this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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[–] HikingVet@lemmy.ca 115 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 92 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

Any of the Reacher books. God, they're terrible. They're just about a guy who jumps to outrageous conclusions and is always right nlbecause he's just so special. He's also big and tough and the best sniper in Army history.

In the first one, a guy skips town because he's a witness, and Reacher finds him in a hotel instantly because of the following logic:

Clearly he would have changed cities every night going in clockwise order or whatever - except for the one night after the place he was in was closer to the city he was fleeing - he'd rest 2 nights in the next city because sleeping thay close was so exhausting.

Because Reacher saw a Beatles album in the guy's house, he just knew he'd be using the last names of the Beatles, but keeping his own first name (which was Paul iirc), cycling them at each hotel.

So he walks into a random hotel near a bus stop in a random city and asks for the room of Paul Lennon and finds him because Reacher is just so smart!

And in the second book, he comes upon a woman being raped, kills the rapist, and the woman has sex with Reacher instead because he's a big, tough hero. And nothing like attempted rape puts you in the mood to fuck a stranger.

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 75 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Here's a condensed version of all the books ...

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.

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[–] SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 33 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Sounds kinda like this great rant about the show ‘Sherlock’:

So apart from tumblr fanbase, why doesn't /tv/ like this show?

Because it has smart characters written stupidly.

Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men is a smartly written smart character. When Chigurh kills a hotel room full of three people he books to room next door so he can examine it, finding which walls he can shoot through, where the light switch is, what sort of cover is there etc. This is a smart thing to do because Chigurh is a smart person who is written by another smart person who understands how smart people think.

Were Sherlock Holmes to kill a hotel room full of three people. He'd enter using a secret door in the hotel that he read about in a book ten years ago. He'd throw peanuts at one guy causing him to go into anaphylactic shock, as he had deduced from a dartboard with a picture of George Washington carver on it pinned to the wall that the man had a severe peanut allergy. The second man would then kill himself just according to plan as Sherlock had earlier deduced that him and the first man were homosexual lovers who couldn't live without eachother due to a faint scent of penis on each man's breath and a slight dilation of their pupils whenever they looked at each other. As for the third man, why Sherlock doesn't kill him at all. The third man removes his sunglasses and wig to reveal he actually WAS Sherlock the entire time. But Sherlock just entered through the Secret door and killed two people, how can there be two of him? The first Sherlock removes his mask to reveal he's actually Moriarty attempting to frame Sherlock for two murders. Sherlock however anticipated this, the two dead men stand up, they're undercover police officers, it was all a ruse. "But Sherlock!" Moriarty cries "That police officer blew his own head off, look at it, there's skull fragments on the wall, how is he fine now? How did you fake that?". Sherlock just winks at the screen, the end.

This is retarded because Sherlock is a smart person written by a stupid person to whom smart people are indistinguishable from wizards.

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[–] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 83 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

Ready player one. If I wanted to read about a guy masturbating over memorizing 1980s Wikipedia I'd just go to forums.

It was the most boring Mary Sue-esque trash and I have no idea why it was so popular

[–] Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 39 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Yeah, I was a third of the way through and realized it kinda sucked. I did stick it out to the end though.

One of the plot points has the main character literally act out scenes from classic movies. It's never a good idea to remind the reader that there's better entertainment that they could be enjoying right now.

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[–] superduperenigma@lemmy.world 20 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I like the part where they figured out the previously undiscovered secret in the race was to drive backwards. I tried that shit in Mario Kart when I was 8, you're telling me NOBODY had tried it in that game before?

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[–] FritzApollo@lemmy.today 75 points 2 weeks ago (20 children)

Mein Kampf. Apart from being a bad person, Hitler was a terrible writer. Low quality thoughts articulated badly. I only read it so I could nail neonazis when they came at me with their stupid arguments.

[–] tired_n_bored@lemmy.world 42 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

Adolf Hitler was a modern-day edgelord and an incel. He didn't have any original thoughts, he stole the ideas from the magazines he read while he was poor and unemployed

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 weeks ago

It's a good thing people don't act like that any more /s

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[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 67 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand hands down. it's like normal economics except they stripped away the mask that makes it look human.

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[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 52 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)
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[–] TheLunatickle@lemmy.zip 45 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

The wheel Of time series. I got through the first 2 books before realising that I disliked every character. Also every female character was written so poorly it made me want to "Tug on my braid and stamp my foot"

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[–] CaptainBlinky@lemmy.myserv.one 37 points 2 weeks ago (32 children)

The 3 Body Problem. It's trash and I'll die on that hill.

