Worst book you've ever read?

I think it's a book called "Journey" about a little girl who has to travel across Australia to unlock the secret of her powers while doing battle with evil beings from other dimensions.

Fortuately, it will never see publication. I've deleted it off my hard drive.
 
Anything by Mercedes Lackey. I do like that one of her earlier heroes was an openly gay man who had to defend his country and bear the stigmatism of being feared by his own countrymen because he was gay. On the other hand, her story telling is atrocious, with a constant change in narration, sense of time, tense, explanation. She makes such liberal use of italics, like some people use CAPITAL LETTERS to get their point across. The endings are also disappointing, anticlimatic, if she bothers to put one in.

Tannith Lee had that problem, too; poor storytelling.
 
Duncan said:
I found The Old Man and the Sea to be extremely boring. Now I'm not sure about worst book, storywise, but Jinn is, without question, the worst edited book I have ever read. I have never read a book filled with more typos, run on sentances, past-present tense confusion, missing words, character mix-ups, and pretty much anything else you can think of that would ruin an otherwise good story. I couldn't even finish it. It was that bad. Whoever edited that book should be fired. Awful.
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I had to read this in sixth grade--can you imagine, a group of twelve-year-olds discussing the "Hidden imagery inherant to all of Hemingway's heroes, and why their struggles are all similar?"
Yes, I remember that, because our teacher was one of those self-proclaimed Literay Bohemians who thought EVERYONE should have an appreciation for the Classics, even if he had to drum it into our tiny little skulls. Someone like that, you never forget.
I still can't read any Hemingway, because of this twit.
 
Oh shoot. I see someone already got to three of mine, so I'll just second them:

Billy Budd - I read part of this in 10th grade. I think a story may have existed in there somewhere, but you'd need a weed whacker to find it. Never tried anyting else by Melville.

Old Man and the Sea - Another one from school. As someone once said, Hemingway wrote short stories for grown up boys. Yeah, yeah, yeah...the old man symbolizes Christ...big freakin' whoop. I tried another of his books (either A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls, I can't remember), and although it wasn't as bad as TOMATS, it was completely forgettable.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Also from 10th grade. Mostly I recall that the plot hinged on a woman's rape, which she slept through.

Other supposedly classic books that I should have loved:

Walden - Boring beyond belief. Do I really need to know how much Thoreau paid for nails?

Great Expectations - Plot twists! Ooh! It's my firm belief that Dickens was the Danielle Steel of his day. For some reason, I had to read this twice in high school.

Red Badge of Courage - From 6th grade (again, who's picking these for kids?). The tall soldier, the fat soldier, the writer who couldn't be bothered with names, the kid who couldn't give a ◊◊◊◊.

Why Bad Things Happen to Good People - OK, it's not that this book was bad; I'm mostly just amazed that Christians keep passing it around to the depressed. The book is basically forced to admit that god is either all powerful, but doesn't care if you suffer, or very caring, but unable to stop your suffering-and yet the author still thinks you should believe.

The Story of O - Gag. Porn for snobby lit majors.

Then there was some Stephen King book a friend convinced me to read. I can't remember the title, but it involved a woman finding a spaceship buried in her back yard. Terrible writing, not the least bit scary and the ludicrous ending made me think he'd just finished watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad...World.

I've tried to read Ulysses at least three times, but always given up.

I admit that I did love LOTR. It's the only fantasy book I've read, and I loved all the extra stuff that people thought should have been edited out.
 
Worst book I've ever read? The list is so long, and mercifully I've forgotten most of them. However, three of them stand out in my mind:

Atlas Shrugged Sorgoth, I feel your pain. I have tried to read this book 6 times and have never made it past the first chapter. The Mr., on the other hand, just raves about it. He read it when he was a teenager and it "changed his life". Oookay.


Catcher in the Rye : I wa forced to read this in my 11th grade English class. Eeew. That's all I can say about it. Endless whining by the most uninteresting narrator in literature, unreadable vernacular...just eeew.

The Book of Acts (KJV Bible - New Testament): Another English assignment, this time for college. It made me into a raving feminist. Unfortunately, the person who assigned writing a critical paper on this book was a Pauline scholar. The paper was just fine, gramatically correct (a miracle for me) but wildly unflattering to Paul.

