 worst books of 2019. Hello everybody, E here. Welcome to the worst books of 2019. These are not books that came out this year. Maybe some of them are, but that is not a hard rule for this episode of Top 5 Friday. Today, we're gonna be talking about my five least favorite reads of the year. These are these are books that you may enjoy and if you do, that's fine. This is my opinion. There's been a lot of talk online recently about the pointlessness of worst of lists, worst of lists, and I'm all about pointless. So here we go at number five. So at number five we have Diablo. No, devil. I keep getting it wrong y'all. Devil. By Kathleen Kaufman. I didn't hate this book, but I've had such a good year reading that this book is down in, when I check Goodreads, other than the Dean Coombs books that I read, this is one of the only five down there at the bottom. I gave it two stars and the whole reason for that was it didn't live up to my expectations. There were a lot of inconsistencies in the book and it really went nowhere for me. That's about it. I'm gonna leave a link to my review. All these books, if I have reviews for them, will be down in the doobly-doo for you to check out. Number four. So at number four, we have another one that is not awful, but because I read so many good books this year and I quit so many bad ones, I try not to put books that I quit on worst of lists. I don't know. It just doesn't feel right to me. I don't mind reviewing them. I don't mind giving them a star rating, but I didn't finish them so I don't feel that they need to be on this list. But this is another one that is not bad, but I disliked it a little bit more than Devil by Kathleen Kaufman and that is The Haunting of Hill House. And I know there's gonna be a lot of you going, How could dare you put Shirley Jackson down here in the bottom five? Because I didn't like it. I don't see... I'm sure there's a point to the book because I love pointlessness, but I'm sure there's a point either I missed it or the book's just dated. And I think that's the biggest problem for me is that none of the concepts or anything really, especially the writing and none of it really works in modern times. I don't feel. There's been a lot of comments on my review of the book that says it's an allegory for depression and mental illness and so on and so forth. I thought we have always lived in the castle was more along the lines for that, but I didn't like that one either and it's it's basically Shirley Jackson's writing that I don't care for. It's not really the story. It's just her writing bores me. There's nothing that really evokes any emotion for me. So that's number four. Number three. So at number three, we have a book that was wickedly popular this year. I'm not entirely sure why. I've said this before in other reviews of popular stuff. I really do believe that people's expectations and standards are at an all-time low. If you disagree with me, please do down there in the doobly-doo, but it feels like the bare minimum is getting by and being lauded and praised and I don't quite understand it. The book had zero originality and the writing was really, really bad. If you want to see what I'm talking about, you can go over to my Goodreads review of this book and check out my updates, not in the actual review, but check out my updates for it for The Chain by Adrian McKinty. Don Winslow, who I love, I've never read a book that he had recommended before and he's been talking this book up all year. So I was super hyped for it because I love Don Winslow stuff. It is Winslow, right? Yeah, because one time I called him Winston and the comments section went ballistic. But Don Winslow loved his work. I had no idea when I ordered the book that Stephen King had blurred it also. Had I known that, yes, I'm a King fanboy, but the man has terrible taste in books. I don't know if it's contractual thing with him that he has to. I mean, it's not even the same publisher. I don't believe it's Mulholland books and Little Browns, so I don't think that's the case. And it could also be a case of, you know, he's friends with Don Winslow, so, you know, he's going to like what his buddy likes. But Stephen King blurred it, and as soon as I saw that, I was like, oh no, what are we going to do? But yeah, this is, if you're looking for a better experience than this book, oddly enough, the movie Cellular, I think it has Chris Evans in it. That's the movie that I kept thinking, that's what I kept thinking about the entire time I was reading this, because it felt so similar. I can't even remember Cellular, but this is, I think it's, maybe somebody got kidnapped and they have a phone and it has nothing to do with the premise of this book. But that's what kept popping up in my head while I was reading it. But the main thing is, the writing is bad. There's some stuff in here, some metaphors, some similes, that just do not work in context. They don't work at all. There's also a lot of cliched stuff, and if I'm honest, it feels like what it is, a non-American writing a book set in America. And that killed it for me as well. Number two. Okay, so on to books that I actively hated. The chain was bad, but these last two books are books that literally, they pissed me off. Maybe not one, one I was just disappointed in, this one literally pissed me off. And I am a firm believer that if a book gives you any type of strong emotion, there's something good about it, there's a talking point, at least it starts discussion. So I'm going to give this book that. What I didn't like was, it's not really the message, it was the delivery, and that is The Obsolete's by