Another bitchy "worst-of" thread: Your votes for worst bestsellers or classics [Archive]

Sampiro

10-06-2005, 11:18 PM

Straightforward: what bestsellers or classic works of lit do you feel are the most poorly written or otherwise qualify for a "worst" list?

A few of my pics:

Anything John Grisham has written since The Client. He's far far far more formulaic than Stephen King ever thought of being, and while at his best he writes good escapist fare at his worst he's positively painful with totally implausible endings and interchangable characters. (His best novel, Time to Kill, was clearly based on To Kill a Mockingbird, though sufficiently different to give it some merit.) The last novel of his that I tried to make it through was The Broker, which I put in the CD player for a very long car trip and before it was halfway through I was listening to a staticy Easy Listening channel instead- just impossible to get into.

The Da Vinci Code- too many threads already detail why

Almost anything by Danielle Steel (and yes, I have read her)

Several new age titles come to mind:

Shirley MacLaine's mega bestseller Out on a Limb seemed deep to me when I was a teenager but on re-read a few years ago seemed more like a "What happens if you don't have critical thinking skills" reader.

Anything Richard Bach wrote after Jonathan Livingston Seagull (and make up your mind Bach- was Illusions fact or fiction? You claimed it was fact in some writings and fiction in others, and nowhere did you mention that while you were out barnstorming and living the "romantic rootless vagabond" existence for several years that you left behind six kids to be raised by your ex-wife while you were out womanizing and reliving your youth.)

Anything by Clive Cussler. Literally painful to read, and the historical inaccuracies would make Oliver Stone grimace.

So step up, don't be shy, bash your least favorite bestsellers or classics right heah ladies and germs!

DataZak

10-06-2005, 11:38 PM

Moby Dick.

AuntiePam

10-06-2005, 11:42 PM

Any of the Left Behind books.

Hung Mung

10-07-2005, 12:03 AM

Fuck Silas Marner. It makes Wuthering Heights look like David Copperfield.

Sampiro

10-07-2005, 12:10 AM

Any of the Left Behind books.

Ooh, good call. I actually read as much as I could of the first one, but it was like reading a novel by Ann Coulter.

Bomzaway

10-07-2005, 12:20 AM

Marley23

10-07-2005, 12:21 AM

I fear this might be an unpopular pick, but I really didn't like The Catcher in the Rye. That Holden Caulfield's a whiny, irritating bitch.
Actually I think a lot of Dopers agree with you.

FlyingRamenMonster

10-07-2005, 02:45 AM

The only bestseller I really disliked was The Da Vinci Code. I was absolutely stunned by how dry and dead the writing was. Not to mention that the man's name was Leonardo, not da Vinci.

Cunctator

10-07-2005, 02:59 AM

Theologue

10-07-2005, 03:15 AM

The Bridges of Madison County

Worst. Book. Ever.

(No I didn't spend good money on it. It was lying around, and I needed fiction.)

The stupidest thread here I've ever wasted time on was much better than that piece of faux-literary trash. I'm sure I lost brain cells reading it and am now more susceptible to certain infectious diseases. Years later, my stomach is turning now just from recalling it.

Larry Mudd

10-07-2005, 03:50 AM

For popular fiction, I'd say anything by James Patterson (Along Came a Spider, Kiss the Girls, etc.)

The stories actually aren't bad. The characterizations are shallow but okay for the thriller genre. IT'S HIS AWFUL PROSE. The guy makes Ludlum seem like Joyce. He never describes characters (or sometimes even situations.) The lazy bastard just scribbles "Detective Jablome looked like Al Pacino. He was interrogating a suspect who was the spit-and-image of Martin Landau. He was thinking of his wife, who looked liked a shorter version of Cher. Before he could get anything useful out of him, he was interrupted by Chief Numbnutz, who poked his head in the door, reminding Jablome of a bitter Hal Linden." How do people read that crap? (This is to say nothing of the supersaturation of gratuitous products and pop culture references.)

As for serious literatchuh, I'd go with Rushdie's Satanic Verses. Terrible. That fatwah was the best thing it ever had going for it.

ivylass

10-07-2005, 06:12 AM

Shelters of Stone by Jean Auel. I waited 12 years for that sequel to the Earth Children series, bought in hardback the first damn week, and was bitterly disappointed. She got very lazy, and it's like she got tired of writing the books but knew her fans were clamoring for more.

I'll probably pick up the next book at the library, but I'm not holding my breath for it.

Sal Ammoniac

10-07-2005, 08:11 AM

Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand. I swear she learned English from reading Harlequin novels (or whatever the equivalent was in her day). And if her writing is fourth rate, her political philosophy is hardly better. With a little bump for generosity's sake, we'll call it third rate.

Scumpup

10-07-2005, 08:21 AM

Hey, It's That Guy!

10-07-2005, 08:30 AM

A bestseller from a few years back, The Celestine Prophecy, was painful to read. I couldn't even finish it.

The Sound and the Fury was just that, a tale told by an idiot, a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I think Faulkner is terribly overrated.

I also think the Lord of the Rings books were horribly boring. Thank God Peter Jackson came along, trimmed a lot of the fat (including the never-ending sequence with that worthless hippie Tom Bombadil), added some much-needed comic relief, and made three wonderful movies from them. Tolkien was a trendsetter with some wonderful ideas, but those books sapped my strength and resolve worse than the One Ring did to Frodo.

divemaster

10-07-2005, 08:34 AM

The Celestine Prophesy. Mega-million bestseller. Topped the lists for years. Just to see what the big deal was, I borrowed a copy from a colleague and read it.

Oh my God, it was bad. Laughably bad. Seeking different planes until you vibrate into, what, deification? My memory is hazy on the details. I get that is was suppossed to be a novel (you know--made up stuff), but there at the end of the book was a form by which you could send Redfield $25 bucks to "learn more" about the insights he was peddling. WTF?

The only way I was able to make it through without feeling insulted was to MST3K my way through. To her credit, my colleague felt the same way about it (we were both grad students in biology and not given over to a bunch of New Age crapola), so we were able to laugh about it togehter.

And although I've never read it, I suppose Dianetics falls in a similar category.

Annie-Xmas

10-07-2005, 08:34 AM

Sue Grafton. I think there's a special place in Hell already reserved for her. I find her books to be totally unreadable, and I am amazed and baffled at her success.

James Patterson's mysteries are bad, but his two books "Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas" and "Jennifer's Letters to Sam" are surprisingly good, but smatzy and sacchrine.

Baldwin

10-07-2005, 08:37 AM

Darn it, somebody already took The Bridges of Madison County. What a waste of three hours of my life. You know the most irritating thing about that book? It's not just that it's stylistically bad, although it is. What bugged me was that we're told, over and over, that the male protagonist is brilliant, yet he never says anything that you couldn't hear from a slightly drunk college sophomore.

For consistent bestselling crapitude, I submit Michael Crichton.

WordMan

10-07-2005, 09:01 AM

The Sound and the Fury was just that, a tale told by an idiot, a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I think Faulkner is terribly overrated.

