Signs of a bad book

I haven't read a single book from the 21st century aside from 1 history book this year, when you do that you don't have to worry about being a pleb or making a pleb decision.

what does Death of the Author have to do with any of that?

>Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed

I mean seriously what the fuck.

It's usually because of cliches. Bad writing is full of them. Whether it's a story device such as, for example, starting a book with a character waking up from a prophetic dream, or using a specific phrase such as, "to add insult to injury," a phrase I just saw in a random sf/fantasy book I found on amazon. (That phrase might work in a comedy, but when the author's trying to be serious, as it looks like, it just comes across as tone-deaf.) Also, redundancy is always a killer. On that same first page I see the phrase, "loud thundering roar." Wouldn't a thundering roar already be loud? That's just sloppy writing.

>Male Author
>Female protagonist

Dropped.

>Even though I hate the term, I tend to drop off at "Reddit-tier" opening lines: sentences where the author tries WAY too hard to grab your attention, rather than just telling the story. I'd much rather deal with an underwhelming opener than start a book off with secondhand embarrassment for the author.

I agree and disagree. Where I disagree is, to me, it's gotta have a good opening. To me, a good opener is a fundamental aspect of storytelling, going back to when humans were telling stories around the campfire.

Where I agree is that there's a fine line between a great opener and a Reddit-tier opener and, you're right, it's worse when it's too much rather than mildly underwhelming.

It's tied to the current pseudo-egalitarian ideology about reading and writing that's memed the fuck out of authors, critics and readers alike.

Present tense is bad because the author basically surrenders the fullest extent of his narrative power. Omniscience can become a character and voice all its own, can make surprising judgments and introduce new information at any moment with any mood. Present tense stretched to novel's length always turns into a passive recital and is way too restricted to the characters that actually have agency

>Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery.

I mean seriously what the fuck.

Normally I check to see how it's written. While I don't know precisely how to put it into words, 'Prince of Thorns' is a perfect example of exactly the kind of shite I tend to avoid, which is a shame because it's of a genre I usually enjoy.

>Female author
>Male protagonist

Dropped.
It's unbelievable what bullshit people assumed to be intellectuals think about the other gender.

if anything, it's the OPPOSITE of the identity politics that the pseudo-egalitarianism is based on.

Is it routinely that awful in both directions? I mean I don't know how often I've actually read a book like this, besides perhaps the Harry Potter series when I was going through highschool, and I never really noticed anything overly wrong with it there. Is this more a mark upon a certain genre?

>Human author
>Animal protagonist

Dropped.

Not the way it's been interpreted by most people it isn't.

how's that then? you're probably right but I can't see the connection.

>Human Author
>Alien/Robotic/AI protagonist

Thrown across the room with force.

>Alien/Robotic/AI Author
>Mental Patient Protagonist

Deposited into the incinerator.

>Dragonkin Author
>Netherknight protagonist

Banished to the Forbidden Realm

>Unintelligent Author
>Super intelligent protagonist

Sent to the spooky door.

Indication that there are retailer-exclusive chapters or sections

Name ONE good book that has ever done this

faulty premise.

if it's at a used bookstore that means someone didn't want it. so it can't be very good.

if it's in the library but it hasn't been checked out by someone, it can't be very good either.

Dan Brown's Inferno

>Adult Female-Identified Transperson
>Demon-possesed Loli protagonist

Directly to the shredder

Those aren't mutually exclusive. I mean, I found my copy of His Dark Materials literally in a trashcan, and it's one of my favorite books ever written, and I managed to pull Man In The High Castle out of the library just yesterday.

if he was in the high castle how did you manage to pull him out of the library?

I feel you man. I was looking for a new book, but every book that wasn't completely sold out must be trash since people didn't buy up every copy.

Same with e-books. If I try to download a book, and the server isn't crashing due to customer demand, it must be hot garbage, and I don't want it.

My library is very archaic.

>Purple prose

So no Shakespeare (I know, he writes mostly in blank-verse, but still, his language is highly mannered), Nabokov, Melville, Proust for you?

If you establish a proper form you can bring new information at any moment anyway - present tense can be crazy good with the right creativity.

Side note, would you consider Joyce purple prose?

>agendas

Sometimes it's hard to detect just by reading blurbs or flipping through it, but this is a major reason for dropping a book. If the writer is incapable of impartiality to a certain degree, then they can't be completely trusted with telling the story. They have to have put aside bias.

I should have added, that having bias doesn't mean their writing won't be great.

