# The worst book you ever read and why. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 1, 2006, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507 "2006-12-01T18:44:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Sassy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@Sassy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sassy)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/81 "2006-12-02T21:15:58Z")
I tried to read one of the Left Behind books, but couldn’t do it… ---
**Author:** ![look\_ninjas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b2d939/32.png) [@look\_ninjas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/look_ninjas)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/82 "2006-12-02T21:45:53Z")
For some reason, I picked up Patricia Cornwell’s Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed as part of my Ripper material a few weeks back. I’m not sure why. I cringed when she said her subject was Walter Sickert. I felt a bit funny inside when she increased the number of canon victims from five to seven. (For the record, she seems to attribute at least nine murders to Sickert’s Ripper, including some that occurred out of the London area, and one or two young boys.) A few chapters in, she was confidently declaring that Sickert committed the murders owing to the fact that he lost his manly bits as a child, despite the fact that she had no actual proof of that. The rest of her evidence was even worse. And yet I kept right on reading, even though I was alternating between cursing the book and mocking it. I have no idea why I didn’t just throw the book down and read something else. Maybe I was just enjoying the fact that, compared to her, I’m a freaking Ripper expert. ---
**Author:** ![light\_strand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a6a055/32.png) [@light\_strand](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/light_strand)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/83 "2006-12-02T22:00:26Z")
I generally have no compunction about putting down a book half read when I get bored or don’t like it, so the books I’ve actually read that I hated compose a very short list of one: **The Bridges of Madison County**. I hated this book. It is the only book I’ve ever completed, which, when I laid it down I said to myself, _Someone owes me three hours of my life back._ It was trite, stupid, unromantic, full of unlikeable characters, and badly written. I reasons I finished it: because it was so highly recommended that I kept expecting it to get better. It was short. I hoped for some killin’. ---
**Author:** ![Sternvogel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sternvogel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sternvogel)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/84 "2006-12-02T22:15:45Z")
[QUOTE=SnakesCatLady] “The Ladies of the Club”, I think it was. A six-inch thick paperback written by a 90-something year old woman. It is the only book I started I never finished, and I have finished some stinkers! [/QUOTE] You were close on the name – it’s [“…And Ladies of the Club”](http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/elements/lkefsnw1.htm) (the quotation marks are part of the title). I never read it, but I remember the hype, as well as the fact that one of my aunts had a copy prominently displayed in her house. I did read _Great Expectations_ as an assignment in ninth grade, but I can’t join the chorus of hatred for that work. However, I tried to read the appropriately-titled _Bleak House_ when it was on the syllabus of a college class on the Victorian novel, only to realize after about fifty pages that I’d take a chance on being able to BS my way through any final-exam question that related to this Dickensian _minim opus_. (I was also taking a course on literature of the American South that semester, and forced myself to slog through every one of the assigned works in that class\*, as I knew that the professor had a policy of asking students, when they took a final in any of his courses, to attest to the fact that they had indeed perused all the relevant material. The professor of British lit had no such policy.) - actually, most of the books were pretty good, but I had to race against time in order to finish _Look Homeward, Angel_ on the night before the exam ---
**Author:** ![SailBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/77aa72/32.png) [@SailBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SailBunny)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/85 "2006-12-02T22:34:38Z")
I agree about Steinbeck’s The Red Pony. Never put “pony” in the title of a book that is not intended for horse crazy pre-teens…holy cow Depresso! I read it a few years later, searching for something I’d missed, and hated it just the same. Also, about Name of The Rose, I had to read this for an AP English class in high school for summer reading. Our teacher told us that Eco purposely made the first 100 pages difficult to slog through as some sort of test for the reader. Only those that made it through were worthy of the rest of the book. It does get more interesting by the end, although we were so concerned with picking it apart into little literary pieces that all entertainment value was lost. ---
**Author:** ![gallows\_fodder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8c91f0/32.png) [@gallows\_fodder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gallows_fodder)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/86 "2006-12-02T22:42:27Z")
I read Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. As testimony to how much I hated it, let me just say I’ve written four drafts of this post and each version ended in incoherent snarling how heinous the main character was. She was the most morose, spineless, soulless, vapid, _loathsome_ creature I have ever encountered in fiction, and if she were alive I’d suggest she swallow her tongue and quickly. I only read the book because my roommate asked me to. And I vented about it in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=364776) a few months ago. And it still pisses me off. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/87 "2006-12-02T22:56:10Z")
