# 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:** 11\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/141 "2006-12-04T18:28:33Z")
I’m confused by this. I _liked_ In the Name of the Rose, and the movie based on it. On the other hand, I never could slog all the way through his _Foucalt’s Pendulum_ ---
**Author:** ![vibrotronica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/a9a28c/32.png) [@vibrotronica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vibrotronica)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/142 "2006-12-04T18:36:47Z")
_American Psycho_ really blew. I don’t know why I finished it, but I did. I blame drugs. And it made a lasting impression on me. The impression was that Brett Easton Ellis was an overhyped hack. Strangely, the movie is really good. But, Ayn Rand notwithstanding, the worst book I ever read was [Armageddeon: The Musical](http://www.amazon.com/Armageddon-Musical-Robert-Rankin/dp/0440503477). It was supposed to be a super-surreal comedy. It was neither. ---
**Author:** ![Carlyjay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Carlyjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carlyjay)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/143 "2006-12-04T18:47:53Z")
_Mike, Mike & Me_ by Wendy Markham. I’d love to go into lots of details as to why it is an awful book, but there’s really only one reason: it’s horribly written. It reads like a mediocre-at-best grade ten creative writing assignment. And I’m not just talking plot and character, I mean the actual _writing itself_ was bad. I have no problem with the occasional book full o’ fluff, I like an easy read just as much as the next person, but this book was actually hard to read because it was so poorly written. I have no idea how this woman managed to get published, much less more than 60 books. ---
**Author:** ![Beadalin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@Beadalin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beadalin)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/144 "2006-12-04T19:06:14Z")
I haven’t (and won’t) finish it, but for me the answer is Chuck Palahniuk’s **Haunted**. It was such a steaming pile of ludicrous, misanthropic shit that I couldn’t bear it. I’ve been trying to give it away but no one else wants it, either. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/145 "2006-12-04T19:38:54Z")
I wonder if I’m thinking of the right “In the Name of the Rose”. I never read it, but I downloaded a BBC radio dramatization and listened to it, because I had a vague impression that Umberto Eco was a Big Important Author-type person. If I’m thinking of the right thing, it was an incredibly silly murder mystery set partially in a library filled with enough implausable clues, tricks, and gimmicks to make Dan Brown roll his eyes in disgust. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/146 "2006-12-04T19:54:47Z")
> [@](#): > > I wonder if I’m thinking of the right “In the Name of the Rose”. I never read it, but I downloaded a BBC radio dramatization and listened to it, because I had a vague impression that Umberto Eco was a Big Important Author-type person. > > If I’m thinking of the right thing, it was an incredibly silly murder mystery set partially in a library filled with enough implausable clues, tricks, and gimmicks to make Dan Brown roll his eyes in disgust. Sounds almost right, but, having read Brown’s book and sen the movie, I have to say he’s got Eco beat hollow in the “silly clue , trick, and gimmick” department. Ya want proof? There’s no _Cryptex_ in Rose (and vinegar doesn;t dissolve papyrus, anyway0. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/147 "2006-12-04T20:00:12Z")
I _like_ Great Expectations… The worst book I was forced to read was **The Perfect Storm**. It’s the only book that ever had me contemplating suicide rather than finishing it. I really like the professor who assigned it, but I had to wonder what we did to him. The worst book I ever read on my own from start to finish was [The Twelve](http://www.amazon.com/Twelve-Howard-Kaminsky/dp/0312971400/sr=1-1/qid=1165262054/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-2981497-6825635?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Howard and Susan Kaminsky. There are a couple of ways to co-write a story. You can write “together” in a whole collaborative manner or you can write alternating chapters. This pair chose a third method, which was very clearly to write alternating chapters, BUT to never ever read what the other author wrote. I guess that would be cheating. The sheer number of things written from chapter to chapter that contradicted what came before were mind-boggling. What I don’t understand, however, is how the cultist’s daughter ended up with **3** different ages at her time of death, since there were only two authors… ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/148 "2006-12-04T20:21:55Z")
[QUOTE=asterion] Ah, _Eragon_. That’s one of those books I just can’t decide whether or not I want to pick up and read. I’ve seen a lot of reviews just like yours, that it was written by a teenager and it shows, being very cliched. Heck, I’ve seen the previews for the movie and can’t decide if the guy’s deliberately ripping off McCaffery and several other writers or not. I have an Audible subscription and it’s time to pick another audiobook (hard for me since I’d rather read a book than listen to it.) I’m not coming up with anything else I want to get, so I’m trying to decide whether or not to get the audiobook of Eragon. [/QUOTE] No, don’t. Email me your address and I’ll mail you my copy of \*Eragon \*(hardcover, too!). You can have it. It’s derivative of derivatives. I’ve ranted about it before on these boards. Maybe the kid deserves kudos for writing, but this book never would’ve been published if an adult had written it. The author liberally rips off everything and everyone (which lots of authors do), but never adds anything original, never inserts his own ideas. And the fact that he’s making more money off a movie version pisses me off to no end. ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/149 "2006-12-04T20:29:58Z")
