# The worst book you've ever read?



## Blossom

If you read quite a lot, you are doomed to come across the odd book that makes you want to burn every copy in existance or hunt down the author and stop them unleashing another horror on the poor, unsuspecting public. Or that you at least swear never to read again. 

So what are your most hated books? And what made you dislike them?

Mine:

_The Prophecy of the Gems_, _Eragon_ and _The Da Vinci Code_ all made me wince at nearly every page because of the appallingly bad writing, overused cliches and pretty horrendous plot lines. 

The _Tales of the Otori_ trilogy by Lian Hearn also ranks up there; while the books were written quite well, it has to win the award for worst characters ever. I wanted to kill off the entire cast - apart from the ones she killed off herself.


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## Mira

Eragon. I only got halfway through, but wow, that book is bad... It really doesn't have a single original thought. Lord of the Flies, not too fond of that book either. I've read it twice, but still, I think its kinda silly. I have a very hard time imagining something like that actually happening... 

I didn't dislike the Davinci code though. Very entertaining at some points, even though I don't really take what it says very seriously. Read it as fiction, that's my advice....


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## Stewart

Mira said:


> I didn't dislike the Davinci code though. Very entertaining at some points, even though I don't really take what it says very seriously. Read it as fiction, that's my advice....



I don't quite understand how you can read a novel as anything other than fiction.

Stuff like _The Da Vinci Code_ and _The Kite Runner _are obvious crap. The one that gets me is _Gilead_ by Marilynne Robinson. It has pedigree in that it took the Pulitzer Prize for fiction a couple of years ago but I found it a complete chore to read. And, talking of chores, I won't be reading any more of A.N. Wilson once I finish his new novel, _Winnie And Wolf_, which I would abandon if I hadn't made the decision to read and review all thirteen books longlisted for the Booker prize this year.


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## TinyMachines

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis.
I will never ever be able to forget a scene in that book, and I want Ellis to burn for scarring me with it.


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## Johnnyelvis

Worst book ever written? 

Wonderland Avenue by Danny Sugarman. Interesting story, reads like it was written by a Koala bear with fused fingers.


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## Mike C

I try not to read bad books. Life's too short.


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## Patrick Beverley

Blossom said:


> _The Prophecy of the Gems_, _Eragon_ and _The Da Vinci Code_ all made me wince at nearly every page because of the appallingly bad writing, overused cliches and pretty horrendous plot lines.


If I haven't misinterpreted -- you're saying you read all the way through these books, despite the fact that you hated them? All three of those books are over four hundred pages long -- that would mean that you were prepared to wince, by your account, four hundred times without giving up. You sure are a sucker for punishment.

I've never read all the way through a book that I didn't like. I put down Jonathan Coe's _The House of Sleep_ early on, because of a scene that I considered to be badly written. But I have since read and loved_ The Rotters' Club_ and _The Closed Circle_ by the same author, so I may go back and give _HoS_ another try. 

A friend read _Clever Girl_ by Tania Glyde all the way through because his girlfriend loved it. He expressed a desire to burn every copy of that, though he acknowledged the quality of the writing; his objection was that the author had used her writing talent to make him feel nauseous and depressed.

I've seen films that I really hated, but the worst reaction I tend to get to books is, "Well, it's alright, but nothing much to write home about."


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## jesterscourt

Mike C said:


> I try not to read bad books. Life's too short.



I originally read this as saying "I try not to read books.  Life's too short."


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## Linton Robinson

Most of the bad books I read were in English class in high school.   They don't WANT guys to read novels so they give them Lord of the Flies and Jane Eyre and SILAS FUCKING MARNER and all that turgid crap.  THen for a little light, youth reading, Catch in the Fucking Rye.

Other than that I don't finish worse books.

EXCEPT, for some reason I read one by Brett Easton Ellis and two by Michael McInnery,  the two poster boys for disaffected lame-ass eighties coke-lit.   I think with those I just got fascinated by how awful the were and tried to figure out why so many people didn't realize it.


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## ClancyBoy

Whatever the first book in the _Wheel of Time_ series was.  What godawful crap.  I got it because it was the most downloaded audiobook on the bittorrent tracker I use most.

Second worst was _China Mountain Zhang_.  I got it without hearing anything about it because it was sci-fi set in China.  Could have been interesting if the author had the first clue what she was talking about or even the tiniest bit of imagination.

Publishers seem to give a free ride to minorities who write ignorantly about the countries their great grandparents come from.  Chinese 101 and a summer in Hong Kong teaching English seem to be enough research for people (especially Asian-Americans) to write fiction set in China.  

I can't count the amount of ignorant dreck people write about "their Grandfather's Village" and other such rubbish where they crib all they know of the country and culture from a travel guide.

Edit:
I know I'm kind of begging the question here.  I write fiction set in Asia, but I try to be careful never to write about aspects of it that I'm not intimately acquainted with.


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## Linton Robinson

> Publishers seem to give a free ride to minorities who write ignorantly about the countries their great grandparents come from.



Thank you.   I was telling this to a librarian and I thought she was going to call security.

If you are a Tibetan-American,  an advance awaits you.


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## Linton Robinson

More of that conversation might be of interest here:
I had been noticing that the shelves were full of all these politically correct, ethnically enlighted titles...most totally inappropriate to the area the branch was located...so I started opening them and pulling their cards.   NOBODY WAS READING THEM.  They had collections of five books by authors that NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON had checked out the first one he wrote.

I pointed that out to her and asked if it wouldn't be a good idea to stock books that people wanted to read, rather than what they thought we should be reading.   

He got really bitchy about that (I mean, you know, for a public employee) and this hippy-looking grad student nearby looked like he was going to try to kill me.     

I kept coming back to "but nobody is reading them.  You're spending money and space on stuff nobody wants."  But she wouldn't hear of it, kept on ranting about how I didn't realize the mosaic of the country.   Finally she played the big card,  "It's no longer the case that people only get to read books by middle-aged white males."

I said, "Well, my experience from grade school up to right now is that what we're getting shoved down our throat is the choice of menopausal white females.   Your etnics here don't want your cool fucking books, they want people shooting and fucking each other."

Incredibly, she was speechless.   She just stared at me and wandered off.  I stared down the grad student and left.

They just keep buying the same old shit.    They have every title Carlos Fuentes ever wrote and none of them have a single stamp on the card, just to name one.


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## jamesdemann

the da vinci code is probably the worst book ever written with the greatest sucess....it is a funny old game.

A pretty bad book I started to read, but gave up as it was that bad was Ken Macleod's engines of light trilogy. Looks good, and the blurb on the back sounds really interesting, but both me and mum, both sci-fi fans took a look at this and gave up after just 20 or 30 pages. It is a confused and boring mess of a book. In fact so bad, that when thinking of a psycho drunk neighbour for my latest work, I used his surname for this character....


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## BlackWolf

Every Wheel of Time book after book three. The first three were ok, and I was bored, but I can't start something and not finish it, so even though it is absolute torture I will read the next one too.


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## ClancyBoy

lin said:


> Thank you.   I was telling this to a librarian and I thought she was going to call security.
> 
> If you are a Tibetan-American,  an advance awaits you.



Don't you understand?  Cultural insight is heredetary.

Doesn't matter if you spent your childhood playing nintendo and eating frozen burritos.  If your last name is Tan, knowledge about your grandfather's village is stored in your ancestral memory just waiting to be tapped.


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## kenewbie

Clive Cussler - Atlantis Found. 