[QUOTE=AHunter3] No contest. Harlan Ellison, _Memos from Purgatory_. [/Ellison] [/QUOTE] An adaptation of which was made into an “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episode featuring Walter Koenig as a bad-ass gang leader. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Frosted\_Glass](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frosted_glass/32/3926_2.png) [@Frosted\_Glass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frosted_Glass)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/88 "2006-12-02T22:56:23Z")
[QUOTE=Surrender Dorothy] Great Expectations is traumatic! [/QUOTE] I knew someone here would agree with me. _Great Expectations_ was awful and by far my least favorite of all assigned readings. Unfortunately for me, I also read it first in 8th grade and then had the good fortune of having to read it for class in 9th grade. Stupid, boring and pointless. My second nomination goes to _The Da Vinci Code_. My ex-girlfriend recommended it to me and she is normally so damn picky that I figured it would be a good read. That combined with the hype is probably the reason that I hate it so much. It may be a good novel for people who are illiterate but for anyone who has actually read a book before it is terrible. I am convinced that she recommended it to mess with me. ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/89 "2006-12-02T23:04:53Z")
[The Special Prisoner](http://www.amazon.com/Special-Prisoner-Jim-Lehrer/dp/1586480421/sr=1-8/qid=1165100515/ref=sr_1_8/104-1442395-7287125?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Jim Lehrer. The blurb made it sound interesting, but he simply can’t write. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/90 "2006-12-02T23:59:39Z")
I will admit to reading **Shelters of Stone** by Jean Auel, mainly because I fell in love with the Earth Children series. I have never been so disappointed in my life. It’s like she was phoning it in. Repetitive, conflicts set up and then pettily resolved, slow and dull. I will probably check out the next book at the library, but unless it’s much much much better I won’t be buying it. I will also admit that **Whirlwind** by James Clavell was not good either. Too many characters and I couldn’t keep track of them all, or remember why I was supposed to care about them. I’m rereading **Tai-Pain** and it’s much better. I guess I’m sucked in because I admire the author’s other works. But if it’s a new person that I’ve never read before and they fail to enthrall me, it gets tossed. ---
**Author:** ![InternetLegend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/internetlegend/32/13154_2.png) [@InternetLegend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InternetLegend)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2006, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/91 "2006-12-03T00:21:45Z")
[QUOTE=light strand] I generally have no compunction about putting down a book half read when I get bored or don’t like it, so the books I’ve actually read that I hated compose a very short list of one: **The Bridges of Madison County**. I hated this book. It is the only book I’ve ever completed, which, when I laid it down I said to myself, _Someone owes me three hours of my life back._ It was trite, stupid, unromantic, full of unlikeable characters, and badly written. [/QUOTE] You’ve named the very last book I ever read all the way through regardless of how much I hated it. Before **Bridges** , I used to feel compelled to finish any book I started, but once I’d soldiered my way through that particular dreck, I was cured. This is why I haven’t actually read more than the first pages of **The Celestine Prophecy** (another milestone - it’s the first book I received as a gift and exchanged for something better) or **The DaVinci Code**. (I only made my way through all of **Bridges** because a) it was a gift from my mother-in-law, who hadn’t actually read it but who once lived in Madison County and b) she’d written a note on the title page to that effect, so I couldn’t take it back anyway.) I can’t say any of these three would qualify as the single worst book I’ve read. I’m sorry to say I’ve hacked my way through many of the books listed in this thread, and it would be just as hard for me to choose just one as the very worst as it would be for me to pick just one of my favorite books as the very best. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Rieux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2006, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/92 "2006-12-03T01:44:41Z")
[QUOTE=Earl Snake-Hips Tucker] An adaptation of which was made into an “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episode featuring Walter Koenig as a bad-ass gang leader. :dubious: [/QUOTE] And James Caan as Harlan. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2006, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/93 "2006-12-03T04:10:23Z")
