What Makes a Book Bad?

In this video essay, your old pal the Book and Movie Guy yet again pretends he knows what he's talking about.
In this video, I go through some answers I got in a survey about what people thought made books bad. I also talk a little about some specific pieces of famously bad writing, and maybe even have a little fun, along the way.

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Finally, I get to be the one who writes the first comment on a video made four years ago! No, actually it's way simpler than all that. What those books--"To Kill a Mockingbird," "Lord of the Flies," etc., those particular "classics"--have in common is that they are very frequently assigned reading in American middle schools and high schools. The people who voted for those books as being the worst ever, well, the books that were assigned reading in school are the only books they have ever read. And they hated them all, but it's not like they're comparing each one to some other book that they feel is better for the totally sufficient reason that they have never read other books. They're just assuming that the ones they were required to read happened to also be the worst ones. "Twilight," "50 Shades," and "Da Vinci Code" are on the list for basically the same reason. They are not assigned reading in school but at their peak of popularity they might as well have been. For a brief period in 2006 it seemed like everybody was talking ab u Vinci Code; moreover, it was extremely easy to pick up, and I mean that literally, because there were copies just lying around practically everywhere. You could just pick one up from a park bench or from next to the drinks dispenser at a McDonald's, or you'd visit a friend and walk out with a copy even if you didn't want one. There were many people alive in 2006 who ordinarily found it taxing to read an article in Glamour in one sitting but felt compelled to read that book just to avoid being left out when their friends talked about it and it was probably the only book they'd read since leaving high school and of course they hated it. Many sensible people had cause to regard it as quite bad, such as the first sentence--"Renowned curator Jacques Saunier..."--but just because something is widely regarded as bad for good reasons doesn't stop others from believing it is bad for bad reasons.