#ask game: unrecommend me a book

[jasper-pagan-witch]

I'm not that anon but Judika Iles because she wrote a huge-ass spell book which not only lists appropriated Voodoo spells but also the infamously dangerous, illegal and mythical Main de Gloire spell ( and no, JKR didn't make it up ) AND she wrote a book about how to use the Rosary to connect to the Divine Feminine.

Oh yeah, I knew Judika Illes was shit. I was mostly wondering why Harmony Nice was on the list. I read one of her books a while back and it just seemed...generic and boring to me, but overall pretty inoffensive. I was wondering if there was something I missed, considering the other names she was surrounded by.

~Jasper

#answered #anonymous #ask game: unrecommend me a book

[jasper-the-menace]

There are a few books I will unrecommend. "Iron Dragon's Daughter" and "The Renifluer's Daughter" to start. The Iron Dragon's Daughter has a lot of references to fairies and their lore, and all the things said about the power of names and oaths with them. There Seems like some cool story elements and world building going on... But the main character is literally the worst. The story develops several key people and she betrays or kills them and gets away with it by lying. I found it impossible to identify with her, because she felt like too much of a personification of my most distorted view of myself. The Renifluer's Daughter is a messed up story about a woman who cheats on her husband and Generally Fails to face the truth. It was depressing, hopeless reading, and I hated it.

Wow, neither of those sound appealing.

This sounds mean, but...I'm gonna unrecommend the Spiderwick Chronicles. They're meant for ages 7 through 10 (yes, even with the bunch of murders at the end of book 4 through the end of the series at book 5) and they generally try to reinvent fae lore. It's an interesting premise, but the main characters (all siblings) took three books to finally decide to work together. It runs into a similar problem where you really don't like the human characters you're supposed to relate to.

It's pretty much one of those books where you have to have picked it up at the right early age to be able to enjoy it later through nostalgia.

~Jasper

#answered #promiseiwillwrite #ask game: unrecommend me a book

[steelycunt]

dont. read. charles. dickens. don't do it to yourself. it's pure suffering. it made me depressed. it made me violent. his writing is like a black hole of misery. I can't unrecomend him enough. I am just a silly gal and I read Great Expectations. hated it. thought ok, I'll give it one more go. read a Christmas Carol, actually wasn't terrible. read David Copperfield. actually teared up it was so bad. And because I'm a sucker for punishment apparently, I READ ANOTHER ONE (a tale of two cities) WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME

this post made me spiral, I'm reliving the experience. don't make my mistake. please.

agh omg...ok when it comes to mr dickens im grateful to him 4 providing the source material for the greatest film ever made in cinema history (muppet christmas carol 1992) but well i studied a christmas carol at school and. did not enjoy it other than that it made for easy essay writing. i dont know what it is but i have just never had any desire 2 read his writing i didnt enjoy the style of it in ACC at all it just does not appeal to me...like at all...u are either a trooper or a masochist for making your way through so much of his work despite not liking it i am so sorry that happened to you xx

#HATE great expectations though. ive seen multiple screen adaptations i hate it sooooooo much so so so much so much. #ask game: unrecommend me a book !!

[volturialice]

heartily unrecommend ender's game. the author is like smeyer but ten times worse.

funny you should mention that because I happen to know from my podcast research that smeyer loves ender's game. which, like, her book taste ranges all over the place, from "this book fucks" to "this book is fine" to "this is the worst drivel imaginable" so that doesn't actually tell us much but quelle coincidence you should bring her up in the same breath

unrecommend me books

#I've actually heard ender's game is really great #but yeah if I ever read it I will not be financially supporting mr card #asks #anonymous #unrecommend me books asks

[cupcraft]

I really wanted to think of a book to unrecommend, but turns out I’ve never actually read anything I am not at least neutral about. Other than notorious stuff like Twilight of course.

But then I remembered the story I actually hate and was forced to read:

Never read “The Storm” Ostrovsky («Гроза», Островский). We were forced to read it at school, and it’s my most hated classic book ever. The main character is just annoyingly naive, all the adequate characters are posed to be evil, and all the evil characters are actually the only ones that I don’t dislike (not as people, don’t get me wrong, they are awful, but just at least they are shown by who they are).

As a short recap: the main character Katerina is a young beautiful who lives with her despotic mother-in-law and her mommy’s boy husband. MIL treats her poorly, always criticizing and telling that she is definitely cheating on her son somehow.