Oh, BBVLou - gotta disagree with you there. He's hard to get into, but when you do, wow. Try As I Lay Dying - far more accessible than the Sound and the Fury.

Regarding most of the best-sellers mentioned: first of all, I agree. Second of all, I basically expect them to be crap. Only rarely do I find a widely-read bestseller to be any good. Just like music: 95% of what is on the BillBoard Hot 100 is crap, too. Just the nature of the beast, I guess.

In terms of "literature" (say it with a snooty voice) that I found "worst of" - I have to go with "The Shipping News." It won the Pulitzer! It's a best-seller! Omigod, it's just the best! Ugh. I got about 2/3 of the way through it - c'mon, it won the Pulitzer! You can do it! - then just frisbee'd it across the room. Man that felt good.

Beware of Doug

10-07-2005, 09:33 AM

Chief NumbnutzRight now I'm regretting I can't change my screenname.

For worst classic novel, I give you Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. It contains so much pointless, eye-glazing exposition, written in ostentatiously long sentences full of subordinate clauses, that I couldn't even get far enough into it to see the plot start. See Hitchcock's movie instead. It's what Conrad would have done had he had an editor.

Tentacle Monster

10-07-2005, 09:41 AM

I fear this might be an unpopular pick, but I really didn't like The Catcher in the Rye. That Holden Caulfield's a whiny, irritating bitch.

I've always thought, on the chance that I might have been in the wrong frame of mind or something when I read it, that I should probably re-read that one, but I can't. I hated it so much that I just can't seem to bring myself to read it again.

You're hardly alone. In another thread, Holden Caulfield was one of the most-hated fictional characters.

I read it when I was a moody loner teenager because I heard it was popular with moody loner teenagers. I came away with the following conclusions: Holden was a total asshole, anyone who identifies with Holden is probably a total asshole, and I hope J.D. Salinger never comes back.

And Silas Marner sucked, too. Maybe if people didn't have to read so much Charles Dickens in high school, more of them would read recreationally.

kelly5078

10-07-2005, 09:55 AM

I think I'll attack some classics. My judgements on these books will be considered idiotic by those who actually got something out of these books. More power to you: they must be classics for a reaon, but I don't get it.

I really hated Madame Bovary. All that "he did this" and "she thought that," with almost no dialog.

Martin Chuzzlewit is godawful. One can only take so much snarkiness. Hard to believe it's by the same guy who wrote David Copperfield and Great Expectations.

Heart of Darkness is miserably opaque. Shove it up your whited sepulchre, Joe.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is neither insightful nor interesting, in spite of what my father thought. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a very similar book (oh those naughty Victorians), but even worse.

Silas Marner blows, as posted earlier.

I've read Huckleberry Finn three times, trying to see what lit professors see in it. I don't get it.

And finally, in the world of poetry, Wallace Stevens is a total craphead.

Jonathan Chance

10-07-2005, 09:55 AM

Another one for 'Catcher in the Rye'. Urf, was that painful.

AuntiePam

10-07-2005, 10:29 AM

Everything by Dean Koontz. He's written the same schlock horror novel over and over again.

I've never forgotten Koontz describing an overly-attentive husband (in From the Corner of his Eye), hovering over his pregnant wife while she was baking in the kitchen. Koontz writes that he "loitered in her vicinity." :rolleyes:

I think he's a decent writer who's fallen into a formula trap to give his fans what they expect. A friend insists that Phantoms and Watchers are excellent, but to stop with those two.

Theologue

10-07-2005, 10:36 AM

I also think the Lord of the Rings books were horribly boring. Thank God Peter Jackson came along, trimmed a lot of the fat (including the never-ending sequence with that worthless hippie Tom Bombadil), added some much-needed comic relief, and made three wonderful movies from them. Tolkien was a trendsetter with some wonderful ideas, but those books sapped my strength and resolve worse than the One Ring did to Frodo.

(Note: I totally love Tolkien and LOTR) Whenever I reread LOTR, I skip the Bombadil sections. It reads much better that way. It's been said that LOTR is a wonderful story horribly told. Of course that's not really true, but if you do compare the plot of the story with its style, the former totally outclasses the latter.

Now, The Silmarillion... it's a terrible pity he never finished it the way he wanted to. That is a true work of art.

Hung Mung

10-07-2005, 10:50 AM

I guess I'm in the minority here, but I rather liked Catcher in the Rye. Caulfield was a prick, but he was a prick with whom I could relate. He hated EVERYthing, as did I. But I think it's one of those books where if you're unaware of the context, it completely goes by you. When read in tandem with All Quiet on the Western Front, I think it makes more sense. Lost Generation, and whatnot.

I would submit for terrible bestseller: House of Sand and Fog. I got about 80 pages into it (or however long it takes for the policeman and homeless woman to start porking) and couldn't stand it any more. Awful, and I hated the characters.

Lathe of Heaven

10-07-2005, 11:10 AM

Sampiro

10-07-2005, 11:27 AM

I was even irritated when Dennis Miller (remember him? Used to be funny, then he wasn't, and he blamed it on 9-11, but really it happened before?) named his son Holden. You named your kid after a whiny little hypocritical byotch in a psych ward... hmm. (His other son's name is Marlon.)

I'm embarassed to say I've never read a Faulkner novel, only short stories. It's strange seeing them available at SAM'S CLUB/COSTCO due to Oprah's Book Club. I might try them.

Totally agree with Jean Auel. I thought Clan of the Cave Bear was an imaginative, well conceived and well researched book that kept my interest, but each sequel gets progressively weaker until basicall it's Alley Oop softcore porn.

I just picked up Gore Vidal's The Golden Age at a used book sale for $.50. Overpriced. I love Auntie Gore's venomous essays, but his fiction has always lacked a soul and this one just went to the limit. The final chapter (which I skipped to) has himself as a character ca. 2000 entertaining at his house in Ravella the main character of the book (who was also in some of his other books) and, in what's supposed to be casual dialogue, he works in a treatise on the datura tree, the Shah Jodphur, more than you ever wanted to know about the lesbian affairs of Paul Bowles's wife Jane, a bitchy aside about his work on BEN HUR, and general namedropping of people who have for the most part been dead 40 years and save for JFK are remembered by lit professors. Just self absorbed doggerel.

sj2

10-07-2005, 12:56 PM

IMO, Elizabeth Lowell = utter poo

I have this habit of walking out of my library's sale with a bag of 25c paperbacks and I got 2 of these duds. Horrible and Terrible. She talks with her sad dead kid...who gives her advice and eeerie warnings. Sadly, I accidently got an audiobook of Moving Target. Cliches and talking with dead children. Yikes.

Scumpup

10-07-2005, 01:13 PM

I just picked up Gore Vidal's The Golden Age at a used book sale for $.50. Overpriced. I love Auntie Gore's venomous essays, but his fiction has always lacked a soul and this one just went to the limit. The final chapter (which I skipped to) has himself as a character ca. 2000 entertaining at his house in Ravella the main character of the book (who was also in some of his other books) and, in what's supposed to be casual dialogue, he works in a treatise on the datura tree, the Shah Jodphur, more than you ever wanted to know about the lesbian affairs of Paul Bowles's wife Jane, a bitchy aside about his work on BEN HUR, and general namedropping of people who have for the most part been dead 40 years and save for JFK are remembered by lit professors. Just self absorbed doggerel.

