Worst book you've ever read

[Guy-jin]

I like Ayn Rand and I liked Atlas Shrugged. I'm unimpressed with Objectivism but I didn't think she was so bad a writer.

Ayn Rand always makes me think of a great quote from Lebowski: "You're not wrong, Walter. You're just an asshole."

 

[Not_Punny]

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only person who didn't fall down at Ayn Rand's feet. :tongue: (Or maybe I'm misreading a few posts in this thread)

 

[Supersized]

Some book by Cornel West. I can't remember the name of it. I had to read it for Expository Writting II for my English requirement. I got into a huge conflict with my instructor because she liked the guy and I kept ripping him apart in my papers. She even got so mad as to threaten to fail me on the final paper. She almost succeeded, but, when you do A level work nobody can really fail you. I got a B+ for the semester. I deserved an A. If I'd been smart enough to fuck her! I'd have gotten my A.

"Souls of Black Folk", yes, that's what it was called.

 

[Guy-jin]

I'm glad to know that I'm not the only person who didn't fall down at Ayn Rand's feet. :tongue: (Or maybe I'm misreading a few posts in this thread)

You didn't misread mine at all. I truly do not enjoy books that feel the need to beat me over the head with their points (my favorites list in the other thread is filled with books that are amazing because of how subtly they get their point across, for example).

 

[Not_Punny]

Oh, but I loved it.
I just don't know if I would love it as much today.
I picked up something by Salinger a year or so ago (can't remember exactly what) and it didn't 'click' for me the way his stuff once did.
Maybe my shorts were too tight that day. Don't know.

I failed to get into any other Salinger books. Ah well.

- - - - - -

I'm probably the only here who was stupid enough to read Danielle Steele. I read a few of her books many years ago, at a time when my life was turbulent. The books were mindless and soothing.

Until I ran into this sentence:

"... Fear settled in her stomach like a bowling ball..."

I put the book down and never read another Danielle Steele. Ever.

 

[B_IanTheTall]

For one thing, never buy a book from the Dollar Tree.

Or a second hand book store that doesn't smell like an antique store, which is where I found Anne Rice's (aka AN Roquelaure and Anne Rampling) "Beauty Chronicles" and Exit to Eden. I don't know if the books are bad because I only read a short way into The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty[/a] (the other two I didn't even open) and only a little further into Exit to Eden. I was embarrassed to read them, in my own bedroom, with no one to see.

Though I didn't get it from a discount or second hand store, but Memnoch the Drivel (oops the cover says Devil) sucks so bad that even after my third try to read further I have only read a quarter. A good friend said, "It sucks likes a small mouthed, toothy, Ferengi whore." I've heard that Christ The Lord: Out of Egypt was just as bad and I'm willing to bet that the upcoming Christ The Lord: The Road to Cana will also be bad.

I think what makes these books so awful is that her other books, specially the earlier ones are so good. It's almost heart breaking.

 

[headbang8]

I have never before thrown away a book because it was so bad. But threw this one away. Many of the jokes simply didn't make sense.

 

[B_Nick4444]

English translation of a japanese book on "ki" ... utter crap!

 

[Not_Punny]

You didn't misread mine at all. I truly do not enjoy books that feel the need to beat me over the head with their points (my favorites list in the other thread is filled with books that are amazing because of how subtly they get their point across, for example).

Just went back and read your list (in the other thread). OMG! You're a Asimov and Vonnegut fan. Me too! Huge fan. Althought my fav Vonnegut book was Slapstick. Sadly, the second time I read the book, I made the mistake of reading the foreword, in which he talked about the death of his sister, Alice, and then I realized that many of the funny parts of the book weren't actually funny after all, but an exorcism of memories and pain.

Speaking of a heavy hand, do you feel that Orwell was that way? Yes, his books were good, and they illustrated necessary concepts, but I thought that they were too spell-it-out. So much so that I failed to get emotionally involved.

 

[ZOS23xy]

By the time I got to page 90 of ATLAS SHRUGGED, i wanted to find John Galt and deliver a severe beating.

I read all of CATCHER IN THE RYE and found Holden Caulfield to be an irritating little creep. I have met any number of people since then who can go on and on about their bad habits and destructive behaviors with all the flawed logic that Holden Caulfield engaged in. HC's problem was that his world was too narrow, and he fought it.

His parented needed a bookcalled SPANKING FOR DUMMIES.

 

[Novaboy]

My Sweet Audrina by VC Andrews. I normally love her books but damn that one stood out as the worst.


This may or may not burst your bubble but I was wondering if you are aware that VC Andrews has been dead for years. She wrote the Flowers in the Attic series and (I think) My Sweet Audrina. Everything after that was written by many writers under her name.

 

[ZOS23xy]

One other book I found impossible to finish was Robert A. Hienlien's brain transplant fantasy I WILL FEAR NO EVIL. Pure blather. I recalled thinking at the time that a man who wrote some of the best SF was capable of failure.

V.C. Andrews id dead all these many years. And So is Robert E. Howard. They keep repackaging his stuff, and even rewriting his westerns into Conan stories...

 

[D_Tintagel_Demondong]

Anything by Hemmingway , Atwood, Kitty Kelly, Shirley McLaine, Stephen King (except his non-horror), Tony Robbins, Rhonda Byrne, Carl Sagan.

 

[submit452]

Here's My entry: About 40% of my college textbooks I've been made to read.

 

[Mandee]

Your Best Life Now - Joel Osteen

Ughhh it's pretty much this preacher who is blabbing on and on about how wonderful his life is. Reading it makes you feel like the worst person on Earth and I cried through the whole thing. My mom bought a copy for my brother and myself for Christmas a few years ago and I read it because I felt obligated to. She told me it was an amazing book and that I just HAD to read it. Well, a week or two ago she said something about wanting to buy a copy of it and I was like, "I thought you had one," and she confessed that she has never read it! I was sooo mad at her! lol.

 

[thoreau]

There are only two books that come to mind that I've read that I loathe. Usually if I'm reading something and it doesn't peak my interest or engage me I toss it away. But, these two were both assigned reading in HS. The first I had to read myself, the second was for the class.


The first was in Freshman English and I doubt anyone has heard of it. I t was called "Z for Zachariah", and it is absolute dreck. Its written from the perspective of a sixteen-year-old girl who survives a nuclear war in a small American town. The town's location in a geographically distinct and resides in a remote valley that acts like a protective enclave that shelters it from the nuclear fallout. Then a lone survivor happens upon her little haven and then tries to rape and or consensually copulate with her ostensibly to repopulate the Earth.

I didn't like it primarily because it was poorly written and not what I would consider "literature".


The second book was Sophomore year, and I know I might catch some flak for this because everyone else I've talked to who has read this book said they loved it. Our class had to read " To Kill a Mockingbird" and I thought it was perhaps the most inane book I had to read in HS. It was certainly better than the last book I mentioned but I thought it was just boring and overly didactic. But, that my opinion.

 

[B_goatsnake]

Everything by Ayn Rand I was made to read in 11th grade English.

 

[D_Tintagel_Demondong]

Ayn Rand? I'm a huge fan. I also happen to be an objectivist, so I guess it's mandatory.

 

[ninepointfive]

Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Seriously. I feel like it's money printed on poo when I touch a copy.

 

[SpoiledPrincess]

The first was in Freshman English and I doubt anyone has heard of it. I t was called "Z for Zachariah", and it is absolute dreck.

We had to read this at school although I didn't, I flicked through it and wrote a load of bollocks about it.