Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.

Mark Twain

Tags: bad-reviews

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This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it."

[Women Know Everything!]

Dorothy Parker

Tags: bad-reviews wordplay terrible fancy raisins

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Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Tags: opinions literary-criticism absurd bad-reviews complain tolkien reviews lotr boring

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Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name."

(Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.)

Salman Rushdie

Tags: writing literary-criticism bad-reviews novels the-davinci-code

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I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see.

Dorothy Parker

Tags: literary-criticism bad-reviews

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What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.

American novels, answered Lord Henry.

Oscar Wilde

Tags: humor books literary-criticism bad-reviews sarcasm novels american

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I think the Cincinnati Enquirer must be edited by children.

Mark Twain

Tags: bad-reviews newspapers twain cincinnati enquirer

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What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this for half an hour. It will be a change.

Jerome K. Jerome

Tags: literary-criticism bad-reviews

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Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Mark Twain

Tags: humor bad-reviews jane-austen

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While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw—that of outright unreadability.

Martin Amis

Tags: literary-criticism bad-reviews don-quixote miguel-de-cervantes

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