I should have guessed it looking at the cover, the MC is named "Dirk Pitt". It sounds something out of a horribly cheesy novel. Which it is.

The book is an exercise in clichés and pulp-plots. They find Atlantis, there are of course special ops teams with fantastic not-really-existent-yet technology, and Nazi gold!

The best part is; at one point the author inserts himself, as a real person, into the book and helps resolve the plot. Deus ex Machina doesn't quite cover it, it needs it's own term.

It is bad to a point that I use it to cross-reference other books on amazon. If the book I contemplate buying figures on any "listmania"'s that also contain works by Cussler, I push it to the bottom of the list.

After reading it I started bringing my own books to holidays, the selection they carry at the beach-side kiosks aren't that fantastic.

k


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## Patrick Beverley

lin said:


> They don't WANT guys to read novels so they give them Lord of the Flies and Jane Eyre and SILAS FUCKING MARNER and all that turgid crap. THen for a little light, youth reading, Catch in the Fucking Rye


They gave you those because they didn't want you to read novels? Damn, I never got any of those to read for school. Maybe they could have stopped me reading novels. As it was, I had to find those four for myself, and loved all of them.


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## ClancyBoy

kenewbie said:


> The best part is; at one point the author inserts himself, as a real person, into the book and helps resolve the plot. Deus ex Machina doesn't quite cover it, it needs it's own term.



_Feces ex Machina_

i.e. turd-in-the-box.


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## Mira

> Most of the bad books I read were in English class in high school. They don't WANT guys to read novels so they give them Lord of the Flies and Jane Eyre


 
Hm, I really liked Jane Eyre.  I do kinda think you have to be female to get any joy from this book though... But I've read it twice, and I really enjoy it. Granted it's insanely wordy and takes forever to get through, but it's still a good book....

Wheel of Times-Yah, I read like two books and a half, and those hours feel very wasted to me. Oh, so terrible!!!


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## obscenehaiku

As soon as I figure out a book isn't going to get any better, I will put it down. This is not an option with required reading for school. The absolute worst I ever had to read was _Johnny Tremain_. It was so unspeakably boring that the teacher didn't even read it. I wasn't too fond of _The Outsiders_, either.


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## Patrick Beverley

Mira said:


> Hm, I really liked Jane Eyre. I do kinda think you have to be female to get any joy from this book though...


You really don't.

Patrick
Gender: male


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## Mira

Well, that's good!! You liked it??


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## enron1982

lin said:


> Most of the bad books I read were in English class in high school.   They don't WANT guys to read novels so they give them Lord of the Flies and Jane Eyre and SILAS FUCKING MARNER and all that turgid crap.  THen for a little light, youth reading, Catch in the Fucking Rye.
> 
> .



Hmm, i actually liked Lord of the Flies, and thought it was one of the few decent books i read in english class. The Great Gatsby, too.  Other than that though, there weren't many, that's for sure.


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## BlackWolf

I liked Lord of the Flies too. I haven't read the others, though.


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## Linton Robinson

And of desperate significance to the rest of us.

I heard some Chicano kids I know talking once, saying, like "Well, we're Mexican and Charley is Irish, so we've got all this culture, but Kim's just a plain WASP american and doesn't have any culture."


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## Raging_Hopeful

Ick. I really didn't care for the Great Gatsby... but dug Lord of the Flies, though it took a second read to develop that liking.

Worst books ever? The Left Behind series. Took a great idea and BUTCHERED it with the most contrived writing ever. And to think... trees had to die for that drivel.


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## Linton Robinson

Holy shit.  I can't beleive there is somebody alive who liked Silas Marner.  Wow.


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## Patrick Beverley

Mira said:


> Well, that's good!! You liked it??


Loved it.



			
				lin said:
			
		

> Holy shit. I can't beleive there is somebody alive who liked Silas Marner. Wow.


It's true.


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## The Backward OX

Johnnyelvis said:


> Worst book ever written?
> 
> Wonderland Avenue by Danny Sugarman. Interesting story, reads like it was written by a Koala bear with fused fingers.


 
Koalas ain't bears, they're marsupials.

Still, you wouldn't expect a Pom to know that, would you? 

Fused fingers? You've been watching Phil Tufnell too much, m'lad.


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## howowiginal

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. I felt strangley out of breath after reading it.


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## SFeigley

Flowers in the Attic - V.C. Andrews

I read the entire thing because I kept thinking to myself, surely there has to be some form of redemption before it ends. Something that will make me be able to trick myself into believing that I didn't just wast a ridiculous amount of time reading about some kids being treated like pure garbage. Ofcourse there was the love story that I could enjoy... um between the brother and sister. Sorry, no enjoyment there for me. However, don't let me discourage you, if arsenic powdered donuts for kids is your cup of tea, then this is clearly the book for you.

Blech.


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## Blossom

Patrick Beverley said:
			
		

> If I haven't misinterpreted -- you're saying you read all the way through these books, despite the fact that you hated them? All three of those books are over four hundred pages long -- that would mean that you were prepared to wince, by your account, four hundred times without giving up. You sure are a sucker for punishment.


  LOL. I never actually considered that ... but it's true XD I didn't actually read all the way through the Da Vinci Code, thank goodness, but I did read Prophecy of the Gems and Eragon. Wouldn't read them again though.


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## Joelle

_The Notebook_ or _The Wedding_ by Nicholas Sparks.

Firstly, let me just say how much I abhor Nicholas Sparks. He has to be one of the most overrated authors ever, mostly with a younger audience who hasn't read anything else and thinks that his cliches and mechanical metaphors are deep when, actually, they're just irritating. My aunt bought me both _The Notebook_ (because I like the movie) and _The Wedding_, so I felt obligated to read them.

_The Notebook_ - usually I'm not prone to thinking a movie is better than its original book form, but this time, I am. Absolute garbage.

_The Wedding_ - sort-of sequel to _The Notebook_. I read it because I didn't want to waste my aunt's money and because I thought "Well lots of people like him, maybe he just had a writing lapse with _The Notebook_." But no. _The Wedding_ was entirely predictable, entirely tedious, and entirely crap.

Maybe I'm being a little too harsh. But no, actually, I don't think so. I saw Nicholas Sparks' name as the #1 spot on a best seller list, and I nearly had a spasm in the middle of the supermarket.

Hate him.


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## Rumrunner

The one that springs most immediately to mind, possibly the only one that's made me want to go on a book-burning spree, is _Catcher in the Rye_.  Though, come to think of it, _Song of Solomon_ is probably right up there with it.

Cheers,

Rumrunner


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## JoannaMac

Anything by Dean Koontz makes me want to vommit.


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## Tanner Man

*Jim Davidson: Close to the Edge *


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## Michael

_Jupiter_ by Ben Bova is up there for me in terms of bad reading.  I started underlining particularly bad passages to serve as warnings for those who come after me.

_Otherland_ by Tad Williams was also pretty bad.  I didn't finish that one.

_The Da Vinci Code_ and _Angels & Demons_ were also terrible, terrible books.


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## DamionAlexander

I had to put down Michael Crichton's _The Terminal Man_. I usually really like his work, but reading about the moral implications of 35 year old science was enough to put me to sleep.