I got the whole historical series that began with Burr and continued up through The Golden Age in a sack of used paperbacks. I really wanted to like these books because Gore Vidal is such an entertaining speaker. Alas, my hopes were dashed. Burr was mildly interesting, Lincoln was just barely readable, and the rest were unbearable. The only time his prose came to life at all was to describe the delights of oysters and Virginia ham.

SpazCat

10-07-2005, 01:14 PM

marque elf

10-07-2005, 01:29 PM

I agree whole-heartedly about Silas Marner. I had to read it for 10th grade English and loathed every sentence. Redemption through a cute kid has been done to death by TV and Hollywood. I don't enjoy someone transparently trying to manipulate my emotions. I realize that the book was written long before motion pictures were invented but it's being first doesn't redeem it. The prose stumps from sentence to sentence. I'd never been happier finally closing the cover on a book.

Another real stinker was Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. It was one of my mother's favorite books. It had knights, jousts, swordfights, sympathetic Jewish characters. That meant it had to be a good book right? It was the worst book I'd ever read as a teen. It still rates as one of the worst things I've ever read. I never finished it. It was the only book I ever went out and bought the Cliff's Notes for. Maybe I was too young for it but I've never had the heart to give it a second try.

Nars Glinley

10-07-2005, 01:38 PM

Tom Clancy really needs to give up (if he hasn't already).

koeeoaddi

10-07-2005, 01:39 PM

There are lots of books that I mildly disliked for various reasons. Swann's Way put me to sleep. I never cracked a smile while reading A Confederacy of Dunces. I couldn't keep the characters straight in 100 Years of Solitude and though I bought The Satanic Verses as a matter of principle, it hit the wall after 45 pages. I am willing to concede that I just didn't get the those books due to some kind of egregious personal literary failure and when someone tells me how wonderful one of them is, I'll agree to disagree.

However, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen fills me with righteous pique. What a hugely overrated pile of poo.

Sampiro

10-07-2005, 02:15 PM

Burr was mildly interesting, Lincoln was just barely readable, and the rest were unbearable.

That's exactly how I felt, even though (don't ask me why) I read every one of them. It's almost as if he just doesn't really understand how humans operate.

Vidal's archenemy, of course, was fellow 40s queer wunderkind (actually Vidal won't identify himself as gay, he's just a guy who likes having sex exclusively with men) Capote. In terms of political insight and biting essays, there's no comparison, Vidal's the tops, but in terms of literary style and skill and the ability to tell a story that leaves you hanging on every word, Capote was the master and Vidal a little bewigged and embittered Salieri scoffing into his laced sleeve.

Another one I'll add: I won't call it bad, just, imo, overrated- Eggars' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I just never greatly came to care about the characters. Even for a memoir it seemed utterly self obsessed and... I don't know, it's like he was trying too hard to be witty and likable (even when portraying his unlikable moments). Of course the fact that I'd read a couple of his op-ed pieces that made me say "Get real, boy!" (they weren't liberal so much as just unrealistically idealistic) may have flavored my opinion.

Sampiro

10-07-2005, 02:19 PM

I never cracked a smile while reading A Confederacy of Dunces.

Well... that's one way of... looking at it.

Sampiro orders chief security eunuch to place koeeoaddi's name on a 'future suspected suspects' list'.-- j.k., if tastes didn't vary this would be a dull board

[Hijack]I wasn't aware until recently of the rumors that Confederacy was actually written largely by Walker Percy [similar to the rumors about Capote and Mockingbird). Personally I discount them- nobody has a strong enough ego to not claim a piece that critically and popularly lauded (even more true of Capote and Mockingbird).[/I]

CalMeacham

10-07-2005, 02:29 PM

I'm surprised that Dr. Jeckyll and Mister Hyde and Moby Dick made someone's hate list. No doubt someone will be surprised at my choices:

I'll agree with Catcher in the Rye Why someone thinks this is the novel for rebellious teen feelings is beyond me.

Turn of the Screw, The Beast in the Jungle , and anything else by Henry James

A Death in the Family by James Agee. But i might give it another try. Throwing a high school student into that novel with no inkling of its background strikes me as really bad teaching.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens. I love most of dickens. But not this

A Separate Peace -- Had to read it twice, for two different courses. Hated it twice as much.

Pride and Prejudice I could barely finish this.

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy. Heck, I really liked the sprawling mess that is War and Peace, but I hated this short story.

Anaamika

10-07-2005, 02:30 PM

Tom Clancy really needs to give up (if he hasn't already).
I'll second this. He is absolutely horrible.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - for a really cool, really spooky premise, it was a horrible book.

Great Expectations is like Purgatory....goes on and on and on and on...

Wuthering Heights.

PastAllReason

10-07-2005, 02:31 PM

Since Catcher in the Rye is already taken, I'll add The Old Man and the Sea to the list. Good god, that was horrible. And the only Hemingway I will ever read.

N. Sane

10-07-2005, 02:38 PM

Vanity Fair. English major and literature geek that I am, I tried 3 or 4 times to wade through that pile of prose, and finally said screw it. Fortunately, it was never required reading for any of my classes.

For more contemporaries, I have to say that I wasn't all that impressed with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (did I get the title right?). It had potential, but never really took me anywhere.

stargazer

10-07-2005, 03:33 PM

I agree with Wuthering Heights... I read it in high school, and I thought even then that it was horrible -- it seemed like it had been written before anyone had invented color.

Captain Amazing

10-07-2005, 04:20 PM

When read in tandem with All Quiet on the Western Front, I think it makes more sense. Lost Generation, and whatnot.

I don't get the connection. All Quiet on the Western Front was written in 1929, and is about WWI. Salinger wasn't even born until 1919, and Catcher wasn't published until 1951.

Beware of Doug

10-07-2005, 04:42 PM

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I read it over the summer because I'm taking a course in African lit and a lot of African writers hate that book. I'm with them. 100-odd pages of NOTHING HAPPENING. I had to force myself to stay awake through it.Seems as though a hearty, steaming cup of STFU before writing would have done dear old Mr. Korzeniowski, and his readers, a world of good.

:smack: And don't go looking for a Hitchcock movie called The Secret Agent. It's called Sabotage. Not to be confused with Saboteur.

Beware of Doug

10-07-2005, 04:45 PM

:smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: :smack: Actually, Hitch DID make a movie called Secret Agent. It's got nothing to do with the book. And it's actually better than Sabotage, if you ask me.

vivalostwages

10-07-2005, 05:16 PM

snip

I would submit for terrible bestseller: House of Sand and Fog. I got about 80 pages into it (or however long it takes for the policeman and homeless woman to start porking) and couldn't stand it any more. Awful, and I hated the characters.

If you hated the book, you'll hate the movie even more. I certainly did.

PunditLisa

10-07-2005, 06:28 PM

ENugent

10-07-2005, 06:39 PM

I'm joining the Wuthering Heights crowd. Every single character was an annoying whiny bastard/bitch who deserved what s/he got.

