 I just, who asked for this? Who is this for? It's never a good sign. You know, just Google it. That book was worse than I thought it would be and I thought it would be bad. It's just rude. Worst books of 2022. Yeah, there were some doozies. It was a little bit tougher to narrow this list down than it was for best of. It's never a good sign. So as usual, I'm going to, I have 10. I have ranked them from least worst to most worst. So yeah, off we go. In 10th place, so the best of the worst, the least worst is Babel, my RF Kwong. I have a nearly hour long length. Maybe it's over. No, I think it's under an hour review for Babel. So I'll leave that link down below if you are interested. But in a nutshell, Babel is one of the most disappointing books to me of the year. Because what it purported to be, the thing that it could have been, is something amazing. And the execution of it is so undermining that greatness is it's just like such a crime to take something that could be so good in concept and to do it so badly that it's just painful to me to read it because like, I wanted to like it and it's not just a situation where I'm like, well, I wanted to enjoy this book and it turned out not to be good. I want a book like this to exist that I love. Like what it's attempting to do, the types of ideas it's wanting to explore, like in concept, it's raison d'etre, is something that I so vastly approve of and desperately would like to like a book that's doing that. But I just think it's doing it so badly to the point where it's harming its own argument, harming its own purpose, which is why it's so painful to me. Because it's not just a bad book, it's a book that's like, it's hurting its own cause if that makes any kind of sense. So anyway, I talked about it for like an hour. So if you want to hear more about why I feel that way, you know, that video is there for you to check out. Number ninth is Daughter of Red Winter by Ed McDonald. I read this with Alan from the Library of Alexandria because I made Alan read Blackwing for our TBR swap and he really, really liked Blackwing. And I think he is now also read Raven Cry and will shortly read Crowfall. And I love Ed McDonald's first series, the Ravensmark series, which is what those books are. So we had a new book coming out. I was very excited to read it. Alan was very excited to read it because we both like Blackwing. And Alan did like Daughter of Red Winter. I did not. It was a big disappointment too, a different way from Babel because like Daughter of Red Winter isn't like doing anything that I'm like, this deserves to have a book like, it's just a fantasy story. So it's not like hurting a cause or anything. But I just so love Blackwing and the Ravensmark trilogy. It's just so hard to believe that the same author wrote Daughter of Red Winter because if I didn't know, if I just, you know, if I read these books separately, like, you know, on a like double blind test, don't know who the authors are, there's several things about Daughter of Red Winter where I'd be like, oh, like I hate when authors do this and this and this badly. Take a good author like Ed McDonald. Just look what he does in Blackwing. Like that's how it's done. The author of Daughter of Red Winter could like take a lesson from Ed McDonald. And it's like, well, Ed McDonald wrote Daughter of Red Winter. I do know that Daughter of Red Winter is something that he wrote first, like he wrote it a long time ago. And then it wasn't like it wasn't selling or it wasn't ready or whatever. For whatever reason, he published Blackwing first. But he wrote Daughter of Red Winter first and kind of went back to it and polished it up and now published it now. So that helps to make sense of it. Like, I feel like it's fixable. There's a lot of things about it where I'm like, this didn't need to be so bad. And I feel like the author of Blackwing should have been able to fix this. I get that he's like working with an older manuscript that might have had more flaws built in, but really, it's just so baffling to me when an author you know is capable of greatness falls short of that greatness. And you're like, so it's not that like, you're not a good author because I know you are. I've seen it. It's like, like, what are you doing? Like, what happened? I really hated it, honestly. Number eight on my list is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garbou, I think. I don't have it anymore. I got rid of it right quick. It was a Book of the Month Club book. I have a whole rant review for a lot of the books on this list. I have either a rant review for or I have like a live chat or something for it. So like, there is additional content to be consumed for most of these. Because I tend to talk, I tend to do lives and dedicated videos for books that I feel strongly about, whether it be positive or negative. So anyway, I do have a full review for Lessons in Chemistry that I'll leave linked down below. And it was very painful to me at the end of the year seeing how many like, I think, at least one, but possibly more, I think more like stores and things and like named it as their Book of the Year. Like I think Barnes & Noble, it was like a Book of the Year. I think it was a finalist for Book of the Month Club. I think elsewhere it was also like Book of the Year. I think it's getting a TV adaptation. I'm just like, never was this less deserved. It was like a soapbox in a book or like in book form. Like it wasn't about characters, it wasn't about a realistic