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[–] MrSelatcia@lemmy.world 35 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I was in a horrible spot mourning for a close relative who had just hanged himself. I made the mistake of posting on Facebook and a friend from high school recommended "12 Rules for Life, an antidote to chaos".

I was not in a good space and didn't even look at the author before ordering it. When it arrived a few days later I only had to read the first page before realizing I'd been had. Jordan fucking Peterson. What a pile of shit that guy is.

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[–] inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world 35 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Ready Player One.

I laughed my ass off starting on like page five. It was such a hate read, total hail corporate nostalgia bait slop. Never took the coworker who recommended it serious again.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 33 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Anything and everything written by Ayn Rand.

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[–] Epp2@lemmynsfw.com 33 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

The Book of Mormon. Someone literally paid me to read it. It is so glaringly obvious that it's tall tales by Joseph Smith it hurt to read from the cringe. And it was so dark, too! Most memorably the section titled "Doctrine & Covenants." In chapter 132, verse 54, Joseph says Emma Smith, his ninth wife, would be destroyed by god, and her entire family destroyed for good measure, if she refused to sleep with him.

I don't understand how Mormons can be so gullible, and in believing all of it, how they can believe a deity that threatens women for refusing to sleep with a sexual predator can be a deity they want to worship. It makes me sad to think about.

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[–] TomMasz@piefed.social 31 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

The Da Vinci Code. It was laughably awful. This includes the premise as well as the writing. Dan Brown is probably sleeping on top of a pile of money with many beautiful ladies, though.

[–] TriangleSpecialist@lemmy.world 29 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (13 children)

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It was a while back, so I can't remember exactly, but I do remember my friend not doing it any favours by really praising that book. Perhaps I was expecting too much, but by contrast, I found it to be a rather naïve, consensual, and superficial self-help book trying to masquerade as something more profound with a thin veneer of new-age spirituality.

Hope I don't offend someone who loves it. I don't feel strongly about it now, it was a while back, so maybe I missed something then. If someone disagrees with me I won't die on that hill.

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[–] chunes@lemmy.world 28 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Easily The Fountainhead.

There's a reason that

Twelve publishers rejected the manuscript before an editor at the Bobbs-Merrill Company risked his job to get it published.

[–] TotallyNotSpezUpload@startrek.website 26 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Harry Potter back when I was a child and the first book was released. After reading a few pages I was already fed up with that horsecrap and continued reading The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

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[–] RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 26 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I worked at a book store back a while now so people would ask and recommend books

The Secret was big at the time The Secret sucks ass I disliked any customer that recommended it to me after that I wouldn't say that though, I'd thank them politely.

I usually recommended Neuromancer, but it depended on topic.

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[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

Reading Dune books ATM and the original is one of my all-time favorites. But fuck me, Dune Messiah is incomprehensible. It's 80% about Paul navel gazing. I'd read a paragraph and think, "I have no idea what that is supposed to mean." 80% of the words in the book hit me like that.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The author is over a billion in debt. Just constantly leveraging assets in a never-ending chain of debt.

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 21 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

The Art of the Deal, by some Putz. I don't know whatever happened to him.

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[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 20 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

You guys have never experienced JOHN RINGO.

The first book opens with Osama Bin Laden and the leader of Iran hatching a plot to kidnap sexy American coeds to rape and torture.

It then switches to the POV of our hero, a former SEAL who left the army due to his arthritis and has now enrolled in college. He is stalking a female student from his class whom he is thinking about raping, he lets the readers know that he is 100% a rapist and also that all these left-wing female students secretly desire to be raped by a strong conservative man.

But unfortunately for our hero, a white van pulls up and kidnaps the girl he was stalking right in front of him. Thinking quickly he follows the van and then ends up stowing away in the wheel well on an airplane that's on it's eay to Iran.

Long story short, he single-handedly rescues dozens of sexy coeds from the combined forces of al-queda and iran - killing Osama Bin Laden himself.

In the sequels, for which there are many, he travels to Georgia (the country not the state) and finds an isolated community descended from the Varangian Guard. These people recognize him as an alpha male and make him their leader The Kildar whoms job it is to lead them into battle and impregnate their daughters, most of whom are 14-18 year olds.

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[–] CubitOom@infosec.pub 20 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The Turner Diaries

It depicts a violent revolution in the United States which leads to the overthrow of the federal government, a nuclear war, and, ultimately, a race war which leads to the systematic extermination of non-whites.

This book was recomeded to me by a fellow activist. It's a disgusting and baddly written book, however it does give one insight into the mind of far right militants/terrorists. It also outlines the playbook that neo-nazis and various other bigoted assholes use to gain power while distancing themselfs from direct action and blaming minorities.

It holds up as something a leftist should read to know your enemy.

To that end, I also recomend every American read project 2025.

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