One day she sees a guy in a church and like immediately falls in love with him. Because ya know. He is handsome. It bugs her, and when some time later she and her sister-in-law Varvara hide in a church from a thunderstorm, some old lady says stuff like “OOOOH YOU TWO ARE TOO BEAUTIFUL! AND YOU KNOW WHERE THE BEAUTY LEADS – TO THE RIVER”. And Katerina faints because of that.

Then she sees that guy another couple of times from afar. Her husband goes on a work trip to Moscow. She starts seeing this guy (I don’t think they did anything?? I think they maybe kissed once, but it’s been 7 years now, I don’t remember for sure). And somehow her MIL finds out, Katerina maybe told her herself honestly, because she is supposedly a saint person and lying was hurting her.

Then Katerina wants that guy to steal her and run away with him, but he is a coward and doesn’t actually love her and leaves. Her husband says something like ‘yeah, okay, I can forgive you. Let’s just forget about it’. But instead she goes and gameovers herself in this river.

And like. Maybe I would be fine with this story. There are some very interesting psychological moments about it. BUT the thing is, Katerina is posed as a saint person, istg she is known as ‘a sunshine in a dark kingdom’, that’s a literal quote from literature analysis.

Story treats her like this pure soul. Teachers teach you to think of her as this innocent girl trapped in a cruel world. And I just hate this idealizing of her.

Yeah, she is a good person in a very bad family circumstances. But my god everything that happened with her and this guy was just her falling for a random pretty face. She is not prefect nor saint, and it would be so much better if she was treated as such too.

And even like, we have another russian classic story with a young girl that offed into a body of water because of love. For some reason writers loved that exact trope. And I also don’t really like that story, but it’s so much better and the main character IS just a naive girl in love that didn’t do anything to get herself into the situation she ended up in other than falling in love. Shortly: a girl fell in love with a guy, they spend time together, then she saw her with a rich lady as a partner and jumped into a lake (i think). Turns out he was just doing it for money to pay his debt and be with her because he also loved her.

I am sorry, I didn’t plan to make it so long.

this book sounds really chaotic however im intrigued enough to read (helpme) even though the ask game is sell me to not read it ig

#tea.cakes #ask #ask game #tw suicide mention

[aphrogeneias]

19, 134 & 135 + bonus question tell me what’s on your tbr!!

19 — a book that put you in a reading slump

the idiot by elif batuman put me in a huge slump last year and because of that i ended up never finishing it. it's not a bad book at all, it had some great reflections on the mundane parts of academic life, and literature, but the pacing was off and a lot of the chapters were unnecessarily long (i also got sick around the time i was reading it and it derailed all my reading plans as well lmao)

134 — unreccomend any book you like!

i'd like to unrecommend high fidelity by nick hornby, another book i've dnf'd, it's very much a book written by a man and you can tell, the protagonist sucks and not even in a way that is fun or interesting to follow. the movie is infinitely better and because john cusack had the charisma to pull this character off (and jack black was in it, which make it gain a lot of points with me)

135 — recommend any book you like!

if we were villains by m. l. rio was the best book i read this year and i can't recommend it enough, especially if you like dark academia or if you just enjoy seeing pretentious people getting in trouble, or if you just like shakespeare, either way you're gonna love it. there's also some sprinkle of messy queer romance, which we always love, and a fucked up found family <3

✨ bonus: what's in my tbr?

— utopia avenue, by david mitchell (i've already started it but it intimidated me a little, it's very very british and it has a lot of 60s slang, i need to continue with it because i know it's gonna be great)

— the silence of the girls, by pat barker

— love is a mixtape: life and loss, one song at a time, by rob sheffield

— the summer of broken rules, by k. l. walther

— howl's moving castle, by diana wynne jones

— the next two books in the daevabad trilogy

book recs ask game

#that tbr is only growing it's out of control #ariel 🌿 #inbox #ask game

[agardenandlibrary]

For the Book Recs Ask Game: 14, 66, 134, & 135! <3

alright alright alright. once again, going to try to pull from recent reads to answer!

14. a book that made you trip on literary acid

literary acid could mean anything lmao but let's go with what first came to mind:

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

I wasn't expecting this book at all. It threw cool "so sci-fi it might as well be fantasy" worldbuilding at me. None of these people are innocent, what's a little mass murder amongst our extremely messed up world. We're all gay and we've all done crimes.

