I really dislike certain types of foreshadowing. Example "If only I (we) knew how much trouble this would cause." I just DNF'ed a book because that type of sentence was in every chapter of the first five chapters! Book blurb on the back, okay fine. Somewhere in the first chapter, alright. But in every chapter? I'm just done. Also switching the tense from present to past and future in the same paragraph. And it was not a book about time travel.
Mine is unnecessary world building. If the characters are taking a trip through a cave and they are only there for a few pages I don't need an entire chapter describing the cave. It's not important and wastes time. It's filler fluff and I'm unimpressed
How funny, 20k Leagues Under the Sea is one of my favorite books. It did take me a bit to get used to the older style of writing. It's also translated from the French, so that may have some part in it. However, I absolutely adored that book. Jules Verne was a genius imo. I read an edition that had footnotes, which I found helpful and would recommend to others.
I wish I liked jules verne. I might be too millennial… 🤔 i would consider retrying it but not for at least 5 years. Perhaps i just need to get to a more contemplative mindset 🤷🏼♀️👍🏻 well thanks for watching
I adore that book too. Jules Verne was one of my favourite authors growing up as a kid. His extraordinary voyages and Dumas Three musketeers got me into reading. 💜
I grew up in the 70’s, and during that time Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most significant authors around. People could not get enough of his books. To this day, Slaughterhouse Five is considered one of the most significant books of the century. Kurt Vonnegut was a writer and satirist, with his books filled with dark humor. I don’t think he was ever considered a “Sci Fi” writer…he just used element of science fiction in a few of his novels.
Ooo, ooo, I’ve got “In Ascension” on my wishlist after watching another BookTuber describe it and have it tickle my interests! No p/b until February 1st 2024, so not long for me if I choose to haul it - which I probably will. I remember disliking one of The Expanse books for getting a bit too preachy (to me). I like that you always have these off-piste picks in your tellybox show. I feel that my own reads are too ‘common’ if you like, and I’d really like to get off the beaten track and into the wider universe.
Ha yep never made it thru because of an animal torture scene in it. I CANT TAKE sense animal cruelty and not to that degree of detail for sure. I havent retried it
Ah, Left Hand of Darkness is a romance? Not my thing at all. Yeah, the "expectations" thing is a pain. It's hard to get a good sense of what a book is about, without spoiling yourself. Sometimes I won't even read the back or inside flaps because they give away too much. I guess that's why you're safer reading older and/or classic books. At least there's enough knowledge about them in the cultural ether that you usually already have a good idea what you're getting into.
A short list of some of the things in a book description that turn me away: LitSf, no thanks I never liked homework. Vampires or zombies, not for me. Main character is a priest, sunday school bored me, I could have spent that time with a (lower case on purpose) good book. Or the closely related Nuns In Space. which was all the rage recently. A Fairy Tale retelling, I won't get any of the references. I've turned into a very picky reader but BookTube has helped me discover new favorites...and which books to skip.
Super fun video Whitney. One of my favorites. I like when reviewers feel like they can say they didn't like a book. Everyone help this channel grow. Like and subscribe
I'm not sure what else a book titled "Towing Jehovah" would be, other than blasphemy towards the biblical God. Interesting how that seems to be the only religion books/movies/shows ever seen to target.
Great video Whitney, always appreciate your honesty! To be honest I get what you mean by Left Hand of darkness, it may be one of my top 5 favourite scifi books of all time, but when I think about the very political plot, a lot of walking and uninteresting alien culture, it doesn't sound very exciting. But I think Le Guins incredible prose and world building really sunk me into the book and got me invested to the very end. On a separate note I'd love to see a video of your opinion on P.K.Dick books!
Haha 😂 oh yeah. I have some things to say about him in “change my mind” video a few months back. Otherwise will have to keep reading….. thanks for watching
Did we need details about the father killing himself or the weird touchy (was that a rape?) thing…. If we could cull some of that imagery that honestly was gratiutious- i would have liked it
@@secretsauceofstorycraft The graphic stuff didn’t bother me, but I’m an old horror fan from way back. I loved the prose in these stories, Sturgeon blew me away. He very much reminded me of Shirley Jackson.
What a great vid! Agree on Left Hand - never "got" it. I've read so much sci-fi that I'm very particular. Bad blurb (evil corporation, no oil, teens save the world, etc) or bad cover is a no-no as is constant "explaining" ("We left in my J46 anti-gravity car that works by......") Caricatures - evil scientist, noble social worker, evil businessman, sassy black woman vs characters. Uneven tech development, we have FTL but still wash clothes or live in shacks. An odd no-no is incoherent direction. Some of the spaceship novels are guilty of this sin - corridors, doors, up, down, tunnels, floors...you spend more time trying to figure out where you are than following the plot. HG Wells - the Map Trilogy (de Palma) is an incredibly original take on him and "what if it was true, there was a time machine?" Or what if aliens actually existed? Detailed, character based, incredible plot.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft There was no middle ground - you hate it or loved it. I loved all three - original, quirky, occasionally the "talk back to the reader". It was just so darn imaginative and original. Good Luck
Man alive, I hate when the author blindsides you with something that you KNOW is the author ranting about XYZ thing, because it doesn't flow naturally from the characters or the plot. Even if it's something I agree with, it takes me totally out of the story.
