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Recommended Stuff You Didn't Like


Draginon

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We all have our interests and likes and tend to recommend stuff to someone else so they can enjoy it as well.

Well simply put have you ever been recommended a book, movie, show, play, etc that you didn't enjoy afterwards?

The only one I can think of right now is Firefly. This sale rep at Barnes & Noble had talked me into watching this show. I watched the whole season and movie and just couldn't find something I liked about it. Heck when the characters died in the movie I didn't even cry or get upset about it like I do with other stories.

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Ready Player One. People were all, "It's the best for nerds. You will geek out because of how hard it nerds. You're a nerd, you'll love it." It was the worst. The best thing I can say about it was that it was a huge improvement on the book which I couldn't even finish. It was just so...lazily written. 

This used to happen to me a lot, but part of it is my sisters think it is funny to make bad recommendations. If they went and saw a terrible movie, they love to lie about it to the family and convince us all to see it. That's how I ended up watching Battlefield Earth, The Scorpion King, and Anaconda. Since the internet came of age it is a little harder to pull one over on me.

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The Time-Traveler's Wife came highly recommended by writers' resources that didn't usually recommend fantasy, and for the first three-quarters, it was lovely and dreamlike and sweet. Then the last quarter took a turn for the vulgar and cynical, and don't even get me started on the Big Thing. 

Spoiler

Henry's death is the single biggest waste of setup I have ever seen in fiction. If you're acting like you're going to have him run afoul of some shady guys connected to a friend of his, having him die in a hunting accident is not a plot twist; it's a massive letdown. 

After seeing Worm and other works by the same author praised online, I was excited to read it, and massively disappointed when I did. None of his other works have managed to gain my interest. 

Edited by TwiLyghtSansSparkles
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Foreign language opera. I sat through The Barber of Seville once because a family member recommended it. I don't even know what language it was in, it was all just noise to me. :D Word to the wise, unless you're a huge art fan, stick to the Bugs Bunny version. 

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A while back Brandon recommended a book called A Thousand Faces by Janci Patterson, one of his writing students. I read it. Wasn't very impressed.

The funny thing about this is that I also read one of Janci Patterson's other books, Chasing the Skip, and enjoyed it a lot, and it's not even fantasy. *shrug*

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I tend to look for positives in anything I read, so I rated each of these 3/5 stars immediately after finishing them (and never picked up the second volume in each series).  But as time goes on my memories become less fond.

  • I got an advance review copy of Without Warning by John Birmingham in '09, back when I had the time to write reviews as a hobby---here's my review.
  • Around the same time Pat Rothfuss recommended The Magicians by Lev Grossman.  By the time I forced myself through it my reviewing days were over, but I ranted for longer than usual in my reading log:
    Spoiler

    Grossman uses the book to hammer on some philosophical points I don't strongly care about (for instance that obsession with fantasy worlds can leave one immature and incapable of dealing with the real world), and for that purpose borrows many aspects of his setting and plot from such well-known fantasy series as Narnia and Harry Potter.  As a consequence, The Magicians relies heavily on its characters, whom I simply couldn't stand.  Had they been real people, I wouldn't have wanted to spend any time with them; I didn't enjoy reading about them as fictional characters, either, and spent months halfheartedly forcing myself through the book.

     

  • Jim Butcher recommended Fated by Benedict Jacka, which didn't impress me.  The (urban fantasy) worldbuilding seemed thoroughly half-baked, to the point that I never managed any suspension of disbelief.  Although the story is supposedly set in London, I got so little sense of place that it might as well have been Poughkeepsie.  (Perhaps not coincidentally Butcher's Dresden Files have also had trouble managing an urban setting, especially in the earlier volumes.  I nearly gave up on The Dresden Files after the third book, but ended up enjoying them much more starting from book four.)

In film, I was looking forward to The Death of Stalin (since I like The Thick of It) but did not enjoy it when I finally had a chance to watch it in August.  It's especially unimpressive when compared with Burnt by the Sun.