The only F I ever received in college - I got a D for the course.
 
I picked up 'In The Light Of Experience' for 30 pence last weekend. It's the autobiography of David Icke. Nuff said.
 
RonSceptic said:
I picked up 'In The Light Of Experience' for 30 pence last weekend. It's the autobiography of David Icke. Nuff said.
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You paid for it? They should've paid you to take it off thier hands!
 
mothworm said:

Great Expectations - Plot twists! Ooh! It's my firm belief that Dickens was the Danielle Steel of his day. For some reason, I had to read this twice in high school.
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I actually fell asleep at a bus stop reading this for high school. Ugh. Exhibit "A" in the argument for why you should never pay authors by the word.
 
mothworm said:
Then there was some Stephen King book a friend convinced me to read. I can't remember the title, but it involved a woman finding a spaceship buried in her back yard. Terrible writing, not the least bit scary and the ludicrous ending made me think he'd just finished watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad...World.
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Tommyknockers. I usually like King, but I agree that this book is terrible.
 
Dinonychus said:


You paid for it? They should've paid you to take it off thier hands!
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Well it was for charity, and it's probably worth the money for sheer comedy value.

The funniest part is where Icke reveals the 'difficult decision' he had to make when the great godhead sent him the message that he had to make love to a female psychic.

He explained later to his wife that he was only doing it 'for the good of everyone'. Yeah, right. Apparantly his wife believed him though. Makes you wonder who is the crazy one in that marriage!

Sadly for Icke the woman in question got pregnant and it all got very very ugly.
 
The worst book I ever read was called "They do it with Mirrors - a Jana Blake Mystery". Well, I think it was. I remember it being printed on really cheap paper with a sort of anti-anti-lesbianism theme.

Books I didn't like were Heinlein's "Job - A Comedy of Justice" and "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls". I got the impression he was just trying too hard. And as for Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", well, it never helped any with my GN250.
 
Breaking Smiths Quarter Horse (Paul St Pierre) is a book I was supposed to read for grade 11 english. I never got past chapter two at the time and as an adult I found it and decided to read it. Turns out I was intuitive rather than lazy ... what a piece of crap - borrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiinnnnnnngggggggg!
Canadian literary classic my arse :mad:

I think the lesson there was about how sometimes we are told to do things we aren't going to like (not that I'm known to do as I'm told!)

I was surprised to see that some didn't like Catcher in the rye... I thought it was quite funny. Haven't read it since I was an apathetic teenager though

:roll:
 
I just realized something...no matter what your choice for worst book you've read, it's probably high up on the list of someone else, and vice-versa. God, that's scary...:eek:
 
Earlier i said "Neanderthal" by John Darnton was the worst book I ever read. Today I saw another book by him and in big letters it said "From the Author of Neanderthal!"

To me that's like seeing a movie trailer tht starts witht he words "From the team that brought you Gigli"........
 
"Gigli", from the mind of horror-master HP Lovecraft...A man, a woman, and a story so diabolical, NO ONE will be seated during the last ten minutes!!!!
(Or the last 60 or so minutes, as they've all gotten up & left).
 
Temporal Renegade said:
"Gigli", from the mind of horror-master HP Lovecraft...A man, a woman, and a story so diabolical, NO ONE will be seated during the last ten minutes!!!!
(Or the last 60 or so minutes, as they've all gotten up & left).
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A Lovecraftian inspired sequel to Gigli might be pretty good. Mostly because if it stayed true to Lovecraft's style, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez would end the movie either gibbering mad or having been eaten. Who wouldn't want to see that? I think I have a screenplay to write.
 
Nyarlathotep said:


A Lovecraftian inspired sequel to Gigli might be pretty good. Mostly because if it stayed true to Lovecraft's style, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez would end the movie either gibbering mad or having been eaten. Who wouldn't want to see that? I think I have a screenplay to write.
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At The Mountains Of Gigli...
The Gigli Over Innsmouth...
The Strange Case Of Charles Dexter Gigli...
The Call Of Cgigli...

Gods, It's ENDLESS!!
 
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