Simeon Mills. This book, it was sent to me for review, and I honestly don't know how I finished it. The book supposes that cyborgs, not cyborgs, androids are real, and that they should be treated fairly and equally, that kind of thing. The problem that I had with the book, and the thing that really sticks in my mind, is the dehumanization of the people that the author is trying to write for. You have robots instead of humans, and when you're looking at a racist or a xenophobic person or a homophobic person, they don't consider that person, the people that they hate, they don't consider them human. So to make those people literally not human bothers me. I haven't heard anything about this book, positive or negative, so you can probably see why I say these things, if you have opinions that are really really good about something, really really bad about something, then this book pissed me off, but nobody's talking about it. I feel like this book is just a meh experience, a very middle of the road experience on top of the problems that I had, which makes it even worse, because if a book gives you no feelings whatsoever and you don't even feel like talking about it, that makes a terrible book, and I just don't see too many people talking about it. Of course, you can't even say that it's because I don't read YA, but I follow loads of YA reviewers. A.G. McDonald, there's a whole list of people that I follow just because I like them, even though they don't read the same things that I do, and no one talked about this book this year. If they did, I completely missed it. If you want to link me to a positive review of it, go right ahead. I just haven't found it. I'm not talking about Goodreads, I'm talking about Booktube, where it's more likely that you're going to have a big reaction and a comment section kind of thing. Number one is a book that I will, I don't know if the review will be up by the time I post this or not, but it's a book that I got from the library that was heavily requested, and it's easily my worst book of the year. And that is Gwendi's Magic Feather. I'm still kind of shaken by the fact that this book even exists. I've heard rumors that the book is one of a trilogy, the way it ends, I don't know that it leaves open. There's nothing in this book that makes me want to read another one. Despite the fact that it's a bad book and an obvious cash in on his, I guess, his success with Gwendi's button box with King. One of the things that I couldn't help but notice is that Stephen King's name is on the book more than Chismar's is, and it feels really shady, especially because over on the side it says on the cover that the sequel to Gwendi's button box co-written by Stephen King. Now throw some reading comprehension in there. Of course he's saying that the first book was co-written by Stephen King, but it makes it sound, if you're not paying attention, it makes it sound like Stephen King had a hand in writing this book as well. Even at the bottom there's a introduction by Stephen King. So Stephen King's name is on the book twice that leads to someone who does not know better thinking that it's a Stephen King book, and it's definitely not a Stephen King book. Nothing about the book feels like a Stephen King book, and that's what I loved about Gwendi's button box was it felt like a Stephen King story. It felt like Stephen King's writing in places. Same thing with Sleeping Beauties that King wrote with his son Owen. But with this book there's no heart, there's no conflict. It's the biggest problem. You say whatever you want about it being a cash grab, but there is no conflict in the book. As soon as something negative happens it is fixed right away. Literally the very next page, or because this book is a 333 page book that's only a four hour audio book and it's not a bridge, you can tell that there's just not much, you know there's not much there. But even the stuff that's there, there's not much to it because as soon as you get done with, as soon as you see the conflict, like I said, it's fixed. On the very next page, which is the very next chapter, because they use really big font and very short chapters to make the book 333 pages when Gwendi's button box was under 200 and it's maybe 10,000 words shorter than this one. It's not a novel. In fact if you listen to the audiobook experience it says Gwendi's magic feather a novella. Yet the book is being marketed, the actual book itself is being marketed as a novel. So there's a bunch of shady stuff going on with Gwendi's magic feather, but on top of that, the main thing is the book is bad. Nothing happens and when it does happen those problems are fixed super, super quickly. The whole serial killer subplot comes to an end in like three paragraphs. It's a very convenient ending. That's my top five worst books of the year. I would love to hear about the books that you were disappointed in down there in the doobly-doo. Next week we're going to have an entire week of positives. So if you're tired of hearing about negative stuff here on the channel, we're going to end the year on a positive note. And then after that I'm going to be taking a week's vacation to recharge my batteries. I'm taking a week off of everything, social media, YouTube, all that. I won't be around on Twitter, I won't be posting things to Patreon, nothing. So next week just be ready for it. After next week, the final week of the year, I will be gone for an entire week at least. I won't be back until after the first of the year. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been the worst books of 2019. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!