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5 ludicrously influential books (that are actually awful to read)
Ah, books. They entertain us. They inform us. They mystify us. They sometimes bore us. But sometimes a book comes out that does more then that. It drives the gullible masses of this world into a frenzy. It inspires them to acts of lunacy even beyond what they would normally do on a Friday night. Yet more often then not, people just hear about them instead of actually reading them and that's because some idiotically influential books are just downright awful to read . Here are the worst of them.
5. Lord of the Rings Seems an odd book to place on this list, right? After all, the movies kicked ass, the books sold like crazy and everybody kept dressing like elves so long you couldn’t help but start wondering if the world had turned gay.
Gods, I hate Orlando Bloom... Well, let me ask you. Did you read the entire trilogy, including all the songs in it and the parts when Aragorn wasn’t killing stuff? Even the bits where nothing happened except more endless descriptions of two hobbits walking to mount doom? Really? Come on, don’t lie to the internet. We know your thoughts! Practically nobody reads all of it and that’s because after the 42nd little song sung by bloody Tom Bombadil you start to think that maybe you can find a better way to pass the time. Like putting leeches on your skin while gurgling the Klingon national anthem. Nobody can argue that there is serious awesomeness hidden in the LOTR books but those dreadful songs and endless hobbit stories put a serious damper on it. Good thing Peter Jackson removed all that crap even if he replaced it with some crap all his own.
4. The Satanic verses While its true that you don’t have to go to very great lengths in order to provoke a fatwah by the Islamic religious leaders these days it was still a fairly big deal for Salman Rushdie in 1988. His book the satanic verses received such raving good reviews from the west that it couldn’t be anything else then a bloody sacrilege against Allah. So they put a fatwah on the dude.
Angry Muslims. Surprise, surprise. Let me tell you what a Fatwah is if you didn’t get it by now. What it basically says is that everyone loyal to the faith has a duty to viciously murder you and show the entrails to Iran for proof. Its so diabolically evil and primitive that it could have been devised by the Christians. Heck, it probably was. For years on end after this, the world cried out in outrage at this act. The British government protected Rushdie en bodyguards came everywhere he went. The book which caused all of it sold more copies then any other (proving that fatwah’s are the way to improve sales) and anything Rushdie said was revered. He was so revered that the Pakistani made a movie of him, looking like Rambo and torturing people by reading from his book, the Satanic goddamn verses.
Oh yeah, now I see the resemblance! It took the world a couple of years to realize it but the Satanic verses is actually a boring piece of tripe. If the Hezbollah of Iran had actually taken the time to read it he might have realized that nobody would ever consider buying, much less reading it, except a few scholars who had to keep up appearances while drinking ludicrous amounts of bourbon. It sucks. I never got beyond page 25 and I praise myself for even making the effort. Why did this ever get so popular? Because religious people hated it, that’s why. Idiots!
3. Mein Kampf Most burgeoning neo-Nazi’s are slack jawed idiots with no comprehension of what a Jew actually is, besides ‘bad’. In some parts of Germany and the rest of Europe but also in America Hitler is still revered as something of a hero even though he destroyed his own country, murdered thousands of people in gas chambers and looked like he was on XTC 24 hours a day.
Mein Kampf was the only book he’d ever write and it was written in prison after his failed attempt to take over the world, uhm I mean Germany in 1923. In it, he depicts his struggle for world domination, uhm I mean to be respected as an artist and his views on how best to exterminate all those he didn’t think belonged in his world. Jews, Gypsies, crippled people, that dude who pissed him off at the buffet the day before. All were mortal enemies of Germany and had to be dealt with. Especially the buffet dude. The Hitler book became the number 1 bestseller after he took over the world, uhm I mean Germany and everyone was told to read it. I guess the best way to boost book sales is to say, buy it or be shot! And buy, they did.
Nazi book-salesmen boot camp All that is history. Awful history but history nonetheless. In our modern times with Hitler and his dumbass friends long gone that leaves us with his book. And boy, does it suck. Even by the standards of 1923 at least a few people must have seen that it was written by a mentally unstable Charlie Chaplin imitating lunatic. His writing style is akin to scratching graffiti on a church wall with your own fingernails. If you go pure by his book, Hitler was the craziest man ever to walk this planet and don’t take my word for it. Read these literary ‘marbles’ and decide. “With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people.”