Great video. I"m surprised you didn't like Relic by Alan Dean Foster. I read that recently and absolutely loved it. it reminded me of reading sci fi when i was young :). i usually enjoy alan dean foster a lot. I still plan on reading left hand of darkness, but i'm a little scared now lol.
Speaking of 1800's or early 1900's sin, I also often have a hard time reading reading books from that era or ones heavily influenced by it, especially when the male characters come across as a bunch of upper class twits or are brain dead and the woman a bunch of damsels in distress. One example from 1918 is The Land That Time Forgot. Another from a slightly earlier time, 1912, is The Lost World. What especially grinds my gears is when the characters go on about the innate superiority of their class, sex, race, country, etc. Since their behaviour is often at odds with their boasting, it could be taken as a satire except that the rest of the cast of characters go along with this like it was a well known matter of fact. Thanks for highlighting your picks of examples of the other various sins. And here I thought I was the only one to get ticked off by them.
Interesting. Going to figure out what my '7 Deadly Sins' are. I've found myself not like a few very popular books of late. I think I'll file Neuromancer, Solaris and Roadside Picnic under the 'wading through treacle sin, and Hyperion and House of Suns under 'expectations' (although I'll be revisiting Hyperion as I have a feeling I'll get on far better with Fall of Hyperion). I need to think about this next one, but I think I dislike books that have characters that I'd filed under 'ooooh, aren't I edgy'. Now going to have to think of examples... On the flip side Neverwhere and American Gods are two of my favourite books :)
For me it's unnecessary sex scenes, senseless violence, also too much backstory. Some overdo that kind of thing. That's why I like Adrian Tchaikovsky, he gives you enough information to care about the protagonists but doesn't bore you to death with their childhood 😴
😂 yessss waste of potential is the most annoying! And I’m with you on the not liking/getting The left hand of darkness, I was bored from the get go. A pity because The dispossessed is one of my favorite sciFi books of all time. Great video as always ⭐️
You might like to try the early 70's movie 'Slaughterhouse 5' and see if that gets you more on board with the book. It is quite slow, like films of the 70s are, but I haven't seen anything else quite like it. The film makes great use of editing, and has a non-linear structure, representing Billy Pilgrims jumbled thoughts, before the term non linear was really in general use.
I HATED sirens of titan. Just rubbish. The ultimate sin for me is for a book to be boring. A waste of my time. Boring ideas, boring prose, boring characters, boring plot. Nope. When I'm King of Books this will not be allowed. Btw, i think you have almost as many books on your sin list as i actually read last year!
I`m really love Jules Verne, especially in my childhood. But 20k Leagues Under the Sea I think was my least favorite, like it feels that it has more "information" type than adventure. At least for me. But In Search of the Castaways and The Mysterious Island was rereaded so many times)
This may be more of a movie trend, but I’m really bored with the super cavalier, cheeky protagonists. Those that joke whenever a dangerous situation arises. *eye roll*
Aww haha im sorry. I wish I had liked it. But the idea isnt to just say books are good or bad, i’m trying to think about why and what other books would fit into that trend
oh my goodness.. I just DNFd More Than Human. I got like maybe 20 pgs in and just couldn't do it anymore. It was boring and bit nonsensical and I couldn't get over the weird "touching" thing...
Usually, I dislike science fiction books that focus on religion, which is one of the reasons I hated The Sparrow. That book was so tedious! I can tolerate some degree of sexist behavior in older books because standards were different in the past. Still, sometimes it gets offensive. For example, in the Forever War, the author describes an orgy as follows "... then unleashed Stargate's eighteen sex-starved men on our women, compliant and promiscuous by military custom (and law), but desiring nothing so much as sleep on solid ground."
Sorry to hear you didn’t like In Ascension. I enjoyed it, even though it was weak on some of the sci-fi elements. I also got a kick out of the fact that the main character is from Rotterdam, where I live. I had never come across that in an English novel before. Will you be avoiding all literary sci-fi from now on?
Refreshing. Honest and fun. I loved this. Annoyance: gratuitous sex. John Varly's Titan. Incest joke wasn't funny the 1st time and certainly wasn't a riot the 5th time. Stranger in a Strange Land: "Toots"/"Sweetie"/"Dollface".....besides the fact that we get a cross between Truman Capote and Jabba the Hut who hosts a party. Anger/Hatred/Annoyance: Cemetery World, Nostrilia, Roadside Picnic, The Demolished Man. Every character in these books are filled with rage. Language: Recently while a favorite You toob'r was hosting a reading sprint wondered aloud, "Did people back then speak a different language?"
As soon as you said "Preachy," I was waiting for Heinlein, and wondering which one. And before that, re: C.S. Lewis, when you said that there wasn't much of a story, I said to myself, "You think that's bad, you should try Jules Verne!" (Full disclosure, though, I was really thinking of Journey to the Center of the Earth.)
