Worst book ever?

[Chocolate Lover]

What's the worst book you ever read and why? Did it bore you tears? Was the writing awful? Subject matter?

Silas Marner was one of two books I could not finish in school, it just bored me to tears. I hope they're not still teaching it.

I didn't read The Good Earth either, but that was mostly laziness.

[Deleted]

I really liked Silas Marner!

I could never finish more than a few pages of House of the Seven Gables though

[wvugurl26]

I have a hard time making myself focus lately on anything but trashy romance novels. I really struggled to finish Life of Pi. I'm trying to finish One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest now. I'm almost there.

[thyme4change]

I read "One Day" and hated it.  I hated the characters so much, I didn't really care if they were happy or not.  I only kept reading it because I was hoping that they would get drunk and leave their cigarettes burning and burn down their house and die in the fire.  Unfortunately, that isn't what happened.  After I finished with that atrocity, I wrote "Read at your own risk" on the front cover and left it on an airplane.  Maybe some intellectual wanna-be will connect with a story about two useless, shallow assholes.  

[Waffle]

Frankenstein.  Had to read it for a lit class in college.  Couldn't finish it.  It was just horribly boring.

[ontrack]

Portrait of an Artist of a Young man by Joyce.  It was assigned in senior year high school lit class, and I thought it was boring and hard to follow.  Needless to say, I didn't write my AP essay on that one!

[Chocolate Lover]

May 9, 2013 13:54:08 GMT -5 oped said:

I really liked Silas Marner!

I could never finish more than a few pages of House of the Seven Gables though

I haven't touched it since High School and I was known to read the phone book if nothing else was available. I have never had the urge to try it again.


I read a book written by a local man I found at our library and you could tell he self published and cheaped out on the editing/proofreading.  The first paragraph was a run on sentence. It didn't get better. Good story idea, bad execution.

[Deleted]

Eat,Pray, Love.  Hated the character so much I stopped reading it when she arrived in India.  I barely made it through her Italy journey.

I did watch the movie with my cousin (who seems to think Eat, Pray, Love is one of the greatest books ever written) and I didn't hate the movie as much as the book.  They cut out a lot of her whining in the movie.

[movingforward]

Well, I have to go with the 2nd book in the Twilight series (can't even remember the name).  Bella's whiny ass made me want to blow my brains out.  I am not even sure why I continued to read it other than my office closed for a week at Christmas and I had nothing better to do. 

[Bob Ross]

I recall not being too thrilled by The Catcher in the Rye.

It's been a while, but as I recall, whiny bitch wanders around and whines a lot.  I guess this was really profound when it was written since back then, everyone was a conformist and whiny bitchitude was frowned upon, but today, it's nothing special.

It's ESPECIALLY nothing special.

[wvugurl26]

I refuse to read anything Twilight. I want nothing to do with the whiny twit Bella!

[Deleted]

I WANTED to hate Eat, Pray Love, because I dislike the author. It was chosen for my grown up book club and I got the parody Drink, Play, F**k, to read at the same time because I 'knew' I'd hate it. But I didn't, much as i tried. There were truths there that spoke to me...

[movingforward]

May 9, 2013 14:03:34 GMT -5 imanangel said:

Eat,Pray, Love.  Hated the character so much I stopped reading it when she arrived in India.  I barely made it through her Italy journey.

I did watch the movie with my cousin (who seems to think Eat, Pray, Love is one of the greatest books ever written) and I didn't hate the movie as much as the book.  They cut out a lot of her whining in the movie.

I didn't finish it either.  I actually read this right after my mom passed away because I wanted something inspirational.  It wasn't even close to what I was hoping for.  I stopped reading it and started reading a Harlen Coben book.  I enjoyed it a whole lot more. 

[Deleted]

Oh yeah, I didn't finish Twilight, didnt pick up any others, lthough I liked the host.

[Deleted]

May 9, 2013 14:05:55 GMT -5 movingforward said:

Well, I have to go with the 2nd book in the Twilight series (can't even remember the name).  Bella's whiny ass made me want to blow my brains out.  I am not even sure why I continued to read it other than my office closed for a week at Christmas and I had nothing better to do. 

I have never read any of them nor have I seen any of the movies.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

The Giver.  We had to read it in 8th grade and I didn't get it. I found it really dry too, it was hard to get thru.

Twilight.  I read the first one, I wanted my $10 back.  The writing was so bad and I wanted to OD Bella with prozac.  At least Sookie has the fairie thing going for her, Bella's got nothing!

50 Shades of Grey. It's basis is a Twilight fan fic and I hated Twilight.  Second reason is its writing is even worse than Twilight.   Third  this book is supposedly a "revolutizing" book that therapists are recommending to married couples and I don't get it.  I found the sex scenes pretty vanilla or stupid.  "Her sex" and "his throbbing manhood" don't strike me as very revoluntionary. I've read way better Harlequin Romance bodice rippers.

She also has no clue what S&M really is.  If you're going to write about it at last do a little homework.  Though I suppose the target audience doesn't know what S&M is either.

I finished Life of Pi but it was really hard.  I found it to be very slow.  I felt like the author took way too long describing things, like the Pondicherry Zoo before getting to the plot.

Wicked and every single book written by that guy.  His books don't end, they just.. .stop.  It's like he decided he's done writing and that's it.  He also doesn't transition well so I'd find myself reading and next thing I know he's discussing something else and I have to go back a dozen pages or more to figure out what he's talking about.  I also think throws in a lot of grautious sex, especially beastiality in the Wicked series.