Khadaji

10-07-2005, 07:12 PM

Not sure if either of these authors were ever best sellers but:

Anything by Terry Goodkind or Robert Jordan. Hated them.

But of course, as many will probably attest, everyone is different. There were actually plenty in this thread that I enjoy. :)

Fionn

10-07-2005, 07:20 PM

Everything by Dean Koontz. He's written the same schlock horror novel over and over again. Burnt-out cop with a tragic past hero? Check. Plucky, brilliant female lead who falls in love at first sight with hero? Check. Sadistic, junk-food loving villain w/ paranormal powers? Check. Unusually intelligent, lovable dog? Check. Gah. My head is starting to hurt just thinking about the life-span I wasted reading his drek in my youth.

And they all drink Pepsi.

I enjoyed the first Jonathan Kellerman books I read, but I've come to realize how utterly crappy and repetive they are. Alex Delaware is called in to assist on a murder, his gay detective friend Milo dresses badly, Alex and his girlfriend make dinner and screw, murder solved.

JRDelirious

10-07-2005, 07:33 PM

On the classics front, another vote against Salinger's Catcher.... Actually, I find it to be a just fine adequate tale, it's just I can't get my mind around what in the world makes it a "classic".

As for regular commercial bestsellers, nonfiction, Who Moved My Cheese is pathetic. "You need to see change as an opportunity." Great. I ain't paying you $12 for taking a fortune-cookie aphorism and stretching it through enough pages to square-bind the thing.

Fionn

10-07-2005, 07:50 PM

The Chicken Soup for the Soul books sucked.

Linty Fresh

10-07-2005, 07:50 PM

If we're talking bestsellers, anything Ann Coulter has ever written. It amazes and disturbs me that she has enough of a following in this country to get her books on the bestseller list.

Odinoneeye

10-07-2005, 07:51 PM

Dune. I read it in college, was very disappointed, then lots of people told me that it was great so I tried again. Stopped halfway through.

I mean it would have made a great 200-250 page novel, it's those extra 300 pages or so that bore me to tears.

Marley23

10-07-2005, 07:54 PM

Lord of the Flies
On the Road
There are a few books on here that I was okay with, but nothing I love. I hated all the Dickens I read in high school, but I think it's possible that that's just not the time to teach Dickens.
I think he's a decent writer who's fallen into a formula trap to give his fans what they expect. A friend insists that Phantoms and Watchers are excellent, but to stop with those two.
Well, Ben Affleck was the bomb in it. Or not. Given the movie, I can't imagine the book was any good.

Evil Captor

10-07-2005, 07:54 PM

I'll join the hatefest for Silas Marner. I also had to read The Mill on the Floss. These were books I didn't so much read as burrow through. You just had to take a machete to the turgid prose and grimly hack your way through to the end. My theory is that English Lit types forced students to read them because, having read them, everything else would seem good.

Which may explain why I enjoyed Heart of Darkness. After you've worked your way through Mill on the Floss, Heart of Darkness is a red-hot, thrill-a-minute actioner!!!

Thudlow Boink

10-07-2005, 07:58 PM

Last of the Mohicans. It's the one exception to the rule that movies are inferior to the books. When I read this, I honestly thought that English was Cooper's second language and I was reading a bad translation.Mark Twain would agree with you there. (Well, maybe not about the movie part—but Cooper would have been his "worst" pick.)

Gee, some of the books you folks have been naming have been ones that I thoroughly enjoyed, or at least kinda liked.

Hung Mung

10-07-2005, 08:35 PM

I don't get the connection. All Quiet on the Western Front was written in 1929, and is about WWI. Salinger wasn't even born until 1919, and Catcher wasn't published until 1951.
By God, you're right. Well...my face is a bit red. I could've absolutely sworn that Catcher was published in the early Thirties. Crap.

I imagine I could still construct a post-war, widespread-numbness-and-nihilism argument that contained fewer holes than a Dunkin' Donuts, but it wouldn't be nearly as germane.

Those two books always dovetailed so well in my mind that I made a false connection. Sigh.

Proceed with the Caulfield-bashing.

Scissorjack

10-07-2005, 09:23 PM

Anything by John Le Carre, the poor man's Graham Greene {and that ain't saying much - Greene was vastly over-rated: lapsed Catholics yomping around exotic locales for three hundred pages in search of The Meaning Of It All} - quit it with the fucking omniscient narrator, already: it takes a character three pages to drive across town because we have to be treated to an interior monologue of everything that flits across his mind plus the plot exposition. And I bet he just made up all the spy stuff.

Bomzaway

10-07-2005, 09:34 PM

sinjin

10-07-2005, 10:17 PM

The Bridges of Madison County

Worst. Book. Ever.

I could not convince my neighbor that this book was not only not a "TRUE STORY" but that it TRUELY SUCKED. I even bought her a copy of the parody "The Ditches of Madison County." We remain best friends but don't discuss books anymore. :cool:

KRC

10-07-2005, 10:22 PM

I didn't like The Shipping News either. I found it poorly written and thought the lead character was a hopeless doof. I don't think I got halfway through that book.

Then there was one book--I think by Anne Tyler, but I've tried to suppress the memory of both the name and the author--which featured a man breaking his leg after his cat tries to enter the house through the dryer hose while the drier is on. WTF? And that was just the beginning; it got worse. Maybe that one doesn't count because as far as I know it wasn't a classic or bestseller (at least I hope not.)

Whitley Streiber's Communion --the book about the space rapists from Mars--well, where do I begin? I suppose it wasn't the worst book I've ever read, but I'll include it because it scared the living *#@* out of me.

Frostillicus

10-07-2005, 10:36 PM

Cold Mountain could cure anyone's insomnia in a flash.

And the current best seller The Historian is just plain awful. I don't know how you can make a book about a modern day search for Dracula boring, but the author managed to do so.

(Ironically, I am a history teacher.) :D

Mississippienne

10-07-2005, 10:51 PM

I've bitched about her before, but historical fiction author Sharon Kay Penman is capable of writing only three characters: rogueish bad boy, noble knight, and spitfire heroine. That's it. Somehow, she's managed to write some eight or nine books featuring only these three characters.

I got a good ways into the Scarlet Pimpernel before coming to a horribly ant-Semitic passage about a disgusting Jewish caricature. I flung the book down and was never able to finish reading it. Baroness Orczy can suck it.

Beware of Doug

10-07-2005, 10:58 PM

Well...my face is a bit red. I could've absolutely sworn that Catcher was published in the early Thirties.Except in the early Thirties, there were no nihilists, only Stalinists.

Loopydude

10-07-2005, 11:05 PM

I found The God of Small Things just insufferably tedious. Everybody was creaming themselves over Roy's genious vision and prose, but all I could see was a Rushdie clone (hint: Capitalize Everything, or runyourwordstogethreforemphasis), right down to the soporific drudgery of it all.

NicePete

10-08-2005, 12:16 AM

Couldn't finish Confederacy of Dunces and never saw much funny in the part I read. More cringe-inducing than laugh-inducing.