I don’t know exactly, but to me he is not very poetic. To be honest I don’t like Joyce and Faulkner very much. I think that they are quite brave and innovative in their styles, but I can’t call them poetic (there aren’t many bold metaphors and similes, for example). It is quite hard to find in Joyce moments like this, of pure beauty and poetry:

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

I agree with your addendum, but the rest doesn't really make any sense. No story is ever impartial because a million different biases go into every aspect of how an author chooses to tell a story, what it's about, and what happens in it.

I'm not saying pure propaganda should be encouraged but art is never truly impartial. I guess there should be a transformative aspect that makes said biases more than the sum of their parts for it to be considered art, but doing away with them totally is impossible.

I don't think you're wrong to say that. Joyce tried to get the mind itself on paper, and that doesn't really lean toward poetry even if it does lean toward art. And it definitely doesn't benefit "storytelling."

Not to stir shit up, but I think that's what disappointed/disappoints a lot of people about him. Everyone knows he was capable of traditional beauty and poetry but he went a different direction with his stuff. This was deliberate, obviously, but I always wonder what would have happened if he didn't become so obsessed with it and stuck to the more traditional. Or, at least, the slightly less experimental.

Have you even read Barthes? Or any lit criticism at all?

A lot of women writing about boys include awkward descriptions of boners. Ann Patchett:
>If he didn't have his rifle to hold in front of him he would have embarrassed himself every time, her singing brought about such a raging, aching passion that his penis stiffened before she had finished her first line, growing harder and harder as the song progressed until he was lost in a confusion of pleasure and terrible pain, the stock of his rifle brushing imperceptibly up and down, leading him towards relief.

Well I usually skip over sexual scenes in books. I come to understand that it happened, but a lot of authors write it strangely because a sexual book and a non sexual book have very different feels, in my honest opinion.

Also that is really, really weird to read.

>If he didn't have his rifle to hold in front of him he would have embarrassed himself every time, her singing brought about such a raging, aching passion that his penis stiffened before she had finished her first line, growing harder and harder as the song progressed until he was lost in a confusion of pleasure and terrible pain, the stock of his rifle brushing imperceptibly up and down, leading him towards relief.

me irl

>Harold Bloom doesn't like it

It is. There are surely a few exceptions here and there but I can't remember any of them.
Characters of the opposite gender (relative to the author) can be well-written and they can play a central role, but they don't work well as a protagonist, unless the author disavoids fleshing out his lead.

When I read fantasy I don't pay attention to the details whatsoever and keep wondering how I stooped so low, so I can't talk about Harry Potter as an example.

"And then he hopped on his gryphon with a magic dick and showed his feminine tits. Then he fucked. Then he died. The message of my book is, everyone can die. Not everyone fucks though. Read the next book in the series for goodboy points and the foreshadowing of the next 62 deaths. You won't believe #5, completely unexpected!

>Me
>muh diary desu

Veeky Forums

You are completely retarded

I get what you're saying, and should clarify what I meant by impartial. Basically close-minded people. I think someone who is a radical, for example an ultra-feminist or a misogynist, or perhaps a communist, ultra-conservative, racist, etc. Basically if someone has a set belief that only one way of life is correct, rather than taking into full consideration all ideas about people, that will show in their work. Like how Ayn Rand affected Terry Goodkind. Of course intelligent people will be able to imbibe their work with their biases but unless they also consider the opposite point of view they will not produce a dynamic or well rounded work.

>book has housewife-attracting title like "America's Angels"
>book advertises that it's a bestseller on some stupid list
>book has glossy cover with too much shit going on
>book has HEY!! / MARKET RESEARCH SAYS / YOUR BRAIN / RESPONDS TO / ***THIS*** / IMPACT FONT / SO BUY THIS BOOK!
>book has long XDDD BOOKS AINT SUPPOSED TO HAVE SO LONG TITLES :P!! title like "Good Money after Bad: How The Economy Is Something What You Ain't Never Even Learned it in School, And We're all Gonna Economy The Future"
>book cover says "From the author of.."
>book features picture of author
>book is by a scientist but it's on social issues
>book is by a guy who stopped doing real science 20 years ago so that he could do fifty discovery channel documentaries per second per second and write articles for salon.com about how you need to maximize your brain using science, man!
>book is about american ennui
>book is written by a thirtysomething who takes gray-filtered vanity shots of himself looking stern and conflicted possibly in a polo shirt
>book is postmodern and/or maximalist pastiche
>book is written by "nu avant garde" hipster and is about doing drugs while being very deadpan and apathetic
>book is fantasy or scifi and the author has a zany ethnic-sounding name like Erika Kwanzaa Mahalo
>book is fantasy or scifi written by a non-dead woman in general
>book is about "race in contemporary society" and has cross-looking brown man on cover so you know he's serious about giving you a talking-to
>book is about contemporary events or figures but not written by an academic
>book is written by an academic and has a title like "Pax Atlantica: Issues of Race and Gender in the South Atlantic Tampax Trade, 1650-1890 (Routledge)" or any similar "[Quote from one of my sources]: [More prosaic description of some really boring shit I researched because I had to research something] (Will publish any monograph whatsoever)"
>book is written by a woman
>book is academic analytic philosophy and is written ordinary/"conversational" english in a completely affected and self-conscious way that just makes the author seem like a cunt
>book pretends to be continental philosophy but is actually written by a woman
>book is about applying deleuze to anything
>book is about art or aesthetics and written by a woman
>book has pointless black and white plates because the publisher thinks you're so retarded that you need pretty pictures but he's also too cheap to commit to real pictures so you get to look at grayscale pixel art of a monet painting gratuitously included because the author mentioned it offhand 26 pages prior
>book is coming-of-age for teenagers but written by a 37 year old man who is eerily dedicated to writing exclusively for teenagers