[Deleted]

May 9, 2013 14:08:25 GMT -5 oped said:

I WANTED to hate Eat, Pray Love, because I dislike the author. It was chosen for my grown up book club and I got the parody Drink, Play, F**k, to read at the same time because I 'knew' I'd hate it. But I didn't, much as i tried. There were truths there that spoke to me...

The only thing that spoke to me in that book was that I wanted to get to Italy and try gelato.  The rest?  I thought she was a self centered twit that did nothing but whine.  My cousin acted like I had just insulted the bible and her religion when I told her I hated the book.  She actually wouldn't talk to me for like 2 months over that book.

[Deleted]

I loved The Giver, and Life of Pi, lol.

[Deleted]

May 9, 2013 14:12:55 GMT -5 imanangel said:

May 9, 2013 14:08:25 GMT -5 oped said:

I WANTED to hate Eat, Pray Love, because I dislike the author. It was chosen for my grown up book club and I got the parody Drink, Play, F**k, to read at the same time because I 'knew' I'd hate it. But I didn't, much as i tried. There were truths there that spoke to me...

The only thing that spoke to me in that book was that I wanted to get to Italy and try gelato.  The rest?  I thought she was a self centered twit that did nothing but whine.  My cousin acted like I had just insulted the bible and her religion when I told her I hated the book.  She actually wouldn't talk to me for like 2 months over that book.

Well, that's just nuts. The author is a whiner. She was in that positin because she cheated on her husband, and you know she's the coyote ugly girl, right...

But she ran into some very interesting people. 

[Tiny]

Ok, I have a book I absolutely hated and it's a modern one:   
Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro. 

I had the hardest time finishing it (it was short thankfully, so I forced myself to finish it).   I hated the 'set up' he used to 'fade out' from the current action to the main characters rememberences of the past.   By about 5 chapters in I was groaning in pain when a 'fade out' would start happening and going "No! No! Not again!  do something different! PLEASE! MERCY!"

I did find the subject matter interesting - but the pacing, characters (who I wasn't sympathetic towards), and the awful repetitive writing techniques drove me nuts.  Not to mention I felt I had read better fiction (specifically other Sci Fi writers) that had covered the same themes with better story telling.    

It's funny, because I see now that the book is billed as a "Sci Fi", dystopian work of fiction.  I have no idea how this book is Sci Fi (other than it deals with cloning of humans - which isn't something we do yet).    I agree with the dystopian part (I like those kinds of stories) but I strongly felt that the 'target market" for this book was specifically people who did NOT like science fiction - cause if you did like Sci Fi, odds are you had read other books with similiar themes but with more - science fiction in them.

No, I didn't bother to see the movie... I'd rather stick a pencil in my eye.

[wvugurl26]

Wicked's another one of my half finished books. I think the language and the way it's written is throwing me off. I wanted to read it all before I saw the play but that didn't happen. Along with The Hobbit and some others I'm forgetting.

And now thanks to DQ I'm tempted to throw the unopened copy of 50 shades of grey in the trash!

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Confessions of a Shopaholic and all it's sequels.

First one was a decent summer read, but I wanted to kill the main character, especially when I decided to read book #2.  I HATE characters that never evolve.  I started to think she needed some serious therapy and maybe a stint in rehab.

[Deleted]

I didn't finish Wicked either. Or Redemption Falls by Joseph oconnor. That one was a horrid slog...

[swamp]

The Scarlet Letter.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I wanted to read it all before I saw the play but that didn't happen

Don't worry about it.  Froom what I've heard the book and the musical are nothing alike.

Eragon.  I really tried to like it but I kept feeling like the author plagorized a lot of other, more talented authors. I kept thinking "You're a J.R.R. Tolkien" wanna be.

The Davinci Code.  It was all right, a good summer read but I don't get the following the author has.  I felt like there was a lot of stuff that could have been left on the editing floor that would have made it a lot better book.   I also felt like his characters were underdeveloped.  I could see Robert Langdon in the hands of another author being on par with other great detectives but Dan Brown does him a disservice.

Yet I'm reading Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol right now, go figure.

I like The Hunger Games but was not that impressed with it's sequels.  I feel like she should have stopped with HG, it was strong enough to stand on its own.  Leave what happens after to our imaginations.  Dragging it out into sequels was a let down.  The sequels aren't horrible but I don't think they were a necessity or really add anything.

[Deleted]

I couldn't get past the first few pages of Hunger Games.  Maybe it was because I was reading it at night while laying in bed.  I don't remember being really captivated though.  

I also hate anything by Ernest Hemingway.  He uses so many adjectives to describe something, by the time he's done I don't even remember what he was talking about.  Clearly he needed more friends or something.

[Queen of Interesting Nuts]

I got this Zombie/TEOTWAWKI book for my kindle. Absolutely terrible but I can't remember the name.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Moby Dick.  Just having to read excerpts in English class was painful.  No way I could finish the entire book.

[wvugurl26]

I read DaVinci Code and the Angels one.

I think I end up reading some of the ones that require concentration when I'm too drained to do so. And then it's a struggle to pay attention.

My mom yelled at me for reading the DaVinci Code. Something about it being evil and not religiously correct?

[wvugurl26]

I read the entire Hunger Games trilogy. My whole office did. Those drew me in and I found them to be an easy read.