I think it’s important, though, to distinguish between bad books and books I don’t like (although of course these categories will often overlap). For instance, I detest every novel I’ve read by Thomas Hardy (his poetry is OK), but his books were very popular and influential and continue to be widely read, and not only by unfortunate Grade 11 students slaving away in English A HL courses; and when I can manage to turn off my dislike for them even I can see that they have their merits. Similarly, one may dislike an entire (sub)genre, but this doesn’t make a books published in that genre ipso facto a bad book.

I find the most useful application of this technique is to take apart a book I dislike in a genre that I generally like — IOW, a book I had every reason to think I would like before I started reading it — and try to be really objective about why I don’t like it and, as you say, what would have to change in order for me to enjoy it.

Thank you for your words of encouragement re: NaNo when I met you today at Children’s Book World. I’m very much looking forward to reading LIAR when NaNo is over!

I appreciated your post as well. Though I dread going back to books I’ve abandoned, I can see the value in trying to tease out what didn’t work for me.

Thanks for all the tips and for your gracious nature.

On the other hand, I was recently reading a big fat book in a popular fantasy series who actually *did* have one of my biggest faults as a writer–the tendency to go on at to much length, to really drive every point home. And it gave me a real clear experience of how frustrating and even infuriating it would be for my readers when I did the same thing.

So . . . um, no real bottom line here. I just thought it was interesting. Wish I could figure out a way to implement that advice effectively every time.

Rebecca: Awesome that you’re already doing it!

Jim: I think that if you’re consciously looking at why the writing is bad it’s very unlikely the bad writing will contaminate your own.

Philip: Yup his commentary is just astonishing. I could not do it. I am all admiration.

Jessie: Exactly. My first published novels—the MorM trilogy—were inspired by all the bad fantasy I’d read.

It may not work for everyone, but I embrace it.

Sorry, I’m just surprised to see someone else out there has realized what I have, that the bad books and movies and whatnot can be just as instructive as the good, in that they teach you what not to do.

If anyone out there is interested in seeing a really in-depth analysis of bad books, there’s a blogger who goes by the name Slacktivist who, for a few years now, has been going through the Left Behind series and picking out how atrocious these books are. He’s an evangelist like the books’ writers, so there is a lot of theological discussion to sift through. But even if that’s not your thing, he also examines the mechanics of charactertization, dialogue, plot structure, cliches, and all other things literary.

The only thing more impressive than how bad these books are (and they are front-runners for the worst books of all time) is his committment to this project.

He has an archive of his posts starting at http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/page/27/, but be aware they’re in reverse order (ie. newest posts are at the front of the archive).