My ultimate 'Waste of Potential' book is River of Teeth - an alternate history western with domesticated hippos instead of horses. The cover and the premise got me super excited only for it to be a very poorly handled heist novel.
In this era releasing the first chapter or 40 pages would be a nice thing before you buy a book and this doesn’t happen. Last year I got a book with an interesting synopsis, good reviews et all and at the very second page it takes a whole paragraph to describe the f4king logo of a company - type and all (helvetica)! 😂
For people who didn't get along with The Left Hand of Darkness, I cannot recommend enough the BBC Radio Play adaptation, which brings something to the characterization that you might not get from the prose. Actually, I recommend it to people who loved it too.
Really interesting list - thank you. Completely with you on sin 5 (preaching) but surprised by sin 4 (1890s to 1930s). Granted there's a lot of dross in this period but everything... Sin 3 though - yep, I'm with you. Sin 1 - yes. Not many in my life but certainly some books that I've started with relish and then found the book doesn't do it, but this could be rolled in with sin2. It's all about expectations whether set by the cover blurb and marketing team, or the first chapter which then fails to live up to its promise. Strangely enough, for me, the worst example of this was a film not a book - The John Carter of Mars movie which wasted its production budget and brilliant SFX on a weak story mashed together from bits of the original novels. So disappointed.
I thought that UKL's prose in LH of darkness was amazing, but you you just never vibed with it. Same for me with Dune and Ender's Game. Although I thought Dune was a good book, I just wasn't a great book for me. Enders game turned out to be more of a disappointment for me. It had some great elements in it and had great potential, but I thought the execution was lacking. To each their own I guess.
The book "Orbitl" by Sarah Harvy is beautiful, but it is not science fiction - i thought it was. Meditations from the ISS. Lovely, but not a bit of science fiction.
So, what I loved about Perelandra was that it gave due time and importance to the fall of man where the Old Testament gives so very little. Doesn't the root cause of sin and all human suffering deserve more than the few lines we got from Genesis? And it was nice to see evil represented as the truly grotesque thing that it is, rather than something with a tragic beauty we wish could be redeemed. But that's just literature's range of interpretations manifesting between you and me.
@@secretsauceofstorycraft we do agree on American Gods. And that wasn't my favorite Wyndham either. More, there are two versions of Puppet Masters with one of them having a representation of what happens once the thrills of violence, and sex, are discovered (and the other not). As a boy reading it, it was all about the adventure of humanity overcoming horrific slug-like aliens riding people's backs and controlling everything they do.
I have to try the books again! I WANT to love them. I just couldn't follow the first book very well. Maybe I just wasn't in the right headspace at the time. That happens to me.
Totally agree with you and thank you for the number one deadly sin, i simply hate it :) That is not sci-fi that is an excuse to write anything else as main interest in a futuristic setting. I so don't like fiction in a futuristic setting or frame with the claim that it is science fiction ! I hated The Way Station by Clifford D. Simak , for example. People appreciate the "pastoral" approach...sure, in a non-science fiction genre i totally agree :) But , hey, let's pretend that is sci-fi and give it a Hugo Award (1964)...i love your style when you say : "i can't take it !" . It is perfectly expressing my feelings too :) Oh, the famous Dark Matter by Blake Crouch too...i counted 2-3 pages at best describing sci-fi..the rest is really nice but in another genre....
Frankenstein is guilty of several of these for me, sadly. One of the classics that everyone seems to love and while I like the core story, I found the way it was written borderline unreadable. Archaic and clunky prose, slower than snail pacing, and the philosophical questions it poses are interesting but less present in the story than the descriptions of European geography. Sad to hear you didn't enjoy Vonnegut. Admittedly they are confusing books. I didn't have a great time with Sirens of Titan but SF5 is an all time classic for me. Vonnegut didn't really consider himself scifi and I think it messes with expectations when he gets introduced that way. FWIW, I thought Player Piano was the most interesting scifi book he wrote, as a better anti-utopian novel than Brave New World.
Oh my God I hated In Ascension so much. It's so boring and dry. The SF part is also not good. The characters are tedious. The dialogue are stunted. DNF'd. It's not a good literary book, nor a good SF book. A true and good literary SF writer is Ursula K. Le Guin. She doesn't set aside the SF part of her books...she complements them with great literary style.
Yup! Nailed it! Waste of potential gets me every time! That is why I can ramble for days about a movie that was mediocre (but took $300M to make and had cast and CGI and everything) and not mind a student movie that just didn't work. The problem is not with the end result, but with ... return on investment or honesty of effort, I guess. Obviously strongly linked to expectations. "So many people did so much more with so much less! Who put you in charge?!" And I guess the other one would be agenda driven stuff. The author wants to talk about minority rights or whatever, but doesn't write a book about that, they write a science-fiction novel, so it happens in space! And then nothing space-related is introduced. Just down-your-throat righteous criticism of current affairs. "Thanks for ruining my escapism!"