I devoured this trilogy and the short stories and I'm ready to read them again soon.

another one I did on the podcast and you can hear my review here!

66. a book that fucked you up

I'm doing two you can't stop me

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Oh, Anne! If I spend too long thinking about her I'll cry. moving on,,,

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Oh, Maia! If I spend too long thinking about him I'll cry. You get the idea.

I also did a podcast episode about this one :)

134. unrecommend any book you like!

okay well, you know what I'm gonna say

From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout

it's not worth it. It's like someone took SJM's books and added Twilight back into it but only the bad parts. It's almost 600 pages and really should be 350 at most. Nothing makes any sense. The love interest is a huge creep. I don't think it had an editor. Don't do it.

But if you do, tag me so I can see what you think.

135. recommend any book you like!

The Copper Crown by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

What, you don't like out of print fantasy from the 80s? How dare you.

What if a large portion of the Celts left Earth to get away from the encroachment of Christianity? What if they were the descendants of Atlantis and had magic? What if they founded an empire of planets far away in the stars?

What if we found them again?

#cara reads #ask game

[sprachgefuehle]

Hi! Love your blog. For the book ask, can I request 103, 107, and 134, please? Have a nice day and hydrate lots :D

103. A book that deals with heavy topics First that came to my mind was the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness. One of my favourite YA trilogies alongside The Hunger Games and His Dark Materials (even though I wouldn't call the latter YA but still).

Another one that I recently finished and that isn't YA is On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. It deals a lot with the trauma of poverty and immigration and it was very painful to read but I'd still only give it a 6/10.

107. your favourite book in a different language The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Both also fall into the category of "dealing with heavy topics" and especially The House of Spirits does so incredibly well in my opinion.

134. Unrecommend any book you like! Oh, that's easy! It's One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez! It is a terrible drag and confusingly weird at times. The book follows several generations of one family and every character has a different variation of the same fucking name so you won't make it through it without having a family tree at hand. Confusing and weird. Touched me in ways only few books ever did. -10/10. I am not the same after that book.

Book rec ask game!

#thanks for the ask! #bradburymeinfire #ask #ask game

[hamiltonsteele]

24, 54, 73, 134 for the book ask game :)

24: A book on your nightstand.

God Bless You Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut and In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (I love her and bought it right when it came out but I've needed to take it slow bc it's A Lot).

54: A book with the best opening line.

"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Honorary mention because it's not technically a first line, but the dedication of In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado is "If you need this book, it is for you."

73: A good book with an awful cover.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. Maybe not awful but not my vibe.

134: Unrecommend any book you like!

I would like to take The Catcher in the Rye away from high school boys everywhere because they are not taking the right lessons from it.

Book recs ask game

Or ask me anything!

#thank you!! #suicide mention

[dykefever]

hi you xx for the book unrecommendation tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by gabrielle zevin. saw people RAVE on it and it is just. not worth your time, not worth my time, not worth ANYONE’S time. it has a very cool concept don’t get me wrong but the execution was just. not there. writing wasn’t bad at all it just…dragged. and don’t get me started on the two protagonists. am all for unlikeable characters but they were so insufferable i truly would have rather they’d just kill themselves. sorry.

hello my love!!! HATE when a book is hyped heaps and then just doesn't deliver. always feels like you're looking around asking if people read the same book as you. googled the book just now read video game design and switched the fuck off icl

it does sound interesting but i feel it would be easy to not execute well. also everyone is always wanking on about unlikeable characters and omg the character was supposed to be like that but well. the character still has to do something. there needs to be a point, serve the story like why are they insufferable. they've got to be insufferable in a way that makes me want to finish the book not put it down and never finish it. and so many books do not get that right <3

#unrecommend me a book #liv you can give me all ur hater book opinions im never regarding seven husbands in a good light after ur takes xxx thats ur power #liv tag

[proto-language]

Books rec ask game: 1, 54, 86, 98, 124, and 134!

thank you!!!

already answered

54. a book with the best opening line

my usual answer to this question is a bit of a cheat, because it's not actually the opening line of The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (which has a prologue), but rather the opening line of the first chapter. i like it enough that i let it count anyway:

"Locke Lamora's rule of thumb was this: a good confidence game took three months to plan, three weeks to rehearse, and three seconds to win or lose the victim's trust forever."

86. a book with an insane plot twist

shit, i wish i'd looked through all these questions before answering, because i'd like to answer The Lies of Locke Lamora for this one too! my 14-year-old self was genuinely devastated by the twist in that one.

