A Wrinkle in Time
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Possibly the worst book I have ever read.

message 53:
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King Shit of Turd Mountain
(last edited Jan 08, 2015 04:37PM)
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rated it 1 star


I have never seen this book classified as anything other than children's literature. That's where you'll find it in bookstores, libraries, etc.

But that would severely weaken my argument, so I don't really want to go there.
Maybe GoodReads isn't for me. If it is only for books we consider to be GOOD Reads, then we should give a blanket 5 Star rating to every book.

No, honestly, you come across as immature.

The goal of most people is to read books they will enjoy or find worthwhile. Howver, Goodreads isn't for only positive reviews. As I and others have said before, your problem is not that you are criticizing the book. It's that on the one hand your criticism is condemnation without substance or detail, and on the other hand you are insisting that this is nor a difference of opinion,but that you are right, and everyone else is wrong. And that you want to stop anyone else from reading it, because it's Bad.
But you have not grasped the difference, or the simple fact that judgments of art, not even yours, are not Revealed Truth.
A book can be bad for you and good for someone else. And you don't want to just share your opinion and let other people make their own judgments. You want to decide for everyone else.
And you don't get to do that.

The fact that I also genuinely found this book dull only made me hating it even easier.
So I do think I get to do that.
Leave the monotheistic propaganda out of the book and I will leave the book alone. I will just leave the 1 Star review and be done with it. When a book starts preaching, it becomes more than a book, it becomes a virus. If I used children's cartoons to promote smoking, you would say I am evil. This is the equivalent as far as I am concerned.

Again, no, believing differently than you is not evil. Or even automatically wrong. The Greeks warned of the danger of hubris; you are guilty of it.
message 60:
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King Shit of Turd Mountain
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Maybe you need a hubris, or you start to grow one when you realize a good portion of the world is insane and you have to deal with the repercussions of that for so long. Read the Q'ran and tell me it does not promote what you would consider 'evil'. An idea can be evil, so some ideas that differ from mine, while seeming innocent or comforting or whatever at first, can be evil.
message 61:
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Nah, you spent ten years of your life in a war zone (yeah, sure; not a lot of Americans who spent ten years there, and you claim tp be Australian) because GWBush decided going after Saddam was more important than finishing the war with the guys who attacked us.
There are certainly evil ideas--and the notion that some have the right to tell the rest of what we're allowed to believe, for our own good, of course, one of the most evil. You don't have that right, and you don't have the wisdom, despite your delusion to the contrary.
You are as human and fallible as the rest of us, and you have a good deal less life experience than some of us. You have not learned to consider the possibility that you might be wrong, and that is the surest possible way to make disastrous errors.

Why the heck would I answer personal questions from you?




Now that is a valid concern, but for me it did not come into play with this novel. The only overtly religious bits I remember are Jesus being mentioned once, which if you subscribe to the idea that the mythical Jesus was based on someone real, can be rationalized, and the singing centaurs, which I had actually totally forgotten about until I reread the book a few years ago (I know they're usually on the cover, but I had forgotten what part they played in the story.) What I took away from this book was a strong message of individuality (which, as a misfit kid, I greatly appreciated), an increased interest in science, and a general message of being good (or "fighting against the darkness" as it's put in the story.) Now that's only me, but I just don't see as there is anything "evil" in the book (as opposed to C.S. Lewis, who thinks it's better to die and go with Jesus than live out one's life on Earth.)

message 72:
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King Shit of Turd Mountain
(last edited Jan 07, 2015 08:09PM)
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Now that is a valid conce..."
Admittedly Scott, this being a passionate point for me makes this something that did stick out like a sore thumb for me. I am probably more primed than others to notice things like this. I had no idea it would be in there, and so I had to re-read the passages a few times to make sure I wasn't misreading it before thinking "Oh WTF?". I thought I was reading sci-fi, not the New Testament. I was already too far into the book to turn back at that point, and was not enjoying it but figured it may go somewhere unexpected. It did I guess haha

Sorry I didn't see this message. That will require a close reading and quite some time, and so I will have to dismiss my own advice and read the book again. I will come back with some comprehensive literature-criticism relevant arguments as to why I feel this book is worthy of no more than 1 Star, but it will take some time. I can see their are some passionate advocates for this book, so I will be hoping that I will at least get some decent concrete responses in return or my own trolling will have backfired on me horribly. I'm sure nobody but me will lose sleep over that though. It would be good to go back to speaking about the book rather than myself as well to be honest, because my hubris is getting tired from all this excitement and it needs a rest.
Although I do feel that this venture will be as about as futile for me as having to explain why a religion is wrong as opposed to somebody explaining to me why it is right, I will comply.
It will take some time though. I won't leave you hanging forever, but this will take weeks. I will aim for before March.
message 74:
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King Shit of Turd Mountain
(last edited Jan 07, 2015 09:05PM)
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But this is only because my huge hubris has allowed myself to be flattered by your comments when you may have actually intended them to be insulting.

