Following the meme. I don't read many bad books. That's because I don't use the library. I buy books, and I rarely buy a book I don't think I'd enjoy. But sometimes someone loans me a book, and sometimes I make dumb mistakes. Without getting into the whys and wherefores, here are books I remember hating because they were supposed to be all that, and weren't.
1. The Isis Papers, by Frances Cress Welsing
2.
3. Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino
4. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, by Henry Miller
5. The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi
6. The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe To Each Other, by Randall Robinson
7. The Women of Brewster Place, by Gloria Naylor
Most of these books were mostly disappointments, especially Naylor, whom I like and respect as an author. But there is no number two when it comes to bad. The Isis Papers is the Nick Berg video of literature. And so I dedicate a few paras of scortched earth.
This book is so horrid that it made me ill just thinking about it. It is obscenely retarded, ridiculously hyperbolic and has all the style of the instructions on a package of dog food. I've read cereal boxes with more wit and humor. I've heard more insight into the nature of race from 7 year old children.
Perhaps the only thing more astounding than the fact that the book was ever published is that there are people who actually believe this garbage. It only underscores how tragic are the dimensions of this uniquely American dilemma.
I will periodically could come back and add to this review every time I have an opportunity to find a new metaphor for idiotic poison stinkiness. In fact, the Isis Papers is a milestone, a testament to awfulness which will have critics reaching for superlatives for years to come. It will continue to challenge reasonable people with common sense to find ways to describe its slimy gutwrenching putrid foulness. Think of the old woman in the Princess Bride booing Buttercup. Boo
After I read it, I tried to justify it. I tried to figure out where she was coming from. No good. It sat on my shelf - and I thought, well at least I can tell something about people by judging their reaction to the book on my shelf. Instead, I just got nauseated by seeing it there. I actually felt sorry for the books that were next to it. OK, I say - there has got to be a good use for it. So I cut out the middle of it and made it into a book safe. Then I couldn't think of anything I cared about enough to hide, but not so much that I would put it into the embrace of the Isis Papers.
In the end there was only one good use I found for this book. I threw it into the trash. With that one motion I felt purified and my house felt cleaner. So I picked it out of the trash and did it again 12 times.
I would remind thoughtful people, in case you've never seen it -heaven forbid the temptation strikes you - that books don't burn well; whole books that is. If you take the pages out one at a time however, you get good kindling. Just thought you should know.
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