BJ Fogg quite a few times) to be awesome, and most other books to be ineffective, from my own PoV.
Cutting Social Media:
Cal Newport did a great job in "Deep Work", and a very poor one in this other, don't-go-online-cut-your-wifi book
Who am I and why am I here books:
Plenty of books just plain better, either literature or philosophy. I think man searching for meaning is way too hollow. The topic it intends to discuss is by no means shallow.
what don't you like about 1., I found it quite profound.
Edit: sorry I just read your last sentence now. No idea how I skipped it the first time around
Tim Winton - Cloudstreet. Read for high school, most meandering, boring, no-point, absolute opposite of page-turner novel ever. And I forced myself to read the whole thing because I was a diligent student. Hated it and took nothing away from it.
Close seconds: To Kill A Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn, two more high school books that I also read. Only Cloudstreet had no purpose or strong themes and was even more boring.
Great Expectations by Dickens, that was so boring.
I loved that book. Not in Highschool though, I read it again two years ago and it was great.
I thought it was decent when I read it this year. starts off face paced and peters out, but I liked the prose more than anything
The Color Purple...it is the way the book makes you sound out the words, as they are written phonetically.
Rich dad poor dad.Basically a book that says you need to obtain income generating assets, spread across several pages.
I read an article/blog post by some guy who was against this book. Main point was it was basically made up, you would think after all these years that they would reveal who the "rich dad" was.
I've parsed the book, Robert Kiyosaki, and some of the other books in the rich dad series. They're not all bad, just make stuff too simplistic. Basically would be like if one of us wrote a law book and said when you go to court just say "didn't do it" and you're fine.
I never liked Dickens.
Where Are The Customers Yachts. After reading books like Common Sense on Mutual Funds I found it way too trite and unsubstantiated. The guy just laughs off a few anecdotes about how banks steal all your money and it's apparently the best book on Wall Street.
I tried to read On The Road once after hearing all of my buddies rave about it in college. I thought the first half was absolute hot garbage...never finished it.
haha same i got exactly half way through. lazy alcoholic abusive loser who drank himself to death in his mom's house after spending some time train hopping and working on migrant farms? so fucking cool dude
agreed 100% I put it down half way through
Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I disagree with someone of his takes such as:
- paying a mortgage is a liability - well nothing everything in life is to be looked at as an investment, your home is your roof over your head. If you’re lucky and play it right then maybe your home builds up equity over time but it should not be the primary case you a buy your residence.
- also this may be more cynical but i can always tell who is a novice at finance when they recommend you to read or this or overexaggerate the importance of the book. The US economy is based on consumerism and right now Americans generally spend more than they make, have very little savings, and have a poor understanding of finances. You can’t expect one to just easily create multiple streams of income. Also it is faulty advice because there are many who work stable high income jobs that have superb finances without the stress of running several businesses.
If most Americans became aware of how to manage their finances and had a better relationship with credit, I can make the argument that a large portion of goods such as clothes, cars, and luxury dining would do worse than they are today.
My freshman year I read a couple chapters of this book for a project. Was really my first intro to persona finance and I enjoyed it, but almost everyone says it’s a bad book. I might read the whole book just to see what all it’s about.
I’ve found audiobooks at 2-3x speed are a quick way for me to power through them. Typically go 2x based on the narrator and depending on the genre. If it’s the self help type book, 3x is fine because you don’t really need to catch every single word they say. 90% of them are all the same stuff just worded differently
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Very long for what it actually tries to say. It's better to just watch a 10min youtube video about rational-irrational behavior and basic statistics.
Totally agree
Agreed. I recently tried getting through this one and gave up about a third of the way in
Definitely long and granular. I think unlike the other books mentioned here, this book has some real meaning and purpose. We can actually understand his experiments and improve our lives with his work- it’s not a crime to put this book down half way and understand 90% of the ideas in it
How to Persuade People Who Don't Want to be Persuaded: Get What You Want-Every Time!
Catch 22 and the Scarlet Letter were horrible, I also dislike many of Dickens’s works.
Curious to hear why the animosity for Catch-22 -- it might be my favorite fiction novel of all time.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle - Just hated pretty much every sentence, could not stop rolling my eyes at all the contrived "ah-ha" moments. Felt like this was written for Oprah and her audience.
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger - Maybe it's because I read it as an angsty teen but I just did not care to read about some angsty teen whining. Could not for the life of me understand why any young person found this drivel so profound. I know it's not exactly a hot take to find Holden Caulfield unlikable, but most famously unlikable characters are at least fun to hate.
The Divine Comedy made me want to punch myself in the face
Were you trying to read it on your own for a class? If trying to read it on your own, I can completely understand your sentiment. I had the good fortune of taking a class centered around reading the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paridiso and it was one of my favorites in college.