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## Jolly McJollyson

lin said:


> Most of the bad books I read were in English class in high school.   They don't WANT guys to read novels so they give them Lord of the Flies and Jane Eyre and SILAS FUCKING MARNER and all that turgid crap.  THen for a little light, youth reading, Catch in the Fucking Rye.
> 
> Other than that I don't finish worse books.
> 
> EXCEPT, for some reason I read one by Brett Easton Ellis and two by Michael McInnery,  the two poster boys for disaffected lame-ass eighties coke-lit.   I think with those I just got fascinated by how awful the were and tried to figure out why so many people didn't realize it.


...

They didn't want guys to read novels so they gave you...classic novels?


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## quarterscot

Tanner Man said:


> *Jim Davidson: Close to the Edge *


 
Oh, please tell me that was a novel by Jim 'Nick nick I hate black people' Davidson. The mind does literally boggle, if that's possible. 

My recent entries: _In Arcadia_ by Ben Okri, a pretentious, meandering pile of poo by somebody a tenth as clever as he thinks he is; and _The Da Vinci Code_, for more reasons than mathmatics can count. But the winner is still Elizabeth Gaskell's _North and South_, another one set by an English teacher who really, really hates children.


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## Writer Kitten

In addition to _Eragon_, and its sequel (that my mind has blocked the memory of, possibly in defense or because my friend and I rented the movie and heckled it the entire way through), I'd like to put up _The Outstretched Shadow_ by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory, as well as its subsequent sequels. 

Normally, I adore Lackey, and all her poorly written gay relationships and emo-sparkly-teens with ANGST, but that series of books just made me wince and wonder what drugs she was on to decide that _that_ was a good idea.

Also regarding forced school reading; I don't think that there was _one_ book I enjoyed in school when being forced to read it. That, however, might have been my teacher's complete inability to enjoy a story and would only drone on and on and on about the symbolism of everything right down to the colour of the characters' _hair_.

... Our clash over Shakespeare was rather amusing.


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## Grim

JoannaMac said:


> Anything by Dean Koontz makes me want to vommit.


 

I keep a plastic baggie in my pocket with Dean's pic on it, just in case I come across one of his in the store.

Being a historical fantasy lad myself, I was tricked into reading the DragonLance Chronicles by Margarette Weis and Tracy Hickman. It was absolute trash, cover to cover, with cardboard characters and dice-rolled fight sequences. It's also obvious at one point that they run out of ideas, because book 2 contains about 150 pages of aimless wandering in which the plot of book 1 is utterly forgotten.
Margarette. Tracy.. Listen to me.

No, put the damn dice down and _listen_.

Just because you play a _really, *really, *_*really* long game of dungeons and dragons (jesus, you're 56 years old) does not mean you get to slap a spine on it and call it literature.


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## Brian Williams

I agree with Joelle.  The Notebook is horrible!  I don't think I even got through the first chapter.  I am just glad I got it from the library and didn't spend any money on it.

Also, has anyone read any Danielle Steele books?  My smother-in-law gave me a bunch of her books.  Her characters are such stereotypes.  _Why is she so popular?  _


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## ClancyBoy

Brian Williams said:


> Also, has anyone read any Danielle Steele books?  My smother-in-law gave me a bunch of her books.  Her characters are such stereotypes.  _Why is she so popular?  _



Clever things make dumb people feel dumber.  A lot of people just want familiarity and comfort, and Ms. Steele provides that.

Why do people continue to read and write books about elves and orcs?  Same reason.


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## jpatricklemarr

Threads like this interest me because we all (I do it myself at times) throw our personal dislikes around as though we are the authority on good writing. There are many "classics" that I simply can't stomach, but I would never go so far as to say they were "dumb" or poorly written. What is the measure we use to weigh such things?

I happen to like Dean Koontz. Is he a genius? Maybe not, but he's prolific, and I find him fun to read. I like that he writes about genuinely good people. Anti-heroes are overdone. He's also one of the few secular authors that I've seen write about Christian characters without making them hypocrites or stereotype conservatives. That's my opinion, but you also have to look at how many books the man sells. He's doing something right, so why should I sit here and assume a good portion of the populace is wrong about an author when it could be me.

I didn't read past the plot description for _The Davinci Code _before I knew it wasn't for me, but does that make all the people who loved it wrong? I guess I'm not impressed with myself enough to make that leap. It's all a matter of opinion and perspective. No matter what you call "good" writing, it's still just your idea or definition vs. someone elses.

A book, in my opinion, can be a thoughtful well-written essay on our culture, or a loosely written thrill-ride that makes me chuckle. If I like it, what difference does it make if it stands the test of time? I've seen an enormous number of kids reading Eragon at the school where I work. If it, or a comic book, or a hot rod magazine gets them to put their PSP down and read, more power to those writers.

J


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## niftydrumdude

razor's edge


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## niftydrumdude

actually might be catcher and the rye


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## Adjective Ocean

JoannaMac said:


> Anything by Dean Koontz makes me want to vommit.



Why you hatin on the Koontz? Granted, he isn't amazing, but I haven't read a book by him (I've read around 5, Twilight Eyes, False Memories, etc.) that I didn't find decent. Oh well, everyone has opinions and they have a tendency to differ. Twilight Eyes was probably my favorite next to The Face, which I believe had a very nicely delivered message at the end.


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## Four Lucky Spades

There was this one book, so horrible I forget the name, about a women who 'supposably' commits suicide while wearing a scolds bridel (YES! Thats the name of the book! Scolds Bridle). By page thirty I didn't give a rats ass about who killed her, why, or if she actually just offed herself. Maybe not bad writing (awhile go) but bored the hell outta me.


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## Luzici

niftydrumdude said:


> actually might be catcher and the rye


 
Seconded without the might be.


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## Athlynne

Oh, dear.  Am I the only one who liked "The Da Vinci Code"?

Worst book I ever read would probably be "Brave New World".  I know, I know, it's a classic, but it's the only book I've ever literally thrown across the room.


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## sputnik_15

in my opinion, i liked eragon  i thaught it was a good read 

but

the worse ive ever read was.. probably...
"when zackary beaver came to town" the story about the fat kid who moved into a small town.. yeah i thaught it was stupid


but i like books like eragon, its a easy read that kept me interested. i dident mind the cliches of it.


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## Nillani

any janette oke book *shivers*


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## DLFerguson

lin said:


> Holy shit.  I can't beleive there is somebody alive who liked Silas Marner.  Wow.



Agreed.  I had to read that thing in Junior High School and write a book report and I swore that I'd never so much as look at it again once I finished.


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## DLFerguson

kenewbie said:


> Clive Cussler - Atlantis Found.
> 
> I should have guessed it looking at the cover, the MC is named "Dirk Pitt". It sounds something out of a horribly cheesy novel. Which it is.
> 
> The book is an exercise in clichés and pulp-plots. They find Atlantis, there are of course special ops teams with fantastic not-really-existent-yet technology, and Nazi gold!
> 
> The best part is; at one point the author inserts himself, as a real person, into the book and helps resolve the plot. Deus ex Machina doesn't quite cover it, it needs it's own term.
> 
> It is bad to a point that I use it to cross-reference other books on amazon. If the book I contemplate buying figures on any "listmania"'s that also contain works by Cussler, I push it to the bottom of the list.
> 
> After reading it I started bringing my own books to holidays, the selection they carry at the beach-side kiosks aren't that fantastic.
> 
> k



Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels are inspired by the 1930's pulp adventures and movie serial cliffhangers so if you've never read any, such as the Doc Savage series which Cussler cites as being a main influence of his writing then I suppose that the genre does come of as being somewhat cheesy.  I enjoy 'em greatly, though and have 'em all as well as most of the Bantam Doc Savage paperbacks.

