Stanley Lane-Pool

This was by far, hands down, without question, and no doubt the worst reading experience ever in my life. So awful, indeed, that I'm convinced it can never be surpassed. The only reason I suffered myself through the 1,836 pages (!!!) across the three volumes is because, combined, it is #6 on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list. I committed myself, so I had to do it. Otherwise, I would never have dreamed (nightmared?) to put myself through such torture. There was nothing interesting here, nothing captivating, nothing that grabbed my interest, and it was filled to spilling with ultra-violence, all of it gratuitous, purposeless, and immorally nasty. Every page was filled with beheadings, behandings, belimbings, bedigitings, and belifings, sometimes completely out of the blue. Without warning, you could get passages like this: "I gazed longingly into her eyes and beheld our beauty - before I stomped a foot in her ass and lopped off her head." What? What just happened? How did we get from there to here? What on earth is all this irredeemable, nonsensical garbage? When researching the book, I came across a thread where an avid reader revealed that he had read all eight known English translations of the entire Nights. WHAT? How is that even possible? Why would a man do that? This stuff is AWFUL tripe, the worst kind that could be committed to paper, and entirely useless and valueless.… (more)