# Another bitchy "worst-of" thread: Your votes for worst bestsellers or classics **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 7, 2005, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147 "2005-10-07T04:18:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tentacle\_Monster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba9def/32.png) [@Tentacle\_Monster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tentacle_Monster)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/21 "2005-10-07T14:41:08Z")
> [@Bomzaway](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![kelly5078](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6f9a4e/32.png) [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/22 "2005-10-07T14:55:03Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/23 "2005-10-07T14:55:33Z")
Another one for ‘Catcher in the Rye’. Urf, was that painful. ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/24 "2005-10-07T15:29:34Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![Theologue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@Theologue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Theologue)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/25 "2005-10-07T15:36:48Z")
> [@Big Bad Voodoo Lou](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![Hung\_Mung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a88e4f/32.png) [@Hung\_Mung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hung_Mung)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/26 "2005-10-07T15:50:46Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Lathe\_of\_Heaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Lathe\_of\_Heaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lathe_of_Heaven)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/27 "2005-10-07T16:10:10Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/28 "2005-10-07T16:27:22Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![sj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@sj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sj2)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/29 "2005-10-07T17:56:01Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/30 "2005-10-07T18:13:18Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/31 "2005-10-07T18:14:19Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![marque\_elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71c47a/32.png) [@marque\_elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marque_elf)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/32 "2005-10-07T18:29:07Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Nars\_Glinley](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nars_glinley/32/8177_2.png) [@Nars\_Glinley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nars_Glinley)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/33 "2005-10-07T18:38:08Z")
Tom Clancy really needs to give up (if he hasn’t already). ---
**Author:** ![koeeoaddi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/koeeoaddi/32/408_2.png) [@koeeoaddi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/koeeoaddi)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/34 "2005-10-07T18:39:26Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/35 "2005-10-07T19:15:04Z")
> [@Scumpup](#): > > **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. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/36 "2005-10-07T19:19:35Z")
> [@koeeoaddi](#): > > 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_).\* ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/37 "2005-10-07T19:29:34Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/38 "2005-10-07T19:30:31Z")
> [@KRM](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![PastAllReason](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f07891/32.png) [@PastAllReason](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastAllReason)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/39 "2005-10-07T19:31:39Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![N.Sane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/f19dbf/32.png) [@N.Sane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N.Sane)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147/40 "2005-10-07T19:38:57Z")
_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. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-bitchy-worst-of-thread-your-votes-for-worst-bestsellers-or-classics/325147.md?page=3)