I read it on my own, so that's probably a part of it. It would have definitely benefited from a professor guiding the reading and some continual discussion on the content with other people that were reading along. It's obviously still a classic, I just think that if you're going to sink that much time into a piece of literature, there are others that I enjoyed much more.
The 48 Laws of Power. The supposed laws are asserted based on anecdote and many of them are either overly vague or contradictory
The book on Lazard was a piece of shit.
I'm curious what people think of "The Catcher in the Rye." I know people who love this novel and others who hate it. When I talk to my father about it, he seems to think its literary gold, while I just didn't connect with it as much. Honestly, I don't know if I just didn't connect with the main character "Holden" or if the novel just wasn't great. If everyone out there loves it so much, there's got to be some quality to it, I imagine. So many describe the angst that comes with being a teenager was embodied in "Holden" but I just didn't feel that. Maybe I wasn't the typical angsty teen? I don't know.
For anyone who really liked it, I'm curious what made you connect with the book so much.
See my above reply, but I fucking hated it. For what it's worth I felt like I was part of an extremely small minority expressing that opinion at a (how do I not sound like an asshole here) competitive private college prep school in my teens. On the one hand, I can appreciate the book's significance as one of the first prolific depictions of "teenage angst" as it were - it's clearly important and relevant. But man I just hated reading it. I thought it was so fucking stupid and devoid of real meaning. Like yeah, at the time I was angsty as fuck - but I was looking for meaning in that angst and/or a way out of those feelings. This book and those who seemed to worship it seemed content to wallow in those feelings. That turned me off, to say the least.
I seriously can't agree more with you on this. The only thing I'll add is that I feel like more people I knew also hated Holden (like I wasn't in the extremely small minority, but definitely the minority). And I agree that the social commentary associated with teenage life is considerable here, but even I who went to the same type of competitive prep school with the same type of people didn't relate much at all with the main character.
Overall, similarly turned off by the book
The Outliers by Gladwell. Terrible book. Could’ve been 30 pages rather than a whole book. Parts of it were mildly interesting but really did not like that book and barley finished.
Agreed. Gladwell builds a massive, bullshit argument throughout the book. ''Hey, if we all put 10k hours in xyz work and all had access to one of a life time tech discoveries that require you to be at the right time and right place, then anyone could be what are for the moment only successful outliers''.
Doesn't work like that. Most people don't have the drive to put 10k hours in anything to begin with. Especially difficult things. His entire argument also rests on fighting randomness of human life, which is ridiculous.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
My honest takeaway of the book is that it seemed like Covey never faced any real adversity in his life. A tough lesson, an impassable obstacle, a big setback? I never got that feeling, just that things always worked out for him. Surely has nothing to do with the wealth and contacts his family had... The 'habits' come off flat because they lack substance, imo.
I didn’t mind this book. It’s very basic and generalized advice but I see what your argument is
The Russian by James Patterson was pretty fuckin horrible. I know that books like his are just to rip off people in airports but I mean this was by far the worst one.
Playboy. Couldn’t even open the pages.
Extreme Ownership
Are you trying to be edgy? Why didn’t you like the book?
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -- found it weird how people take this as a source of gospel when it's quite clear that the man really has nothing figured out about life, fix your own problems first before pontificating on search for meaning. Esp since his relationship with his son was also crappy, was thoroughly underwhelmed reading this one. If you're reading it for kicks, go for it but I guess I came in expecting to really dig deep into a philosophical quest for truth / meaning and came away disappointed
Siddartha -- another book where I was like 'ok cool.' Amazing how many Reddit guys rave about this book when it fact it was written by a white dude who clearly never understood Buddhism beyond any superficial level & did not any real experience with this religion beyond a couple years of observation. It's 'fine' at best
On an objective level neither of the two books are terrible but they are both overhyped and they both pretend to be more than they are
I agree with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My father gave it to me to read a while back because he remembered liking it in the 80s. It's been two years now of me "reading" the book and I'm only about two-thirds of the way through it. Not enticing at all and a lot of rambling. The author is an interesting character though in real life.
I'm with you two on Zen as well.
400 IB questions
The following are books I thought worsened the state of world civilization:
Honorable Mention
I learned about wasabi from a series of unfortunate events
Yeah, me too.
I also learned that it takes no talent to write a book and sell it.
"VFD????"
So annoying.
On a series of unfortunate events, do you hate them from reading them as an adult? or did you hate them as a child, because I could see how you would hate them if you read them as an adult, but as children's books go they're far from the worst.
I'm surprised noone has brought up Yuval Harari, who's incredibly influential and is basically a real life super villain with clear sociopath tendencies. Incredibly verbose, dishonest and superficial when it fits his goals.
That should be obvious. I have not read any of his works, they might even be well-written, but everything about this man disgusts me on a deeply personal level. It's like with a clown, there's just something innately eerie and wrong about him.
can you expand? I don't know much about him. I agree his books are shit. might have watched a YouTube interview a few years ago and can't recall his personality
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