Clive Cussler put himself into one of his books strictly as a joke and a way to help him get through a bad patch of writing.  He fully expected that his editor would take out the scene but turns out his editor liked it and left it in.  So Cussler continued the gag in the following books


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## Deleted member 14306

I read the first Charlie Bone book of a children's series a few years ago. 

... the thread title says it all.


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## SevenWritez

_Fuck _Eragon. That is all.


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## Nillani

ok... could you refrain from using the language please?


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## Truth-Teller

Really.

I prefer Eragon over Harry Potter, anyday. Not because the storytelling is better, or the idea is executed flawlessly, but because Christopher writes smooth run-on sentences that flow, unlike Rowling's choppy water.


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## Rahvin

_The Handmaid's Tale_. If I hadn't had to read it for my english course, I would have burned it. It is the only book I have ever read that I have actually had to _force_ myself to read. Three-hundred-odd pages, and not one sentence below six lines long. Half the speech doesn't have speech marks (and yes, I know that it was done for effect, and I know the effect, but it sucks. It's impossible to tell which parts are being said and which parts are being thought), and the plot is nonexistent. It literally ends at the same point it began at, and it doesn't even circle round. _Nothing happens_. At all.

And the sad thing is, it could have been good. It was actually a pretty good setting, but the characters, plot, and grammar seem to have been forgotten. The characters are not characters, they are simple dialogue machines. They exist to say things at particular points, and that's it. Including the main character. That is was written in first person, present tense (or sometimes past tense, it switches randomly) really doesn't help, either.


Sorry about that. I just had to study it at college.


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## lisajane

Animal Farm. Yes, I know it's a classic, and despite not reading it 1984 does sound good, but I read the first couple chapters of Animal Farm and thoguht it was boring cause of the fact it has animals (I'm against animal-books, I just can't stand them).

It didn't help that it was for school, or that my highly-respected English teacher started the book by going 'Feel free to fall asleep during reading of this novel, I can't stand it either'.


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## Rahvin

I find most of the "classics" (that I've read) to actually be very, unbelievable, incredibly boring. The characters aren't characters, just plot devices without personalities, the plots are so often static, or else so slow moving that you forget what hapopens thrugh boredom, and the grammar is... well, to put it this way, I wouldn't want to submit something like it. Adjectives and adverbs infest them, slowing the pace to less than a crawl. While you can never have enough description; it is nontheless perfectly possible to have too much in one place. Very often, the average sentence length will be well over five lines.

While we _can_ learn from them, I find it stupid that people hold them as the absolute pinnacle of the writer's craft. They're not. We have moved on from then, honest. That's why we study them. The classic authours were brilliant writers for their time, but not any more. Good, yes. Brilliant, no.

Also, one more thing that annoys me is when people point to the classics, and say that they are still popular books, and quote sales figures. This is pointless. Why? Because, over the world, there are millions of students who are forced to actually go out and buy these books for courses, not to mention the secondary schools (and their equivalents), who have to buy in bulk for their classes. Sales figures for classic books in no way reflect their actual popularity, but rather the course syllabus.


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## ClancyBoy

Athlynne said:


> Oh, dear.  Am I the only one who liked "The Da Vinci Code"?




Did you finish it?

Spoilers follow +++++++++++++++++++++++++





The book entirely failed to pay off.  It promised secret societies, puzzles, a really scary antagonist, and a great quest.

The great secret society turned out to be nothing of the kind.  

The antagonist turned out to be an 80-year-old paraplegic.  Oooh, suspense!

The puzzles started to get really repetitive.  When the first cryptex contained a second cryptex I almost screamed.  That, and I guessed the answer immediately.  Newton->apple.  Dur dur durr.

The self-flagulating albino that he built up for so long turned out to be almost completely irrelevant.

The quest ended up right back where it started, and they didn't actually find anything.  What the hell were all the puzzles and secrecy for?  There was nothing there!

That, and in the first chapter Brown mentioned that the main character was claustrophobic.  I stupidly made myself remember that, thinking that, like Chekov's dueling pistols, he mentioned it because it would be important later.  It wasn't

And also most of the facts about the paintings turned out to be BS.


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## Destroyer

Books based on films. The authors never really bother much because they know the book will be published anyway simply because it' linked to a popular film or tv series.
 And Starcraft books. I start reading them and can't stand it.


----------



## Thoth

its a 3 way tie from the same author (King)
Dark Half/Gerald's Game/Hearts in Atlantis


----------



## aspiretowrite

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. Tried to capitalise on the amazing Jane Eyre and failing miserably - it was a pointless book.

Anything by Jane Austin - she capitulated to Victorian England's value of nice women get their man and indepenent free spirited youngsters who don't know their place have to settle for the older gentlemen courting them in the first place.

John Grisham's later works including King of Torts, The Testament, and The Partner. Borrrrrrrrring and what about the endings.

James Joyce - Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man - you either love it or hate it. I hated it but in my defence I had to readit as part of my university degree.


----------



## Athlynne

"The book entirely failed to pay off. It promised secret societies, puzzles, a really scary antagonist, and a great quest."

Well, I thought the quest was pretty great.  I also liked the puzzles.

"The great secret society turned out to be nothing of the kind."

Do you mean in real life, or in the book?  I'm a bit confused. 

"The antagonist turned out to be an 80-year-old paraplegic. Oooh, suspense!"

I hadn't expected him to be the villain, so I found it suspenseful.

"The puzzles started to get really repetitive. When the first cryptex contained a second cryptex I almost screamed. That, and I guessed the answer immediately. Newton->apple. Dur dur durr."

Again, I really liked the puzzles.  Maybe I'm less intelligent than you; I only guessed one beforehand.

"The self-flagulating albino that he built up for so long turned out to be almost completely irrelevant."

I don't know, he gave the protagonist a fair bit of trouble for a while.

"The quest ended up right back where it started, and they didn't actually find anything. What the hell were all the puzzles and secrecy for? There was nothing there!"

Really?  As I recall, the book ends with Langdon realizing where the Grail must be by finally correctly interpreting the last riddle.  I was quite moved.

"That, and in the first chapter Brown mentioned that the main character was claustrophobic. I stupidly made myself remember that, thinking that, like Chekov's dueling pistols, he mentioned it because it would be important later. It wasn't."

I didn't expect it to figure largely in the plot; I would've found that cheesy and predictable, in fact.  It was just a detail used to flesh out the character.

"And also most of the facts about the paintings turned out to be BS."

<shrug>  Didn't ruin the story for me.

I know there's a lot of Da Vinci Code-hate here, but it was a really popular book.  I'm obviously not the only person who loved it.  Well, to each his own.


----------



## Sybre

The Lake by Richard Laymon
So absolutely dreadful you have to keep reading it to see if it could possibly get any worse.  
It does.


----------



## Thoth

probably anything that Faustling, Clancy or FW plan to publish.


----------



## Edgewise

At the moment:  

"The Things They Carried".  Than again, after reading "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest" I suppose ANYTHING would suck.


----------



## Erik Buchanan

"The Green Rider"  by Kristen Britian.

The single biggest mass of Fantasy story cliche's I have had the misfortune to read.