I'm a big Salinger fan, but Catcher in the Rye is my least favorite of his work. It's a pretty painful read.

However, might I suggest to the folks that knock Holden Caulfield as a whiny and unlikeable character: Yeah, so? Is it the job of a novelist to create characters that you like? Or are they supposed to create fully developed, three-dimensional, real, believable characters. Maybe the reason people have such a visceral reaction to Holden Caulfield (whether positive or negative) is because he strikes a nerve. What if Salinger intends for you to dislike Holden? If he's successful at that task is the novel really overrated?

Given that, perhaps I should give Confederacy another chance.

Also, you have my pity if you can't enjoy John LeCarre.

As for an original contribution to the thread, I've never understood the appeal of Dave Barry or Carl Hiasson. I don't think I've ever read a Barry column that wasn't derivative, predictable or grabbed a cheap and easy laugh. And Hiasson may be a great columnist (don't know, never read his journalism), but his books are formulaic and his characters cardboard.

Scissorjack

10-08-2005, 01:17 AM

And Hiasson may be a great columnist (don't know, never read his journalism), but his books are formulaic and his characters cardboard.

You have my pity if you can't enjoy Carl Hiaasen, but I agree that Dave Barry sucks pustular stumps. You're pretty much on the money about Holden Caulfield, too: I think Salinger's point was that he was an annoying little twerp and not some existential anti-hero. Which didn't make him any easier to read about, admittedly, but I can't remember the book having that much of an impact on me either way.

Hilarity N. Suze

10-08-2005, 01:57 AM

Does it count if it was a bestseller in 1850? Uncle Tom's Cabin. Aaargh. And it's a classic, to boot. Well, everybody knows its name, my guess is few these days have read it, and with good reason.

Also, to join in the pile-on on The daVinci Code, that one, specifically, and all books that rely on the cheesy device wherein people who are presented as superintelligent and extremely well-educated miss really obvious points so the average reader can solve the puzzle first and feel superior, thereby contributing to said average reader's positive feeling about the book. There's a lot of this in mysteries; just don't present the doofuses who can't solve the puzzle before I do as geniuses, okay?

[Is it just me or does the word "doofuses" look exremely weird?/hijack]

Marley23

10-08-2005, 01:59 AM

Larry Mudd

10-08-2005, 03:15 AM

Okay, this is embarrassing.James Patterson [...] The lazy bastard just scribbles "Detective Jablome looked like Al Pacino. He was interrogating a suspect who was the spit-and-image of Martin Landau..."I'm ashamed, but I'm going through some really cheesy audiobooks at bedtime. They're free-to-me, and they blow insomnia away. Anyway, tonight I started First to Die, by the very same Mr. Patterson that I maligned above. (Sucker for punishment.)

First chapter-- let's define our protagonist! Oooh, first-person narrative:Nobody ever thought that I looked like an inspector -- the only woman homicide inspector in the entire S.F.P.D. My friends always said that I looked more like Helen Hunt, married to Paul Reiser in Mad About You.Aaaargh, I just can't do it. I can't go through with it.

**digs around for an old disc of Richard Diamond adventures**

Linty Fresh

10-08-2005, 07:30 AM

And I bet he just made up all the spy stuff.

I doubt it. Le Carre used to work for MI6. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_le_Carre)

wonder9

10-08-2005, 07:57 AM

The Life of Pi...stupid, sanctimonious and tedious. And did I say stupid?

rjk

10-08-2005, 08:13 AM

David Sedaris. People say he's great, hysterically funny, insightful, and on and on. I say he's just annoying, and what I've read mostly seems to be based on contempt for those around him.

Erle Stanley Gardner is bad too. Perry Mason on TV, as played by Raymond Burr, was great, but the books struck me, on the few occasions I tried them, as just being badly written - slow, clumsy prose that puts me off before the end of the first page.

As for classics, I'll have to agree with Heart of Darkness, the Dickens works mentioned above, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Annie-Xmas

10-08-2005, 08:51 AM

Let's not forget Patricia Cromwell's book about Jack the Ripper wasn't even good fiction, and don't try to tell me it was non-fiction.

LVBoPeep

10-08-2005, 11:04 AM

How about Snow Falling On Cedars ? I'm just glad I bought it at Goodwill for a buck- what a pile of steaming goo....

Dr. Rieux

10-08-2005, 11:38 AM

I'm currently suffering through The Aeneid in LAT 420, so that's currently at the top of my hate list. I'm seriously thinking of pitting Vergil.

AuntiePam

10-08-2005, 12:34 PM

And the current best seller The Historian is just plain awful. I don't know how you can make a book about a modern day search for Dracula boring, but the author managed to do so.

(Ironically, I am a history teacher.) :D

Ditto that!!! What a piece of amateurish crap. Poorly plotted, flat characters, totally unbelievable plot contrivances. I made it almost to page 600 and then kicked myself for wasting so much time on it.

I wouldn't have hated the book quite so much if it hadn't gotten such good mainstream reviews. WTF! I'll never trust Newsweek's reviews again.

Some of the Amazon reviews are pretty funny.

OtakuLoki

10-08-2005, 01:23 PM

Camus' L'Etranger. I had the misfortune of having to read it twice in high school. Once for English, and then a few years later for French. It did not improve when read untranslated.

I found Catcher in the Rye more enjoyable than most literature I had to read in HS, so it's not on my hate list. I can see why it's on others' though.

I hated Wuthering Heights, and Mme Bovary.

I was a masochist of the first water, however, and enjoyed Moby Dick when I read it in fourth grade. (Of my own free will, too.)

On my own, I tried to read some things listed here.

I tried to read Confederacy of Dunces, and just couldn't do it.

I even started a Danielle Steelle book, once. I did not, however, manage to finish it. And I regularly read romance novels.

Scissorjack

10-08-2005, 03:20 PM

I doubt it. Le Carre used to work for MI6. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_le_Carre)

So what? Ian Fleming had a prominent role in Naval Intelligence during WW2.

Talon Karrde

10-08-2005, 04:57 PM

I'm a big Salinger fan, but Catcher in the Rye is my least favorite of his work. It's a pretty painful read.

However, might I suggest to the folks that knock Holden Caulfield as a whiny and unlikeable character: Yeah, so? Is it the job of a novelist to create characters that you like? Or are they supposed to create fully developed, three-dimensional, real, believable characters. Maybe the reason people have such a visceral reaction to Holden Caulfield (whether positive or negative) is because he strikes a nerve. What if Salinger intends for you to dislike Holden? If he's successful at that task is the novel really overrated?

I got pretty much the same thing from The Catcher in the Rye. I didn't think the point was "look how great this kid is" but "look how messed up he is", and how he starts to change a little as the story goes on.
I mean, he ends up in a mental institution. That makes it clear to me, unless you think Salinger was trying to pain him as a misunderstood martyr, in which case I wouldn't like the book either.