situation. It didn't, the era that it was supposedly taking place in, it wasn't written as if it was taking place in that era, it got actual facts wrong about what was like actually true of that time period. And that time period not being that long ago, but like it references like laws and things that like those were not on the books at the time, which is like, you know, just Google it. It was very frustrating read and it was a situation a little bit like Babel where I'm like, I mean, I agree with generally these points but like you're handling it in such a like hand-fisted aggressive soapboxy way that like you're the only people that are going to like this book are people that already think this. So you're preaching to the choir. If you're trying to convince anybody, anyone that doesn't already feel this way is going to be annoyed by this. And I already do feel this way and I feel annoyed by this. So like, who is this for? It was quite like offensive in how it went after religion. And I'm not a religious person. And I felt that way. I was like, damn, like, why you got to go so hard? Because this isn't a book about religion. Like if that's not really the point of the book at all. So the way that it just like casually like, while I'm at it, let me just shit on religious people. It's just like, but for why it's just rude. Like unless your book is about that, like if that's what you were here to soapbox about is like religion and religion being harmful, if that was like what your book is about then fine, but it's not. So I'm like, why? So anyway, um, yeah, I like that. Number seven on my list is Book of Life by Deborah Harkness. Is that correct? Is it? What's the third book in the All Souls trilogy? It was like my very first read of the year. I think I did technically read it in December of 2021 mostly, but I finished it in January of 2022. And that trilogy just got progressively worse. The first book was like fine. I think I gave it like three stars. I just liked the vibes of like being an Oxford. The romance was a bit much a little bit melodramatic, but I kept going with it because like where it promised to go seemed interesting, but the romance of it just got worse and worse and more dramatic and more toxic and more like unbearable to read about. So I only read the third one because I've been watching the TV show and it was like a completionism kind of thing. The third one was so bad. Oh, it was painful. And like honestly, the third season of the TV show was pretty bad. At least in the TV show, you don't get her insufferable internal monologue. But yeah, the first book and the first season of the show are the best. And it just goes really downhill from there. The romance in it is just, it's a lot. It's not even that it's like just like really like sexual or anything like that. I mean, it is a bit, but it's more just like how toxic and gross it is. And so unpleasant to read about. And so like chosen one, Mary Sue about things and the main character is just such a author insert. And it's just, it's, I do not recommend. Sixth on my list is These Violent Delights, which is confusing because I believe it was in 2022 that I also DNFed the other These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong. That might have been in 2021. Anyway, These Violent Delights by, um, is it Michael? Never ever? I got rid of that to book two. I read it for my dark academia blog project. And that book is like everything that I hate about books that supposedly claim to like they like want to cash in on the dark academia popularity, where there is nothing of substance. It is just like we claim to have brilliant characters. We claim to have characters that are like interested in like intellectual philosophical problems and questions. But that's not what the book is about. The book is about toxic people being toxic and kind of romanticizing that in disgusting ways. So like the reader isn't asked to explore troubling ideas through these characters. The reader is asked to romanticize toxic characters who we are told generally offscreen are into intellectual shit. But like you and your experience of these characters in the story is not intellectual at all. So it's like, that's what I mean, but it's like capitalizing on the aesthetic vibes and like tone of what purport what a ostensibly dark academia is doing and the appeal of dark academia, but it's not dark academia. Like I arrived at my own definition of dark academia through their project, which is that like the darkness should be the result of or intrinsically linked to the academia. It's not a dark book that has a school or like a school book that has some darkness. Like the darkness comes from the the academia is part of it is they are interlinked. Dark is the adjective for academia. So anyway, this was again a situation where like, it's two toxic characters that like have a toxic relationship. But like it's only academia and so far as like they met each other at school. And there's like a, there's a debate at one point to demonstrate some kind of brilliance in a classroom setting. But like, it's not a dark academia book. It's just gross, disgusting, toxic and unappealing and boring. Number five on my list is the cartographers by, don't remember the author, I don't have the book anymore got rid of that too. I do have a full length review for or a full review, not full length, a full review for that book as well. And that book was so stupid. Yeah, I feel like I warned people that it was stupid and then