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.
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…
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.)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 
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.
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?
Oh, nuts!
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.
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: