Worst book you've ever read
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My Sweet Audrina by VC Andrews. I normally love her books but damn that one stood out as the worst.
Clarissa was also a bad piece of vintage literature and the Kenneth Star Report was pretty bad too!
Clarissa was also a bad piece of vintage literature and the Kenneth Star Report was pretty bad too!
whatireallywant
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That book messed with my mind. I got really paranoid and was wondering if everyone I knew was playing some kind of mind game on me trying to hide something from me.
There were a few I didn't finish, and I didn't like Kon-Tiki when I had to read it in school, but I actually think I'd like that one now.
The worst? There was one of the later Well World books by Jack Chalker that I could barely get through because of the sexism in it (although the earlier books in that series were pretty fascinating). And I actually made it through (with some struggle) a couple of Harlequin romances that were really dismal... they all have the exact same plot.
I always want to change the ending in those books. Instead of the woman falling in love with the arrogant man she hates through most of the book, have her tell him to go to hell and walk out. :biggrin1: That would be MY happy ending! :smile:
I absolutely loved Catcher in the Rye! :frown1:
Why? Like many of the books written in the 50's & 60's I find the situations and characters a bit too hokey, unbelievable. Teenage angst - not a favorite of mine.
Atonement by Ian McEwan (the same book that spawned the award-winning movie.)
It was heavily prententious and slow moving. It was like McEwan was whoring himself to get an award or something. Overlong descriptions, and not much plot. The ending and somewhat sympathetic characters saved the book for me.
It was heavily prententious and slow moving. It was like McEwan was whoring himself to get an award or something. Overlong descriptions, and not much plot. The ending and somewhat sympathetic characters saved the book for me.
D_O_Revoir
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The return of Quetzalcoatl. Daniel Pinchbeck, its basically a metaphysical kinda book following him (a psychodelic drug user/advocate) who thinks that the world is going to have some big change in the year 2012. I could elaborate, but why bother.
-Zork
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I think it's interesting, I guess. I liked the teen angst (I read it as a teenager). As far as the situations and characters being too hokey... it was kind of how the book was supposed to be - the views of the people and what happened were distorted by the main characters point of view.
Hand_Solo
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When I read it, I couldn't help but subtitle it in my mind Foucault's Pendulum for Dummies, yet I wouldn't really classify it as awful. It was a fun read. I kept thinking while I was reading it that it'd make a good movie, and sure enough, a few months later they were making it into one. Still haven't seen it. Reading the book was enough to tide me over pretty much forever.
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Another reason I started this thread is because I picked up a copy of 100 Books to Read Before You Die, (my translation) at la libreria Aetaneo, a famous bookstore here in Buenos Aires. Of course, the book is in Spanish and as I flipped through it I was amazed at all of the authors I had never heard of (the book supposedly emcompasses all world literature).
There was a time if I started a book I had a guilty compulsion to finish it. Now, however, after 50 pages if the author doesn't spark my interest I usually stop. In some cases the problem was that I just didn't know how to read the particular work. Rather, I was boring, the books weren't. Rainbow's End and Magic Mountain are two good examples of books I tried to read several times, but just couldn't keep with them. Then one day something clicked and I finally read and then reread them.
I'm impressed at how many so far have mentioned Catcher in the Rye and Atlas Shrugged. There are some works, such as Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, that can be worse than a root canal in English, but in the original French his prose is stunning and all consuming.
I can still safely say my top three worst books were complete wastes of my time (see beginning of thread). I read first two with an open mind and can honestly claim they are pieces of shit. The third was one of those things where, like a car accident, I just could not stop looking at the pictures. Then again, at the time I was on a morphine drip recovering from surgery and found the colors pretty.
By the way, Snoozan's The DaVinci Code subtitled by Hand Solo as Foucault's Pendulum for Dummies! That is fucking hilarious! Keep 'em coming.
There was a time if I started a book I had a guilty compulsion to finish it. Now, however, after 50 pages if the author doesn't spark my interest I usually stop. In some cases the problem was that I just didn't know how to read the particular work. Rather, I was boring, the books weren't. Rainbow's End and Magic Mountain are two good examples of books I tried to read several times, but just couldn't keep with them. Then one day something clicked and I finally read and then reread them.
