It is the last sentence that show the main idea.
<span><em>Yet
our modern world is full of books about Success and successful people
which literally contain no kind of idea, and scarcely any kind of verbal
sense.
</em>The central idea of this essay of G. K. Chesterton, which he surprisingly wrote in 1909 is to debunk all of those "get rich quick" and "become successful overnight" self-help books. He says that those books, even though they are created by a wild imagination are actually boring and offer no actual advice that would help anyone. <em>
</em></span>
The meaning of bad according to the dictionary is of poor quality, inferior or defective. It can also mean something that must not to be desired. Synonyms would include awful, lousy, miserable, and unpleasant. The antonyms of bad are good, and favorable.
This is definitely personification.