About preaching, omg, you are so right about Robert "libertarian" Heinlein, but it should be all his books, never read Puppet Master, so i thought you would have said Stranger in a Strange Land, the misogynistic slug-fest of his. But even worse than Heinlein, would be Jerry Pournelle with his uber-right-wing diatribes. I notice you have Lucifer's Hammer on your book shelf by the way. You might wanna hide that. Other than those two observations, I pretty much agree with you. Oh, but I loved Left Hand of Darkness I liked it for how Ursula Le Guin told her story. Nothing else like her prose.
I really don't like when there are characters that I really don't care about. I think with Verne that Journey to the Center of the Earth is probably a better place to start. I think if you were reading Puppet Masters in the fifties the preaching would have been more tolerable because the communist threat was more tangible.
Hm, it might be fitting now, as we are in a neo-commie/woke revolution. (And most people are asleep.) But I have not read the book, so I can't speak to it directly.
Yeah, science fiction is not about being "Literary". C. P. Snow's Two Cultures essay says interesting things about intellectual culture. SF is where science and literature intersect but sometimes literary intellectuals try to prove that they are smarter than they really are with fancy writing. Physics and chemistry do not care!
@@secretsauceofstorycraft More than 4 billion people are not carrying smartphones around because of all of the people with degrees in English literature.
Slow pace from too much description. A book is not a movie. It's like authors get paid by the word. If I want to learn about clothing, I'll get a J Crew catalog. I like a story to turn every 4 to 6 pages. A book should be fun all the way through. I shouldn't have to endure a slow setup, like with multiple POV’s that don’t get good until everybody meets. An exciting prologue does not make up for several boring chapters after that. I'm not a fan of a lot of flashbacks. Give me dinner first, and dessert if I eat my veggies. That's a terrible trend. I'm looking at you, Netflix. With the caveat that no book is perfect and sometimes the good makes the bad worthwhile.
Always hearing praise for book titles and authors is only half the truth. The other half is why books might be garbage and the reasons why you don't like them. Sometimes this second half is even more decisive in forming an approximate picture. So keep the rants coming :D
Even though I am a Christian, the too-on-the-nose thing is what never quite worked for me with the Narnia books. (I feel bad even saying that. I know people of all kinds love them, even if they are not personally Christians.) Maybe the problem was that I first read them as an adult. Kids just see the story and not the deeper meanings. I did not have that built in attachment when I read them as an adult. I don't know. I also wanted to love his Space Trilogy! But I read the first book and couldn't follow it very well. Maybe I will try again someday.
Sounds to me like some of these books are below your skill level. I really hate getting twenty pages in to a much-hyped title and realizing it’s written at a middle grade or young adult level. I understand that not all adults attend university, and that’s perfectly fine with me, but the books written for them won’t always hold my attention very long before I become bored and dnf. I have an eighth sin: books that are written like screenplays because the author fully expects a movie deal. Deal me out of that travesty! Thanks for your views. We were all thinking it. Well said. 😺✌️
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I really dislike certain types of foreshadowing. Example "If only I (we) knew how much trouble this would cause." I just DNF'ed a book because that type of sentence was in every chapter of the first five chapters! Book blurb on the back, okay fine. Somewhere in the first chapter, alright. But in every chapter? I'm just done.
Also switching the tense from present to past and future in the same paragraph. And it was not a book about time travel.
Yeah that would annoy me too. Luckily i havent run into that much
Mine is unnecessary world building. If the characters are taking a trip through a cave and they are only there for a few pages I don't need an entire chapter describing the cave. It's not important and wastes time. It's filler fluff and I'm unimpressed
Agreed!!!
How funny, 20k Leagues Under the Sea is one of my favorite books. It did take me a bit to get used to the older style of writing. It's also translated from the French, so that may have some part in it. However, I absolutely adored that book. Jules Verne was a genius imo. I read an edition that had footnotes, which I found helpful and would recommend to others.
I wish I liked jules verne. I might be too millennial… 🤔 i would consider retrying it but not for at least 5 years. Perhaps i just need to get to a more contemplative mindset 🤷🏼♀️👍🏻 well thanks for watching
I adore that book too. Jules Verne was one of my favourite authors growing up as a kid. His extraordinary voyages and Dumas Three musketeers got me into reading. 💜
I grew up in the 70’s, and during that time Kurt Vonnegut was one of the most significant authors around. People could not get enough of his books. To this day, Slaughterhouse Five is considered one of the most significant books of the century. Kurt Vonnegut was a writer and satirist, with his books filled with dark humor. I don’t think he was ever considered a “Sci Fi” writer…he just used element of science fiction in a few of his novels.
I was aware of his status and was hoping I would also love his work… sadly I just didnt connect with it-
Ooo, ooo, I’ve got “In Ascension” on my wishlist after watching another BookTuber describe it and have it tickle my interests! No p/b until February 1st 2024, so not long for me if I choose to haul it - which I probably will.
I remember disliking one of The Expanse books for getting a bit too preachy (to me).
