#bargepole

Context: For many years now, I have been collecting funny lines from Goodreads reviews to share with my coworkers. (I do collection development, reader's advisory, and weeding at a public library, so I read a LOT of reviews)

Are some of these, perhaps, rather mean? Yes, but they are also very funny, and come from a place of honest frustration. In the tradition of Bargepole threads and lists everywhere, names and titles have been censored.

"First, I want to say that I understand how hard it is to write a book and how amazing it is when it is actually published. Congrats to the author for that accomplishment. That said--"

"Warning: This review will be lengthy due to pure hatred."

"I found myself feeling really, really annoyed with the world that this book is allowed to exist. We live in a universe where the passenger pigeon is extinct but this book goes along merrily being read by unsuspecting lovers of words and ideas and stories? It just seems like too much, you know?"

"Don't do it. Don't spring the cash for the hardcover. Instead, eat an entire bag of Twizzlers, spend some money you don't have at a high-end department store, look up on Facebook the shady college boyfriend that made you cry, research the current value of your home or 401K and then read all about how the big hedge fund managers are faring during the economic crisis. You'll feel about the same stomach pain if you waste your time reading this book."

"This wretched novel begins with the mugging of an old lady and it appears I may be in the process of repeating that loathsome crime as [author] was 78 when she wrote it. It is not nice to put the boot into such a poor defenseless old creature lying there with only a damehood, a Booker Prize and a few million quid. It’s a nasty job but somebody has to do it."

"I think this is the way dead people would write, if they could."

"I am considering setting up SPABB: Society for the Protection of Accurate Book Blurb. This blurb appears to have been written by someone from the publishers who met [the author] the night before, got very drunk, lost his notes and then constructed something in a fug of hangover the next morning."

"I congratulate [the author] on the early half of his book, which was thoroughly fun and made me laugh and think. I congratulate [the author] on the second half of his book, for finishing it. It reads like that was difficult."

"…a woman whose taste in contemporary literature has roughly the same batting average as a pitcher in the National League."

"The author is a pompous windbag."

"Recommends it for: No one. Recommended to me by: A friend who apparently wished to cause me great suffering."

"Makes me wonder: is it possible to obtain similes at a volume discount?"

"The repeated phrases made me want to mail a thesaurus to the author."

"I'm disappointed in myself for finishing this book."

"if the author described [character's] eyes as "obsidian" one more time I was tempted to write her and ask if her thesaurus broke."

"They say that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters would, if given infinite time, eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. [This book], on the other hand, would probably take the average monkey just under two hours."

"I can't imagine what the author had to do to get this nadir of Western literature printed on innocent trees, but he does seem to know a LOT about being well-connected in New York."

"This book is so bad it is almost worth reading just to make you appreciate the other books you are reading."

"Reads like it was written by a brilliant author, the night before it was due."

"raises interesting questions, like: can a book be so bad as to constitute an act of terrorism"

"has this author ever spoken to a human woman"

"This acorn has fallen so far from the tree that it can’t even see the forest."

"I’m guessing they are touted as ‘beach reads’ because no one will care if they get dropped into the ocean."

"This book begins with all the energy of a hand vacuum near the end of its battery life, and the pace doesn't quicken much from there."

"At least everybody’s eyes stayed the same color this time around.”

Part 2

Part 3

[part 1] [part 2] [part 3]

"I have been waiting 450 pages to write a scathing review, and now that I'm here to destroy this, I kind of feel rather tired about the whole thing."

"Well rip my bodice!"

"A handy reference guide for tropes and clichés, poorly disguised as a potboiler."

"if I had to add up all the pages of actual real dialogue and not just snarky barbs, this book would be five pages long."

"This author couldn't write her way out of a wet paper bag."

"I’d rather experience the zombie apocalypse than continue reading this book."

"Throughout the second half of the book, all I could think was DUDE, I WOULD'VE CHEATED ON YOU TOO."

"You can tell which characters are bad guys not because of any interesting moral argument but because the bad people are implausibly successful in order for the story to continue."

"like eating stale cake while reading the Old Testament."

"I started to feel like she's a racetrack consisting of a circuit of legs-breasts-eyes-mouth and he's busy trying to get his laps in."

"Prose purpled itself into oblivion."

"as personal and efficient as an unoccupied room in a Ramada Inn."

"I would like to thank this book -- my kitchen is clean and the laundry is folded because every time I picked up this book, I found something more interesting to do."

"A book so OK it hurts."

 "I mean, I love a semi-colon as much as the next girl, but really???"