----------



## Amara-J

I saw the word "classics" and had to scream in joy. ;-) 

I really have bad memories of dragging myself through the proverbial mud patch of _The Swiss Family Robinson. _I was in my pre-teens when I read that, tried to read it again during my teens, and have sworn off that darned book ever since. It's a botanical and zoological encyclopedia in the ill-conceived guise of an adventure story. Pah. This is basically the book's summary: 

1) People get shipwrecked on an island.
2) People start eking out a living on said island.
3) An exploration party (mostly consisting of father and 2 sons) go out to explore said island.
4) Exploration party discovers new animal / plant that's exotic and useful to the people stuck on the island, in some way. (i.e. cotton and ostriches).
5) Exploration party is enamoured with new discovery and ships the latter back to the main camp, where it is put to good effect. 
6) *** _Rinse and repeat steps 3 to 5.

_Being the nitpicker that I am, I had to stop and ask why oh why were cotton plants, ostriches, coconut trees (and other odd semblances of wildlife) mixing freely on the island, but also why was the author tempted to recycle steps 3 to 5 ad nauseum. Ran out of plot? 

Oh, and I'd also nominate the _Dune _series and the _Thomas Covenant_ books (Stephen Donaldson), but I think my major failing was reading both at the wrong age. I tried to tackle both when I was eleven, and completely lost it. Someday I might be brave enough to try again.


----------



## Mr Sci Fi

Eragon.

I'll never touch a YA novel again.


----------



## alanmt

I own a scholarly work about the nature of English social, economic, political and cultural life at the time roman authority was collapsing, a subject of great interest to me:

"England in the Age of Arthur"

The author takes a fascinating subject and turns it into the densest drudgery imaginable.  I keep it on my bedside table as a 100% effective cure for insomnia. Two paragraphs is all it takes.


----------



## Amara-J

SFeigley said:


> Flowers in the Attic - V.C. Andrews
> 
> I read the entire thing because I kept thinking to myself, surely there has to be some form of redemption before it ends. Something that will make me be able to trick myself into believing that I didn't just wast a ridiculous amount of time reading about some kids being treated like pure garbage. Ofcourse there was the love story that I could enjoy... um between the brother and sister. Sorry, no enjoyment there for me. However, don't let me discourage you, if arsenic powdered donuts for kids is your cup of tea, then this is clearly the book for you.
> 
> Blech.



When I was in law class for my matriculation year, our (female) teacher was in love with this book and its author. She said it was great, even the love story part. Beats me, but I'm sure the other twenty people in my class had the same expression as I:  this :|.

I'm glad I never got into Harlequin romances and their ilk.


----------



## cinder and smoke

Brave New World. Sorry, but I wanted to shoot myself after reading that.


----------



## Winterstorm

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by some chick


----------



## tellerKay

The quest by Martin Langfield

I cannot explain it, i just hate that book so much.


----------



## abbeyd21

The worst book I've read that I can remember was Black House by stephen King and somone else.  To be honest the book wasn't bad untill the end.  I hated the way it ended.  After I finished it I was actually upset that the chose to solve everything the way they did.  It made me regret wasting my time with the rest of the book.  

I personally have a lot of trouble with the "classics."  I can understand the value that they have but most of them are so dense that it takes a week to read 10 pages.  Not only that it feels like most of the others are showing their superior intelligence in the way they write the books.  I don't care if a book has perfect grammer and all that.  If I can't feel for the characters or follow whats going on because I have to look up 5 words per page I'm not going to stick with a book.  I want to be challenged but not made to feel stupid.


----------



## Travmire

_The Little Engine that Could_, it gave away the ending in the title.  Couldn't it be called _The Little Engine that Might Be Able To_, just for intrigue?  

Seriously though, the worst book I've read is probably _Pulp_ by Charles Bukowski.  I enjoyed _The Post Office_ a lot and would recommend it, but not _Pulp_.  It was the only other novel by Bukowski that my library had, and I'm sorry that my name is listed among those who've checked it out.  I think it is meant to be a satire of pulp fiction, but instead of making fun of the clichés, it embraces them.  Somewhere aliens become involved in the PI plot, and I have no idea what that ending was supposed to be.

Also, I try to avoid anything that's currently popular, _The Notebook_'s and _Davinic Code_'s of the world.  I know this sounds pretentious, but I find it to also be the truth in most cases; books like that are usually crap.  If something is popular, then that means that it has to be simple enough to be accepted by a large audience.  They follow literary traditions and techniques that have been used and overused, and they offer nothing provoking or challenging.

One thing I don't understand though is the hatred of _Cather In the Rye_.  Is the book overrated?  Probably--I would never let it become the spiritual text of my life.  The plot, yes it does have one, is interesting, and Holden is a memorable character.  I do think that _Nine Stories_ should be considered Salinger's best work though.  _Seymour an Introduction_ was a struggle to read, and it's definitely not for everyone.  Overall though, I found it worth the struggle.  I enjoyed the discussion of luck and skill.


----------



## Patrick

For the first 40 pages or so, of Angela carter's "Wise Children" I detested it but I have to say, I was completely won over by the end and the second time I read it, I just thought wow, great writing.

I suppose, if I really have a book that I never got into, and could never read again, it would have to "The Lord Of The Rings". I just never enjoyed the characters, the descriptions were far too long and I was just glad to finish it. It really was a massive struggle to read.


----------



## GloryGloryManUtd

Eragon, without a doubt. I've never wanted to burn a book until after reading that piece of tripe.


----------



## Korkskrew

The Silmarillion. It's unreadable.


----------



## Wallmaker

Hands down: The Woman at Otowi Crossing by Frank Waters. 

No one in our class was digging it...especially after Refuge by Terry Tempest Willaims.  Man, that was a long, enduring month.

Of course, Da Vinci Code takes the cake.  What bad bad BAD writing.


----------



## DLFerguson

Mermaid on the breakwater said:


> For the first 40 pages or so, of Angela carter's "Wise Children" I detested it but I have to say, I was completely won over by the end and the second time I read it, I just thought wow, great writing.
> 
> I suppose, if I really have a book that I never got into, and could never read again, it would have to "The Lord Of The Rings". I just never enjoyed the characters, the descriptions were far too long and I was just glad to finish it. It really was a massive struggle to read.



Agreed.  I've had a set of LOTR in hardcover ever since I was in High School and to date I've never been able to get past page 50 of the first book without falling asleep.  Tolkien just isn't for me.  Every couple of years I take another whack at it but no go.  I'd rather read Robert E. Howard or Michael Moorcock.


----------



## Patrick

I read the whole book but it took me about 4 months. Painful reading.


----------



## The Cloaked Stranger

To be fair, Tolkien was never prepared to publish the Silmarillion (I think his son published it?) and if I'm wrong that's certainly true of Unfinished Tales.

When authors appear in their own books it is called Metafiction.  I"m not sure if I like the idea or not.

But the book I disliked reading the most was "Forrest Gump" because I saw the movie first.  They are nothing alike, aside from a few plot points and some dialogue -- in the movie, Gump comes across as sweet, in the book he seems like a jerk.

The Inheritors won a pulitzer or a nobel, but I thought it was boring -- the book is written the way a Neanderthal might think, with no abstract thought, no sense of the future -- and the last chapter, where they meet homo sapiens (us) is written like a normal novel.  The writing style, while a smart experiment, drags on and on -- could have been a smart short story, didn't need to be a novel.


----------



## Amara-J

The only thing memorable about the Silmarillion was finding out that Tolkien had given one of his kingdoms / lands within Middle-Earth the prestigious name of "Tuna". My friends and I laughed for days.