I like that you always have these off-piste picks in your tellybox show. I feel that my own reads are too ‘common’ if you like, and I’d really like to get off the beaten track and into the wider universe.
Exploring is good 😊 but common are common for a reason…
Have you read Altered Carbon? That was one I put down very quickly, just seemed way overly gratuitous in the first 20 pages.
Ha yep never made it thru because of an animal torture scene in it. I CANT TAKE sense animal cruelty and not to that degree of detail for sure. I havent retried it
Ah, Left Hand of Darkness is a romance? Not my thing at all.
Yeah, the "expectations" thing is a pain. It's hard to get a good sense of what a book is about, without spoiling yourself. Sometimes I won't even read the back or inside flaps because they give away too much. I guess that's why you're safer reading older and/or classic books. At least there's enough knowledge about them in the cultural ether that you usually already have a good idea what you're getting into.
Yeah im always surprised by what the summaries give away!
A short list of some of the things in a book description that turn me away:
LitSf, no thanks I never liked homework.
Vampires or zombies, not for me.
Main character is a priest, sunday school bored me, I could have spent that time with a (lower case on purpose) good book.
Or the closely related Nuns In Space. which was all the rage recently.
A Fairy Tale retelling, I won't get any of the references.
I've turned into a very picky reader but BookTube has helped me discover new favorites...and which books to skip.
Everyone has the things we cant take! I’m glad ur finding stuff u love tho
@secretsauceofstorycraft Oh yeah, there's good stuff out there and the hunt for it is half of the fun
Super fun video Whitney. One of my favorites. I like when reviewers feel like they can say they didn't like a book. Everyone help this channel grow. Like and subscribe
🔥
I'm not sure what else a book titled "Towing Jehovah" would be, other than blasphemy towards the biblical God. Interesting how that seems to be the only religion books/movies/shows ever seen to target.
Probably thats what most people relate to- there are some on others but definitely less of them. 🤷🏼♀️
Great video Whitney, always appreciate your honesty! To be honest I get what you mean by Left Hand of darkness, it may be one of my top 5 favourite scifi books of all time, but when I think about the very political plot, a lot of walking and uninteresting alien culture, it doesn't sound very exciting. But I think Le Guins incredible prose and world building really sunk me into the book and got me invested to the very end. On a separate note I'd love to see a video of your opinion on P.K.Dick books!
Haha 😂 oh yeah. I have some things to say about him in “change my mind” video a few months back. Otherwise will have to keep reading….. thanks for watching
Sitting here in shock that you didn’t like “More Than Human.”
Did we need details about the father killing himself or the weird touchy (was that a rape?) thing…. If we could cull some of that imagery that honestly was gratiutious- i would have liked it
@@secretsauceofstorycraft The graphic stuff didn’t bother me, but I’m an old horror fan from way back. I loved the prose in these stories, Sturgeon blew me away. He very much reminded me of Shirley Jackson.
What a great vid! Agree on Left Hand - never "got" it. I've read so much sci-fi that I'm very particular. Bad blurb (evil corporation, no oil, teens save the world, etc) or bad cover is a no-no as is constant "explaining" ("We left in my J46 anti-gravity car that works by......") Caricatures - evil scientist, noble social worker, evil businessman, sassy black woman vs characters. Uneven tech development, we have FTL but still wash clothes or live in shacks. An odd no-no is incoherent direction. Some of the spaceship novels are guilty of this sin - corridors, doors, up, down, tunnels, floors...you spend more time trying to figure out where you are than following the plot.
HG Wells - the Map Trilogy (de Palma) is an incredibly original take on him and "what if it was true, there was a time machine?" Or what if aliens actually existed? Detailed, character based, incredible plot.
Ironically i have the first book of the map trilogy but havent read it
@@secretsauceofstorycraft There was no middle ground - you hate it or loved it. I loved all three - original, quirky, occasionally the "talk back to the reader". It was just so darn imaginative and original. Good Luck
Man alive, I hate when the author blindsides you with something that you KNOW is the author ranting about XYZ thing, because it doesn't flow naturally from the characters or the plot. Even if it's something I agree with, it takes me totally out of the story.
💯!!!
Great video. I"m surprised you didn't like Relic by Alan Dean Foster. I read that recently and absolutely loved it. it reminded me of reading sci fi when i was young :). i usually enjoy alan dean foster a lot. I still plan on reading left hand of darkness, but i'm a little scared now lol.
Haha maybe you will disagree with me and love it! 🤞
Speaking of 1800's or early 1900's sin, I also often have a hard time reading reading books from that era or ones heavily influenced by it, especially when the male characters come across as a bunch of upper class twits or are brain dead and the woman a bunch of damsels in distress. One example from 1918 is The Land That Time Forgot. Another from a slightly earlier time, 1912, is The Lost World. What especially grinds my gears is when the characters go on about the innate superiority of their class, sex, race, country, etc. Since their behaviour is often at odds with their boasting, it could be taken as a satire except that the rest of the cast of characters go along with this like it was a well known matter of fact.
Thanks for highlighting your picks of examples of the other various sins. And here I thought I was the only one to get ticked off by them.