Edited by daschaich
Finish the damnation post
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*unsure if she really wants to state this, decides for it*

In that case I can only recommend the Spiderman movies. They are a great watch, entertaining and promote a great hero!

No honestly, I've watched them all, and the most I can say is, that they were.... nice? I never really got a feeling for Spiderman, never felt like he should defeat his enemies, or succeed. Not that I cheered for his opponents, it was more a "I don't care how this ends". I don't know, somehow it didn't click with me. I simply didn't get a grip on them and on spiderman himself. I'm pretty sure a lot of people won't agree with that :P

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3 hours ago, Sorana said:

didn't get a grip

There is a pun to be made there seeing as how you’re talking about Spider-Man but I’m too lazy to make it :P

On movies, I wasn’t recommended by a person to watch Annihilation, but lots of the reviews said it was good so that was pretty much a recommendation.

I didn’t get it. It seemed so... ok. Like it was trying really hard to be “oh wow look how weird I am OwO”

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4 hours ago, I think I am here. said:

There is a pun to be made there seeing as how you’re talking about Spider-Man but I’m too lazy to make it :P

On movies, I wasn’t recommended by a person to watch Annihilation, but lots of the reviews said it was good so that was pretty much a recommendation.

I didn’t get it. It seemed so... ok. Like it was trying really hard to be “oh wow look how weird I am OwO”

Did you see it in theater? This is one of the few cases where that matters. The ambience created really adds to the film, and I can see why the director was upset that it was only released on Netflix in the UK.

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1 minute ago, TheOrlionThatComesBefore said:

Did you see it in theater? This is one of the few cases where that matters. The ambience created really adds to the film, and I can see why the director was upset that it was only released on Netflix in the UK.

No, I watched it on Netflix. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t enjoy as much as others.

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16 minutes ago, I think I am here. said:

 

No, I watched it on Netflix. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t enjoy as much as others.

One reason. The other being you probably recognize that it isn't nearly as cerebral as the reviewers made it out to be.

Seriously, not every sci- fi movie that takes itself seriously is 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

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On 11/17/2018 at 9:07 PM, Singer said:

Ready Player One. People were all, "It's the best for nerds. You will geek out because of how hard it nerds. You're a nerd, you'll love it." It was the worst. The best thing I can say about it was that it was a huge improvement on the book which I couldn't even finish. It was just so...lazily written.

for me too...but by proxy if that makes sense?  basically a friend of mine had tons of people recommending it to him, and asked me for my thoughts on it, so I read it and...i won't say I hated it, but it was no better than OK.  and the worst part is, I should have liked it.  the idea of a treasure hunt through a virtual world is right up my alley, so this thing had an advantage going in.

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4 hours ago, Dunkum said:

 and the worst part is, I should have liked it.  the idea of a treasure hunt through a virtual world is right up my alley, so this thing had an advantage going in.

This is my thought too. A really cool concept executed poorly. I assume people who loved it just loved the concept and ignored the rest.

Edited by Singer
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 17.11.2018 at 11:37 PM, Toaster Retribution said:

Brandon recommends Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. I did not like it.

Blasphemy! :o:P (I love those books ^^)

For me it was A Song of Ice and Fire, kinda. I liked the books while reading them (only read 1-3 though), but they didn't really get me on edge like other books did, and I currently don't know whether or not I want to continue reading them in the future. Certainly not before book 6 comes out.

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3 minutes ago, Toaster Retribution said:

That is kinda interesting. Would you mind explaining what you liked? Because I didn’t really like anything...

Mostly Nahadoth *blushes furiously* :ph34r:

I dunno, it's been about 7-8 years since I read those, but I liked the worldbuilding, the characters, the language (there's an entire sequence in book one I can still recite from memory) and the way it's pleasantly different from standard fantasy.
I really should read them again ...

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