I'm impressed at how many so far have mentioned Catcher in the Rye and Atlas Shrugged. There are some works, such as Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, that can be worse than a root canal in English, but in the original French his prose is stunning and all consuming.
I can still safely say my top three worst books were complete wastes of my time (see beginning of thread). I read first two with an open mind and can honestly claim they are pieces of shit. The third was one of those things where, like a car accident, I just could not stop looking at the pictures. Then again, at the time I was on a morphine drip recovering from surgery and found the colors pretty.
By the way, Snoozan's The DaVinci Code subtitled by Hand Solo as Foucault's Pendulum for Dummies! That is fucking hilarious! Keep 'em coming.
Guy-jin
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If I hadn't attempted to get through one of those horrendous Drizzt books (on the baffling recommendation of someone who told me, "If you like Song of Ice & Fire, you'll love this!"), I would agree.
Although, techincally I didn't finish that book and I did finish The DaVinci Code, so maybe it really is the worst.
I tend not to finish a book if it's sucking horribly.
I've had that compulsion to finish a book I've stared especially if I bought the hardcover version but no more. Can't force myself to waste time reading boring books anymore.
I've tried to read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' about 4 times now and still can't get past page 25 without throwing it back on the shelf. Not sure if it is the book or me that's boring however.
I've tried to read 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' about 4 times now and still can't get past page 25 without throwing it back on the shelf. Not sure if it is the book or me that's boring however.
It's so great to see that a lot of other people didn't like Catcher in the Rye, for a long time I thought I was the only one. Someone mentioned they had to write a paper about it in high school and got a 9 or something, I had the same type of assignment, but I cheated and got an already written essay (and a 98%).
A lot of people don't agree with me, but the Harry Potter books were annoying, and I'll read just about anything, for some reason people kept giving me these books and I hated all of them.
A lot of people don't agree with me, but the Harry Potter books were annoying, and I'll read just about anything, for some reason people kept giving me these books and I hated all of them.
whoa. i didn't know this book actually existed! lol...i must sound so dumb. i remember in an episode of Will and Grace when Grace bought that book for her then current boyfriend, Nathan (Woody Harrelson). i thought it was made up for the show. wow. lol.
OK, where do I start?...
"Smilla's Sense of Snow" This was a HUGE disappointment since so many people told me how good it was and it just SUCKED big time. It was boring and I don't care how many words for "snow" a language has or how many different ways you can describe it. It's BORING!
Also, "Le Rouge et Le Noir" ("The Red and The Black") was terribly boring. This is perhaps Stendhal's most famous tome. It's long, and it reads like a really bad soap opera set in the 19th century. Actually most 19th Century French Literature of this kind could all stand to be thrown to the flames as far as I'm concerned. I had to read so much of this boring crap in order to get my minor in French and I regret every moment of it. I want those months back!
Salinger's "The Catcher in The Rye" was an especially painful read in high school and it didn't get better the second time I read it as an adult. It's beyond boring.
Incidentally, my Dad was a high school English Teacher who was a Reading Specialist. He did not appreciate some of my distaste for what he would consider "The Classics" of American and British literature. However, we found common ground in Isaac Asimov and Joseph Conrad. And he got me turned onto the Fantasy genre, especially J.R.R. Tolkien and I'm forever grateful to him for it.
Also we shared an appreciation for Classical Greek and Roman literature...
"Smilla's Sense of Snow" This was a HUGE disappointment since so many people told me how good it was and it just SUCKED big time. It was boring and I don't care how many words for "snow" a language has or how many different ways you can describe it. It's BORING!
Also, "Le Rouge et Le Noir" ("The Red and The Black") was terribly boring. This is perhaps Stendhal's most famous tome. It's long, and it reads like a really bad soap opera set in the 19th century. Actually most 19th Century French Literature of this kind could all stand to be thrown to the flames as far as I'm concerned. I had to read so much of this boring crap in order to get my minor in French and I regret every moment of it. I want those months back!
Salinger's "The Catcher in The Rye" was an especially painful read in high school and it didn't get better the second time I read it as an adult. It's beyond boring.