Thank you for saying so!! You are def not alone.
Interesting. Going to figure out what my '7 Deadly Sins' are. I've found myself not like a few very popular books of late. I think I'll file Neuromancer, Solaris and Roadside Picnic under the 'wading through treacle sin, and Hyperion and House of Suns under 'expectations' (although I'll be revisiting Hyperion as I have a feeling I'll get on far better with Fall of Hyperion). I need to think about this next one, but I think I dislike books that have characters that I'd filed under 'ooooh, aren't I edgy'. Now going to have to think of examples...
On the flip side Neverwhere and American Gods are two of my favourite books :)
Hmm 🤔 edgy characters. I’d agree with that for neuromancer and roadside
@@secretsauceofstorycraft definitely!
For me it's unnecessary sex scenes, senseless violence, also too much backstory. Some overdo that kind of thing.
That's why I like Adrian Tchaikovsky, he gives you enough information to care about the protagonists but doesn't bore you to death with their childhood 😴
Uh dont get me started on how i dont care about their childhood….
😂 yessss waste of potential is the most annoying!
And I’m with you on the not liking/getting The left hand of darkness, I was bored from the get go. A pity because The dispossessed is one of my favorite sciFi books of all time.
Great video as always ⭐️
Thanks!! Glad im not the only one
It’s Wilson’s “Spin” for me. A lot of drama, very little of sci-fi.
Yeah that woulda been on my last years list…
You might like to try the early 70's movie 'Slaughterhouse 5' and see if that gets you more on board with the book. It is quite slow, like films of the 70s are, but I haven't seen anything else quite like it. The film makes great use of editing, and has a non-linear structure, representing Billy Pilgrims jumbled thoughts, before the term non linear was really in general use.
Thanks for the tip! 🤔
I HATED sirens of titan. Just rubbish. The ultimate sin for me is for a book to be boring. A waste of my time. Boring ideas, boring prose, boring characters, boring plot. Nope. When I'm King of Books this will not be allowed. Btw, i think you have almost as many books on your sin list as i actually read last year!
Hahaha 🤣 boring books are really rough
I`m really love Jules Verne, especially in my childhood. But 20k Leagues Under the Sea I think was my least favorite, like it feels that it has more "information" type than adventure. At least for me. But In Search of the Castaways and The Mysterious Island was rereaded so many times)
Fair enough! Thanks for sharing! Maybe in future i would try again but not for a bit….
This may be more of a movie trend, but I’m really bored with the super cavalier, cheeky protagonists. Those that joke whenever a dangerous situation arises. *eye roll*
They r pretty prominent in books tooo 😂
Slaughter House 5 is my all time favorite book
Aww haha im sorry. I wish I had liked it. But the idea isnt to just say books are good or bad, i’m trying to think about why and what other books would fit into that trend
@@secretsauceofstorycraft no need to be sorry. I can see that it's not for everyone. You might try KV's Galapagos or Bluebeard.
Oh man, SEVERANCE was fantastic. "The scifi" is actually pretty well laced and overarching throughout the whole book.
oh my goodness.. I just DNFd More Than Human. I got like maybe 20 pgs in and just couldn't do it anymore. It was boring and bit nonsensical and I couldn't get over the weird "touching" thing...
Ugh the touching thing gets worse…. 😣 Good decision IMO
@@secretsauceofstorycraft ugh is right! eww no thanks.. yes glad I bailed 😅
Usually, I dislike science fiction books that focus on religion, which is one of the reasons I hated The Sparrow. That book was so tedious! I can tolerate some degree of sexist behavior in older books because standards were different in the past. Still, sometimes it gets offensive. For example, in the Forever War, the author describes an orgy as follows "... then unleashed Stargate's eighteen sex-starved men on our women, compliant and promiscuous by military custom (and law), but desiring nothing so much as sleep on solid ground."
👀 hm not sure about how i feel about that. Will decide when i read forever war later this year…..
Sorry to hear you didn’t like In Ascension. I enjoyed it, even though it was weak on some of the sci-fi elements. I also got a kick out of the fact that the main character is from Rotterdam, where I live. I had never come across that in an English novel before. Will you be avoiding all literary sci-fi from now on?
I will try not to for at least awhile but no promises- im not always great at figuring out which are and which arent
Refreshing. Honest and fun. I loved this.
Annoyance: gratuitous sex. John Varly's Titan.
Incest joke wasn't funny the 1st time and certainly wasn't a riot the 5th time.
Stranger in a Strange Land: "Toots"/"Sweetie"/"Dollface".....besides the fact that we get a cross between Truman Capote and Jabba the Hut who hosts a party.
Anger/Hatred/Annoyance: Cemetery World, Nostrilia, Roadside Picnic, The Demolished Man.
Every character in these books are filled with rage.
Language: Recently while a favorite You toob'r was hosting a reading sprint wondered aloud, "Did people back then speak a different language?"
Oh no! I have titan as a book to be read this year….. nice to know about the others
How about Tiger, Tiger!, for 6?