“For a racially pure people which is conscious of its blood can never be enslaved by the Jew. In this world he will forever be master over bastards and bastards alone.”
“Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.” Yes Adolf, you don’t like the Jews. We get it. Now come and get your electro shock therapy.
2. The witches Hammer (Malleus Maleficarum) According to popular belief the medieval world was populated by plague ridden lunatics, religious madmen, filthy peasants and murderous nobles.
Yeah, something like this. The Witches hammer is one bit of proof that popular belief was absolutely right. Its perhaps one of the most evil, murderous and deceitful bits of literature ever published. It was so evil that even the catholic church, famously opposed to witches, tried to ban it at some point and contrary to popular belief (which can also be dead wrong) the author was not a well-respected man. The crackpot who wrote it was called Heinrich Kramer and he had views on Witchcraft that were considered weird and extreme by most of his fellow clergymen, who continually opposed and hindered his trials. For instance, Kramer ran a large trial in Innsbruck in 1485, where 57 people were investigated. Nobody was killed. The bishop of Innsbruck became so irritated with Kramer's fascination with the Witches' sexual behaviour that he shut down the trials, claiming that the devil was in the inquisitor, not the Witches.
Despite this, many ‘witches’ were burned at the stake because of the Witches Hammer and all because Kramer was an obvious women hating eunuch. (I’m making the eunuch part up but he might well have been!) Every single man who ever read Kramer’s tripe must have known this but the burning continued, proving that the European clergy as a whole weren’t very fond of women. Get rid of the damn celibacy already you frustrated jerks! On top of the insanity, its actually a boring read. How Kramer managed to combine the subject ‘burning people’ with ‘being fucking boring’ is beyond me but he managed it. The Malleus Maleficarum is without a doubt the most blood soaked and insane piece of literature on this planet and it still sucks to read it. What could possibly be worse?
1. The Bible Have you ever read the Bible? I mean the real Bible? Statistics say you haven’t. Most people have read an adapted version of the bible, one customized to be read by modern audiences in language we can understand and converted to stories we can make movies of and preach about. That’s not what the bible is though.
This is not what the Bible is. Seriously. The Bible is a collection of stories and letters (and conveniently, the entire Jewish holy script) that are said to tell the story of Christ and convey the Christian message. It was assembled in the council of Nicea some 300 years after Christ actually lived. This was probably the biggest collection of religious bastards ever in one place as they threw out the stories they didn’t like and left in what they could use at the time. A new religion was born and it still bugs us some 1700 years later. Hu-fucking-Rah. There’s probably no other book in creation that even approaches the number of murders committed in its name. Crusades were fought because of it. Religious massacres were common at some point and Pogroms against the Jews were organized hundreds of years before Adolf ‘Nutcase’ Hitler even grew a moustache. In short, it’s the most insanity inspiring piece of literature ever to see the light of day. And it still sucks to read! Dear whatever-god-actually-exists does it suck! Its not a real story! Its verses! Thousands of them! And psalms! PSALMS!!! If you have the stomach to read it you’ll find its an experience akin to sticking a rusty dinner fork through your tongue and sing ‘hail Mary’. In order to illustrate my point I’m going to put you through some literary torture. Bible verses. Booyah! This is what the bible says on love: 7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born [1] of God, and knoweth God. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. This is what it says on gambling:
And
Samson said unto them, I will now put forth a riddle unto you: if ye can
certainly declare it me within the seven days of the feast, and find [it]
out, then I will give you thirty sheets and thirty change of garments: But
if ye cannot declare [it] me, then shall ye give me thirty sheets and
thirty change of garments. And they said unto him, Put forth thy riddle,
that we may hear it.
And this is what it says on marriage: Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet [is] she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. For the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for [one] covereth violence with his garment, saith the Lord of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously. Psalms, verses, proverbs, letters. Nobody in its right mind would attempt to read all of it without a significant dose of sense numbing medicines and even then I imagine it would be tough. For a book that spawned as many wars, atrocities and horrors as the bible you would have expected a cooler read!
Bad books can have great power. But they can also suck!
Back to the world of sucks and rules
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