----------



## ClancyBoy

DLFerguson said:


> Agreed.  I've had a set of LOTR in hardcover ever since I was in High School and to date I've never been able to get past page 50 of the first book without falling asleep.  Tolkien just isn't for me.  Every couple of years I take another whack at it but no go.  I'd rather read Robert E. Howard or Michael Moorcock.



I think Sam and Gollum are some of the most memorable characters in literature.

I admit though, whenever Elrond or the Noble Men of Rohan and Gondor start bloviating about duty and honor I start skimming.

And to be fair, the Silmarilion isn't really intended as a novel.  I don't think you're supposed to "read" it, per se.


----------



## Lance

Any of the Goosebumps books.


----------



## Sniper McGee

Lance said:


> Any of the Goosebumps books.



Oh dear god....

Dont even talk about those things.

Ugg, my skin is crawling.

-Bryce out


----------



## New Moon

Eragon was pretty bad, I didn't hate it, it did have a decent pace.
  The worst book for me though was one titled "Alison". My name is Allison and so I was curious to read it. I never ever thought it would end up being the worst possible book I've read. The plot was stupid, the characters easy to hate and the writing was nothing to talk of.


----------



## wheelz1138

The Da Vinci Code is by far the worst book I've read. I only got slightly past the murder at the museum before I gave up. It seemed so lacking in vital description (such as hardly anything about the main character), and focuses quite a bit on descriptions that leave the reader totally confused to their importance (such as the details about the museum pyramid). Fortunately the movie had been out for a while by the time I read the book so I just imagined Tom Hanks in the book. I didn't actually see the movie till much later though. Once I did, I was hooked. The book sucks. The movie is one of the best I've ever seen.
_I actually got permission in high school to opt out of reading Catcher in the Rye in exchange for another teacher-approved book._


----------



## jewellz

Anything by Nicholas Sparks.  Honestly I can't figure out why people like him.  Also, that _Five People you Meet in Heaven _book.  I really wish I could get those hours of my life back.  Ick.


----------



## jewellz

Oh yeah, and also Eragon.  That book was completely unreadable.  But to be fair, I never did get past the first 50 pages


----------



## damselfly

I don't know what people saw in Jodi Picoult, and I gave her the benefit of the doubt by thinking that maybe it was her content that sold it. "My Sister's Keeper" was really bad. Overload of drama - very poignant in the whole ethical law issues but seriously, it was just so OTT. Everything else was just predictable and a little too boring. I was really angry I wasted an afternoon reading that book. It's so overrated.


----------



## ClancyBoy

The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Maybe not the worst, but Lord it ain't good.  I think I would have to be autistic to enjoy it.

Around chapter two the MC is running toward something, and Robinson describes the feeling in his chest as two globes of ice in his lungs that cool his rapidly beating heart.
No one in the Awful Fiction thread even came up with a metaphor that horrible.  Dear sweet merciful zombie Jesus!!


----------



## Delvok

Well, this is probobably going to stir up some shit but oh well.

The Fellowship of the Ring. I read 3/4 of that and wanted to shove a fork up my nose.


----------



## ClancyBoy

Delvok said:


> Well, this is probobably going to stir up some shit but oh well.
> 
> The Fellowship of the Ring. I read 3/4 of that and wanted to shove a fork up my nose.



I can see that.  It's very slow getting started and the Council of Elrond has to be the most boring 60 pages ever printed.  

The rest of it is, IMO, great stuff.


----------



## Queen_Bee

_Dracula. _We had to read it for Language Arts last year, and then we watched the movie. Our teachers censoring wasn't what it could have been. Ew.


----------



## JHB

Anything by Ed Greenwood, mainly his godawful Elminster series. Is that man a freaking pervert or something? Every book I've read of his all the female characters get naked at one point or another. Now, that's not really _bad... _but the way he does it makes me shiver....


----------



## Eli Cash

lin said:


> EXCEPT, for some reason I read one by Brett Easton Ellis and two by Michael McInnery,  the two poster boys for disaffected lame-ass eighties coke-lit.



You mean Jay McInerey? You gotta admire a guy who has the balls to do an entire novel in the second person then sell it to be made into a movie starring Michael J. Fox.

God those bastards were crazy in the eighties.


----------



## Reluctant Hero

Everyone that gets a book published should be congratulated, not least becasue of the time and effort that has gone into it.

However, there are just some books you wonder how on earth they found a willing publisher.

One of those is The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger.  I didn't take to it at all.  With a name like The Dissident, I was waiting for something politically exciting to happen.

Having waded through all three or four hundred pages, I am still waiting...


----------



## Eli Cash

Eli Cash said:


> You mean Jay McInerey? You gotta admire a guy who has the balls to do an entire novel in the second person then sell it to be made into a movie starring Michael J. Fox.
> 
> God those bastards were crazy in the eighties.




Plus, look what I found on Wikipedia:



> Director Wes Anderson has stated that his character of Eli Cash in the film The Royal Tenenbaums is loosely based on McInerney.



I'm _based_ on him. Now you gotta love him.


----------



## Chupacabra

Running with Scissors. It was on a table of books being given away, now I know why.


----------



## IsEverybodyIn89

*Bad books*

Catcher in the Rye a bad book? I'm in high school and I relate to the book pretty well. I think others don't like it because of the narrative of one single character. That and annoying? If you look at the book from a rebel's point of view,wouldn't it be a much better story?


----------



## Rabid Euphoria

Gentlehands.  Can't recall who wrote it. Had to read it for Grade 9 English.  It was about a teenager who discovered that an old man in town was an ex Nazi and he befriends him. It was not unlike Apt Pupil, it just lacked all the interesting things Apt Pupil contained.  

All in all, I give this book five steaming turds.


----------



## FMK

Easily _The Metamorphosis._ Being forced to select a book off of my high school AP reading list, I tried to go with one that sounded interesting. A man turning into a bug? That's definitely a more entertaining idea than a filthy rich white guy (_Great Gatsby_) or the life of some Afghan kid I couldn't care less for (_Kite Runner_). But Kafka just slaughtered that potential and showed the corpse to everyone who picked up his book. For one, he wakes up, sees he's been turned into a bug, and is remarkably more concerned with the fact that he's late for work. And then Kafka feels the need to make sure we know just _exactly_ how he gets out of bed and just _exactly_ how he turns the key to open his bedroom door. This is to be followed by monologues the length of presidential speeches that seem in no way natural. 

Arrgh! I can't _stand_ it when people write like this. Get to the freaking point; don't dedicate half a page to detailing how the main character operates his door's conventional lock! Thank God this story was so mercifully short.


----------



## ClancyBoy

I thought the excruciating detail was the whole point.

Eh, I agree though that it's not much fun to read.  It is interesting to talk about though.
Actually that goes for most of Kafka's writing.  More fun to talk about than read.


----------



## The Thing

I nominate "The Pillars of Rome" by Jack Ludlow. It's so badly written, generic, and cliched.


----------



## Edgewise

FMK said:


> Easily _The Metamorphosis._ Being forced to select a book off of my high school AP reading list, I tried to go with one that sounded interesting. A man turning into a bug? That's definitely a more entertaining idea than a filthy rich white guy (_Great Gatsby_) or the life of some Afghan kid I couldn't care less for (_Kite Runner_). But Kafka just slaughtered that potential and showed the corpse to everyone who picked up his book. For one, he wakes up, sees he's been turned into a bug, and is remarkably more concerned with the fact that he's late for work. And then Kafka feels the need to make sure we know just _exactly_ how he gets out of bed and just _exactly_ how he turns the key to open his bedroom door. This is to be followed by monologues the length of presidential speeches that seem in no way natural.
> 
> Arrgh! I can't _stand_ it when people write like this. Get to the freaking point; don't dedicate half a page to detailing how the main character operates his door's conventional lock! Thank God this story was so mercifully short.


