Writer's Block: Book worms unite!

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What are the three best books you have ever read and what are the three worst? What made them so good or bad? Submitted By crazylove16 View 274 Answers

With the caveat that I'm just naming books off the top of my head, and I might miss something perfectly obvious, and the further caveat that I only include books that I've read straight through:

Best:

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

One of the best English humor books ever written. Three English blokes (and a dog) decide to go on a trip up the Thames river. What makes it hilarious is J's writing - he is a brilliant raconteur with a poetic, charmingly digressive style, and he finds exceptional material in his reminisces.

(Conveniently, it is available online in several places.)

Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling

You could describe it many ways, but it feels to me a bit like film noir Twenty Minutes in the Future (as they say on the Tropes of the TV). Remarkably, it's still Twenty Minutes in the Future despite being published in 1988 (five years before the Eternal September), which should give you an idea of how strong Sterling's SF chops are. In any case, this stands out for its skilled worldbuilding (of course), characterization, and pacing. Events occur kinetically yet vividly, which is a fine line to walk.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Reportedly, somewhere in the television series Lost, a character named Sawyer says about this: "Hell of a book! It's about bunnies." It would be difficult to describe it more eloquently in less space.

Taking advantage, then, of having more: this is my very first favorite book, and I'm proud to say that it's held up well for more than half my life, reading it again and again. Richard Adams possesses the most fluent descriptive voice that I have ever encountered, and paces it with a master's grace. There is a simply beautiful passage where Hazel (the protagonist) pauses at the mouth of a burrow to check the surroundings before going out in the field, and Adams takes this moment of time to describe in lyrical terms the sights, smells, and sounds of that instant. It is a beautiful trick of the writing art, and Adams wields it with virtuosic skill. A true classic, in the sense of a work which survives the test of time.

And fun to read! Hell of a book, like the man said.

Some books which I considered, but did not include in the top three:

• Shardik by Richard Adams
  
• A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
  
• A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason
  
• A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will by Robert Kane
  
• Fooling Some of the People All of the Time by David Einhorn
  
• The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
  
• Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II

Worst:

Caveat: I enjoyed most of these. All of them, if I'm honest. I (mostly) don't finish books if I don't. That said...

Born to Run by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon

Cheesy modern fantasy. It makes this list less out of any flaw than out of general lack of merit.

War of Honor by David Weber (Book Ten of the Honor Harrington series)

The Honor Harrington series follows a very simple formula. That formula has worn paper-thin by Book Ten. The new elements Weber introduces to liven it up do precisely the opposite, except where they introduce a little excitement by being profoundly stupid. I had enjoyed the first two books in the series, continued reading the series out of intertia, and ran out on this one.

In truth, this is probably the worst of my three-worst list. But I feel obliged to bump it from that slot in light of...

The Radiant Warrior by Leo Frankowski (Book Three of the Conrad Starguard series)

...which features the Rape Is Love trope. The first four books are pure fluff otherwise - time-travel wish fulfillment fantasy of the most elemental sort - but the misogynistic aspects are utterly grating. Fortunately, the most epochal Crowning Moment of Awesome for the series is in Book Two. Unfortunately, as far as respect for women is concerned, the aforementioned rape scene is more a dip than a chasm in the narrative.

(I will not include a near-misses list here - I have too much respect for NAME REDACTED and NAME REDACTED, and TITLE REDACTED wasn't supposed to be good in the first place.)

(Edit: Actually below all three books on the list is a Dean Koontz book I read ages ago, my former copy of which my mother decided should be dismembered and recycled rather than continue to exist. I take pride in not remembering the title - it featured incest, Body Horror, thoroughly horrible people, and was written in a loving style which cannot reflect well on the author.)