Topic: Least Favorite Book

... spoilers to the everything by this thread

Books I didn't like: Dune, because I read it at a very young age and the slow pacing really got to me. I just kind of skimmed a lot of it without being sucked into the world, and the lack of plot didn't help.

I also didn't like Frankenstein and Dracula, both because they haven't aged well and the writing style is so slow.

How I interpreted it
When Rand & Morridin's balefires touched it created a mental link sort of thing (crown of swords?). Anyway Rand is linked with Nynaeve and Moiraine in the pit of doom and are using callandor, which acts like the black bracelets and necklaces and enables women to forcibly control a male channeller. Morridin takes control of callandor which allows Moiraine and Nynaeve to take control of him (2 men and 2 women linked are possible so rand is added to the mix as well). At this point I believe is when the switch occurs. Recall earlier in the books that ter'angreal react strangely when in the presence of a similar t'a like egwene's dream ring and the rings for becoming an accepted? Well I think one of those strange incidents occured due to the mental link from the balefire and the linking of Rand and Moridin. Moiraine and Nynaeve being unaffected due to not having that balefire link.

Make sense? Probably not, but it's a theory

But the boks explain everything else. Why should this have to remain a fan theory? Sort of makes sense, though.

I could swear there was a given reason behind the body switch, however I only read the book once and that was about a year back, this is what I'll think to be the cause until I re-read it again and figure it out. The who killed Asmodean part was ridiculously vague for most of the series as well, but we know the answer to that now

Well said. I've never read Catcher in the Rye, but one of my all time favourites, A Clockwork Orange (who would've guessed ) has an unreliable narrator and a monster of a protagonist, but it all serves a purpose. I don't mind violence, even gory one, if there's a clear reason for it; in Clockwork Orange it's to show both sides of freedom of choice and also to numb the reader to the monstrosities made by the protagonist to make his eventual capture and the scorn others feel towards all the more powerful. I don't want to read Saw – the book either, but won't condemn a book just because of the violence depicted on it.

@Dave24 would you mind writing down some of the huge plot holes and character behaviour inconsistencies? I'm genuinely interested: while ASIF isn't my favourite book series, from what I've read, Martin captured the enormous scope of the world well and the plot twists did make sense based on what we knew about the characters at the time. For example:

Like I said earlier the vastness of Martin's world comes through well in the books: even the tiniest bit of information can take months to reach from character to character and misinformation is common. Smoky taverns and the 'smallfolks' POV in the storms of war give a hands-on feeling not even Tolkien managed to create.

I can't think of any books I'd outright despise, or perhaps my brains just work hard to suppress any memory of them.

@Red_XIII that book is awful as heck :/ put it down after the first half of the first chapter. I really hated the second hunger games book. It was incredibly boring and a chore to read, put me off from reading the final book. I also really hate the great gatsby. Thank god it's short, because i have to read it for school. I also really hate any book that revolves around a girls life changing thanks to some mysterious boy or the main character who is really pretentious and thinks they knows it all (nick). Another thing is i really can't read a book with explicit sexual content. I feel reallly uncomfortable (yet i am perfectly fine with OTT violence).

Wait... who was it? I just realized I don't remember him dieing, just vanishing out of the story at some random point.

Why?

Here's another Least Favorite Book of mine.

My English teacher from my senior year in high school suggested I read Anne Rice's "Interview With The Vampire". (This was before the Tom Cruise movie existed).

I read half of it and quit. It was just too romanticized for me. I prefer my vampires to be blood thirsty monsters versus the ones that are involved in erotic, love stories, like this one. Needless to say, I haven't read anything else by A.R.

Death of a Salesman.

The characters in this story are unrealistically stupid. The message is "the American dream is flawed," which is a fine message; however, it's delivered through characters that are stupid enough to fall for the belief that success is based on whether or not you are well-liked, rather than on whether or not you work hard in school; unless you're as stupid as these characters, you won't be able to learn anything from the story because you can't relate to them. The salesman convinces his oldest son (who is about to flunk math) that he will be successful due to his being well-liked and to his being the star high-school football player. The salesman is on commission, and his successful, but not well-liked, friend is keeping him alive by giving him loans, all while the salesman disrespects him with his pretentious remarks. After being fired from his job, the salesman's friend offers him a very well-paying job, which the salesman refuses to accept because he "already has a job."
The salesman eventually kills himself after finally realizing how stupid he was; yet, he was still stupid enough to think that his suicide would leave his family with an inheritance of money (yeah, it doesn't really work that way). His family and his successful friend are the only ones to attend his funeral.
Aside from the story, the dialogue is very strange, and, on numerous occasions, the salesman has hallucinations that come without indication (Of course, English teachers will praise this by saying that "the lack of indication breaks the barrier between the protagonist's reality and his hallucinations," but it didn't do anything more than confuse me to death).
In the end, Death of a Salesman wasn't a very inspiring story for me, and I don't think it delivers its message very well.

My mom once gave me this book on adolescence, and the changes that come in puberty. Long-story-short: It ain't pretty.

@ianmage1 - I believe the phrase is simply "success through hard work", period. The school part is not exactly necessary.

There's a lot more I'd like to contend with, but I don't want this to devolve into a political/philosophical argument...

You're probably right about that. I know this book has a very split audience; most people in my family and in my school hate it, while others, admitting that they disliked the characters, found something about it that really touched them.

The Catcher in the Rye, which has already been mentioned in this thread, is another book with a split audience. I actually really liked it, mainly because of the protagonist. If I told someone that I could relate to Holden, they'd probably assume that I was a pretentious, overly-judge-mental snob who struggled in school. The real reason why I can relate to him is because of his internal conflict with himself and the fact that he is well-aware of his own flaws. @dumedum put it quite well:

Graendal killed him at the end of fires of heaven

Woops. Thanks.