"has anyone told men they don't need to publish every scrap of thought that cross their mind"

"my oeil remained untromped"

"this book would be better if all the characters brutally died in shark infested waters"

"The writing here flows more like a rockslide than a river."

"everyone in this book speaks like a founding father."

"The hero was tormented. So was I…"

"I think this book is really great if your table or chair has a leg that is shorter than the rest"

"i do in fact have more chemistry with my toilet."

"I got about 30 pages into this book before I realized I was reading Ted Kaczynski's shopping list for Cabela's."

[Part 1] [Part 2]

This is the last of the list, at least at present. I'm not quite sure when I started saving these, but it's been somewhere around 6 years!

"I think we should thank this book for finding us a new source of renewable energy: Jane Austen's corpse spinning in its grave."

"DNF @ 30% and I'm embarrassed to have made it that far."

"was written solely because the author received a thesaurus for her birthday."

"This book was so horrible that my friends and I started a Terrible Book Club where we passed around a copy in which we wrote snarky comments in the margins."

"If I wanted to hear endlessly repetitive justifications of bad decisions, I would go reread my journals from 2003"

"I can’t believe I’m expected to care about these two people who have the collective personality of a chair"

'This is one of those books that makes me feel that, even though I had heterosexual parents and a heterosexual family and grew up in a heterosexual world, I will never understand heterosexuals.'

"isn't so much a cliche storm as it is a cliche monsoon, a tsunami of platitudes, a tornado of concepts that have been Done Before."

"someone PLEASE give [author] a bag of commas (or at least give them to his editor)"

"I am reading this For Science."

"This book could be the perfect door stop, but the cat sprayed it."

"This book is fine for people who enjoy chewing sawdust."

"[Title] was my first husband's favorite book, and he used to quote from it all the time. When we got divorced (it wasn't amicable), my lawyer asked how I'd feel about using that fact in court."

"If the main character were an instrument, she'd be a cowbell."

"There's a metaphor that has been beaten to death and will never bother anyone again."

"The characters [...] were flatter than frogs hit by all eighteen wheels of a semi. Even the dogs were underdeveloped."

"It's the OJ Simpson trial! But with an extraterrestrial! This will never get dated!"

"about as exciting as an uncooked Brussel sprout"

[Author is] "Someone you'd sit behind in a 100 level philosophy class and maybe secretly want to choke a little."

"I read this book while locked in a psych ward against my will. I would have rather stared at the wall for five days instead of reading this."

"[...] a metaphor so blunt I am surprised it did not injure me"

"It takes a certain and rare kind of writer to make a story about civil war, genocide, and a refugee crisis boring and unreadable."

"Use this book to stuff an old mattress."

"I cannot honestly say that [book] is the worst novel ever written, but I grant [author] the benefit of this doubt solely because I have not read every novel ever written. (In private, however, I maintain my suspicions.)"

"disintegrated in my hands, which felt like a blessing."

[part 1]

[part 3] [part 4]

"I've read a few books where the authors should have quit while they were ahead. Occasionally that spot is after they've written down the title."

"As boring as watching my grandma knit"

"if I hear the word 'countless' used to describe what we were repeatedly told were exactly one million ships ever again, I think I'll find something to throw myself off."

"The only crime in this novel worth investigating is the one the author has committed against the English language."

"The breasts of every woman that appeared in this book were described."

"The best thing I can say about this book is that it's diverting. The worst thing I can say is not printable."

"This book could have been an email."

"Someone take the damned thesaurus away from [author]."

"This book is so bad that I literally joined Goodreads just so I could vent about it."

"Why does everybody keep falling for him? He has the emotional range of a potholder."

"as if a spavined mule was trying to do the tango to the music of Iron Maiden."

"too much wrapping and not enough content."

"Can I get a horror comic with real monsters and not a metaphorical one please."

"OH MY GOD WHEN WILL SOMEONE GET MURDERED ALREADY?"

"I did not read this I’m just a hater." 

"Sometimes, if it takes you 10 years to write a book, you just shouldn't." 

"I'd recommend vcr manuals over this."

"She actually wrote 'molten gaze'! Ack!"

"Those poor, tortured metaphors."

"This book only gets a star because the fact that I like words coincides with the fact that it contained words."

"I will proceed to chronicle my transition from literature enthusiast to broken shell of a woman"

"A shortbread tin Brigadoon piece of nonsense"

"It pains me to write this review, almost as much as it pained me to finish this book."

"'Empurpled' is a word that should never be used to describe genitalia. It should, however, be used to describe your prose."

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