Crap you read in high school

[williamjm]

So I was wondering what else people read in HS then realized later in life was total shit. (D&D tie ins don't count, I think we all read that crap)

I know you said they didn't count but I find it hard to look beyond the dozens of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms (and a few from other settings) I read when I'm wondering how I could have spent my reading time better. I think the puzzling thing is that I didn't even think most of them were particularly good at the time but still continued reading them, I think that might be a common thread between a lot of the bad books I read at the time that I didn't know when to stop reading a series. I had really enjoyed Weis & Hickman's original two Dragonlance trilogies (although technically I did read them first before High School) and I think I kept trying to find something I'd like as much among related books but kept failing. I think part of the reason for it is that this was before I had access to the Internet and didn't really know many people who read Fantasy/SF so it was hard to get recommendations and therefore kept returning to known quantities rather than taking a risk on something new.

[wolverine]

When I was younger it was a lot of Louis L'Amour westerns and his other stuff. I still think he is a kick ass storyteller, even if he is a bit formulaic with mostly infallible heroes.

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah, it's hard to top Hubbard. That's like...wow dude. I'm impressed.

Honestly, as much as I dislike Ender's Game, Card has written far, far, FAR worse.

[UVA]

I remember reading V.C. Andrews and the Point Horror Series, with titles from Christopher Pike, R. L. Stine and D.E. Athkins. I read lots of Robert Cormier as well. While The Handmaid's Tale wasn't considered YA at the time, a lot of us girls had read the novel in our teens.

I also read Judy Blume and S.E. Hinton. And I went through the teen romance stage, reading from the Sweet Dreams books, and Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.

Lots and lots of Star Wars books. I remember even liking what Kevin J. Anderson brought to the table. Just typing that makes me feel dirty :ack:

I think I gave up somewhere in the Young Jedi Knight's series. But I quite liked the first EU novels -- Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy. And speaking of Anderson, I confess to reading his Dune prequels in a time far removed from high school however.

And, if we're confessing from before high school, I will also cop to some Babysitters' Club and Sweet Valley High books. Yeah. I totally did.

SVH was in my wheelhouse too. For my daughters, SVH has been supplanted by the Dork Dairies and series like My Sister the Vampire; and I lugged around all of these Nancy Drew novels over the years for nothing! :)

[Theda Baratheon]

Twilight lol.

Look, it came out when I was a 10/11 yr old girl ok. I didn't think it was particularly great then but I *did* like the first book.

[brentendo]

Every single Drizzt book. Been trying to keep up with the latest books but I'm stuck on like #22 or something lol.

[Darth Richard II]

Oh, I just remembered reading some Shadowrun books. Those were...not so good.

[buff daddy]

I loved the Heroes In Hell and Thieves World anthologies when I was young. I have no idea how the general quality of them would be perceived by someone reading them for the first time nowadays. I do wish I still had all those old paperbacks so I could try them again.

[maarsen]

John Norman's Gor series. I am embarrassed even as I write this. I also started to read Phil Dick, Delaney, Silverberg and such also so I was not a complete loser.

[Tears of Lys]

If this is making some feel old, consider that more than 90% of the books mentioned above had not been written when I was in High School. The big new thing my last HS year (1965-1966) was The Lord of the Rings, which I thought was wonderful (and still like, of course), but I read the ACE paperbacks, which were all that were available in 1965. (I was into buying books, but only ones I could afford. It would not have occurred to me to have my parents take me over to the local University library, besides their copies were probably on permanent checkout by then.)

Other than that I did not read much Fantasy, but a fair amount of Sci-Fi, most of which, other than the Asimov Foundation Trilogy and the Heinlein has probably disappeared into oblivion, which is what usually happens to the trashy stuff.

I graduated HS in '69, so shake hands. LotR's was all the rage back then, but I refused to read it for some stupid reason. I only picked it up and finally read it because the movies were coming out and I wanted to experience the book(s) first. Am REALLY glad I did.

Most of my misspent youth I was immersed in John D. McDonald's Travis McGee books, a TON of Zane Grey westerns, the occasional Dickens reread, the obligatory Austen and Bronte books (still love 'em) and Daphne du Maurier's stuff.

When I was younger it was a lot of Louis L'Amour westerns and his other stuff. I still think he is a kick ass storyteller, even if he is a bit formulaic with mostly infallible heroes.

[deleted01]

I have read the first three books by Jean Auel probably too many times. I have no idea if it is good or bad that the next ones were not translated into my language then - on the one hand, I might have realised how bad they all were if I had read those (they are getting progressively worse through the series). On the other hand, I might have not realised that and spent even more time of my life on it. :leaving:

I also read one (or maybe two?) Twilight books because I was curious what it was that my schoolmates were so excited about. At least I can say I had the sense to not like them.

There's nothing wrong with liking Twilight. It has flaws, but it also serves its purpose. I didn't think they were worth the hype, but I thought they were alright.

I had (still have) so many Sabrina the Teenage Witch books. And Goosebumps. I would reread them a lot, even as a teenager. I also used to read my mum's John Saul books when I was a teenager. Some were great, some were not so great.

[Darth Richard II]

John Norman's Gor series. I am embarrassed even as I write this. I also started to read Phil Dick, Delaney, Silverberg and such also so I was not a complete loser.

Oh shit, I think you won the thread there.

[Theda Baratheon]

Point Horror novels lol. I was obsessed. I collected them; had loooads.

[Jon AS]

I think in terms of average quality of all the books I read over a period of time, the year immediately following highschool graduation. Being obsessed with the Baldur's Gate games I read a lot of Forgotten Realms tie-ins which were just not very good. It wasn't all bad, though, as it let to me picking up the first three A Song of Ice and Fire books at the end of that year and subsequently discovering one of the previous incarnations of this board, which has been helping me make better decisions when it comes to picking books since.