Talon Karrde

10-08-2005, 05:04 PM

Khadaji

10-08-2005, 05:27 PM

Again, dunno if he was a best seller, but the J.R.R. Martin series is terrible too.

vivalostwages

10-08-2005, 05:52 PM

SpazCat

10-08-2005, 05:58 PM

Oh, and for my own entry, I had to read Beloved and The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrisson in high school and didn't like them. I felt that she aimed more for making everything as perverse and sensationalist as possible than making a good story.

I just don't get the huge screaming fangirl/boy crowd for Toni Morrison. I mean, I love Sula and Song of Solomon, but the rest of her work is just...meh. Still, the only book of hers I couldn't finish was Tar Baby. I didn't even get through the first two chapters. Utter drek.

Scissorjack

10-08-2005, 06:09 PM

I'll see your Toni Morrison and raise you an Amy Tan.

Frostillicus

10-08-2005, 08:31 PM

Ditto that!!! What a piece of amateurish crap. Poorly plotted, flat characters, totally unbelievable plot contrivances. I made it almost to page 600 and then kicked myself for wasting so much time on it.

I pulled the plug at about page 450 when I realized that i couldn't care less whether they actually found Dracula. The constant switching back and forth between time periods also gave me headaches.

Theologue

10-08-2005, 10:31 PM

I'll see your Toni Morrison and raise you an Amy Tan.

Yes! Summary of Amy Tan's books in five words: "My husband, he bad man."

Otto

10-09-2005, 01:09 AM

I'm going for the Gold Standard of suck and saying that, yes, Hamlet sucked. Greatest play ever written my fat ass. Not even Shakespear's best play (Lear was so much better). Had to read it in high school and again in college and it just is not good.

Haven't read the Vidals noted here but I can't believe any of it could be as bad as Williwaw, Kalki or The City and The Pillar. Ugh. Stick with tranny movie freaks, Gore.

MEBuckner

10-09-2005, 02:47 AM

And Silas Marner sucked, too. Maybe if people didn't have to read so much Charles Dickens in high school, more of them would read recreationally.
People don't read Dickens because they don't like George Eliot?

(Yeah, I wanted to stuff little Eppie down a well, too.)

How about The Scarlet Letter?

Scissorjack

10-09-2005, 03:04 AM

Yes! Summary of Amy Tan's books in five words: "My husband, he bad man."

The gripping tale of three generations of Chinese women bickering in the kitchen: the movie of The Joy Luck Division is even worse, especially when you have to watch it in Japan where the bickering isn't even subtitled in English. It says much for Missus Case's charms that we stayed together even after she dragged me along to this.

Larry Mudd

10-09-2005, 03:44 AM

the movie of The Joy Luck Division is even worse.Now that creates an interesting mental image.

Theologue

10-09-2005, 05:01 AM

The gripping tale of three generations of Chinese women bickering in the kitchen: the movie of The Joy Luck Division is even worse, especially when you have to watch it in Japan where the bickering isn't even subtitled in English. It says much for Missus Case's charms that we stayed together even after she dragged me along to this.

Thanks for the warning; haven't seen the movie. I sort of (really, I'm not that picky when it comes to fiction, and the selection around here is limited) liked Club, so I decided to read The Kitchen God's Wife. Ugh. It was the exact same story, except only one family, stretched out over a whole novel, with an even more abusive husband. Very bad man.

SmartAleq

10-09-2005, 12:08 PM

Eragon, by Christopher Paolini. Look, I'm not denying that simply finishing that big boy was a tremendous accomplishment for a teenager... but ye gods, what a steaming pile that book was. You could practically touch his influences: plot is from Star Wars, telepathic dragons are from the Pern series, etc.

Oh, the pain... it's worse for me because I read the book based on the recommendation of my grandson, who thinks it's the greatest book EVAR! He usually has better taste than this, but I suspect it's the literary equivalent of sour gummy candy--the appeal doesn't translate outside of childhood. Now he wants me to read the sequel and I'm running out of ways to tell him tactfully that it's all been done to death before without crushing his spirit...

Holden Caulfield = Whiny Bitch, check!

I spit on the person who handed me "The Old Man and the Sea" as my first exposure to Hemingway--if I weren't so bloodyminded stubborn it might have been my last attempt, which would have been a mistake.

All the Anne Rice books written after she made enough money to convince her publisher that her deathless eggplant hued prose needs no editing WHATSOEVER. I keep picking up the newest books, hoping for the best, only to fire them across the room after ten pages screaming incoherent imprecations for the way the bitch suckered me again into carrying one of her overweight tomes home from the library. Then I sulk off to read "Belinda" instead, because even though it sucks it's a kind of sucking I don't mind so much. :D

Neal Stephenson, everything BUT "Snow Crash." Huge books of likewise huge suckitude, initial promise never fulfilled, dammit!

Thomas Covenant series, whose episode of Punk'd was THAT?

Sure wish David Eddings would stop writing that same endless book cycle with the same characters over and over...

There's always more, but I have too much blood in my caffeine system right now. :p

Khadaji

10-09-2005, 12:34 PM

Neal Stephenson, everything BUT "Snow Crash." Huge books of likewise huge suckitude, initial promise never fulfilled, dammit!True. I hated Cryptomonicon.

Thomas Covenant series, whose episode of Punk'd was THAT?I liked the first three OK.
Well, at least they were worth reading, although I got tired of the whole Unbeliever nonsense, but the rest sucked.

Sure wish David Eddings would stop writing that same endless book cycle with the same characters over and over... Agreed.

Oh yeah, I think Anne Rice sucks too.

I didn't hate Eragon as much as other here did. I can't say it was great, but I'll read the sequel.

Darkhold

10-09-2005, 01:05 PM

Sure wish David Eddings would stop writing that same endless book cycle with the same characters over and over... Read Regina's Song then after you finish weeping in misery over the poorly written incompetent book you'll see why all he can do is write the same crappy cycle over and over.

On second thought don't read it just take my word for it. It's the only book I've ever thrown in the trash.

Otto

10-09-2005, 01:15 PM

Has anyone mentioned Stranger in a Strange Land yet? Because that book was the suck.

Baldwin

10-09-2005, 01:17 PM

Originally Posted by Scumpup:Everything by Dean Koontz. He's written the same schlock horror novel over and over again.How could I have forgotten about Dean Koontz? (And how can I do it again?)

I read some of his early stuff. Two things made me stop:

1) In the novel Phantoms we're told (by a doctor lady) that a human brain weighs six pounds. (Amazingly, this made it all the way to the silver screen; apparently neither Koontz, his editor, his publisher, the writer of the screen adaptation, the director, nor anybody on set at the time, knew how much a human brain weighs.) Also, just terrible writing; ridiculous dialogue, clumsy exposition, eyerolling cliches.

2) In another novel, there's some dialogue in which a mob boss, known to be responsible for all sorts of evil stuff, becomes mawkish talking about his little dogs. Okay, obvious irony. Then Koontz explains to the reader that the situation is ironic. That's when I stopped reading and started a new, Koontz-free life.

(I think this was on "Family Guy": we see a van run over a man on a country road. "Oh my God, we ran over Stephen King!" "That's not Stephen King -- that's Dean Koontz!" And the van backs up and runs over him again.)