Take this as the compliment it is intended to be....this is the most interesting discussion I have ever been involved in for Goodreads.

I never read this book as a child.
I read it later for a Library Science class in children's literature.
I guess I felt I AUGHT to read the book as it was such a hyped book growing up as being the BEST BOOK EVER.
While it has been several years now, I have to say I remember not being very impressed and actually finding it a bit annoying and cringeworthy.
There was something about references against communism or something that, It did have veiled weird messages contained within it.
But I didn't like Harry Potter either. I have read all of those and find Harry Potter to be annoying but I 'got into the story" and had to finish up but I wouldn't have recommended those to children but I guess if that book (or any book) gets children reading I guess that is a positive.

See by swearing, I know that self-important people with will react.
(And no, I don't know how to italicize either.)
Lenjibenj, I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who feels more self important than you. In four days time you have managed to write almost as many words about this book than there are in the book itself. Do you not have a job, a family, a life? I get it. You hated the book, you feel cheated, like the world screwed you over (I've already decided that you are so self important I don't need to swear for you to react.) I think back to your comment of eating poop out of your nappy (how Anglophile of you) and you would have rated that five stars at the time but not so much now, and I can't even begin to imagine that, if the book and all of its praise upsets you so much now, how much more over-the-top you would be if the book had been read to you as a young impressionable child without your consent, only to rediscover it now and realize how many levels beneath toilet paper and fish wrapper you consider it to be.
I can see it now, you going through life as a somewhat idealistic teenager, certainly not naive but definitely hopeful for a better life, a better way to live, a life created through love, idealism and, above all, individuality! You're not sure where this comes from, maybe a little from your family, maybe a little from your friends or your schooling, but there is something deeper you just can't place. It's just images really: a pair of thick glasses, the name "Aunt Beast", and even the occasional nightmare of a large throbbing brain. But your idealism is so strong that when you wake from this nightmare, instead of being afraid you are energized. This dream has reminded you to keep fighting the good fight and live your dreams!
Your teens become your 20's, your 20's become your 30's, your 30's become your 40's, your 40's become (stop me if I've gone too far, age-wise) and that idealism is there, but shaken, yoked under by the harsh responsibility of job, marriage, society. You look for a way back. Maybe you try meditation, maybe you try alcohol, maybe you try drunken meditation, but nothing is working.
Until that one day, on Goodreads, when you see a book with a 4.04 star review and a name that sounds familiar. Now it all comes back to you! The same nanny that changed your nappy diapers read this book to you many years ago and it planted the subconscious seed that powered your life for all those years. 'This,' you think, 'will save me from the doldrums of my existence!' So you read it again, and you find yourself thinking:
'What a crock of shit!!'
(Normally I wouldn't swear, but I get the impression that if you would write the word shit, and vigorously defend your right to use it, then you must certainly think the word shit as well.)
Now your life is even more devastated. Now what few dreams you had left, barely kept afloat on battered wings and tired hearts, crash and burn, and all you are left with is the smoldering ruin of your life. As you look into the ash heaps of your childhood and the cold, worthless frozen future, condemned you are sure to live a life of excruciatingly loud desperation, you realize that if you can't save yourself, you must, at least, save humanity.
So you shun what little life you have and focus all of your energy on making sure than anyone who might make the same mistake as you be forewarned. "Better to think this world cold and useless, a shackling master who besets (I don't think I'm suing that word right, but at this point I don't think you're still reading either) on us pain and misery," you say, "than to read this worthless, inane, pimple-on-the-ass-of-humanity book and learn that the world is even worse than that!" And for that i thank you.
It is rare in this world to see people who have the courage to stand as you do, to fight bravely the forces of, well, whatever forces your fighting, and the windmills they ride in on. It gives me hope in the future of humanity.
By now, if you're still here, you can probably figure out that I like this book. i do, a lot. I reread it every few years because it reminds me of the hope it first instilled in me. And you know it instilled that hope?
Because I read it as an 8 year old child. That's who the book was written for. It wasn't written for quivering masses of middle aged toe-cheese who, even though they were lit majors, are so addle brained and simple-minded they can't think for themselves, who don't know how to read a review and instead only can count stars, and decide to baaaaa like the sheep they are and read it. Do you choose the books you read on your own because they interest you, or do you blindly look for lists other people make of the top 10, 20, 100 or however many books you MUST read before you die? I've seen those lists, there's a lot of books on those lists I haven't read and I'm not going to read. You know why?
Because they don't interest me. A million people might tell me I'm wrong, but I ain't living their life. See, you're not in school anymore. You don't have to finish books you don't like. I'm sure you weren't in love with every page in this book until the very last page when it all went down the tubes for you. I'm sure long before that you realized "Wow. I can't stand this." So then and there you could have put the book down. You could have signed on to Goodreads, you could have given it the one star you think it deserves, and you even could have said something like "This review will only cover the first 30 pages, because that's as far into this book I got before I decided it was garbage." And then you know what you could have done?
You could have gotten on with your life.
Instead you stayed here in all your self-important glory, telling us why this book stinks, why swear words are appropriate, and whatever else you went on to say in the next 40 or so comments. Your choice I guess.
But if you're still reading this I have a challenge for you. (And no, it isn't to read the next 2 books in the original trilogy. If you hated this book, the third one would lead you to do horrible, unspeakable things, all in the name of anger and frustration.) I challenge you to write a review about a book you like, and I challenge you to do it as passionately as you have denounced this book.
personally I don't think you can do it. I think you have spent far too much of your life being shocking profane and negative, and you like the thrill that it gives you, to be equally passionate but in a positive, thrilling and intelligent way. To use one of your words, you enjoy being King Shit of Turd Mountain, so much so that you couldn't handle it if a beautiful flower managed to grow out of all that turd.
Prove me wrong.


