His Heat wasn’t much better than Brothers, but I admit that I enjoy his writing style so much that, even if the plot suffers, his books still amuse me.
Forrest Gump was the worst book I’ve ever read because the author simply can’t write. How they made a mildly entertaining movie out of it, I dunno. I didn’t mind The Fountainhead so much, but Atlas Shrugged bored me to tears with the preaching; Stranger in a Strange Land had the same effect for the same reason.
Easy. Cait London’s When Night Falls.
To quote myself (from a review I wrote):
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
I read it in high-school. It was impossible to follow. I think I made it about half way through. The part that really turned me off was the description of one of the characters transforming in to a goat with an exceptionally large phallus (described in detail.)
Why this book would cause a fatwa and an uproar, I’ll never know… Because the whole thing was completely and utterly nonsensical.
Fish in a barrel, I know, but it’s got to be **‘Vale of the Vole’ ** by Piers Anthony.
Why? - It’s Piers Anthony. It’s Xanth - 'nuff said. I defenestrated it somewhere around chapter five.
The Last Mammoth. Not only was the dialogue (setting prehistoric North America)
riddled with contemporary (late 20th century) slang, but most of the plot involved the young
hero and heroine screwing like rabbits. You’d think the second half of the book would involve
a hunt/search for the last mammoth, right? Nope-just some bland hand-waving about how
killing all the mammoths would be necessary for modern civilization to arise. Huh?
When I was young and had not yet developed taste and good judgment in selecting reading material I read a lot of licensed novels and by far the worst of those were the Dungeons and Dragons novels. R.A. Salvadore and Ed Greenwood, I want that time back!
The Things That Matter Most: In the mid-90’s, I went through a Dittohead phase, which I’m not proud of at this late date. Still, not even the worst shit spewed by Rush Limbaugh could match Cal Thomas’s drivel. In this commentary on our society, Cal blasted the Enlightenment for taking us further away from God and called for censorship of TV and movies for the sake of this fine nation (This was all irony-free, by the way. Cal was being totally serious.). His photograph is on the cover, and he even looks like an asshole. He’s got the same smug look as a high school principal I used to have who gave extra detention to the popular, good-looking kids. To this day, I’m pissed off at myself for actually paying money for this book.
Advanced Sex Tips for Girls: I hate to say it, but Cynthia Heimel has lost her ever-luvin’ mind. She used to be the author I would read when I was feeling confused in a relationship and wanted some wisdom. She was kind of wild and wooly even back then, kind of a ranter, but damn, she could give good advice, and you always had the feeling that she would do her damndest to help you through your troubles while making you laugh all the while.
Not anymore. She’s turned bitter and weird in her dotage, and her advice reads like she wrote it after a nice soothing cup of Chamomile tea and Benzedrine. I’m not really mad at the book as much as I’m sad for Cynthia.
Ditto, although I think Clive Cussler might edge her out on actual negation of literary talent. Like ivylass, I no longer tolerate books that I can’t stand after the first fifty pages or so; a later Robert Ludlum work (I think it was called Apocalypse Watch) once got tossed into the fireplace for being hideously unreadable. Tom Clancy (never a master literary writer to begin with, but at least at the top of the heap with technoporn) tanked pretty hard, too, in the mid-Nineties. I was glad when the dog tore up Rainbow Six.
Stranger
Misselthwaite by Susan Moody. Looks like it’s also published under the name Return To The Secret Garden.
As the second title indicates, it’s a sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. It’s not a children’s book and it follows the characters in adulthood. Essentially, Moody ruined the beauty and joy of the original story and utterly changed the personalities of the lead characters. It is the worst sequel to a classic book that I’ve ever read - and I’ve read Alexandria Ripley’s Scarlett. I was so disgusted by the book that I threw it in the garbage rather than give it away or donate it, because I didn’t think anyone else, ever, for any reason should be subjected to that trash. Susan Moody should be tried for crimes against the written word.
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.
I also loathe Great Expectations , but I can’t tell if that’s because I’m a boneheaded ninny or Dickens is.
Oh, so many to choose from!
The one that stands out in my mind at the moment was Steppe by that hack writer, Piers Anthony. Worse than his bad Xanth stuff, IMHO!
The Moonstone, for a Lit class. I kept waiting for this most marvelous book to get good. It never did. I did like the character who used Robinson Crusoe like a Bible, though.
FWIW, I found The Historian readable. Not my favorite book, but far from the worst.
In terms of serious books, Fox Girl by Nora Okja Keller has to be the worst book I’ve read. I’m thinking of writing part of my thesis on it because the stuff I have to say about that book could easily fill 20 pages. It’s about a Korean girl growing up post-Korea War and how circumstances force her into a life of prostitution. The way the author shamelessly uses snippets of Korean language and culture to make the book seem exotic and “Asian” makes me want to slap her - more so because she doesn’t even get it right. Her exploitation of a culture she knows squat about is appalling and worse than Amy Tan.
And don’t even get me started on The Red Queen.
Just when I thought I could never top Jonathan Livingston Seagull, lo and behold I read the book my wife just finished when we were on vacation.
A Million Little Pieces. She told me it was great. She deliberately lied to fuck with me. (Kinda like “Taste this - it’s delicious!”)
Who cares if James Frey was telling the truth or not - the real truth is that it was effin’ horrible self-flagellatory pap.
I want to take this book
I want to take this book and grab scissors
I want to use the scissors to cut the book
Cut the book cut the book
Cut the book into little piles of paper bits
Piles of paper bits piles of paper bits piles of paper bits
Bits bits bits bits bits bits bits bits bits
Where’s my lighter
::Foomp::
Well, this doesn’t really count since I didn’t finish the book, but I tried reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Truly, truly painful; somehow, I managed to slog through about 5 pages before I realized that I was in for another 600 pages of the same inpenetrable prose. I hate giving up on books, feeling that one should stay to the bitter end, but I have limits. Eco found mine.
Oh, God, you said the words! Never, ever say those words! Those are bad, bad, naughty-icky words!
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.
Then, the same teacher that assigned GE followed it up with A Separate Peace..
Synopsis: Finny was an insecure, adddlepated punk, and he dies.
:rolleyes:
I can’t for the life of me understand why either of those lousy wastes of time were ever described as “classics.” I’d rather read the phone book.
Add me to the list of those who think Great Expectations is a loathesome piece of quasi-literary shit. What a pointless waste of my time. I hated that book so badly, I got the only D of my time in high school rather than re-read and study it for the Literature test I had on it.
As for non-“classical” novels, I would have to go with some really really bad “SF” called Galactic MI. Basically, someone took a run-of-the-mill military thriller and transported it to another planet, without increasing the technology level or changing the names, and made a SERIES of books like that. And not only was the premise lame, the books were HORRIBLY written. Seriously, they read like crap I wrote when I was 14 years old.
*Firefly by Piers Anthony. It was about a… um… amobea that made people think about sex and then die and stuff. And then the amobea would eat them. Or something like that. Sweey mercy, it was horrible reading.
And I know about his Xanth novels and stuff but I’ll give those a pass because I was in junior high when I started and, at the time, they were fun enough. But this was supposedly an “adult horror” story and it just read like pure shit. Oh, and all the skeevy innuendo of the Xanth books comes out unleashed in this one. I wanted to take a shower afterwards.
Someday I’ll learn to preview here on the SDMB. On the other forum I’m most active on, the preview function has been busted for years so I never think about it.
Worst book? The Bible. Why? Because it’s important.