98. a book set in a fictional kingdom

buddy, i specialise in books set in fictional kingdoms. The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay has multiple fictional kingdoms modelled closely on medieval Iberia; The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner has a few pseudo-Greek kingdoms; and i'm pretty sure the setting of Miles Cameron's Cold Iron is technically an empire rather than a kingdom, but i reckon that's close enough for the purposes of a tumblr ask game which i am answering at half past midnight on a sunday.

124. the book you're currently reading

ha, well, about that... at the end of last term i was reading The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault, which was very nice and enjoyable, although i wasn't making particularly speedy progress with it. then i got a bit distracted, and read a few other books, and read 80% of the 1000 pages of Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey. i have since failed to finish this on account of distractions such as P.G. Wodehouse and Becky Chambers. while all this has been unfolding, i have had several long-term unfinished books sitting around, including American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (which i started in the christmas holidays), The Half-Drowned King by Linnea Hartsuyker (which i think i first started reading at some point in 2021 or even 2020), and Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco (which i have been exactly 1/3 of the way through since last september). anyway, as it is may, i think i am going to start my annual Roma Sub Rosa reread soon, probably with A Murder on the Appian Way (because it fucks and because i finished my last reread with The Venus Throw)

134. unrecommend any book you like!

my standard answer here is The Woman in Black by Susan Hill. I just fucking hated it. my mum suggested it to me when i was like 8 and it was boring as all shit. and then i had to read it for school when i was 13. and it was boring as all shit. and maybe if i read it now as an adult it wouldn't be boring as all shit, but i'm not willing to take the time to find out. (the stage play, on the other hand, is fucking brilliant and made my 13-year-old self cry with fear for the entire 2 hours). also, i wouldn't go so far as to unrecommend it, but if you're ever contemplating reading The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis, do yourself a favour and read some Steven Saylor first. (or maybe don't? maybe that's why i didn't enjoy it? maybe read that and then read Steven Saylor and enjoy that even more?)

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Unrecommending any of Lovecraft’s stories. They’re not as good as people make out, and are super bigoted (obviously).

Like, there’s “the horror of what you don’t see” and then there’s having that be your entire portfolio. Oh, your protagonist was in the dark during the attack? Oh, your hero was performing the banishing on a hilltop that a villager is looking at who is now suddenly the narrator? Oh, the story is told in journal entries that end before the writer ventures into the unknown? The only reason Call of Cthulhu is popular is because Cthulhu is actually described!

Sorry, I’ve been reading through his collection of short stories and have OpinionsTM

-Rowan @rose-colored-tarot

I think my favorite one was where he was describing "the color from beyond the stars" or some shit and he just...described magenta. Worstie, that's magenta. You're just describing magenta.

But yeah, Lovecraft was a bigot and deserves to be mocked for his bigotry and his lack of writing skills. I've actually found some of his works interesting, though maybe that's just because I got a set of his works with a very pretty cover (the World Cloud Classics paperback) and enjoyed Overly Sarcastic Productions' breakdown of some of his works. He was definitely bigoted, even by the standards of his time, but he was onto something with the cosmic horror.

At least he's dead so he doesn't make money off of his bigoted shit.

You know whose works I can't fucking stand? Doreen Virtue. Gods, she's such a scam artist and a turncoat at that. Yeah, go ahead and get rich off of New Age angel shit, and then turn around and denounce all of it once you're rich and cozy. What an asshole.

~Jasper

#answered #anonymous #rose colored tarot #ask game: unrecommend me a book

[jasper-the-menace]

do not read. the fucking great gatsby actually. You will be depressed as shit.

That's fair. Don't read A Tale of Two Cities, you will block it from your memory forever.

~Jasper

#answered #pinesodaexists #mutuals #ask game: unrecommend me a book #books

[steelycunt]

unrecommending normal people. normal people more like boring people. i am so deeply sorry if youve already read this and liked it but it was simply not for me at all, I didn’t like how she wrote & her lack of quotation marks, I didn’t enjoy the subject or the relationship. It just wasn’t for me at all 💀

also this is a random one but was also very unimpressed by the wonder by emma donoghue, it very much should’ve been a short story

ooo okay!! i HAVE read normal people but it was quite a while back so i dont think i could say anything very interesting about my experience of it now...i dont think i minded it but i know ms rooney is a divisive one kind of marmitey. the lack of quotation marks didnt really bother me!! ive come across it quite a few times but definitely when youre not used to things like that (or even if you are) they can be a bit jarring!! i remember reading open water which is written in the second person and finding it took some getting used to, but i think its also really cool + fun to read things like that which explore outside of conventional structures and formats : ^ ) i havent read anything else by rooney which..idk that may say something in itself but i dont mind the way she writes!! did nawt like the tv adaptation of normal people though idk i loved both the actors but i found it very boring...