I agree, I have learned that there are a lot of book snobs on goodreads. I think you can write a review that explains why you personally did not like the book without bashing it or by bashing someone who enjoyed the book... We all read different things for different reasons and not everyone's going to agree but I have an issue when people demean and insult others because they don't agree.

I will make time to read th..."
Normally I would just let you rant... but why do you think it is your job to stop people from reading anything? What is a waste of time for you may not be for someone else. This is a children book so if you want a more heartfelt review of why a child likes it then ask a child. You dissing the book does not make people dig in and like the book more it is not that simple. It just means people are going to oppose YOU more.
I think you should just right your heartfelt review and let people decide if they are going to read it or not just like they do with everything else that is criticized or critiqued.
Your post seem more than just a average critique to me but then that is just my opinion and my opinion doesn't make anything true, it just makes it my opinion and I appreciate your difference of opinion about this book.

Oh, and let me just add - you suggested that if a person wastes their time reading this then you will be a lesser person as a result. You clearly are not much of a person if you let reading a short little book (whether you hate it or love it) "lessen" you, mkay?
Grow up.

See by swearing, I know that self-important people with will react.
(And ..."
Congratulations Jack - you've actually hit the nail on the head with your little psychoanalysis there - even down to the alcohol bit (though not for many years now). Unfortunately of this I am already aware, so while you may be news to everybody else, it is neither shockingly offensive nor enlightening to me. I'm actually a little impressed.
Luckily for me an unmentioned cousin of the Mrs W's, Mrs WTF imparted on me the gift of hubris to overcome this dark cloud that threatened to engulf me, and so I can live quite happily in my deluded world of hypocrisy where I can go on dreaming of fixing the worlds ills through offensive 1 Star reviews of children's literature.
I don't usually hang out in forums, and to be honest I didn't expect this conversation to go as long as it did (due to aforementioned lack of forum experience), but I am not one to turn away from a juicy argument. There is also very little going on at my place of work at the moment, so this helps kill time. As I said, I just punched out my opening argument for a laugh, and then for a while I was just posting because to be honest, I thought it was funny, but then everybody started getting all serious and now this is becoming more like work than fun, and a tad boring. While it may be enjoyable for all to discuss my personal character flaws (of which the Internet itself would not be big enough to hold a full discussion on that), I haven't heard a single solid reason as to why this book is so worthy of praise besides "because I loved it as a kid", which is probably because their isn't one. We can all get defensive, but I have not attacked anybody personally - the closest I got was suggesting that perhaps Lis was related to the author, which unless being related to the author is a particularly embarrassing thing to be for some reason isn't really an insult to Lis at it is a completely and obviously fictional scenario. One thing I guess I am forgetting is that Americans do not really understand sarcasm as such (which is very big in Australia).
I have never claimed to be smarter than anybody, I just state what to me is the obvious. I am simply a product of a generation that has to do his best to try and fix up the mess of a world that the hippy generation has left us with to make it livable again.
I'm not the first 33 year old that feels the need to change the world and I won't be the last. One crackpot 33 year old I know who was wasting his life away thought he was so much wiser than anybody else they nailed him to a tree 2000 years ago. He went on to become a best selling author. I don't think you should entirely dismiss the power of the 'wisdom' of 33 year olds with hubris. A bit of heavy editing over the centuries and my words on this post might and people might kill each other over my forum comments.
(See that last paragraph was an example of sarcasm).