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp] By the way, everyone, you realize that we’re only even having a discussion here because nobody on the SDMB has actually read [_Mission Earth_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_earth), right? 😛 [/QUOTE] Sorry - I’ve been offline. I’ve posted rants in many threads before about the sheer horror of that series. I read all ten volumes. I started it because (A) I’d never read L. Ron, and had no idea how bad he was, and (B) because I’d seen that damn series on various library shelves for decades, and finally just had to know what the deal was. I continued it after the first ten pages out of some perverse desire to be able to warn people about it without worrying about hearing “Yeah, the first six books were bad, but then it got GREAT!!” You can search my other posts if you’re really fascinated, but the line that sums up my feeling about it is this: “Calling this series a dungheap is an unforgiveable insult to all the fine, hardworking, nutrient-producing, decaying piles of shit out there that do so much for us all.” I’m sorry - I’m sure all the other people in this thread have read some bad books, but this one wins, hands down. No other books has been such a useless sacrifice of trees. If we recycled every copy into toilet paper so that I could wipe my ass with this series, it would be improved by orders of magnitude. I really didn’t like that series. ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2006, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/94 "2006-12-03T04:13:31Z")
While I wouldn’t say it’s the worst book ever, here’s why I have a bug about _Great Expectations_. I used to teach 9th grade English. I was given a choice to teach either GE or _The Lord of the Flies_. Of course, I picked LotF because it’s got way more appeal and interest for 14 year olds than GE, which is insanely long and fucking annoying. At the end of my 3rd year, my department chair, in her infinite wisdom, decided that LotF was too adult for 9th graders and insisted that I teach GE instead. I quit that goddamn job before I had to inflict that horror on my students. That’s not the reason I quit (some of it had to do with my department chair being one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met), but it is a representative sample of why. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2006, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/95 "2006-12-03T04:31:23Z")
[QUOTE=Marley23] _Atlanta Nights_. It was designed to be the worst book ever written, and it is hilariously successful. Maybe it shouldn’t count, since it’s a parody, but since **RealityChuck** posted here… [/QUOTE] Come on . . . you didn’t _really_ read the whole thing. ---
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2006, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/96 "2006-12-03T05:13:54Z")
[QUOTE=ivylass] I will admit to reading **Shelters of Stone** by Jean Auel, mainly because I fell in love with the Earth Children series. I have never been so disappointed in my life. It’s like she was phoning it in. Repetitive, conflicts set up and then pettily resolved, slow and dull. I will probably check out the next book at the library, but unless it’s much much much better I won’t be buying it. [/QUOTE] I bought this one at a closeout store for four dollars. I feel I was ripped off. Every book since the second in the series seems to have the same plot: Ayla and Jondalar have sex. Ayla faces prejudice because of her background. Ayla and Jondalar have sex. Ayla invents something/saves someone’s life and overcomes the prejudice. Ayla and Jondalar have sex. ---
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2006, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/97 "2006-12-03T05:57:20Z")
[QUOTE=jacob wrestling] **The Devil Wears Prada** by Lauren Weisberger. I checked it out from the library one summer in a misguided attempt at finding some good “beach reads” for vacation. Horribly plotted, terribly written, soul-destroying, 350 page-long, name-dropping monstrosity. [/QUOTE] That’s the book that immediately came into my head when I saw thread title. A pretentious bit of nonsense written by someone comes across as a snide, shallow, obnoxious spoiled brat. Her main character’s ambition is to work for the New Yorker. The author writes so poorly she’d be lucky to write for the National Enquirer. I swear I was rooting for the villain. ---
**Author:** ![ACC\_Expat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/76d3ee/32.png) [@ACC\_Expat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ACC_Expat)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2006, 6:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/98 "2006-12-03T06:02:20Z")
I knew there was no way that I’d be the first person to list _Great Expectations_. To give Dickens credit, I rather like _A Tale of Two Cities_. I did not like _The Scarlet Letter_ either, but before you give up on Hawthorne, try reading some of his short stories. I think he was really gifted with that form. ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2006, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/99 "2006-12-03T06:08:42Z")
[QUOTE=Rysdad] I had to read that despicable piece of ultraboring bilge in high school. I’ve already told my son that, if GE is ever required reading, he has my blessing to skip the rest of that class. I can only hope that someone does a re-write of it where Pip grows up, kicks his sister’s ass, and gets Miss Havisham placed in a nice, secure nursing home. [/QUOTE] I’d be curious to hear what you’d recommend instead of _Great Expectations_. I’ve met plenty of folks who didn’t like it, some who said it was one of the best novels they’d ever read, but not a single one who called it “ultraboring bilge” and hoped a rewrite would end more like a Stallone/Schartzenegger picture… ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2006, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/100 "2006-12-03T06:14:14Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck] Come on . . . you didn’t _really_ read the whole thing. [/QUOTE] I go to bad movie festivals. I managed to read The Da Vinci Code. You think I couldn’t do Atlanta Nights? By the way, if I haven’t told you before, your chapter is one of the funniest. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507.md?page=6)