they still read it. And we're like, this book was so dumb. And I'm like, I told you that I didn't warn you. It's again, it's a book that in theory appeals, like I was very excited to read it. Because it was like, you know, a mysterious magical realism, possibly dark academia in tone book that involves cartography. But like, first and foremost, the author does not know what the word cartographer means. Because what she's written about is an archivist who happens to oversee a collection of maps, that is not a cartographer. But the magic of the speculative element of the story does not bear up under any scrutiny. Forget scrutiny, it doesn't bear up under casual reading. It's just the dumbest. And like, it's not even like, okay, this book is dumb on like, as the premise, but at least it's like a fun time that's like, you like you watch a CW show and you're like, this is dumb and makes no sense. But like, I'm having a good time. It's not a good time. It's so dumb and bad and boring. Oh my god, I'm telling you seriously, like believe me, don't read it. It's not good. It's super, super dumb. Number four on my list is a book that I don't have a review for, but I did a whole live show for it. And that is Empire the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. I'm the one that finished that book. It was Jimmy and Alex's idea. Jimmy didn't read it at all. Alex didn't finish it. I'm the only one that actually finished that stupid book. And our live show for it is like a little over an hour. It involves Alex live reading some passages of it. I put on some like gothic makeup for it. It was it was a good time. The blood show, not the reading of the book. The book was Misogyny and Homophobia Had a Get Together at Hot Topic. Boy, what a book. And it's like 800 pages. So that book was worse than I thought it would be. I thought it would be bad. I thought it would be bad. I didn't originally want to read it. It was only these lads that didn't actually end up reading the book that convinced me to pick it up. And I had seen so many people say, oh, this is Jay Kristoff's best. And I was like, I really don't think I'm going to like it. I would be very happy to be wrong. Maybe it really is that good. Doubt it, but maybe it really is. And I thought it would just be kind of like kind of not my cup of tea, kind of a slog. It was so much worse than I could ever have imagined. And offensive. It is offensive and is to this day. I read that in October. He uses truth and true, like those words, so much like the phrase of like truth be told if truth were told to speak truth over and over and over to the point where I literally can't handle it when other books do it now. Because it's a perfectly normal thing to say in a book. But he uses it so much, I think, in order to like evoke old timey vibes and like, that's not how you evoke old timey vibes, especially when so much else about your book is like, there's a female character that tells a male character to get off her tits about something. I mean, are we going for old timey vibes? But anyway, yeah, like, I was reading a du epichromy book, Wisdom of Crowds, and he used the perfectly valid expression of truth be told, and I flinched. I was rereading Kingdoms of Death by Christopher Rockio. And he used like, if truth were told, and I flinched, because I'm traumatized by the amount of that expression was used in Empire of the Vampire. Yeah, don't read it. God, that book is garbage. The third worst book of the year, this one's kind of my fault. I saw it on Book of the Month Club, and I was like, this is probably gonna be bad. But I wanted, I have to pick this. And then I messaged Hillary from Book Board, and I was like, you want to read this terrible book with me? Well, didn't say you want to read this terrible book with me. I was like, do you want to read this book with me? That very possibly will be terrible. And she was like, for sure. So this is my fault. It was terrible. But similarly to Emperor of the Vampire, I expected it not to be good. And I was not prepared for how bad it was. And that is Darling Girl. This Peter Pan, it's not even a retelling, but it kind of pitched itself as one. It is Peter Pan-esque, Peter Pan-inspired, Peter Pan sequel. This follows our main character, who is a descendant of Wendy Darling, who in the present day owns Darling Cosmetics. She's a science lady, you know, because she wears a lab coat and has beakers. There's some mystery to do with how her family is tied to Peter Pan, who is real and is magical in this story. This book, Hillary Put It Best, is like a lifetime movie and not a, not even a very, there's no such thing as a good lifetime movie. Not even like a pleasantly entertaining and campy one, like just like appalling, gross, disgusting, troubling, offensive desecration of Peter Pan. God, the only word to describe that book is yikes. Yikes, yikes, yikes. I just, oh boy. Yeah. Both of us love Peter Pan. And we were horrified by the portrayal of Peter Pan. But even if you don't love Peter Pan, I think you'd still find the book to be disgusting, off-putting, and troubling. Content warnings abound. I just, who asked for this? Who is this for? I, I, it doesn't make any sense. It's not a good mystery. It's not a page turner. It's not good in terms of like what is doing with Peter Pan. It's, I, why did Book of the Month Club choose it is my question really. It's, oh boy. Yeah. Anyway, so there's a live show with me and Hillary ranting about it for however long we ranted about