Worst book you've ever read?

Tricky said:
However the last chapter is truly surreal. All kinds of weird stuff happening and prophecies and the like. I think the guy wrote this chapter while doing acid. Cool.:cool:
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Ergot-tainted Rye, perchance? :wink:
 
Hexxenhammer said:
Just remembered another one I had to read for a class. "Iron John" I think it's the book that started the whole "men's movement" where guys go out in the woods and cry about how women keep them from being men. Big babies. If you want to grow a beard, grow a frickin' beard. Women aren't stopping you from being men! Get over it! I read part of it for a folklore class. I didn't know the class was going to turn into a psycho-sexual politics class. I dropped it.
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I'm actually going to change mine to Iron John too. I read the thing about ten years ago, originally assuming it to be a satire of some sort. however, when I got to the part where the guy loses his dog, and the narrator says that we lose more "dogs" that way, implying some deeper meaning only through the quotation marks, and I realized that that was actually a bit of humor relief and that it was really taking itself quite seriously. I didn't bother with another word from the thing.
 
jj said:
I'm trying to come up with one "worst" here.

Perhaps one of the "Flux and Anchor" series by Chalker, or one of Peter F. Hamilton's possession novels, or "Red Leaves" (the short story by Faulkner), or "The Eyre Affair" by Fford, or the clackers one by Gibson (I forget the name, I tossed the book. I never toss a book, but I tossed that one, I cared as little for the book as the characters), or, hmmm.... that horrid socialist tract my college history prof. made us read (it got me started on understanding rhetorical fallacies and excesses though, it was an inadvertant textbook on the subject), or the psych book written by the psych prof, the one that cost twice as much as all the other books that semester and hadn't a single shred of falsifiability in it, or ...

You know, I can't just pick one. Oh, but I liked 'Jhereg' by Brust, and most of the rest of the series, too. :p
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Peter F. Hamilton's possession novels are masterpieces of modern literature. Alphonse Capone returns to rule the universe. I laughed all the way to the second hand book shop.

Regards,

AC.
 
fhios said:


I'm actually going to change mine to Iron John too. I read the thing about ten years ago, originally assuming it to be a satire of some sort. however, when I got to the part where the guy loses his dog, and the narrator says that we lose more "dogs" that way, implying some deeper meaning only through the quotation marks, and I realized that that was actually a bit of humor relief and that it was really taking itself quite seriously. I didn't bother with another word from the thing.
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I never read that. I assumed from the title that it was about a family that was so poor they couldn't afford porcelain bathroom fixtures.
 
Take a plot from each from Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. Mix liberally while taking a tab of LSD. Write the resultant mess down and then have someone remove any trace of humour from the mix. Pick a title from an automated surrealist title generator.
The result:
Anything by Robert Rankin

'The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse' is the second book by him that I've tried to read. It's also the second book of his, that I haven't been able to get half way through, before succumbing to total boredom with the plot.
Peter
 
Once I start a book, I will usually slog through till the end. The only book that I read in the last while that I literally trashed after a 100 pages or so is the one by Ray Manzarek (speling?). He was the keyboard player in the Doors. His writing is exactly the way he talks (as I had heard in interviews). Kinda like a west coast, surfer dude-speak, circa late 60's early 70's. Drove me nuts. At least I only paid $5 for the hardcover at Borders.

Charlie (still love the Doors music though) Monoxide
 
I have to second GroundStrength's nomination for the Scarlet Letter. Who would think a book about adultery could be so mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly, dull?
 
Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence. It's ridiculous, repetitive, chaotic and boring at the same time and has what is possibly the most numbskulled ending of all time.
 
Anything by Heinlein after about 1970.
Or by Stephen Donaldson, ever.
The Book of Mormon has some cool drawings of Aryans besieging and begetting and stuff. Apart from which, the binding was quite nice...

However, I enjoyed "The Difference Engine". How can anyone forget the characters? Most of them are real people. Darwin, Lyell, Ada Lovelace, Babbage. Granted it is far from being the best book by either Gibson or Sterling, but it passed an enjoyable evening.
 
arcticpenguin said:
The Tao of Pooh.
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Oooh, I'd forgotten that one. I can't say it's the worst book, though, because it's so short.

I have to say Most Likely to Succeed by John Dos Passos. I read it sometime in high school. It was super long and pointless. I wish I could go back in time and kick myself for bothering to finish it. Oh, wait, I can still kick myself for bothering to finish it. Ouch.
 
Well then how about The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose? It's a very presumptuous title, considering how wrong he was. I can't say that i read the entire thing, it was just too dull.
 
EvilYeti said:

Non(supposedly)-fiction

"Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond.

I bought this book at an airport mistakenly thinking it was a history/science book. The entire thing is a long winded diatribe that western culture triumphed over native culture not because it was superior, rather the silly Europeans just got very lucky and were, in fact, inferior to the cultures they conquered.

Total crap. I got about halfway through it and tossed it in the garbage. The fact that it won a Pulizter prize is shocking.
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The book had weaknesses, but I don't consider it the worst I've read. It was redundant and repetitive and redundant and repetitive. Also, since his version of why things turned out the way they did is based on a historical experiment with only one trial, it amounts to an anecdote or a 'just-so' story.
 
Sorry, you're all wrong.

The worst book in the world is "Televisionary Oracle" oracle, by that 'free will' astrologer Rob Brezsny.

I was stuck in a tent on the side of a mountain in Nepal waiting to acclimitize to the altitude, and this was all I had to read (left in the tent by another teammate). It was excruciating.


If you don't believe me, here's an excerpt.

And here's a typical, 5-star amazon review:
I loved this book. While entertaining me, it taught me multitudes of lessons that I am still trying to assimilate. One of these lessons is that I must kill the apocalypse by loving it. I am in awe of this concept. While internalizing this dogma, I have learned that the alchemical process of taking in the bad stuff and melting it down to its purest, non-harmful form is truly a means to reach enlightenment. Everything that is perceived as negative has its uses and the energy therein must be harnessed to move forward. This book will change your life. Use it in everyday life, even if it's just to keep the kitchen table from tottering around, and you will notice a difference in your life.
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All aboard the woo-woo express!
 
AP- You probably only read "The Emperor's New Mind" because you assumed it was about penguins.

I must admit I had forgotten it. For the best really. Why don't people stick to what they are good at?
Somehow, I can't see Richard Dawkins writing a tome on mathematical physics.
Though if he did I suspect it would at least be readable.
 
I was recently given "The Four Agreements" as a gift.

This is a painfully bad book. It is simplistic, poorly written, lacking in substance, illogical, insulting and irritating.

Has anyone else read it?
 
Jean Auel's most recent offering in the Clan of the Cave Bear series was so bad I've forgotten the name of it. I enjoyed the first volumes so much and was eagerly anticipating the new volume. My husband even went out and bought it at retail the first day it came out as I had just come home from the hospital after major surgery and it was a homecoming gift. I finished it just to see if it would ever improve, but it didn't. Apparently Auel was being paid by the word and 300 of the 600 pages were devoted to each character introducing themselves every time they met another character. What a disappointment!
 
This might not be popular, but "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" scored some quite low marks with me. I think the author desperately needs an editor (waaaaaay too long) and a sense of humor. If it hadn't been for the first four novels, I wouldn't have bothered finiishing it.
 
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