• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Has there any books that made you rage quit?

zINXRCE.jpg

I was around 14 when I picked this up from my Dad's book collection. Couldn't finish it as it made me just too fucking depressed and angry.
 
Such hyperbole. Too bad for you.

Yes.

That's too bad. I hear It gets back to being good when Brandon Sanderson took over and finished the series.

I got it back when it first released, which was a looooong time ago... Wikipedia tells me fourteen years ago. I finished it, but I was so disillusioned with the absolute nothing inside that I never went back to the series. I've heard that Sanderson did the series justice but by that point I'd forgotten so much of what had happened and who everyone was that I had no interest in continuing.

Good lord that was a bad book. "Asha'man, kill!" to that.

Edit - Oh, remembered another. I actually did finish this, but I skipped so much of it whenever I got bored... usually the letters from modern day. What a weirdly fascinating book. Golems and medieval Carthage!

 
I non-rage quit Donna Tartt's "The Secret History" about 3/4 in. I just didn't feel like reading about how a group of elitist and pretentious college students felt bad about doing a terrible thing.
 
The Hunger Games.

I think I made it all the way through the 1st one and a little ways through the 2nd one before I couldn't take it anymore. Those books are so badly written.
 
Maybe not rage quit but the first Game Of Thrones book was so hard to get in to. Felt like endless introductions to too many new characters chapter after chapter to the point where when it references back to someone I'd forgotten who that was. I gave up about a quarter or third of the way in.

My memory is awful but it felt just quite overwhelming, not helped by the obviously strange names some characters have when you read them on the page. (Felt like this playing Skyrim too, lots of silly fantasy names and titles and you just lose the plot, literally).
I quit with the second. They're just not good books I think.

I'm reading Norwegian Wood and I'm getting to that bit where I'm not sure I wanna stick with it despite finding it really good at first. It's got a Catcher in the Rye kind of style to it, but it's much more long and has really weird ways of describing sex. Lots of clutching at erections and damp openings and stuff.

I guess sex is hard to write though
 
The Hunger Games.

I think I made it all the way through the 1st one and a little ways through the 2nd one before I couldn't take it anymore. Those books are so badly written.

I thought the first was okay which was probably helped by it being a quick read but gave up about 2 chapters into the second. I had no interest in anything that was happening.
 
The Dice Man. But I was young and its subtleties may have been over my head. The feeling I was left with at the time was one of it being morally hollow.
 
The Hunger Games.

I think I made it all the way through the 1st one and a little ways through the 2nd one before I couldn't take it anymore. Those books are so badly written.

3rd one is a chore. You made the right choice.

I AM THE HARBINGER. I AM THE HARBINGER.

Mass Effect Deception. ...wow. Absolutely terrible. Just read Lump Of Cole's comic and be done with. It's amazing.

The french lieutenant's woman
Not the book itself, but the version I had came at the same time as the movie in the 80's. It had a huge spoiler in the middle of the book from movie pics. No point in reading the rest.
 
jznSKXDl.jpg



Not about to "rage quit" the book, as I find many of the stories fascinating, and having an account that provides a sort of "other side of the fence" perspective of the gaming industry in the 80s/90s (compared to David Sheff's excellent, Nintendo-focused Game Over) is welcome; especially one that promises a peak behind the curtain to WTF was going between Sega's US and Japanese branches back then.

But man, some of the writing in this is bad.

The book opens with a note from the author that states many of the included stories have been recreated or altered, and conversations have been reconstructed or even imagined. Obviously, some of this is to be expected when you're interviewing multiple subjects about things that happened nearly two decades ago, but Console Wars charges headfirst into the narrative aspect to a degree that at times reads almost like fanfiction, and the prose is BAD. This thing is 600+ pages for a story that could be told in less than half that. The pacing is all over the place; I've got about 100 pages to go and we're only just getting to 32 bits. Chapters drone on with clunky dialogue and conversations that read like the author's never actually spoken to another live person before, or just straight up forgot how people speak to one another. The foreword by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg is a "see me after class" level of lazy.

It's not all terrible -- learning about the almost-Sega PlayStation was neat, the sections on Kalinske and his team at SOA building the Sega brand are fun, and the general underdog tone of the book is nice (Harris lets his inner Sega fanboy show just about every time Nintendo is brought up, and as someone who grew up on Mario's side of the war- lol it's cute). I'd have enjoyed the book a lot more though if went with a more fact-based approach instead of the weird docu-novel it tries to be.
 
The Windup Bird Chronicle. I don't know if it was the translation or what, but I felt like I was being told that things and people were weird rather them actually being weird. Plus I'm not about that mysterious woman trope.
 
