I love reading books. I regularly take books out from my school’s library since I don’t have access to a public English library and I have purchased well over 100 books since arriving in Taiwan…most of which I have read. However, I have come across some real stinkers:
The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature by Geoffrey Miller - when I read a book on biology and psychology I don’t expect to have to sit through the author’s ego-stoking. Ugh. Verdict: unfinished, but I might pick it back up someday. Only been three years since I last tried reading it.
The Birthday Girls. I can’t remember the author of this book and they don’t even sell it on Amazon. I bought it at FNAC because they were featuring it and I needed something new to read (in the dark days before Page One). It chronicles 4 “birthday girls” at ages 11, 21, 31, and 41 (something like that) who are all supposed to be interconnected with each other. I tolerated the first 80 pages or so, but after reading the 11-year-old talking like a toddler and the 21-year-old not sounding much older, I had had enough. Verdict: unread and left behind at my old apartment on purpose.
The Giant’s House: A Romance by Elizabeth McCracken. Utter and complete crap. The story of a librarian who fantacizes about a young boy with a growth problem and eventually becomes his lover. I didn’t even need to look at the author’s picture to know she knew nothing about love or romance. Her picture, however, underlines the fact that perhaps she would have been better off sticking to something she knew: desolation and bitterness. Verdict: completed, but used as a dust catcher and never again touched after completing.
The English Roses by Madonna. I know people already had it in for her when she said “When I started reading to my son, I was appalled at the lack of good quality books,” but I picked up The English Roses before I had heard this soundbite.
One of our kindergarteners had ordered it through Scholastic and asked me to read it to her while she waited for her mom to come pick her up. I love reading aloud to children, especially one-to-one, and being expressive, but I had a hard time disguising my disgust while I read this one.
It talks about these girls who like the same boys and wear make-up, etc. which might be appropriate for tweens, except it’s pitched at young children. She takes on a sarcastic, crabby tone as the narrator as she tells about poor, beautiful, talented Binah who gets excluded by the English Roses (4 boy-crazy girls) until they get sprinkled with magic dust and made to see her home life with elements of Cinderella taking care of her widowed father.
The girl’s mother arrived before I had finished, but I flipped through it to finish the story and came to the conclusion that Madonna has no clue about children’s literature. All this before learning that she made the claim that there were no good children’s books. Guess she’s never heard of people like Dr. Seuss, Eric Carle, Margaret Wise Brown, John Archambault, Lauren Child, Marcus Pfister, Lois Ehlert, Beverly Cleary, Don and Audrey Wood, E.B. White…
Verdict: Some celebrity parents can pull off writing quality children’s literature like Katie Couric and Jamie Lee Curtis (such as Tell Me about the Night I Was Born and Today I Feel Silly) but I think Madonna should get out of children’s publishing and stick to singing about sex. Finished, but I’m glad I wasn’t the one who wasted their money on buying it.
Perloo the Bold by Avi (spoilers abound).
The story of a rabbit-like race of creatures with blue and green noses living through a blizzard where their leader is dying and corruption is abound. Avi is a famous children’s author and has won several Newbery honors and the 2003 Newbery Medal for his books (the highest award given to children’s literature by the American Library Association), but he absolutely falls short on this one. I got the sense that he only did this book to pay his bills because there’s no emotion or even depth to this story. The plot is as transparent as glass and very thin. We follow Perloo the book-loving peacenik who gets accused of killing the leader who had been dying for a long time. Because the leader names Perloo as her prodecessor rather than her son, the son seeks to accuse him and throw him into prison. Oh, did I mention that there’s a rival race of wolf/fox-like creatures. The only redeeming aspect of this book were the sayings of their teacher Mogwat which were thoughtfully put at the back of the book so you wouldn’t have to bother reading the thing to find them.
SPOILER (if you care):
The book ends with Perloo joining the enemy tribe which turns out to be more like his own “people” than they think to warn them of the son trying to plot a war against them under false pretense. The son and his army, with their spears, arrive and challenge them and they send Perloo out as their prisoner. He defeats the entire army with…a sword? No. With a spear? No. He defeats them by…throwing snowballs. Yeah. I was 
too.
END OF SPOILER
Verdict: Finished. Was going to donate it to my school’s library, but I thought it would be put to better use as catbox liner.
Just kidding. I don’t throw away a book unless it is too damaged to read, but I was seriously tempted when I finished this one.
Hit me with your best shot. What horrible books have you read?
