Issue 172

News: My Five Least Favorite Books.
Here is the impetus for writing this book: recently, my worplace decided to pose us in the position of the Last Supper, and I decided to portray Judas (although it turned out to be more of a combination of Peter's position with Judas' elbow, oddly enough), and it came out that some members of the crew actually believed that the figure to Jesus' immediate right was Mary Magdalene, and I ended up blowing up at the person who talked about it. After that, I was browsing TVTropes and stumbled upon their page for the Turner Diaries. I knew then that the next blog entry I wrote had to be about the worst books of all time. So, here's my top five, and, astonishingly to some, Jane Austen's works are not on this list, because, while I do dislike them with a passion, their major flaw is that they are utterly dull to anybody with a Y chromosome, and not facepalmingly stupid.
5. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
Well, the title bucks art historical convention and calls Leonardo simply "Da Vinci", even though it's not his actual surname. It's all downhill from there, with regards to historical accuracy. Just to take one example: The vessel for holding the wine is actually in the picture, but it's not the gilded and bejewled common cup of legend; they're all individual glasses that could have been used by anybody in that time period. Admittedly you can only see it if you're looking at an ultra-high-quality picture, but once you did, Teabing's claim that the Grail is in the picture in the form of Mary Magdalene (actually John the apostle, incidentally, and has been identified as such for many years before most of the other disciples in the picture). For a book that claims to be 99% accurate, I am not impressed.
4. Twilight by Stephanie Meyers.
I am almost certain that somewhere in the Middle East, there are some people who will use this book as an argument against giving women education. In essence, you have a woman who is driven to stalking the one person who doesn't love bomb her as soon as she moves to her new town. And it turns out that he's a vampire, which to Stephanie Meyer, seems to entail simply drinking goat's blood, being androgynous, and sparkling in the sunlight [Well, I'm okay with toying with the symptoms of vampirism, like with Cassidy in Preacher, but narrowing it down to those three?], and worst of all, the vampire has graduated from High School literally dozens of times. WHY IN PLUPERFECT HELL WOULD HE NOT JUST PASS FOR YOUNG ADULT FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE? HONESTLY!
3. Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.
Well, in either book or movie forms, this has to be one of the worst tales in any medium, and there are enough plot holes in either form to fill the Royal Albert Hall. While general consensus is that the book is much better, I admit that I stray from the consensus here for several reasons.
A) John Travolta's Terl is way too entertaining.
B) In the books, the climax is literally 1/3 of the way through. The film's climax, as muddled as it is, is at least in its proper place near the end, probaBLY because it was supposed to be the first half of one long movie.
C) Blatant Ethnic Stereotyping. That is all.
D) Johnny is even more questionable. Johnny is considered a hero after vanquishing the evil Psychlos by destroying their planet, except that, in the book, they're only evil due to another race's mind control. Nobody rethinks Johnny's motives.
TIE:
1A) Left Behind. I've done enough on this subject. I don't need to run over why this is on my list.
1B) The Turner Diaries by William Luther Pierce.
Surprisingly, Pierce is probably the most competent writer on the list. However, what he does to merit the lowest position is to write what is probably the most evil novel I've ever read, especially since it's apparently supposed to double as a how-to guide for a White revolution. What truly astonishes me is that Pierce goes into how crime and punishment under the Order would work after they take Southern California, and it's astonishingly brutal: apparently the only punishment for any crime, whether commited by or against whites (for instance, owning a restaurant that serves all races) is summary execution. This is presented as unambiguously good, even though it's clear that they're clearly worse than The System could ever be. Somebody should probably write a book about how a real-world government would face such an insurrection.

Review of the Day: Since I recently finished reading the first four books of Hubert Selby Jr, one of my favorite writers, I decided to review his books.
Last Exit to Brooklyn. I read about the book in Junior year of high school, but couldn't make it past Tralala, but eventually I made it to the end last summer. It was actually pretty good. Admittedly, I'm not sure whether it should count as a novel or a collection of short stories, but, either way, it's one of Selby's best.
The Room. This is the book I finished reading recently. In fact, it is even more brutal than Last Exit was. In fact, Selby himself couldn't read it after writing it. If you thought a teenaged prostitute getting gang-raped by a dozen drunken sailors was brutal, you haven't seen anything yet.
The Demon. Well, this is his most subtle work of the four I read, less overtly terrifying and more subtle, explaining the motives behind Harry White's increasing evil in scenes less overt than his previous terms.
Requiem for a Dream. Well, Darren Aronofsky got the essence of the story, and a lot of the little things in the novel down to their essence in 100 minutes, but the novel is much less emotionally satisfying, and I think that, in this case, not giving the audience much closure is best, since it's probably best for the reader to imagine what is happening in the end.