message 85:
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King Shit of Turd Mountain
(last edited Jan 08, 2015 05:34PM)
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I was moreso trying to make a point that my age should not really be a deciding factor in this matter. At the end of the day, he was ultimately just a dude with some unorthodox ideas for the time.
Jesus was no stranger to the occasional public hissy fit himself now that I think about it. I remember this one time he lost it at a temple. If I remember the New Testament correctly, I believe it was not long after somebody sent him an advanced copy of 'A Wrinkle in Time' through a tesseract.
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See by swearing, I know that self-important people with will react.
(And ..."
Oop - I almost forgot your challenge. How about I write a review on "Faith of Our Fathers", the short story I compared "Wrinkle" to for you? I believe most of Dick's works are out of copyright, so it shouldn't be an issue to find a copy online for free to judge me by. Again, this will take some time, but it will be far more enjoyable than writing about "Wrinkle" - most importantly it will be a breath of fresh air.
Would that be acceptable?
P.S. Could you please address me by my proper title in future - "King Shit of Turd Mountain" before speaking to me? That goes for all of you. I like it because it sounds like a Nine Inch Nails song and it actually brought tears to my eyes it was that funny.
message 87:
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King Shit of Turd Mountain
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Would that be acceptable? At least it would be somewhat interesting for me personally.

Your royal highness:
I would gladly read your detailed critical comparison. And just to be sure you can use as many big words as you want, I'll even read "Faith of Our Fathers" as well. (I'm guessing you made that comparison somewhere after comment 33 and before 79. I still haven't gone back to read them.)

See by swearing, I know that self-important people with will ..."
Given current copyright law, I would estimate there's approximately zero chance any of Dick's words are out of copyright.
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King Shit of Turd Mountain
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http://www.philipkdickfans.com/2012/0...


Wait ... could that mean I was wrong? I don't think I was ready for this. I've never been wrong before - about anything. I might need to take some time out to deal with this.


message 96:
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King Shit of Turd Mountain
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Be careful, we are deep in enemy territory and the punishment for blasphemy is personal (yet pretty accurate) character attacks.
You are a brave man, and I am jealous that your house has a fireplace. I think this is what Ray Bradbury specifically had in mind for us all when he wrote 'Fahrenheit 451'. That's how I interpreted it anyway, and I always interpret books correctly and objectively.

That is actually on my to-do list.

Fred, I have nothing really of value to offer you in reply to your comment other than the act of replying itself just to prove you correct - because I am just that sort of a guy and it would be a shame to turn such an opportunity down.

An interesting read. Thank you.
The post and comments cover many of the issues, but I think they have missed an important one:Some years back (somewhere between ten and twenty?) a whole bunch of material that had fallen into the public domain was put back into copyright, separate from the specific 1963/64 issue David Keller mentions that was part of the original major revision of copyright law.
I am not a lawyer and don't play one on the internet; I don't know if this would affect any of Dick's work. I just wouldn't assume it doesn't unless I were in a position to consult a copyright attorney. Also bear in mind that his work could be under copyright in the US and not in Australia, or vice versa

See by swearing, I know that self-important people with will ..."
The man they nailed to a tree was not an author. Please, these are basic, simple facts. Stick to them.
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I will make time to read th..."
Forgive me, but nothing you've said and nothing in your manner suggests you are old enough to have become a soldier post-9/11.
You are also missing the rather important point that it doesn't matter to anyone except you whether you "get" the appeal of Wrinkle or not.
You are missing the even more important point that it is not up to you to decide what other people should read or what other people are allowed to enjoy or find meaning in. You have the same right to express an opinion and contribute to the discussion as anyone else, but when you believe you have a mission to prevent other people from reading a book, any book, because you feel it has no value, is a waste, or even is pernicious, you cross a line, and demonstrate neither your intelligence nor your high standards, but your arrogance, self-importance, your disrespect for other people. You make a fool of yourself.
No one, absolutely no one, is telling you that you can't criticize this book or its author. People are disagreeing with your very extreme hostility to this book, and your bizarre belief that you are the sole arbiter of what books are good, intetesting, or of value--that it is up to you to decide no one should read this book.
You are not trying to have a discussion. You think I have an obligation to justify my opinion to you, or to try to, so that you can refute it. I have no reason to engage on that basis, because I have no reason at all to regard your opinion more highly than my own. You have not earned that; you have merely demanded it, possibly without thinking it through sufficiently tovrealize that's what you're doing.
The Lewis book I have recommended to is, you will be relieved to know, neither theology, nor apologetics, nor allegory, nor even science fiction. It is about literary criticism, and the value of not dismissing other people's reading experiences.
But that may well seem like heretical theology to you.