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And since Rachel asked, my five worst books ever!

In no particular order:

RL Stine - I can't remember which book this is, since there are so many with increasingly implausible and silly deaths. But the book had a character dying via a piece of dough placed in his/her mouth. The dough rose and miraculously acquired enough force to suffocate the person or to cause death via dough in the brain. I swear, I am not making this up.

Barbara Hambly, the Dragonsbane sequels - I think I may have blocked out how truly terrible these were from my mind. This is particularly sad, because I love Dragonsbane, but the sequels reverse a key decision in the original book (I think) and then begin to incorporate incoherent dimension- and/or time-travel. Other elements that I may or may not be remembering correctly: squalid details about homeless, addicted people in an alternate dystopic earth and how John either saves them or becomes one of them. Mely notes that there is also demonic mother-son incest, which I managed to scrub out of my memory.

Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin - So, there's the "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending, and then there's Slammerkin, in which rocks (metaphorically) fall, everyone dies; you sell your virginity for a red ribbon, get gang raped, then thrown out of the house; you abort your misbegotten gang rape child with a stick; and your best prostitute friend freezes to death on the street and you briefly think of burying her and instead pry a bottle of gin from her cold, dead fingers. The best thing? This is just the first hundred pages! It gets worse (spoilers)!

Robin Schone, Awaken, My Love - I cannot believe I actually finished this. Here's the original post. First, there is the gratuitous detailing of historical squalor. If two people are going to have sex later, I really do not want to know about how unclean they are when they pee, nor do I want details about bad breath, bad teeth, greasy hair, and dirty clothing. I do not mind these things, but when paired with descriptions of bulging tumescences and yonis and chakras and other nonsense blindly taken from the Kama Sutra, they are ridiculously funny. Also, the heroine's husband has apparently never heard of sex, masturbation, or orgasms, and he is supposedly a perfectly normal guy.

The hero's wife is frigid, so he rapes her into submission! We get entirely too detailed descriptions on dryness and tearing, zero remorse from the hero, and no sympathy from the author. Clearly, the hero's wife deserved it for being frigid, for having one leg be shorter than the other, and for being raped by her uncle when she was a child.

I still cannot believe I finished this. All I have to say is that it was before I started throwing books at walls.

And now, I can't think of a fifth, as they were either so bad that I never finished them, or mind-numbingly mediocre. Instead, I list: Piers Anthony, especially the Adept series and its gratuitous virtual sex (IIRC); Robert Jordan, with his notions of how women act; Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series; Anne Bishop's penis-shaped breadsticks; and the Beatrice Small book I started and never finished because it was just that bad in every possible aspect.
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Kushner, Ellen - Thomas the Rhymer

I finished Kushner's Thomas the Rhymer and liked it much better the second time round. It's written in four parts, each part first-person POV of a person close to Thomas or Thomas himself. I don't actually have that much to say about it, hrm. I liked the differences between Thomas before his seven years in elfhame and after, I especially liked his relationship with Gavin and Meg, an old couple he befriends before he leaves. I also love the section when he's in fairy, the language, the description, the riddle the Hunter puts him to. And I loved having him adjust to his gift of truth and to the world in general when he comes back. However, I thought his reconciliation with Elspeth would have lasted longer, and I didn't like her section of the book as much. It just felt a little off to me, as though these characters I had known had changed much too quickly from the dynamics that I had been used to for the most part of the book.

- [livejournal.com profile] keilexandra's review

Schone, Robin - Awaken, My Love

Also finished Robin Schone's Awaken, My Love, and I'm definitely not picking this author up again! Ugh. I'm all for historical accuracy, and I think historical romances too often pretty up the past. Schone seems determined to not do this, describing a modern-day woman's reaction to not bathing enough, to chamber pots and dirty clothes and greasy hair. And it's nice to have that instead of nostalgia, but then, when an author is going to put that level of realism in, I don't want to read about weeping male members and all that purple prose! Plus, her hero is apparently well versed in the Kama Sutra or something like it. And it might just be me, but having the emphasis on personal hygiene in the nineteenth century juxtaposed with exotic Indian terms for vagina and the like really didn't work. Plus, the hero sucked. He was boring and chauvanistic and all those other bad alpha male stereotypes without even being sexy. I didn't like Elaine much either, and I didn't really find her position of being the sex-deprived housewife that realistic. She's from modern times, supposedly, yet apparently her husband doesn't have sex with her, thinks she's insane for having sex manuals and the like. I mean, I'm sure those people exist, but it just seemed too different from my life to be "modern." And then of course, the villain had to be female. This is one of my huge pet peeves. Not that I hate female villains, but I really hate them in romance novels, where they're petty and jealous and cruel because *gasp* they've lost their man's affection and must get it back! Of course not having a man in our lives makes all females vicious bitches who, instead of blaming the guy, go postal on the other woman. Ugh. Then Schone had the grand revelation that the female villain was afraid of sex and half insane because she was sexually abused by her uncle! And instead of having sympathy for the poor girl, she just was the villain. The hero of course showed no remorse that he had forced her to have sex, despite her previous history of abuse, and I don't think we were supposed to feel sorry for her at all. It just felt like a very misogynistic book. Ick. I hate that, the attitude that girls are raped because they are somehow bad people.

Stargate SG-1

Still blazing through Stargate! I never have much to say about Stargate because I don't really analyze it like Buffy. I just watch and enjoy. And I don't even really care that there's not that much character continuity between episodes (e.g. Sam finds her father has cancer, next episode, doesn't mention it) because I just love watching the team interact with each other. I'm so glad Sam's not this minor, token female who just stands by and watches the big men do things. Instead, she's always in the thick of things, always thinking of solutions for the team. And ok, she's a little Giles-like in her exposition function, but we never see a Sam who is not capable. I love her; she's awesome. And Jack is always snarky and funny and quirky. I love his reaction to all the Carterisms and to Daniel's excited cultural explanations. I love Teal'c and his little eyebrow quirks. Back to watching more now!

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