[kuenjato]

I loved the Heroes In Hell and Thieves World anthologies when I was young. I have no idea how the general quality of them would be perceived by someone reading them for the first time nowadays. I do wish I still had all those old paperbacks so I could try them again.

I tried to re-read the Thieves World anthologies in 2011. The first 3-4 books are fairly decent swords and sorcery, and definitely grimdark-before-it-was-grimdark (there's a casual mention of bestiality as a gang lord's background entertainment at the beginning of the 5th book), but the quality really drops off after that... I only made it to book 7 before tossing it aside, the potential of the setting and characters pretty much wasted by that point.

[Myshkin]

I loved the Heroes In Hell and Thieves World anthologies when I was young. I have no idea how the general quality of them would be perceived by someone reading them for the first time nowadays. I do wish I still had all those old paperbacks so I could try them again.

I still have all my Thieves World paperbacks. Like kuenjato said, the earlier ones are still quite good. The later one get messy, but it' not really a quality of writing issue.

[aceluby]

So many Star Wars books. Still have around 25 of them. Dragonlance, of course, and a lot of derivative D&D stories. Ventured into some Magic books based on the card game which were just bad. Pretty much everything from Card that isn't Ender's Game (1st author I had to stop reading because he got worse as he went along...). That was really it when I wasn't being forced to read for English class.

[Durckad]

Oh man, I have read so many books of questionable quality over the years. The sad thing is that I hated or didn't like a good number of them but that didn't dissuade me in the least.

Back in Middle School I read a ton of RL Stein Goosebump books. I'm pretty sure I had at least 20+ of those and I reread some. Even back then I think I knew they were repetitive and full of sloppy, convenient plotting but I still read the hell out of them. A friend of mine at the time dared to interrupt my constant Goosebumps obsession by lending me The Time Machine. I read that, thought it was pretty great, but immediately went back to more Goosebumps. Funny enough I can only barely remember what happens in the book. I remember the Morlocks and the lobster creatures at the end of time which freaked me out. I think the thought of the world being a desolate, empty place aside from giant lobster creatures was just too much for my prepubescent mind to handle.

I then read The Hobbit and proceeded to read any and every fantasy book I could get my hands on through High School. This meant lots of Eddings, Jordan, some Feist, Brooks, Modesitt, Goodkind, finally Martin. I think I started off with Eddings. I didn't know quite where to start so I just picked up the first book of the Tamuli by chance. It's a wonder I continued to read on from there because the Tamuli was awful. Even then I hated it. I went back and read the Belgariad, the Elenium, and the Mallorean, in that order, followed by Belgarath The Sorcerer. I actually thought Belgarath The Sorcerer was the clear standout. I read that one a couple of times and I'm morbidly curious as to how it holds up nowadays. My Eddings fandom ended when I read Redemption of Athalus sometime in High School. It was so bad that I didn't even finish it and I finished pretty much every book I started back then. I got about 3/4 of the way through and just gave up.

Feist I read a couple of books but never got too invested in the series so I pretty stopped reading that after Darkness at Sethanon, I think. Brooks I thought was plagiaristic shit after one book. Still finished the book though. Modesitt was interesting if mostly boring and his writing style left me just vaguely confused most of the time. That, plus the huge amount of books he had out at that point pretty much swayed me away from reading anymore of his stuff. I read five Goodkind books in High School of my own volition. I had many problems with the series but I thought they were decent enough to keep reading. I think I got bored with the series around the fourth or fifth book which was, I think, before Goodkind turned his series from a fantasy into objectivism and serious issues literature so I'm kinda disappointed that I missed out on the truly appalling parts.

I don't think I got into D&D tie-in fiction until mid-high school, mostly because I played D&D with some friends and one of them loaned me a couple of Gary Gygax's Gord the Rogue novels. I think I read like three or four of them. Two of them I thought were straight up awful and the other two I thought were actually pretty good. I didn't venture into the realms of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms fiction until late or post-high school. They were largely fun and enjoyable with the occasional gem rising above the rest (Servant of the Shard) or the more frequent dense turd sinking to the depths (erm... the one where Salvatore rips of Moria). I only read the three original Dragonlance books but I don't regret my time with them. My introduction to Weis and Hickman was actually the Death Gate Cycle which was much, much better. I tried reading The Darksword books but the first one was largely painful so I gave up on it after the first one.

I also read two Magic: The Gathering tie-in novels. The first I read, Arena, was awesome. I loved that novel and I read it multiple times. I kinda want to read it again just to see how it holds up but my copy seems to have disappeared. The other one, I don't recall its name, but it was okay. Not bad, not great, but good enough to reread.

I read Battlefield: Earth and I liked it. Yeah...

I also read Ender's Game and thought it was pretty good, but I didn't continue on with the series.

No Star Wars books for me. I thought the whole idea was fucking stupid. Same with Trek novels. Though I did read one X-Files novel. I remember being really surprised when Mulder dropped an F-bomb in it. :lol:

I'm sure I'll think of other awful books tomorrow. This can't have been all of them...

[Darth Richard II]

Ah, see, I still like Death Gate, although I wouldn't put it on a pedestal or anything.

Man, Goodkind...I read 11 of those fuckers. I thought they were paraody for the longest time. I mean, noble goats! Evil chickens! This shit is hilarious! Objecta-what?

[Tellus Explorer]

The hunger game trilogy :stillsick: I don't get the hype

How to kill a mockingbird.... why did so many people enjoy this book? I really would like to appreciate it, but I don't Lol its pretty boring (along with other things)

Pretty Little Liars (I am ashamed I read these Lol)