Since joining the Old Lady Book Club—and, subsequently, Goodreads—in 2017, the list of read books I’ve rated one out of five stars is short. In order:

Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things (1997)

Omar Fink – Rhodium Pirates (2021)

“Captain” Doug Chamberlain – Bury Him: A Memoir of the Vietnam War (2019)

Marcel M. Du Plessis – The Silent Symphony (2021)

(Excluded, and only because I suffered it years before, is David Baldacci’s The Winner. Shudder.)

The answer to today’s prompt is horrid works of fiction and nonfiction. I become ever so motivated to read each of these turds as quickly as possible—just finish the thing, already!—and get it the hell out of my life. Trash. I might as well have doused my neighborhood’s Little Free Library in Agent Orange afterward.

On a positive note, here are the books I’ve savored and rated five stars this year. All nonfiction, oddly:

Alexandra Petri – Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why (2020)

Mark Frost – The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever (2007)

Leigh Montville – Tall Men, Short Shorts: The 1969 NBA Finals—Wilt, Russ, Lakers, Celtics and a Very Young Sports Reporter (2021)

Tom Wolfe – The Right Stuff (1979)

Erik Larson – The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz (2020)

See? It’s not all snark.