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Glad I'm not the only one who couldnt get through The Left Hand of Darkness!
Haha! U are NOT.
Excellent video! I couldn't agree with you more on all the categories!!!
Yay, thank you!
As soon as you said "Preachy," I was waiting for Heinlein, and wondering which one.
And before that, re: C.S. Lewis, when you said that there wasn't much of a story, I said to myself, "You think that's bad, you should try Jules Verne!" (Full disclosure, though, I was really thinking of Journey to the Center of the Earth.)
Haha!! Sounds like u called each one!
My ultimate 'Waste of Potential' book is River of Teeth - an alternate history western with domesticated hippos instead of horses. The cover and the premise got me super excited only for it to be a very poorly handled heist novel.
Sounds like a solid case of not meeting expectations….. Sad 😔 wish there werent so many
In this era releasing the first chapter or 40 pages would be a nice thing before you buy a book and this doesn’t happen.
Last year I got a book with an interesting synopsis, good reviews et all and at the very second page it takes a whole paragraph to describe the f4king logo of a company - type and all (helvetica)! 😂
Oof! 😫
For people who didn't get along with The Left Hand of Darkness, I cannot recommend enough the BBC Radio Play adaptation, which brings something to the characterization that you might not get from the prose. Actually, I recommend it to people who loved it too.
Hmm 🤔 will consider
Three Body Problem fell into sin number 3 for me. Straight up made me feel dumb
Thats reason I never bought it. The synopsis was enough to do my head in
I started the sample on Kindle and so far it's exhilarating.
Really interesting list - thank you. Completely with you on sin 5 (preaching) but surprised by sin 4 (1890s to 1930s). Granted there's a lot of dross in this period but everything... Sin 3 though - yep, I'm with you. Sin 1 - yes. Not many in my life but certainly some books that I've started with relish and then found the book doesn't do it, but this could be rolled in with sin2. It's all about expectations whether set by the cover blurb and marketing team, or the first chapter which then fails to live up to its promise. Strangely enough, for me, the worst example of this was a film not a book - The John Carter of Mars movie which wasted its production budget and brilliant SFX on a weak story mashed together from bits of the original novels. So disappointed.
Hmm a movie? I will have to consider this.
But yes on sin 4. Im it really is that simple
I thought that UKL's prose in LH of darkness was amazing, but you you just never vibed with it. Same for me with Dune and Ender's Game. Although I thought Dune was a good book, I just wasn't a great book for me. Enders game turned out to be more of a disappointment for me. It had some great elements in it and had great potential, but I thought the execution was lacking. To each their own I guess.
Yeah- gotta say speaker for dead was much much better than ender’s game. But i hear you- everyone has different tastes
The book "Orbitl" by Sarah Harvy is beautiful, but it is not science fiction - i thought it was. Meditations from the ISS. Lovely, but not a bit of science fiction.
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So, what I loved about Perelandra was that it gave due time and importance to the fall of man where the Old Testament gives so very little. Doesn't the root cause of sin and all human suffering deserve more than the few lines we got from Genesis? And it was nice to see evil represented as the truly grotesque thing that it is, rather than something with a tragic beauty we wish could be redeemed. But that's just literature's range of interpretations manifesting between you and me.
Wow. U clearly understood it waaaay better than I did. I think Im just not ready for those books 📚 maybe later in my life
@@secretsauceofstorycraft we do agree on American Gods. And that wasn't my favorite Wyndham either. More, there are two versions of Puppet Masters with one of them having a representation of what happens once the thrills of violence, and sex, are discovered (and the other not). As a boy reading it, it was all about the adventure of humanity overcoming horrific slug-like aliens riding people's backs and controlling everything they do.
I have to try the books again! I WANT to love them. I just couldn't follow the first book very well. Maybe I just wasn't in the right headspace at the time. That happens to me.
Totally agree with you and thank you for the number one deadly sin, i simply hate it :) That is not sci-fi that is an excuse to write anything else as main interest in a futuristic setting. I so don't like fiction in a futuristic setting or frame with the claim that it is science fiction ! I hated The Way Station by Clifford D. Simak , for example. People appreciate the "pastoral" approach...sure, in a non-science fiction genre i totally agree :) But , hey, let's pretend that is sci-fi and give it a Hugo Award (1964)...i love your style when you say : "i can't take it !" . It is perfectly expressing my feelings too :) Oh, the famous Dark Matter by Blake Crouch too...i counted 2-3 pages at best describing sci-fi..the rest is really nice but in another genre....
💜 aptly put!
In fairness 20000 miles under the sea is a slog...
It is a slog!
Frankenstein is guilty of several of these for me, sadly. One of the classics that everyone seems to love and while I like the core story, I found the way it was written borderline unreadable. Archaic and clunky prose, slower than snail pacing, and the philosophical questions it poses are interesting but less present in the story than the descriptions of European geography.