Wait, what?

Now I have to look this up.

You would HATE the books I read.

I've read some dark stuff before, but this was darkly written trash. I posted a link a couple of pages before that quote to a fantastic site about the goodkind books, there are actual excerpts of all their selected commentary as well, some of the original prose is so laughable.

And yeah, I guess rage quit is a bit harsher than what my experiences actually were, can't say I've ever ripped up a book or trashed one.
 
I had to read a book called The Red Pony over summer break once. That book was fucking awful, a huge waste of time when I could have been reading better books. Eragon was so bad I actually forgot that I read part of it until someone mentioned it in this thread.
 
I don't recall ever hating a book so much I stopped reading, but there have been a few I just got bored with, or was distracted by something else.
The first Wheel of Time and American Gods come to mind. Really want to give American Gods another try one of these days though.
 
Star Wars Aftermath by Chuck Wendig. Was meant to be the first big foray into the new extended canon, but it had the absolute worst writing style I have ever had the extreme misfortune of laying eyes upon. I've never put down a book before, but my brain was just unable to continue reading that bollocks. Perhaps there was a good story hidden in amongst that. I doubt it

I gotta defend this one.. The writing style took some getting used to but I ended up liking the series. The next two are much stronger IMO.
And if you can't stomach the idea, try Lost Stars by Claudia Gray. Best of the post Disney SW books that I've read.
 
I didn't stop reading it, but the one book that really gave me pause was Gu Long's "The Thrush". I knew beforehand that this writer was prone to spouting misogynistic philosophy, but this book took it to another level and it had one of the worst female characters I've ever come across! I finished this book because I wanted to read the later books in the series but I haven't read anything by Gu Long since then, and it's been about 3 years now.
 
51ZJG7BtxhL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg


Ed and Lorraine Warren, from the Conjuring movies. They also investigated Amityville. The most insulting and biggest bunch of horseshit I've ever read. The crap that they try to claim was real isn't even good fiction, let alone actual "events".

Bah, this book was fun. Have this as an ebook. It's a good creepy read a chapter or two before bed type of book. There's some real scary cases documented in there.
 
After having reread Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs I finally decided to check out Hannibal.

Unfortunately, I was spoiled on the ending long ago... but I figured it was time. I actually like the beginning quiet a bit but man, does it start to drag... the plot is just so aimless at this point I'm almost finished with the thing and still have no idea what this book is suppose to be about. Nothing even hinting at the controversial ending. Don't know if I will make it.
 
atlus shrugged, for pretty much all the reason many have already said,
i remember the exact moment too, i had been really really trying to give the book a fair shake, despite hating just about everything there, as the idea of just not finishing a book i started really didnt apeal to me. then it had this moment when the metal making guy (rearden i think?) its being pressured by the government into sharing his metal, and he has this gigantic, several page long monologue about how unjust this all is, like to the point of thinking 'yeah i get it already!' for about five minutes. then he just gives in to the guy, its clearly meant to be this big 'woahhh! what amazing plan has he got in store this time!' its was just so assinine it soundly broke through my reluctance to quit, I closed the book then and there and tasted sweet sweet freedom.

Now to everyone saying The sword of truth series, you wanna hear the real goddamn cherry on top? its a freaking doozy.
imma spoil the very end of that whole imperial order conflict (you know, the plot like 12 books in the making). i think there are books following it but you couldn't fucking pay me to read them.

so the bad guys have basically won the war due to outnumbering richard and his sycophants a bazillion to 1 (turns out Richard cant solo entire empires, surprising restraint on Goodkinds part tbh), Richard has surrendered, handing over over the infinity ge- i mean the Box's of Ordon, the macguffin that can do literally anything.bad guy is set to make fantasy socialism reign supreme.
but AH HAH! bamboozled! turns out that if anyone ever tries to use the boxes for anything other than good pure non-commie ends, you just auto lose, just like that, poof! evil plan foiled, bad guy deleted (or maybe trapped to suffer eternally?). and then Richard gets to use the boxes to just fix literally every single problem still around.
BOX EX MACHINA!

man fuck that series.

Man, those books are bullshit. If I wasn't an edgy teenager when I read them, I would have never finished them.

yeah this was me, on the bright side i think this helped me get out my edgy phase real quick, kind of a 'god is this how stupid i sound?' thing.
unfortunately that streak ended only a few books in (i think around the scene where the group of sweet lil child soldiers are gruesomely massacred) but again, i felt compelled to finish what i had started.
 
I don't remember ever rage quitting a book. But becoming disinterested? Only one I can think of. Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon. I get like 120-150 pages in and just lose all interest. Tried five or six's times to read it.
 