#ask game: unrecommend me a book !!

[thequibblah]

19, 77, 134

19. a book that put you in a reading slump

LOLLL i'm going to take this in the positive after i read this i couldn't read anything because i was so into it way — the wolf and the woodsman by ava reid

77. a book so useless that you could use it as a coaster

DOE HANG ON A SEC—

all the books that come to mind are ones i would never spend money on, or indeed, even allow within my living space x going to stay blessedly silent here

134. unrecommend any book you like!

you want me to have enemies. FINE the h*ting game and the l*ve hyp*thesis idc

send me book asks

#ask me #emeralddoeadeer #if this earns me enemies so be it #i know im right #JHBERTHJBERTHJR #book talk

[isfjmel-phleg]

For the Book Recs Ask Game: C, P, AG, AQ, BJ, BX, BY, CB, CD, CN, CZ, DL, DX, ED, and EE, please!

My old blog theme (since changed because this habit was tiresome) used to convert numbered lists to letters, so in translation: 3, 16, 33, 43, 62, 76, 77, 80, 82, 92, 104, 116, 128, 134, 135.

3. a stand-alone that you wish was part of a series

Most stand-alones I’ve read end on a pretty satisfactory note. I wouldn’t mind revisiting the characters from Margaret Storey’s Pauline and see where they end up.

16. a book you'd recommend to your younger self

Nevermoor, which made me feel like a child when I first read it. Younger me would have been fascinated.

33. a book with a white cover

This biography of the last tsar’s daughters:

43. a book that you have read more than three times

What book that I love haven’t I read more than three times? Let’s go with...The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict.

62. a book with a forgettable plot but amazing characters

Heavy Weather by P. G. Wodehouse. But this is fairly true for a lot of the Wodehouse canon. (One doesn’t read Wodehouse for new and exciting plots; it’s all about the humor and atmosphere.)

76. a book with a golden/silver cover

I had trouble finding something on my shelves that fitted this. This leatherbound version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales was the closest I could get. It’s more ostensibly gold in person.

77. a book so useless that you could use it as a coaster

Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle. When L’Engle is good, she’s very very good, but when she’s bad, it’s rather painful.

80. a book that reminds you of a loved one

I read The Penderwicks on Gardham Street to my sisters when it came out, and rereading it this year brought back every part where they laughed.

82. a book featuring the chosen one trope

This is a trope that has to be carefully executed to work or it gets to be a bit much. A Clock of Stars: The Shadow Moth by Francesca Gibbons, which I read this year, uses it if I recall correctly. Not a perfect book, but fun.

92. a book about a redeemable villain

This one stumped me. I found a few cases of redeemable antagonists or antiheroes, which is different. But an actual villain? Tenthragon arguably might have one, but that’s all I’ve got.

(This is another trope that I’m particular about the execution of. It has to be an actual tangible change for the better in the villain. Having a sad backstory and being attractive to the heroine isn’t enough.)

104. a fluffy, sweet read

Pie by Sarah Weeks is about as fluffy and sweet as middle-grade novels go.

116. a book with multiple povs

My favorite example of multiple POVs is The Candymakers by Wendy Mass, in which the effect of the plot depends on the reader’s gradually having to change perception with each new POV.

128. a book that made you hungry

This sounds rather obvious, but The Hunger Games, and if I had not been absolutely starving the first time I read it, I might not have met my best friend.

134. unrecommend any book you like!

I wanted to like Wildwood by Colin Meloy for its setting and illustrations and premise that sounded like my sort of middle-grade fantasy. But the story, characters, and themes were all disappointing.

135. recommend any book you like!

The Chrestomanci series is a lot of fun. Some I like better than others (namely Charmed Life, The Lives of Christopher Chant, and Conrad’s Fate), but Diana Wynne Jones’s characters and humor and plot twists are all genius.

#asks #valiantarcher #thank you! #random personal stuff