Sad to hear you didn't enjoy Vonnegut. Admittedly they are confusing books. I didn't have a great time with Sirens of Titan but SF5 is an all time classic for me. Vonnegut didn't really consider himself scifi and I think it messes with expectations when he gets introduced that way. FWIW, I thought Player Piano was the most interesting scifi book he wrote, as a better anti-utopian novel than Brave New World.
Thank you for your insight!
I found This Is How You Lose the Time War to be needlessly confusing.
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Oh my God I hated In Ascension so much. It's so boring and dry. The SF part is also not good. The characters are tedious. The dialogue are stunted. DNF'd. It's not a good literary book, nor a good SF book.
A true and good literary SF writer is Ursula K. Le Guin. She doesn't set aside the SF part of her books...she complements them with great literary style.
🔥 haha. Thanks for sharing!
Yup! Nailed it! Waste of potential gets me every time! That is why I can ramble for days about a movie that was mediocre (but took $300M to make and had cast and CGI and everything) and not mind a student movie that just didn't work. The problem is not with the end result, but with ... return on investment or honesty of effort, I guess. Obviously strongly linked to expectations. "So many people did so much more with so much less! Who put you in charge?!"
And I guess the other one would be agenda driven stuff. The author wants to talk about minority rights or whatever, but doesn't write a book about that, they write a science-fiction novel, so it happens in space! And then nothing space-related is introduced. Just down-your-throat righteous criticism of current affairs. "Thanks for ruining my escapism!"
Well put!!! Agreed! 👍🏻
And I thought I was hypercritical.
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About preaching, omg, you are so right about Robert "libertarian" Heinlein, but it should be all his books, never read Puppet Master, so i thought you would have said Stranger in a Strange Land, the misogynistic slug-fest of his. But even worse than Heinlein, would be Jerry Pournelle with his uber-right-wing diatribes. I notice you have Lucifer's Hammer on your book shelf by the way. You might wanna hide that. Other than those two observations, I pretty much agree with you. Oh, but I loved Left Hand of Darkness I liked it for how Ursula Le Guin told her story. Nothing else like her prose.
I havent read lucifer’s hammer yet. Gotta try it before i get rid of it. But i will see…
I really don't like when there are characters that I really don't care about. I think with Verne that Journey to the Center of the Earth is probably a better place to start. I think if you were reading Puppet Masters in the fifties the preaching would have been more tolerable because the communist threat was more tangible.
Agree with u on all counts
Hm, it might be fitting now, as we are in a neo-commie/woke revolution. (And most people are asleep.) But I have not read the book, so I can't speak to it directly.
Yeah, science fiction is not about being "Literary".
C. P. Snow's Two Cultures essay says interesting things about intellectual culture. SF is where science and literature intersect but sometimes literary intellectuals try to prove that they are smarter than they really are with fancy writing.
Physics and chemistry do not care!
Haha 😆 🔥
@@secretsauceofstorycraft
More than 4 billion people are not carrying smartphones around because of all of the people with degrees in English literature.
Slow pace from too much description. A book is not a movie. It's like authors get paid by the word. If I want to learn about clothing, I'll get a J Crew catalog. I like a story to turn every 4 to 6 pages. A book should be fun all the way through. I shouldn't have to endure a slow setup, like with multiple POV’s that don’t get good until everybody meets. An exciting prologue does not make up for several boring chapters after that. I'm not a fan of a lot of flashbacks. Give me dinner first, and dessert if I eat my veggies. That's a terrible trend. I'm looking at you, Netflix. With the caveat that no book is perfect and sometimes the good makes the bad worthwhile.
Ooh second person to being up movies! This is an interesting theme
Always hearing praise for book titles and authors is only half the truth. The other half is why books might be garbage and the reasons why you don't like them. Sometimes this second half is even more decisive in forming an approximate picture.
So keep the rants coming :D
🔥 glad u understand this piece!
It always amuses me when you give a bad review to a “SF Classic.”
Haha 😆
Amen sister !
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I agree with Slaughterhouse 5... such an overrated book. Hate it to the core.😅
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Even though I am a Christian, the too-on-the-nose thing is what never quite worked for me with the Narnia books. (I feel bad even saying that. I know people of all kinds love them, even if they are not personally Christians.) Maybe the problem was that I first read them as an adult. Kids just see the story and not the deeper meanings. I did not have that built in attachment when I read them as an adult. I don't know.
I also wanted to love his Space Trilogy! But I read the first book and couldn't follow it very well. Maybe I will try again someday.
I felt same!
Terraformers was too preachy… I’m left wing but it was too much for me.
Yeah i prob agree
Sounds to me like some of these books are below your skill level. I really hate getting twenty pages in to a much-hyped title and realizing it’s written at a middle grade or young adult level. I understand that not all adults attend university, and that’s perfectly fine with me, but the books written for them won’t always hold my attention very long before I become bored and dnf.
I have an eighth sin: books that are written like screenplays because the author fully expects a movie deal. Deal me out of that travesty!
Thanks for your views. We were all thinking it.
Well said.
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🤩 thanks!! Thats high praise!
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I'm reading In Ascension next month! 😅This was a very clever way to talk about books that don't work for you. 🤍
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