Ducking back into the thread: I liked _The Name of the Rose_ and its movie version (come on, it’s Sean Connery as a 12th century monk! What’s not to love here?). I didn’t mind _Great Expectations_. _The Scarlet Letter_ was marginally decent. Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed _The Historian_ quite a bit. No, my (new) pick isn’t _War and Peace_, which I stuffed into the very bottom of my trashcan after three or four chapters. It’s not _Ulysses_, which had me drooling slack-jawed and snoring over its pages. Nope. Having loved _The Other Boleyn Girl_ and _The Constant Princess_, I, browsing the shelves of my library, picked up _Virgin Earth_ by Philippa Gregory. Never, ever, ever again. ---
**Author:** ![Khan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3ab097/32.png) [@Khan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khan)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2006, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/150 "2006-12-04T20:55:00Z")
[QUOTE=OneCentStamp] I’ll see this, and raise you a _Chapterhouse: Dune_. :mad: 😃 [/QUOTE] I’ll raise you **The Butlerian Jihad** and all the other **Dune** prequels, including the preludes. I got two pages into **House Harkonnen** when I’d heard enough about how great Baron Harkonnen’s pecs looked in leather during his younger years. And since we’re going nuts, I’ll throw in all of the **Dune** series outside of the original trilogy. God Emperor made me chuckle, but c’mon. Leto II as Jabba the Hut? Slig pork? “Oh my god, they killed Duncan Idaho?” I’d add Children and Messiah, but I can’t say that those are really terrible. Lisan Al Gaib deliver us when they release **Sandworms of Dune**. The book I’ve hated the most, though, has been **My Sister’s Keeper** , which I had to read for an ethics class. The main storyline involves a 13-year-old girl who was conceived by IVF and chosen as a tissue donor match for her sister, who was fighting AML. The older daughter’s kidneys fail, and the younger one sues for medical emancipation when her mom expects her to give up one of her kidneys. It raises some intriguing moral issues, but I just can’t get past how humorously bad this book is. For example, every character has a particular font for chapters written from their perspective. Gives “Harrison Ford in a tweed suit” a run for it’s money, don’t you think? Add to that to the one-dimensional daytime TV stereotypes and I lose all respect for this book. One of the side stories involves the dad, a fire fighter, thwarting the efforts of an arsonist who turns out to be none other than… The juvenile delinquent older brother! _gasp_ There’s also the turbulent romance between the girl’s lawer and her guardian ad litem, who were both left scarred by their romance in their upscale high school. She a punk rocker and he of the yacht clube, and the reason he didn’t call was because he was in a car accident that left him an epileptic. HIGH SCHOOL, for chrissake! And that’s to say nothing of the professional breach their relationship amounts to. The ending is the icing on the cake: After building up all this sympathy for the poor younger sister, it turns out at the hearing that A) she was fighting the transplant because her older sister had asker her to and B) she gets killed in the car accident the VERY DAY she wins emancipation. She’s brain dead! Now her sister can have BOTH of her kidneys! Fuck yeah! It’s just made worse by the fact that the author builds up all this tension over the vanishingly slim chance that the transplant will make any difference, only to have the epilogue given by the older sister 20 years later. One in a million! I wish a blogger would go after this one like they did **The DaVinci Code**. Jesus Christ, the fonts! ---
**Author:** ![Whifton\_Polekitty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/97f17d/32.png) [@Whifton\_Polekitty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whifton_Polekitty)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2006, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507/151 "2006-12-05T05:21:28Z")
My first choice, “Catcher in the Rye”, may be more due to the fact it was assigned reading. However, at the time, the book sucked bloated goat testes to no end. Holden “Whiny Prick” Caufield reminded me altogether too much of my whiny teen friends at the time (read: reminded me altogether too much of myself at the time). the writing was bland and monotonous, and did I mention it was assigned reading? My second choice, which was picked up of my own free will, was a lovely little work entitled, IIRC, “Cities in Flight”, which detailed… Well… Cities. Flying through space. Not spaceships, literally CITIES. Scranton, Pennsylvania was one. Fergodssake, SCRANTON flying through space. Add in some crazy-assed longetivity drugs and witnessing the END OF THE UNIVERSE and you’ve got one seriously BAD work of literchure. It sat on the coffee table for several months after I finished it simply because I didn’t want to touch it again. I think my roommate eventually accidently burned it. Ultra mega HEAVY bad, that one was. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-worst-book-you-ever-read-and-why/382507.md?page=7)