it. That was a good time. Kind of like The Emperor of the Vampires book was terrible, but I had a good time chatting about it with Hillary. And yeah, sorry, Hillary, that I made us read that. But I guess lesson learned, I guess. The second worst book of the year is another book that is the live show for. This is not really my fault. This is actually my friend's fault. And then it's For the Killing of Kings by, I don't remember the name of the author. But so my friend, I actually owned the first book because years ago someone had recommended it to me and I had picked it up but not read it. I can't believe someone recommended me that book. But anyway, so my friend Heather was like, hey, the publisher has offered to send me the trilogy. They might send it to you too. And we could read it together and like do a live chat about it or read along whenever I was like, sure, but I read the first one. I was like, absolutely not. I am reading no more of this. We can do a live show in which I will read it serrated my copy of it. I tabbed on every single page where there was something either like stupid, offensive or wrong. And I tabbed every single page. That book, the grammar, awful, prose, awful, world building, awful, representations of females, awful, plot, awful, pacing, awful. Heather and I ran into it about that, I think for like two hours, it's just was unbelievably bad from like every possible standpoint. And it was bafflingly bad. And it was like cliche and how bad it was. And just like the number of sentences where I was like, this doesn't make sense or this is not what that word means or you can't use a word like this. Just like, and breaks every rule of like, I think there's a scene where like a character is looking at themselves in the mirror and like describing what they look like to you that way. And you're like, like 101 writing 101, don't do that. Yeah. Wow. No, I whoever recommended that book to me years ago, just like, wow, yeah, no, nope, nope, nope, nope. Like I was very early in the year when I was looking preparing for this video and looking at the books I read in 2020. I was like, that was this year. My God, that's going on the list. Feels like forever ago. Yeah. Wow. I was shocked by how bad it was. Truly shocked. And the number one worst book of the year, which I forgot about midway through the year and had to post an apology video. I didn't forget it this time, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. It's not just the worst book I read this year. It's the worst book I've ever read. This was also Hillary's fault. Or since they all said Hillary's fault. Darling Girl was my fault. This one's Hillary's fault. So there's a live show on Hillary's channel where we talked about it. I'll leave all of these things if I've mentioned them linked down below. And yeah, she also hated it, was also troubled and offended by it. What is most upsetting about this is though that unlike For the Killing of Kings or Darling Girl, which like I'm sure there's readers out there that like those books, obviously, I mean For the Killing of Kings was recommended to me by somebody, but they're not like lauded. They're not, as far as I know, like well regarded or revered or anything like that. But Norwegian Wood is highly regarded, widely revered and greatly lauded. That is what's like keeps me up at night. Because not only is it just like, oh this isn't very well written, it's so offensive. And so like the way it's written, it just makes me terrified of Haruki Murakami and of anybody that likes that book. That you think this is fine. That you think this is an okay representation of, I mean people in general, but of women. That's what you think women think. And it's not presented in a way where it's like I don't mind reading about bad people doing bad things. I love First Law. As long as it's presented as that, we're like, we're all in agreement that we are reading a book about bad people doing bad things. And it's interesting to examine that, to encounter that, to peek inside the mind of somebody that thinks this is fine. But we all agree that it's not fine. But it's presented as fine. What this character thinks and does and feels and how this character reacts and how the world reacts to this character. It feels like the most disgusting wish fulfillment on the part of the author. And it sincerely disturbs me knowing this book is well regarded. I was very angry about it. And I did film a review for it that Hilary told me was too spicy for the internet. So I shared it with my patrons. So they at least were able to enjoy it. But yeah, probably wise, I was very, very aggressively angry about Norwegian Wood. But I'm serious, like I it upsets me to know that people like that book. And that yeah, there's lots of other older books that people, you know, nowadays are like writing think pieces on and it's like, we talk about now how disturbing that is or how that's not fine or, you know, something like that. And like, as far as I know, no one is doing that about Norwegian Wood. People love Hurricane Murakami and like, I am very upsetting and troubling. So anyway, those are my top 10 worst books of 2022. Let me know in the comments down below your thoughts and feelings if some of your favorites were on my list. If you also read these and hated them, whatever, let me know. I post videos on Saturdays, other random times as well, definitely Saturdays. Like and subscribe to my Patreon if you feel so inclined. And I'll see you when I see you. Bye.