QB VII. This book was recommended to me by my dad, and we usually have the same tastes. I hadn't read a book for quite some time, so I was pretty excited to get back into reading, and the premise sounded great.

I rage quit when the main character made eye contact with a really atractive woman from across the room, and the next scene is them having incredibly hot sex. It had nothing to do with the story, and there was no setup. I don't care one way or other about sex in books, but this just seemed gratuitous.
 
At least the BBC are now making a television series out of it and will hopefully actually do a good job of it.

Visually I just cannot see the BBC doing it justice, especially once the
Angels
appear and ESPECIALLY anything related to the 3rd book.
 
The second Stormlight book. Halfway through some awful assassination plot I put the book down. TWOK was a slog, but at least it wasn't stupid.
 
I don't remember ever rage quitting a book. But becoming disinterested? Only one I can think of. Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon. I get like 120-150 pages in and just lose all interest. Tried five or six's times to read it.

While I didn't rage quit it, Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon made me vow to never read him again. The book contained some of the funniest and most well written passages coiled and strewn between utter gibberish. I'm glad I read it but I will never waste my time like that again.
 
Can't think of too many right now but the ending of Inheritance (The 4th book of the series that starred Eragon). I was so hyped for the conclusion of the series and instead I felt no gratification at all from the end. Yes I know it was prophesied since the first book but I was so disappointed. Such a lame ending for the hero. I'm not reading the series again until The 5th book comes out and I read the darn synopsis first.

Also Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
 
Zeus grants dumb wishes.

The author closes the book by stating that science is just another kind of faith/religion. Skipped the last chapter altogether.
 
I couldn't finish The Casual Vacancy, the J.K. Rowling book. I think I got about two thirds of the way through and realised I just hated every single character and didn't care how the story was going to go.
 
Maybe not rage quit but the first Game Of Thrones book was so hard to get in to. Felt like endless introductions to too many new characters chapter after chapter to the point where when it references back to someone I'd forgotten who that was. I gave up about a quarter or third of the way in.

My memory is awful but it felt just quite overwhelming, not helped by the obviously strange names some characters have when you read them on the page. (Felt like this playing Skyrim too, lots of silly fantasy names and titles and you just lose the plot, literally).

I loved the first two books but I read them consecutively. Even then, by the end characters were blurring into each other and I was having to look stuff up constantly.

I'm kind of reluctant to pick up where I left off because of that though.

Maybe my memory isn't brilliant (or I'm over thinking) but I don't understand how people can follow a series like that and memorise everything between books over years.
 
Throughly fuck Catcher in the Rye. Most overrated piece of trash i've ever laid eyes on.

I rage-quitted at the third book of 1Q84.

Damn, i reallly should have.
Liked first third, kind of liked second, third was dreadful.
 
I think the da Vinci code is an alright book. Most of the criticism from nerds online comes off as pretentious, and or group-thinky.

I stopped reading his next book because it was hella boring after like 50 pages.
 
Malazan. Too many characters, no gateway character, too many different terms that are hard to pronounce and remember, too much history thrown at you, it doesnt explain anything that's going on, really hard to follow, I couldn't finish it. I'm not going to say it's bad but it's just not for me.

I read four of those books I stopped reading them because every action scene was played out like the author was just rolling dice to see what characters lived and died. I dunno if this is true but I heard that he was just basing the story off a dungeons and dragons game he played which explains all the shitty cop out deaths and insane video game battles.
 
The Da Vinci Code is poorly written, but you can see why it's popular, why a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories with some spy action appeals. Little games of placing various historic events in order, toying with symbols in art. It's not hard to read, just fairly bad, and you get through it quickly. Certainly not as offensive as something like the Alchemist.
 
I've stopped reading books because they didn't interest me, or because I didn't enjoy the writing style, or whatever, but the only book I had to quit because it was pissing me off like that is Ready Player One. The endless, endless references that are presented as some in-group thing and then explained with the thoroughness of the subject's wikipedia page just in case you aren't familiar.....god. And it's all presented in that nauseating "whoa this is totally radical! Badass! Totally killer awesome dude!"

I made it like 40 pages in and I was gritting my teeth
 
hA3WkpC.jpg

I hardly ever put books down without finishing them, but this guys writing style was infuriating to me. It's a kind of stream of consciousness text which breaks up the flow of writing every few lines with an internal thought of the narrator written in italics. A shame because the idea of a detective trying to solve a murder in post-war Tokyo is right up my alley.
 
Do you think it's possible to make a highly compelling 300 page book at an adult reading level called "Breakfast Dog" about a dog that ate "so much breakfasts"?

It's been on my mind for quite some time.
 
Top Bottom