 
Tell me, in your own words, without Wiki-ing it, what the story was about.  Otherwise, one can only assume that you didn't "get it".  
















Oh, yeah...don't diss "Kite Runner".  That was a great book.


----------



## CroZ

Terry Pratchett's Soul Music, but it's about to be replaced by the Fifth Elephant. That guy's getting lazy.


----------



## the pioneers

_Vanishing Acts_ by Jodi Picoult. Truly, it pains me to write this author in the worst category, because most of her books are up there with the books I could read over and over. The book itself wasn't poorly written, but the plot just dragged and I couldn't really see where she was taking the characters. So I got bored .. during exam season and never went back to it.

It's probably not the worst book I've read, but I can't recall any other book that I've not finished. Most of the time I like to give the book a shot, get half way through it and then feel I have to finish it because I've read most of it. Yeah, I have issues =P I've probably blanked out a few of them, but it's definitely not a book I enjoyed.


----------



## ladyjazzkiller

I might get punched in the face for this, but I absolutely appall _The Catcher in the Rye_!

I found it completely shallow and pointless. It was so hard to get anything from it because the incessant cursing was incredibly distracting, and the repetitiveness of it made me want to set it on fire. Never again!

"Why did you keep reading it?" you ask. The answer to that is simple: it was required for school, and I didn't have any other option.


----------



## Vines

As I Lay Dying


----------



## L'Oiseau Noir

Man, if I had to pick out a few books I hate...

One of them was that god-awful novel by Jacqueline Woodson, _If You Come Softly_. 

I had to read it for my eighth grade literacy class, and it was, by far, one of the most terrible pieces of literary crap I've ever had shoved down my throat. The entire freaking story was about some Jewish girl who dates this African-American kid, and it's full of teenage angst and woe, with an ending that was so out-of-the-blue and bad it had me laughing rather than crying (in any case you're wondering, as I'm sure you won't want to read it, the boy she was dating dies).  It was terribly written with a boring plot, and full of stereotypes like the rich caucasian kid from a racist family, and the poor african-american kid who accepts everyone and everything. No offense meant to either, I'm just stating it's stereotypes I always see popping up in crappy hollywood movies and television shows. 

Secondly would be _The Outsiders_ by S.E Hinton, which I had to read in my eighth grade class as well. There were so many grammatical errors, and the plot was terrible. It was basically just about fighting, then having the Greasers go somewhere to smoke.  Rinse and repeat. The dialog was boring, as were the characters, and the plot stagnated somewhere between, oh, I don't know, chapter 1. 

Never do I wish to suffer through either of these books again.


----------



## L'Oiseau Noir

Accidental Double-Post! Sorry!


----------



## FMK

Edgewise said:


> Tell me, in your own words, without Wiki-ing it, what the story was about. Otherwise, one can only assume that you didn't "get it".
> 
> 
> Oh, yeah...don't diss "Kite Runner". That was a great book.


I will gladly admit that I didn't "get it." How could I? He rambled so much that I lost concentration repeatedly and kept having to either read parts again or look them up online. The latter happened more often, since I could hardly bring myself to sift through that thing more than once.


----------



## Jack Rains

Cry, the Beloved Country, wait no Yellow Raft on Blue Water or some such thing.


----------



## RebelGoddess

Blossom said:


> Mine:
> 
> _The Prophecy of the Gems_



Just opened the thread, saw that title and had to post my agreement!!!

I was literally thinking of that book (called _ The Prophecy of the Stones _ in the US) when I saw the title of this thread.

Granted, it's impressive for a 13 year old to have written, but definitely not good enough to have been published worldwide!

Racheal


----------



## lilacstarflower

Joan Aiken 'The Watsons'  I'm up for reading a novel that is the completion of an unfinished work by Jane Austen, but this is just terrible. First of all she tries way to hard to get all the minor details of everyday life stuck into the story that have absolutely no relevance to the plot or characters. THEN, she completely deviates from how the story was supposed to end by having the heroine fall in love with a character who she only met for four minutes, ten chapters earlier and who Austen never introduced to the story. The 'Darcy' of this piece - Mr Howard - is a coward (no rhyming intended) and it took me two weeks to read through because i kept picking it up and throwing it away every few pages. I couldn't just stop reading it - once i start something i have to finish which made me hate this book even more because i knew i wasting time getting to the end of a rubbish book

Maybe a bit harsh but it was truly crap - don't read it


----------



## SadLuckDame

A Window with a View, I just felt so bored with all of the politeness.


----------



## Tsaeb XIII

Well, it would be a close tie for me. The first candidate is Eragon (and Eldest, I forced myself through both just so that I knew what was so good about them [and even though I did read them, I'm still at a loss]). Both books were stereotyped and overly simple, not to mention anybody who has watched Star Wars or read a reasonable amount of fiction will find the plot 100% predictable. Not one of the plot 'twists' came as a suprise to me. 
Candidate number two is Looking for Alibrandi, which was a complete abomination. The sections which had the potential to be interesting were glossed over, and the rest of the book was as slow as a beginning driver who forgets that they can actually shift out of first gear. I would have stopped reading it, except it was part of our English course last year.


----------



## Fossy

THE BIBLE.

Too much sex in the beginning.


----------



## JosephB

Hard to say. I used to read into a book, thinking it might get better. Seems it never does. If I'm 2-3 chapter into it, and I don't like it, I'm done.

That being said, my neighbor, who is an otherwise intelligent and well educated individual, encouraged me to read _Tree of Smoke_, by [SIZE=-1]Denis Johnson and lent me his copy. [/SIZE][SIZE=-1]I'd heard _Jesus' Son,_ which is on all kinds of "best of" lists, was brilliant, so I gave it a shot. 

[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]It sucked, for more reasons then I can address here. Just plain _dumb_.[/SIZE]


----------



## PageOfCups

Guilty Pleasures by Luarel K Hamilton. I bought it out of curiousity (and for the reason I suspect ost people buy that book, it has vampires in it and a hot woman on the spine) and I miss my £7.99.

The whole thing was just painfully amaturish and the actions of most of the characters simply don't make sense, most notable the master vampire. If you're a typical 1000 years old you would have gained at least some common sense in that time. And some parts simply didn't match up.

What anoys me more though are the people who love the series telling me that it's just an introduction, that she needed to establish the characters. That's no excuse. If she wanted to grab people she should have made that book the best it could be. Then I get told to read the next couple, that they get better. I don't care. The first book was horrific. I'm not going to continue with the series if the first one didn't grab my interest.

(Sorry, I can't help but rant when it comes to this book.)


----------



## BOURBON

had to read Susan Hill's Woman In Black once. dreadful nonsense.


----------



## Danielle

The worst book I ever read was Ayn Rand's Anthem. It is painfully amateurish, lacks any grasp of language and has no flair whatsoever. I disagree so passionately with the manifesto in it.


----------



## desm

French Revolutions - Tim Moore
Which is atrociously bad. Followed by "Children of the ruins" - Thomas Wisemar, which is full of far to much crude sex and far too little story.


----------



## seigfried007

I don't recall hating any of the books I was required to read in lit classes (high school and below). If anything, I defended them before the rest of the class (most of which was just too lazy to bother reading them--had better things to do, which I didn't).

I'm not a terrible fan of Den Koontz. So far in my wanderings of his books, I've found a lot of his characters to be... formulaic. I'd see them on page one and know exactly how they'd end up by the end. Always do a 180. 

I bought one of his books at an airport so that I would have something to read on the flight... then spent the whole flight doing sudoku instead because I just couldn't get into the story (took so freaking long to go anywhere!)

R. A. Saltvatore's The Demon Awakens was hyped to no end by some friends of mine so I forced myself to read it (was nursing at the time so I had numerous stretches of time to do nothing but hold an infant and stare at a mauve wall). Even so, I couldn't actually finish this piece of crap. Skipped to the end and found out "Ho ho what!' that everyone I liked died heroically at the end and the scene-stealing hippie hack hero and his equally two-dimensional girlfriend lived. Hate this book--and not just because the demon was stupid and I happen to write perfectly intelligent, rational demons that groaned at every page.

rules of writing I gleaned from this piece:

1) Only kill off beloved characters
2) It's perfectly permissable to use the best characters as plot puppets
3) Elves are the coolest damned thing
4) Except rangers
5) and human rangers trained by elves
6) Religious institutions are all evil
7) Prostitutes are all nice people who need love like everyone else
8) Originality is a ruse--like pretty paint on the same old rotten egg
9) Members of non-human races do not have the ability to think for themselves


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## NaCl

Interesting question and difficult to answer. I don't stay long with any book that fails to catch my interest pretty early in the story. Consequently, I have a pile of books that failed to overcome my attention-span deficiency. I suppose I am what the A.D.D kid becomes in adulthood! LOL!

The other reason I can't remember the "worst" book is that I find it difficult to retain negative thoughts...people, books, experiences...if they are negative influences in my life I try to forget them. Life is easier that way.

I found one comment in this thread very interesting...the observation about high school reading assignments. SO TRUE! I struggled with English throughout those years, rebelling aginst the inane "classics" imposed on me. I refused to memorize the Shakespeare demanded by Mrs. McGinness; she told me I would be a miserable failure in life because I "felt" nothing when I read "The Scarlet Letter". On second thought, I would have to say that experience might qualify as the worst "book" I have ever read. I so disappointed her. I wonder...what would Mrs. McGinness think of my most recently completed 140,000 word manuscript? LOL!

Good question...stimulates thought.

.....NaCl


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## Vee

Worst Book - Emma.


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## vikingligrveldi

PageOfCups said:


> Guilty Pleasures by Luarel K Hamilton. I bought it out of curiousity (and for the reason I suspect ost people buy that book, it has vampires in it and a hot woman on the spine) and I miss my £7.99.
> 
> The whole thing was just painfully amaturish and the actions of most of the characters simply don't make sense, most notable the master vampire. If you're a typical 1000 years old you would have gained at least some common sense in that time. And some parts simply didn't match up.
> 
> What anoys me more though are the people who love the series telling me that it's just an introduction, that she needed to establish the characters. That's no excuse. If she wanted to grab people she should have made that book the best it could be. Then I get told to read the next couple, that they get better. I don't care. The first book was horrific. I'm not going to continue with the series if the first one didn't grab my interest.
> 
> (Sorry, I can't help but rant when it comes to this book.)




Yeah, it seems like it is really popular right now to make books with scantly-dressed heroines on the cover who are vampire or werewolf fighters. The literary equivalent of a bad Buffy episode...


The worst book I have read was War and Peace. That might offend some people, but I found it to be a boring tome about the petty squabbles of aristocrats...I had to read it for my Russian Lit class. Everyone else in the class raved about it, so maybe there is just something wrong with me.


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## cryptika

_The Da Vinci Code_. I only read it to see what all the fuss was about, and I'm still confused :-?


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## bryndavis

> The literary equivalent of a bad Buffy episode...


 
I hope you appreciate a good Buffy episode !

I think the worst novel I have read would have to be Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel.  I get that it's sweet and it's love and I get it's themes, and I even understand Magic Realism (and love it when put to good use), but this book's resolution is so bizzare that it destroys any credibility any of these characters possessed (which was little, because their thoughts and actions were completely unsympathetic.)


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## dickstreisand

I find it highly amusing how competition brings out the spite in other people! To me it seems highly obvious that you all demean the work of others in order to raise the profile of your own literary attempts! Shouldn't all artists grow together, encourage others to flower, and support their peers! Well I would assume that but maybe I'm being obtusely unintelligent!


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## Erdhexe

I've noticed that "The Da Vinci Code" and "Eragon" were the books most often mentioned as the worst books ever. Both of them had been made into movies. Kind of funny and it makes you wonder: does it really matter how well and original a book is written, or does it just have to match a certain template to become successful like this? Depressing, if you think about it.

The worst book I've ever read? Hmm, I don't know because I quit reading as soon as it starts to bore me. :-\"


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## Linton Robinson

The name for that template is  STORY.    A good story (meaning one that grabs people's attention and sustains and satisfys it)  will shine through changes of media, translations of language, and crudities of writing.


Eragon (I saw the film, not the book) wasn't a great story,  but it was a popular one.  The work is widely criticized for stealing from other sources.  Well....if you steal stories from popular works, your story will probably be pretty popular, too, won't it?      The story is one that a certain audience really likes...especially the trappings.   Fantasy fans who seem to just want to read LOTR and few other classics over and over in different costumes can hardly complain about Eragon.


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## A Vaulter's Insanity

Eragon the movie was HORRID. The book was okay. I liked the first one, didnt care much for the second. Ill continue the series just to see if he improves at all.

Worst book Ive ever read...Lord Of The Flies. I hated that book with a passion


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## Damian_Rucci

Shoeless Joe. Oh my god, such a boring book. It's the book that The Field of Dreams was based on. The book is so boring the action is so dull. The main character acts like a dumb ass through out half the book. It was so slow and dry.


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## Sam

One of Stephen King's (can't remember the name). It was 800 pages of pure crap. 

Have to admit - Tom Clancy's Red Rabbit has got to be another one. 

Sam.


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## Flintenspiel

Oh the _Davinci Code._ 
I only read it because I wanted to see what all the hoop-la was about. Regretted every minute of it. I feel like it was a book that the "everyman" can sort-of understand, and feel like they are enlightened that they read a book, and a book with conspiracies and secrets, no less.


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## TJ Cruse

> I can't beleive there is somebody alive who liked Silas Marner.  Wow.



Lin, I agree. It was a stinker. It was so bad I couldn't even make myself read the Cliff Notes.

That said...many of the books I had to read for school were really good. The Great Gatsby. Great Expectations. 1984. Don't dis all the "classics" 

I agree with the general sentiment regarding Nicholas Sparks. I read _A Walk to Remember_ recently because someone insisted that I had to read him. Ugh. Predictable. Cheesy. Contrived. I'd go on but I'd need a thesaurus.

I recently read a new one by Dean Koontz, something about a Golden Retriever, The Darkest Night or some such. Let me say, I used to be a Koontz fan back in college. _Lightning_, _Phantoms_, _Watchers_, all really good books. But, this new one was pretty much a stinker.

Worst ever? For me, I'd have to say _The Protector_ by David Morrell. _First Blood_ was a cool book. _The Protector_ sucked. It was like, lets just try to make the whole thing one big action scene. No characters, no setting, no real plot, just a bunch of car chases and shoot-outs. I don't know, still maybe better than _Silas Marner_.


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