Oh, I thought of a couple more. I love Chuck Palahniuk, and have liked most of his books and really liked a couple. However…
I would seriously try to dissuade friends from reading Snuff, which was the worst piece of crap I’ve ever waded through, and Rant, which wasn’t much better. Chuck is definitely hit-or-miss these days (his latest, Damned, is quite good.)
I feel lucky; so far the only ones on this list I’ve read were ones for school. Whoops, except for Prey.
The worst one I’ve read was Pieces of Payne by Albert Goldbarth. I’ll admit I could be biased because it was also for school, but I hated every page of it. It skips around a dozen different plots. It is about 50 pages of novel followed by 100 pages of footnotes. It talks for a page about a guy painting a picture of a horse and then has like an 8-page footnote on the biology of horses. (Sounds like Melville, who is talked about in the book too). It also discusses grocery stores, physics, superheroes, medicine, and I think werewolves too.
I actually dropped the class when that project was over and I did consider burning the book but I was able to get 5$ for it at the school bookstore.