I’m not surprised at people being pissed off at Moby Dick - it’s a hell of a long book, and the fact kids are forced to read it, and that their teachers often don’t have any idea what the point of the book is, ruins it for most people. That said, it is a brilliant book if you treat it like an encyclopedia the first time around, and then reread it for the action skipping the in-depth descriptive chapters. I would say the last ten chapters include some of the most amazing passages I’ve ever read - of course, I had a brilliant Literature lecturer who actually had some understanding of what Melville was on about.
I think On the Road is overrated, but it’s not terrible - I found it fun to read on the bus/train - it seems to fit the rhythm of movement well. I also love Heart of Darkness (and thought Apocalypse Now was crap - the doco on the making of it was much closer to the spirit of the novel). I guess it’s down to strokes for folks.
I have to agree with ‘Men are from Mars …’ - I bought this for my mother as she had been convinced it would help her marriage (which actually was fixed up, but more in spite of this book than because of it) and I took the time to read it. I didn’t throw it, but I nearly tore it up - what an absolute load of crap.
The worst book I ever finished was Chicago Loop by Paul Theroux. It’s about a guy who is a complete dick, and by the end he transforms into a completely different dick. The story reaches its moral, aesthetic and logical conclusion in the worst possible way – the plot has nowhere to go when the guy sucks so bad he can’t possibly suck any harder, and he kills himself just so the book can end.
Bar none, the worst book that I have ever read was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It was requred for a general humanities course in college and was roundly decried as a pretentious piece of garbage.
Fortunately great strides have been made in psychotheraputic drugs in the twenty years since it was written. So all I have to say is, “Dude, take your Xanex, remove the wrench from your ass and quit annoying the freshmen.”
I also agree with Slackergirl: Tristram Shandy is Sominex in pasteboard. No way it could ever be thrown, though. It’s too boring to get annoying enough to throw.
I must have been extremely susceptible in English Lit because I really like many of the books on this list. I like Dickens, although there are plenty of stinkers in his book list, notably Oliver Twist; Pride and Prejudice is my absolute favorite all time novel; and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is my favorite all time non-fiction work. And I really like Melville, including Moby Dick.
There have been a few books I wanted to read all the way through but just couldn’t do it. Henry James comes to mind.
The only time I ever threw a book was not because it was bad – it was just too emotionally involving at the time: Jude the Obscure, by Thomas Hardy. Never, ever, ever read Hardy if you are already depressed.
It’s not quite contemporary, but I have a copy of an article published in the North American Review in 1895 which is a scathing criticism of Cooper’s writing ability. From the author’s list of “rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction”:
I never was made to read Cooper, yet I love this stuff. Someday I’m going to start collecting great reviews of really bad things. (I was entertained for days reading reviews of Battlefield Earth!)
The 13th Warrior was absolutely horrible. I read the book all the way through simply because I can’t stand to start a book and not finish it. I burned it when I finished. I wouldn’t dream of passing it on to someone else.
Well, Hannibal, but that has already been os so deservedly thrown.
Faded Sun-Krsih or something like that, by a good SF writer i will not nam: She required you to learn about 40 words of an alien language by page 5, all just by context, and with no glossary. COULD not read it. Actually DID throw it.
And, for most overrated:the Metamorphisis by Kafka. At least it’s short. For some reason this is inflicted by honors english teachers on millions of underdeserving students, as an example of “european” lit. Crap.
I don’t know about books I’ve thrown across the room, but I do know of books I’ve thrown in the trash. Boxes of books. My dad’s books. My dad’s boxes of books. His boxes of books that were cluttering my room. Well, they clutter no longer.
Let’s hear it for the whiny, swampy prose of William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams or any other writers or playwrights who inflict the rest of us with pointless whining about how decadent and dysfunctional their families or their neighbors might be. Deal with it and move on.
These ghastly tomes are beloved by English profs of the Deconstructionist school because the authors throw enough Pointless Incidents so that any critic can prove his or her point by selectively choosing their favorite half dozen incidents.
It is from a twisted sense of perversity that these authors are forced on innocent young minds. If you want classics worth reading, give them Twain. At least they’ll understand irony.
I have to read Emma for summer reading bullshit. It’s the most boring piece of shit I’ve ever read. I keep falling asleep two pages after I start. Hopefully if i read two pages every sitting twice a day, then i’ll be done soon. I have 2 other books besides that to read for school.
Angela’s Ashes. Like I told the people in my travel group to France who had brought it as a “great new read,” I kind of stopped taking interest when Mr. McCourt started digressing more and more to talk about masturbating in the countryside. The two funny parts I heard on A Prairie Home Companion far outstrip the rest of the book, but it’s too bad that that only accounts for perhaps 1/250 of the book.
Also Catcher in the Rye. Sorry, but Holden Caufield is the epitome of melodramatic teenage angst. I’ve had it explained to me in numerous classes, but if I ever acted like that, I’d be sent to my room to think things over without dinner for a while. To quote Holden, “F*ck that.”
Oh! How can I forget The Last Temptation of Christ? shudder No, no, no, no. This book was not horrific and sinful as so many claimed, but it sucked. Plain and simple. Almost 500 pages of Kazantzakis’s idea that man is dirt that must sublime to flame to become truly pure…or something like that, it was full of obscure philosophy.
Stars and Stripes Forever, an alternate history of the Civil War, by Harry Harrison, and Bring the Jubilee, an alternate history about the US sixty years after the South wins the war, by some clod whose name I don’t remember. A few years ago, I got into Harry Turtledove’s alternate history (not drawn to his SF), and having read all his AH, thought I’d try some other authors. Either it’s only Turtledove that I like, and not AH as a genre, or those other guys can’t write. One reason I got fed up with Harrison is that there were numerous sentence fragments. I’m not a grammar harpy, but it made the style choppy, and since nothing was happening in the plot, and all this nothing was happening to characters that didn’t interest me, I tossed it. I don’t even want to discuss Jubilee.
Chalk up another for the texbooks. Mine was physics (advanced mechanics). Partly I was mad at the author for not writing explaining well enough, and partly I was mad at myself for not understanding well enough. I always meant to finish the damn book, but it’s been three years and I haven’t touched it.
I’m also a big AH fan. I love most of Turtledove’s work, but I damn near threw his collaboration with Richard Dreyfus, The Two Georges into the ceiling fan. I was just so distracted by their (it must’ve been Dreyfus’ input) recitation of every item on their meal menus, ad infinitum. Essential to the story, I think not!
The premise was interesting, British North America in the 20th century, 200 years after Washington’s surrender. I could’ve done without the attention to detail of every last food item each character ate throughout the story. That was weird.
For the most part, his solo efforts are much more fascinating, like the Great War and Civilization, In The Balance series.