Incidentally, my Dad was a high school English Teacher who was a Reading Specialist. He did not appreciate some of my distaste for what he would consider "The Classics" of American and British literature. However, we found common ground in Isaac Asimov and Joseph Conrad. And he got me turned onto the Fantasy genre, especially J.R.R. Tolkien and I'm forever grateful to him for it.
Also we shared an appreciation for Classical Greek and Roman literature...
Guy-jin
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Oh and the WORST read I've had recently is Eckhart Tolle's, "The Power of Now." I specialized in Transpersonal Psychology as a grad student and I work holistically. I thought this book was full of the most simplistic utter shite that I have EVER read on mindfulness. It taught me NOTHING I didn't already know and the author drones on and on endlessly about the same thing throughout the ENTIRE book. It was so bad that I almost wished for death to come take me so I didn't have to finish the book.
Oh and he allegedly attained "Enlightenment" at the age of 29. I believe that anyone who claims to be a guru or to be truly "enlightened" is someone of whom one should be especially wary.
The best quote in Judaism that expresses my attitude toward gurus, religious figures, etc. is here:
"If you have a plant in your hand and someone comes and says the Messiah has arrived, first go and plant the plant." -Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai
Oh and he allegedly attained "Enlightenment" at the age of 29. I believe that anyone who claims to be a guru or to be truly "enlightened" is someone of whom one should be especially wary.
The best quote in Judaism that expresses my attitude toward gurus, religious figures, etc. is here:
"If you have a plant in your hand and someone comes and says the Messiah has arrived, first go and plant the plant." -Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai
Ditto Catcher In the Rye. So completely innocent compared to things today.
I class Catcher with two other books I like to call the, "Get over yourself!" books. I'll catch hell for it but I include Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. I'm completely convinced Tolstoy wrote his monstrosities because Russia was so damn huge, booksellers so rare, dachas so remote, that the rich could take just one of his books away with them for the summer and have enough to read for three months. Anna Karenina, like Madame Bovary, is a woman in agony agonizing over her self-inflicted agonies. We get it!! Does it really take 900 pages to describe every single facet of that agony?? I wager the Russian aristocracy read them with a smug self-satisfaction, happy that they weren't Karenin or Anna. By the end of the book I was ready to throw myself under a train. Madame Bovary is no better. I actually got an "A" on a paper about it after only reading the first 25 pages and then figuring the rest out based on Anna Karenina. They're the same book. Oh sure the things that happen are different but it's still 900 pages of a woman agonizing over her agonies. Horrible, horrible, books.
I class Catcher with two other books I like to call the, "Get over yourself!" books. I'll catch hell for it but I include Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. I'm completely convinced Tolstoy wrote his monstrosities because Russia was so damn huge, booksellers so rare, dachas so remote, that the rich could take just one of his books away with them for the summer and have enough to read for three months. Anna Karenina, like Madame Bovary, is a woman in agony agonizing over her self-inflicted agonies. We get it!! Does it really take 900 pages to describe every single facet of that agony?? I wager the Russian aristocracy read them with a smug self-satisfaction, happy that they weren't Karenin or Anna. By the end of the book I was ready to throw myself under a train. Madame Bovary is no better. I actually got an "A" on a paper about it after only reading the first 25 pages and then figuring the rest out based on Anna Karenina. They're the same book. Oh sure the things that happen are different but it's still 900 pages of a woman agonizing over her agonies. Horrible, horrible, books.
I'll third Atlas Shrugged. That immediately came to mind when I saw the title of the thread. I remember after I forced myself to finish it that the first words that came to my mind were, "What the fuck was that?" Colossally boring, tedious, self-important bullshit.
While I hate to admit it given how lauded and popular A Confederacy of Dunces is, I find myself falling asleep 2/3 of the way down every page. Considering I started reading it when I was in my early 20's and it's got about 90 bajillion pages, I'll probably finish it sometime around 2029.
While I hate to admit it given how lauded and popular A Confederacy of Dunces is, I find myself falling asleep 2/3 of the way down every page. Considering I started reading it when I was in my early 20's and it's got about 90 bajillion pages, I'll probably finish it sometime around 2029.