Yeah, it’s weird. Watership Down is one of my favorite books ever, but after reading The Girl in a Swing I decided not to try any more of Adams’ stuff. TGIAS was boring as shit, and if that was supposed to be a twist at the end, well, it wasn’t.
Not only did that book piss me off all the time I was reading it, it was so bad that I avoided reading the very wonderful Watership Down for 20 years. (Yeah, I read Shardik first.)
Out of the Dark by David Weber. boring, boring book with a “twist” out of nowhere that could maybe have been a good premise if it was at all hinted at earlier than the last few chapters.
earth is saved from alien invasion by… vampires???
Heh, lots of people hate, hate that series, and I can understand why - but I love it. He creates a genuinely different and very strange universe, and the wierdness of it all is intoxicating (to someone in the right mood).
There are no scenes in literature as bizzare and horrible - yet strangely comic - as:
[spoiler] The duel between the grossly obese cook Swelter and the skeletally thin butler Flay … where Swelter torments his victim by placing a cupcake just a little closer to Flay’s head as he sleeps every night …
Or, the successful plot by Steerpike to isolate and murder the twin sisters, and then him dancing over their decayed corpses while trying to persuade himself that he’s not insane …
Or, the daughter Fuschia’s perverse book of nursery rhymes that would make Freud run, screaming [/spoiler]
Oh - good one (I’ve only read Cancer). The naked torso on the cover was about 15 times as hot as the whole rest of the book.
Augusten Burrough’s Running with Scissors. OK, you had a weird childhood. I’m not sure why I’m supposed to care. It comes across as you wanting to impress us behind the high school where we’re sneaking cigarettes.
Not true. Since then his stuff has been readable, fun, etc. just only flashes of the brilliance he had before.
Still, even his worst after then is better than many other authors best.
I really enjoyed Dodger. The Long Earth, however, did not keep my interest.
I wanted to reply to this because romance-y novels that aren’t by such beloved authors as Georgette Heyer get ignored around here.
I’ve only read the Poison Study series, but if you say this glass series is even worse in terms of plotting and stupid ideas, then I ain’t touching it. I spent enough time wondering WTF people were doing in Poison Study.
This can probably be explained by Snyder being one of the flagship authors for Harlequin’s trendy new teen line…
Another one! Gerald’s Game, by Stephen King. I love King, don’t mind his overblown, verbose, overlong stuff even, but that book made me crazy. I just kept waiting for something to happen.
I think it would’ve made a great short story, though.
Here’s another one for the “Kings to Avoid” file: Insomnia. I read it because it was supposed to have a major role to play in the Dark Tower-verse. And, well… I just kept waiting for something to happen. 
I disliked it when I first read it at school, until I read Coral Island- the book it basically parodies. That is one of the most glurgy piles of rubbish I’ve read, the boys (who share names and approximate ‘roles’ with the boys in LOTF) have all but started a cricket team and opened a tea shoppe by the time they’re rescued from the island, having all had a jolly splendid time.
After reading that, I really wanted nasty things to happen to the lot of the prissy little gits, and it vastly improved my re-reading of Lord of the Flies 
“Red Dragon” by Thomas Harris. The first appearance of Hannibal Lector in a story and the basis for that awful movie “Manhunter.” I couldn’t believe how boring and predictable it was. Sadism for the sake of sadism.
Oh - good one (I’ve only read Cancer). The naked torso on the cover was about 15 times as hot as the whole rest of the book.
Congratulations! At least YOU got to see a HOT COVER! Mine just had the title and the overrated author’s name on it!
Mostly Barnes.
Okay, I’m probably going to get strung up by my ears for this one, but…the Dark Tower series. Especially the first one. Especially especially the first one. Talk about waiting for something to happen. I couldn’t even get through it reading–I had to listen to it as an audiobook during my commute as a captive audience.
I wasn’t particularly crazy about any of the DT series (and I love King normally) but the first one was by far the dullest.
I also could not make it through A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Seriously, I wanted to slap the main character at every other page. I just had to stop reading because the only emotion the book evoked in me was pure annoyance.
There are very few books that, once started, I have not finished. I even read the Twilight series (well, most of it; I skipped the third book). It’s crap but entertaining enough that I made it to the end (although I laughed my way through most of it).
The Sword of Shanara series was crap as well, yet I still read it till the end. I’m not sure why. One of the very few fantasy books that I have not been tempted to re-read.
What end? he’s still cranking them out:
I read the first 3 when I was too young to realize how crappy they were. By the time I got to book 6 (Elf Queen of Shannara) I had grown up enough to look back at myself in disgust and “what am I reading?” I think I finished off that batch with “Talismans of..” and then give it up.
Ugh - yeah, I made the mistake of reading the first of those and couldn’t understand why in hell there were sequels. Actually, I tried reading a number of other Anthony books (outside the Xanth series) and universally loathed them.
Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant series. I forced myself through the first book of the first trilogy and hated it. It was depressing, with a thoroughly unlikeable main character. Yes, the world was painted very richly but I just wanted to slit my wrists by halfway through. I couldn’t manage the rest of the trilogy.
Then he wrote another one. Egad.
Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (the book the musical was loosely based on). I forced myself through about half of the book before deciding that life was too short. Again, richly drawn world with tons of detail, but just not READABLE. I had similar “luck” with his version of Cinderella (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister).
And Gormenghast. A friend gave me the trilogy and I tried forcing my way through the first book. Gave up after 3-4 chapters.
Well, I did manage to slog through to the end of Lord Foul’s Bane, and then I rewarded myself with a Trough Sundae at Farrell’s, I suppose just to convince myself that OCD wasn’t all downside.
When I heard tell of a second trilogy, I wasn’t even tempted.
Nearly 30 years ago I ordered Anthony’s Pornutopia, figuring that sf/fantasy porn would be great. Boy was I wrong. Baptists should order that book to encourage chastity. Long out of print, I’m sure, so everyone is safe.
FM Busby has a series starting with Rissa Kerguellen, which is immensely long and could be half the length if he didn’t feel the need to write about each character’s every trip to the bathroom. I have the sequel, but one advantage of having a lot of unread books is that I can avoid things like this. It is now scheduled to be read two weeks after I die, which isn’t a minute too soon.