>book is supposed to be fun fantasy setting for children but instead of being baroquely complex and inviting kids to expand their minds and explore deep and cohesive worlds in their imaginations, it's just thousands of pages of "AND THE WIZARD'S NAME WAS SNIGGLE RIGGLEBOTTOM AND EVERYONE HAS A SPECIAL WAND THAT SANG HIS NAME AND CAME FROM A UNICORN AND THE PLAYING CARDS COULD TALK TO YOU AND MAKE CONSTERNATED FACES WHEN YOU EXPRESSED INCREDULITY AT THE IDEA OF SENTIENT PLAYING CARDS ON THE MAGICAL TRAIN MADE OF CHOCOLATE ;) THEY HAD ELVES AND OWLS AND EVERYONE PLAYED A FLYING BROOM SPORT WHERE NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS! WHAT'S ALL THIS THEN, COMMODORE PERCYQUIVENS, DIDN'T DUMBLEDIDDLYDORIDOO SHOW YOU HOW TO CAST THE TIME TRAVELLING SPELL SO YOU CAN STEAL A KISS FROM YOUR GHOST WAIFU?" despite the fact that half these ideas are stultifying because of how shallowly arbitrary and non sequitur they are, instead of portraying a living breathing world with a realistic level of disregard for random individuals where not everything is a zany sockem bopper funzone pillowfihgt and the villain has no depth and the world is completely untenable, and the other half of the ideas are outright dystopian and terrifying because you could shove living playing cards up your ass while raping your slave-elf and no one could do anything about it because owning sentient beings as trivial objects for your amusement and convenience is normalized because the stupid cunt didnt think think three feet in front of her face whether this was an actual world that could actually function semi-realistically because she was too busy going OHHHH NO DEARIE ME IT'S A FLIGHT OF FANCY AND WIZRDDRYD WHERE EVERYONES GOT A SPECIAL HAT THAT SINGS HIS NAME AND I NEVER MENTION THE HATS AGAIN AFTER BOOK 2 SO THEY'RE PROBABLY JUST SCREAMING TO BE DESTROYED FROM THE BACK OF EVERY WIZARD'S DISUSED CLOSET FULL OF SENTIENT CLOTHING ARTICLES AND REALITY-BENDING BAUBLES THAT COULD BE WEAPONIZED AND USED TO DESTROY ALL OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION BY AN ENTERPRISING 14 YEAR OLD IN SIX MINUTES

first i check if the author is a DWM (dead white male). if the answer is yes, i automatically drop it. Then I check the New York Times review on the back to make sure they called it a "tour de force"

If those conditions are satisfied, then I will read on

damn

Adderall is a helluva drug

what do you look for then?

I would read this

"I hate that women try to write" the post.

I enjoyed the book, but is there anything on how Pynchon did as far as writing a female protagonist in Crying of Lot 49

>Ulysses
>Brothers Karmazov
>Infinite Jest
>Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Multiple copies of all of these Veeky Forums favorites (good copies too) are at the used bookstore near me.

This posts elevates redundancy to a new level.

Title: Does it sound good? Go to Amazon and look at the most popular books of the recent year. The top five I'm seeing are: The Tea Planter's Wife, After You, A Brief History of Seven Killings, The Girl on the Train, and The Aeronauts' Windlass. Can you tell which is the best title? It's easy to guess, but why that is is a matter of experience: titles that contain "X's Wife" or "The Girl ..." are uninspired and seem to be designed to a trend, generally a true reflection on their books; After You is similarly reminiscent of bad books; and The Aeronaut's Windlass is a meaningless combination with the sound of brainless jargon-filled pulp. A Brief History of Seven Killings skews dangerously close to the drastic quaintness of recent popular literary authors (Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, A Highly Unlikely Scenario), and it's similar to A History of Violence (not an impressive association), but the thing is, it's evocative. It sounds expansive, brazen and modern - not extraordinarily so, maybe, but there it is - and that's accurate to the book. Keep going: The Shepherd's Crown, Ocean of Storms, Go Set a Watchman, Strange Child, Varieties of Exile, American Gods, Walk Into Silence, Rebecca, Catch-22, Blood Lines, Rather Be the Devil, Dark Water, From Sand and Ash, His Only Son, The Post-Office Girl.

Cover: Does it look good? That is, does it please you, and/or, does it stay clear of tackiness? I'm not of the opinion that a cover based on a screen adaptation is damning at all, they just look bad, and besides, they are often put on classics (in the case of a translation, though, it may indicate a less than serious attempt to present a definitive edition). But I believe that good illustration tend to appear on good books, certainly preferable covers (for example, the Paul Hogarth illustration for Animal Farm vs the Signet Classic cover, or the original Great Gatsby cover vs DiCaprio). For two reasons: One, it is nearly a rule that there's an inverse relationship between quality and market value in the arts, just as there is a parallel between market value and marketer interference, and while a major publisher in the push towards mainstream revenues will tailor the book to resemble previous successes, smaller publishers (not always, and not all, but a beautiful few occasionally) will tailor the book to best represent its contents, which by their quality will appeal to discerning readers (or by their fashionability to superficial ones). The second reason is, good illustrators have good taste, even in literature, sometimes, and if given an inspiring commission, which is more likely from a press that takes risks on ambitious and genuine work, they rise to the task.

First line: Like it? Want to keep reading? Sometimes the first line of a good book is modest. If they don't take a big swing in the first line, they do in the last, and if they don't you can't tell.

I only buy things I've seen talked about on Veeky Forums

>book is fantasy or scifi written by a non-dead woman in general
>tfw must kill myself for user to read my novel

Did you not see
>book is written by a woman
Checkmate, woman

Excellent. I think you should add 'books where the author's name is bigger than the actual title'.

But he said fantasy books by not-dead women. Which implies he enjoys fantasy books by dead women, or he would have just said women.
Checkmate, faggot.

>book is written by an academic and has a title like "Pax Atlantica: Issues of Race and Gender in the South Atlantic Tampax Trade, 1650-1890 (Routledge)" or any similar "[Quote from one of my sources]: [More prosaic description of some really boring shit I researched because I had to research something] (Will publish any monograph whatsoever)"
>book is written by a woman
>book is academic analytic philosophy and is written ordinary/"conversational" english in a completely affected and self-conscious way that just makes the author seem like a cunt
>book pretends to be continental philosophy but is actually written by a woman

>thing above it
>book is written by a woman
>thing below it

Did you even read the list?

Present tense. But I don't read the first page, I read a few in the middle.

What is so bad about present tense? A lot of people seem to hate it.

It's the prose equivalent of rhyming poetry: sure, it can be done beautifully by an expert, but these days it's much more commonly the first instinct of the fucking halfwit hack whose writing causes me physical pain. So, I play the odds if I don't know the author.

huh

Rhyming poetry is GOAT. Prose was a mistake but maybe worth it for Cervantes and the Decameron and Arabian Nights

what's so great about rhyming?

Rhyming and meter force original choices for communication.

isn't poetry even better if the original communication is unforced?

I think the idea is that the more rules you set for your lines or your writing in general (in this case rhyme and rhythm) the more forced you are to come up with something clever or original.

I don't think like that. Or rather, I don't think in those terms.
I also don't advocate some kind of stream of consciousness poetics. I find that rhyming poetry usually has me smirking at a clever phrase or rendition of an idea. Putting it in terms I would not have expected and adding some depth to it through those unexpected word choices. Maybe that's too cerebral for some. The ideal might be to have the potential 'emotional' or psychic element that I might associate with unforced or less structured poems in addition to that structured cleverness.

With any rule, you always allow yourself the option of breaking it. Finding meaningful ways to break meter or rhyme is always welcomed.

but it's not the only way to come up with something clever or original. why does the method of constructing the poetry make it great, rather than the final result?

You don't produce the same word choice as 'puzzle piece' effect without the rhyme or meter. So while you can produce a great poem without rhymes, it's not great in the same way.

makes sense. thanks for the explanation.

I'm writing a book called Barefoot Contessa. I dont know much about its contents but when you open it the book plays the Barefoot Contessa theme and the first chapter is "My Longest Ye Boy Ever"

How about this passage?

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

But I have quoted the exact same passage on my post...Havent you read it?

Hardly a strong start, but is it really that bad?