Top Ten Books I’d Gladly Throw into the Ocean

Welcome back to Top Ten Tuesday, hosted as always by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week’s topic is a little controversial: there are many people who think that books shouldn’t be destroyed even if you despise them, and there are those who would think nothing of tossing a book that upset them so greatly that they would rather not think about them again.

While I don’t think I’d actually physically toss a book into the ocean, most of the time the books that I don’t like I end up attempting to sell at our local used bookstore, and if the bookstore won’t take them then I’ll give them to the library my mom works at and they sell the books there to help benefit the library. I talked about this a few weeks ago when I talked about Spring Cleaning my books.

Today’s books are books that I’ve talked about on here before (or will talk about very shortly), and I’m sure many of my long-time followers are going to know exactly what I’ll talk about.

1 – Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford

This is one that I had such high hopes for, because it was the only Fantastic Stranglings Book Club Book that I missed in 2020, so I ordered it in for myself at the end of the year and was incredibly excited about it. The summary made it sound incredible, so imagine my disappointment when I realized what a terribly-written book this was and now I’ve got this $30 book on my shelf that I will never read again.

2 – Bloodline by Jess Lourey

This was my first DNF of 2021, just because the writing was absolutely dreadful and you could see the plot point of the husband being an absolute psychopath coming from the very first page. I actually had to look up Jess Lourey to see what gender the author was, and was beyond shocked when I found out that she’s a she. This book reads like a man who knows nothing about women wrote it, and I put it down about 1/3 of the way into it.

3 – Artemis by Andy Weir

This was my first ARC that I received off NetGalley, and I was super excited about it. The Martian is one of my all-time favorite books, and I couldn’t wait to see what Andy Weir would do next. Unfortunately, this was one of the most poorly-written books of all time. The main character was such a terrible person and very poorly written as a woman, and I wish Weir had stuck to what he knew best. I could have tolerated the main character’s personality if she’d actually been interesting to read about, but she wasn’t. I found myself just flipping pages in the end and hoping the book would be over soon, while I didn’t want The Martian to end.

4 – Illuminae by Amie Kauffman and Jay Kristoff

The only book where I was rooting for the villain the entire time because the main female character was so insufferable that I just wanted her to die and to stay dead. I actually love the book’s presentation (emails, classified files, and so on), and when done right, it’s great. This book was so poorly written and the characters were so awful that I have sworn off reading anything by either of those two authors ever. There is no redemption here.

5 – The Frame-Up by Meghan Molin

I don’t even know where to begin with this book. The main character is a self-proclaimed “geek girl” who’s “not like other girls” and goes so far out of her way the entire book to put down every single other woman she encounters (which is not what being “not like other girls” is), and she is horrible. Just a horrible, terrible person all around, and somehow this book about an amateur (like, preschool level) detective became a series? Please don’t waste your time or your money on this book. Several years later and I’m still salty about this book.

6 – Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

I had to read this book for my Children’s Literature course as an undergraduate, and I spent the entire book hoping that someone, anyone would discipline Harriet for being such a jerk to anyone and everyone she meets. I have absolutely no idea how this book became such a beloved children’s novel, and this is a book I’ll be keeping out of the hands of any children I happen to come across.

7 – Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

I had to read this for a class on Stanley Kubrick that I took as an undergraduate, and the book was so incredibly hard to stomach and hard to read. My then-boyfriend (now, thankfully, a long-ago ex) absolutely loved Lolita and A Clockwork Orange, and those should have been the red flags I needed to get out of the relationship much earlier than I actually did.

8 – A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

This was also required reading for the aforementioned Stanley Kubrick class, and we also had to watch the movie, which nearly gave me a panic attack. If someone tells you that this is one of their favorites, please run away as fast as you can.

9 – Opium and Absinthe by Lydia Kang

This is one that I’ve read and reviewed but the review hasn’t shown up on my blog yet (I can’t remember how far out it’s scheduled). I chose this one as a Kindle First book the month it came out, and I should have waited a few weeks until more reviews came out for it. It was a terribly-written book about a drug-addicted woman trying to prove that her sister wasn’t killed by a vampire, and the villain was obvious from the first chapter they were introduced. Save your money and your time on this one. She’s got other books out, but after such an abysmal experience with this one, I’m staying far away.

10 – Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by JK Rowling

Does anything really need to be said about The Cursed Child that hasn’t already been said?

And there you have it – ten books that are not only books that I need to remove from my bookshelf but books that I’d like to erase from my memory all together.

Do you have any books you’d like to see buried and forgotten? Let me know in the comments!

And as always, keep reading.