MrAlpen

10-09-2005, 01:19 PM

Seeing this thread come back to the top of the pile again caused me to re-read. Previously I itched to moan about the bad press for Elliot (Silas Marner, Mill on the Floss). But the thread's not for their defence, so I bite my metaphorical lip: to each their own, however twisted.

But I do have to ask how Silas Marner gets to be so well read in the USA. Is there a standard list of books common to the whole of the USA? It seems to be a (fine but) minor and slim book to choose if Elliot is on the list. What happened to Middlemarch? Or ... ?

Dung Beetle

10-09-2005, 01:46 PM

Has anyone mentioned Stranger in a Strange Land yet? Because that book was the suck.
The only reason I didn't bring it up was because I've bashed it so many times before.

Evil Captor

10-09-2005, 01:54 PM

MrAlpen

10-09-2005, 02:11 PM

It was required reading in one of my English classes in high school. We were forced to read it. At gunpoint. If my English teacher hadn't had that AK47 aimed at me the whole time, I would NEVER have read it!

That's a lovely picture of the American schoolroom!

If I was heading towards the shreader, I'd be carrying everything by Tracy Chevalier apart from Girl with a Pearl Earring.

SmartAleq

10-09-2005, 03:01 PM

Read Regina's Song then after you finish weeping in misery over the poorly written incompetent book you'll see why all he can do is write the same crappy cycle over and over.

On second thought don't read it just take my word for it. It's the only book I've ever thrown in the trash.

Sorry, it's too late for me--already read it. Damned if he didn't have the exact same arch, self consciously cute talking, annoyingly hackneyed characters as usual, but presented as contemporary people, ugh!

Piers Anthony spent too much time out in the horse pasture doing his typing, should have published the horseapples instead.

Oh, and who did Janet Morris blow to get published? Most ham-handed, cow footed excuse for prose I've ever seen in my life, gorge became buoyant in record time! "Run, Holy Mother of God, run!" <--- actual first line of Janet Morris story--at first I assumed someone had a bet on the horse race or something... :rolleyes:
Then I imagined the sack race at the nunnery which featured the special celebrity guest star...

Kyla

10-09-2005, 03:59 PM

Has anyone mentioned Stranger in a Strange Land yet? Because that book was the suck.

Couldn't agree more. And it starts out so promisingly!

Most horrible mainstream bestseller I've ever read: Message in a Bottle, by Nicholas Sparks. Godawful prose, insipid characters. I hated, hated, hated this book. The only reason I didn't throw it away was that the copy belonged to my roommate's aunt, and the only reason I finished it at all was that I was out of the country and desperate for anything written in English. (I read a couple of my roommate's aunt's Danielle Steel books too - also terrible, but not on the same plane of crapitude that Message in a Bottle acheived.)

Long Time First Time

10-09-2005, 06:18 PM

Have to toss in Dick Francis as somebody who as taken a horse-killed it-then beat it over and over and over again.

Some people write have written 20 books in their life. Dick Francis has written the same book 20 times.

Stephe96

10-09-2005, 06:35 PM

Another vote for Elizabeth Kostov's The Historian. An unreadable bore...hundreds and hundreds of pages about people sitting around reading letters written by some people who sat around and read letters. How this turkey managed to fool so many critics is something I'll never understand.

Giant_Spongess

10-09-2005, 07:42 PM

All I have to say is: fuck Jane Austen and her Bronte clones. I had to read a few for lit classes (WHY????????) and unfortunately my mother and sister LOVE them, so I've had to sit through the interminable, innumerable multipartite movies. Argh!

MsMitey

10-09-2005, 08:53 PM

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett. I don't remember much of the plot, but it caused a sensation, and I have no idea why.

That said, I really love a lot of the books listed here. Though I'll second Catcher and Stranger in a Strange Land and raise you A Fairwell to Arms.

Nefarious Chipmunk

10-09-2005, 10:15 PM

I have just started to read Eragon and it is already painfully clear that it was written by a teenager.

I have to second Hard Times by Charles Dickens. That was so boring, it was literally the only book I have ever read that I stopped before I finished it (I am usually way to stubborn to start a book and not finish it).

I also have to put down Romeo and Juliet. Man oh man was that bad, and I like Shakespeare. I am just glad it wasn't my first exposure or I would never have continued to read on.

YWalker

10-09-2005, 10:17 PM

Sign me up as another who thought that A Confederacy of Dunces was horribly tedious. Go take your eructations somewhere else, bud. It's not amusing.

LonesomePolecat

10-09-2005, 10:32 PM

William Burroughs was easily the most overrated writer of his generation. With the exception of Junkie, I've never managed to actually finish any of his books that I've attempted: Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded and The Wild Boys.

He has his moments. Junkie is a passably good autobiographical novel that gives a pretty good picture of the drug scene of the fifties, and there are passages here and there in other works that are very striking. But overall, he's a waste of time.

James Joyces Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are also tremendous wastes of time. The first is about as readable as a phone directory, and the second is incomprehensible to anyone who isn't willing to spend years of his life deciphering it.

Clothahump

10-09-2005, 11:43 PM

Anything by Ernest Hemingway. A vastly overrated author.

Great Expectations by Dickens nearly made me toss my cookies.

And Jordan's Wheel of Time series broke an axle around volume 3, but he didn't notice and kept churning them out.

manx

10-10-2005, 03:15 AM

I second, third, whatever The DaVinci Code. God how I hate that book. Eragon drove me mad when I read it, I have a proof of the second still sitting on my bookshelf. I'll read it eventually,but not any time soon.

David Sedaris has failed to capture my imagination - I've heard him described as Augusten Burroughs, but funnier, so maybe I'm missing something - I enjoyed Dry and Running With Scissors, but Dress Your Family... seemed kinda flat - is it not his best work?

I pitched Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper across the room when I'd finished it. It got rave reviews from people I work with, but I just found it to be full of cheap character tropes and a get-out-of-jail-free ending. And I'm told it's her best, so I won't be going near her again.

I hate hate hate the Alex Rider series of books. (Stormbreaker etc) Granted, I'm hardly the target market, but almost every day someone comes in wanting something similar for their son, because it's all he'll read. Gah.

I hope like hell I missed the point of the bone people when I read it years ago, otherwise that's one of the most overhyped pieces of NZ literature (it won a Booker! Eee!) around.

koeeoaddi

10-10-2005, 09:30 AM

Psssssst, Sampiro. I'm afraid your chief security eunuch is going to have his hands full. Maybe while he's got us all lined up against a wall he could tell us the one about the tire in the middle of the road. I think we'd all enjoy that a lot more. :)

Cheesesteak

10-10-2005, 10:11 AM

And Jordan's Wheel of Time series broke an axle around volume 3, but he didn't notice and kept churning them out.I'm surprised it took this long to get to Jordan. If not worst overall, it certainly is the series that had the most precipitous drop in quality for no conceivable reason.

I can understand that you should savor the journey as much as the destination. No need to run straight to the ending, but a 1000 page book needs to advance the plot.

I gave up on his series, if/when he finishes it, I'll read the reviews to see if it's worth it, then maybe I'll borrow them from the library.

Khadaji

10-10-2005, 10:30 AM

I'm surprised it took this long to get to Jordan. If not worst overall, it certainly is the series that had the most precipitous drop in quality for no conceivable reason.

I can understand that you should savor the journey as much as the destination. No need to run straight to the ending, but a 1000 page book needs to advance the plot.

I gave up on his series, if/when he finishes it, I'll read the reviews to see if it's worth it, then maybe I'll borrow them from the library.No need to be surprised, because it didn't take this long to get to Jordan. I mentioned him back in post #48.

Gary "Wombat" Robson

10-10-2005, 01:30 PM

And the current best seller The Historian is just plain awful. I don't know how you can make a book about a modern day search for Dracula boring, but the author managed to do so.I definitely agree with that one. And have you ever heard of a 15-year-old girl that talks like the narrator in The Historian? Good grief. I'm surprised I made if halfway through.

Do children's books count for the list? How about Madonna's book, The English Roses? Absolute tripe. If it had been written by anyone other than Madonna, it wouldn't have sold a dozen copies worldwide.

I've enjoyed several of Anne Rice's books (even while finding Ms. Rice herself absolutely insufferable), but Cry to Heaven just capped it. No more Rice. Just stop, already.

For those complaining about books being bad because they're formulaic, I think it all depends on which book you read first. I gave up on Piers Anthony's Xanth series far later than I should have, but if I had read book 12 before book 1, I might have liked it better. Who knows?

Cheesesteak

10-10-2005, 01:47 PM

I mentioned him back in post #48.Oh, nuts!

Scumpup

10-10-2005, 01:55 PM

I've enjoyed several of Anne Rice's books (even while finding Ms. Rice herself absolutely insufferable), but Cry to Heaven just capped it. No more Rice. Just stop, already.

Ex-sister-in-law insisted I read that one. In retrospect, I would rather have spent the time going jogging on the muggiest day of the year while wearing an athletic supporter lined with Owens-Corning fiberglass insulation. I finished it only so I could detail for her exactly why I thought it so dreadful.

AuntiePam

10-10-2005, 03:04 PM

I definitely agree with that one. And have you ever heard of a 15-year-old girl that talks like the narrator in The Historian? Good grief. I'm surprised I made if halfway through.

Then you didn't get to the part where she explains why one of the major characters (not sure which one, they were all alike) forgot that he'd fallen in love with someone a few weeks before.

It was because of something he drank. Yep, Greek booze causes amnesia. Not general amnesia, very selective amnesia, the kind that authors use to wave away conflicts in the plot. :rolleyes:

SmartAleq

10-10-2005, 07:08 PM

Then you didn't get to the part where she explains why one of the major characters (not sure which one, they were all alike) forgot that he'd fallen in love with someone a few weeks before.

It was because of something he drank. Yep, Greek booze causes amnesia. Not general amnesia, very selective amnesia, the kind that authors use to wave away conflicts in the plot. :rolleyes:
Ah yes, the famed "Plot Hole Ouzo," rarer than absinthe...

And no funny comments about oozy plot holes, either! :dubious:

Millit the Frail

10-10-2005, 09:35 PM

Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series started as a really fun and interesting set of mystery novels. She was way ahead of the medical examiner craze (predating CSI and all its clones), and her characters were well-conceived to the point where I wanted to meet them, work with them, be their friends, etc. However, the last several books have steadily declined in quality. It's like she's not even trying. What can we put these characters through? Oh, how about bringing someone back from the dead? More job losses/job changes, that'll mix things up! I have the newest one on loan from the library but it's been sitting on my bedside table for two weeks unopened. I'm worried it'll be crap like the last few.

Since children's and mystery/crime are what I read most of the time, I'll add Artemis Fowl. Those books are really popular, but I read the first and was completely unimpressed. Among other things, I'm sick of the fantasy cliche that humans aren't alone on earth, but they're so dumb that the other life forms/races/whatever need to protect them from that knowledge. JK Rowling does this in a good way, but Eoin Colfer's fantasy world just didn't do it for me.

zenith

10-10-2005, 09:52 PM

Right now I'm regretting I can't change my screenname.

For worst classic novel, I give you Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. It contains so much pointless, eye-glazing exposition, written in ostentatiously long sentences full of subordinate clauses, that I couldn't even get far enough into it to see the plot start. See Hitchcock's movie instead. It's what Conrad would have done had he had an editor.

Hitchcock did another excellent editing job on the short story "Rear Window", as well.

LavenderBlue

10-10-2005, 09:52 PM

Scissorjack

10-10-2005, 11:04 PM

Ah yes, the famed "Plot Hole Ouzo," rarer than absinthe...

You couldn't use absinthe as a plot device for a character forgetting a lover, since absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

Dr. Rieux

10-10-2005, 11:10 PM

You couldn't use absinthe as a plot device for a character forgetting a lover, since absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.
Dammit, I wanted to say that!

OtakuLoki

10-11-2005, 01:25 AM

For that matter, the movie version of Mr. Roberts is far more enjoyable than the book of the same name, that the play the movie is based upon was written from. How that happened I'm not sure, but it is.

SpazCat

10-11-2005, 07:17 AM

You couldn't use absinthe as a plot device for a character forgetting a lover, since absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

You, sir (ma'am?), win at everything. :D

I'm adding that line to my sig.

Crafter_Man

10-11-2005, 07:27 AM

Wow... three pages, and no one has mentioned Atlas Shrugged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged).

I read it. Cover to cover. Included the never-to-end radio speech.

That was 5 years ago. Recovery has been slow, but I can still feel the pain.

OtakuLoki

10-11-2005, 08:56 AM

One question for you, Crafter Man: Why did you read it? :D

Crafter_Man

10-11-2005, 09:35 AM

One question for you, Crafter Man: Why did you read it? :DBecause I'm an idiot! :p

Over the years I have read quite a few books on libertarianism, gun ownership, individual liberty, etc. The authors of these books were always talking about the "classic" novel Atlas Shrugged. And one of my very favorite novels (Unintended Consequences (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_Consequences)) was constantly compared to Atlas Shrugged. So I thought, "Hmm. Guess I better read this thing."

And so I did. :smack:

Gary "Wombat" Robson

10-11-2005, 11:13 AM

Anne McCaffrey has been on the bestseller lists for a long time. Her core Pern series is excellent but her last few novels have been utterly awful. If you have nothing to say anymore, stay away from the typewriter!She's doing exactly that. Her last Pern book was co-authored with her son, and he's now written his first Pern book by himself. She benched herself and sent in the relief pitcher.

GargoyleWB

10-11-2005, 02:27 PM

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I read it over the summer because I'm taking a course in African lit and a lot of African writers hate that book. I'm with them. 100-odd pages of NOTHING HAPPENING. I had to force myself to stay awake through it.

Heh. My lit professor loved this book, and harped on how brilliantly the monotony of the nothingness was presented. Seriously. He felt the major success and genius of the book was creating a mind-numbing atmosphere of hopeless boredom, free of stimulation or variety. Darkest bleakest Africa.

In that case I wish to nominate my tax return of last year for the National Book Award.