# What are the worst books you've ever read?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [March 12, 2002, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896 "2002-03-12T19:21:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 5

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/81 "2002-03-14T01:42:54Z")

</div>

My vote is a three-way tie between _A Separate Peace_ (forced to read it in high school), _Lord of the Flies_ (ditto), and _The Magus_ (world’s longest shaggy-dog story).

I read _The Magus_ only a few years ago out of curiosity. John Fowles toys with the reader the way the Greek sadist toys with the novel’s narrator. Eventually you realize that the mental torment he’s putting the poor patsy through on that island is a metaphor for the mental torment the novelist is inflicting on the reader. Knowles had a great idea for a ripping good story. But instead of admitting he didn’t know how to write it, he went ahead and produced a hugely bad novel out of sheer contempt for the reader. He keeps teasing you that the payoff is just around the corner but after 656 pages the payoff never comes. He couldn’t even write an ending for it! The stupid book just stops with no ending.

I welcome this chance to get back at John Knowles, John Fowles, and the rest for the dreary crap they put me through.

What’s all this about _Ethan Frome_? I never heard of it apart from everyone at the SDMB unanimously slamming it.

I read _The Pushcart War_ when I was maybe 9 years old. I don’t remember it being disjointed in style. I totally dug the plot of the little guys banding together to get the big guys. It was fun.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Atreyu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5e9695/32.png) [@Atreyu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atreyu)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/82 "2002-03-14T02:17:51Z")

</div>

I had to read Tess of the D’Urbervilles for a college class. Wanted to kill the professor after I finished it. A total waste of my time.

Anne Rice’s The Vampire Armand remains to this day the only book I ever threw into the trash can. Oftentimes if there’s a book I don’t plan on keeping anymore I’ll either sell it at the used books store or donate it to the library. But I could not, in good conscience, contribute to the merest possibility that this book could be inflicted upon another reader. Complete and utter shite.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lorinada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b5e925/32.png) [@lorinada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorinada)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/83 "2002-03-14T02:32:35Z")

</div>

I can’t believe I had to get to the second page before _Hearts in Altantis_ was mentioned. It sprung to mind just upon seeing the thread title. Way too wordy even for Steven King, and absolutely no connection between the first, second and third parts, except for that Carol kid, who was only a minor character in each part. This book was definitely going to get my vote…

And then **Drastic** reminded me of _Killobyte_. I am diabetic, and I can tell you, for all the bragging that author did on the amount of diabetics he interviewed for his research, he still did not get one aspect of this disease correct. _Booster_ shot? What the hell is that? And why was that girl named after a devil? And she wouldn’t have crashed if she had bothered to do what most people do after they take a shot - EAT!

Of course, I, too, have to include anything by Dean Koontz. If that’s all the talent it takes to become a millionaire best-selling author, then I missed my calling.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sjc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@sjc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sjc)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/84 "2002-03-14T07:30:07Z")

</div>

> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Guinastasia \*
> 
> _Romeo and Juliet_. Yes, I said it. Yawn yawn yawn. Bleh bleh bleh. I think it’s evil to make freshmen read this-I was put off of Shakespeare until I read _Macbeth_.

I don’t know if anyone has objected to this yet, but I just _have_ to disagree with you. The High School Shakespeare I read tended to be boring because either the textbook edited things out and so it made less sense or they weren’t presented well by the teachers. I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I think Romeo and Juliet was pretty good. Better, in some ways, than Macbeth. This is all my opinioin, of course, but I have to take exception to Romeo and Juliet being among the _worst_ you have ever read.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Kaitlyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/73ab20/32.png) [@Kaitlyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaitlyn)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/85 "2002-03-14T08:02:11Z")

</div>

Hmmmmmmm. What is it that makes a bad book bad? Is it merely poor writing, or is being actively offensive? Is a book that demostrates a competence in the craft of writing, but is unbearably offensive bad? How about books that are competently or even well written, but have a severely flawed ending that leaves you disappointed. I’ve read books that I didn’t care for that were nonetheless competently written and which I would hesitate to label bad simply on the basis of my disliking them. I don’t care for Faulkner, but that’s a matter of his style not interacting well with my personal taste in literature; I recognize the deep talent he posessed and can understand why he is so admired.

Several of my favorite books are listed here. I consider _Lord of the Flies_ one of the great novels of the 20th century. My students and I both love _The Pushcart War_; it’s a little easy for the gifted 5th graders I teach, but it’s so useful as a tool for teaching tone that I can’t leave it out of my curriculum. I find _The Chocolate War_ compelling; it’s a good introduction to the concept of literary tragedy, though I tend to prefer _I Am the Cheese_. I like _A Separate Peace_ a lot. I think Steinbeck is a god.

My personal choice: _Let’s Go Play at the Adams_ by Mendel Johnson. I read this one summer during college. A college girl is babysitting three children in the Adams family, little Bobby and Cindy and their older sister during the summer. So that they can “have some fun” unhampered by adult authority, they use some chlorofom from their father’s office (he’s a doctor) to knock her out, intending to keep her tied up for a few days then release her. They, and a teenage boy neighbor, proceed to keep her bound and gagged, stripped naked, for a week, using her as a toy to be played with, gradually escalating to torture and rape. They finish by tying the girl naked to a fence post and torturing her to death with a red-hot fire-place poker. They frame a homeless Hispanic drifter for the crime and get away with it, without even feeling very guilty about it.

My hatred for this book know no bounds. It isn’t enough that the book itself is thinly disguised bondage porn. Johnson goes out of his way to make it worse by giving the victim a chance to escape (by injuring the little girl during a bathroom trip), which she fails to capitalize on (she’s too weak to do what’s necessary to save herself, so she is partly at fault). He implies that once the first step was taken (cloroforming and tying up the girl) the rest was an inevitible progression which could have happened with any similar group of kids, and that they were basically good kids who just got a little carried away in a situation kids are ready to handle. The girl wasn’t the victim of an unspeakable act of evil, she was just unlucky.

All this isn’t enough, though. I would remember the book as offensive, but would hardly have this vivid, unreasonable hatred of it 20 years later were it not for the last chapter. The final chapter deals with what might have become of the girl’s soul as a result of her death, in which it is implied that she may be eternally mute and immoble because of how her life ended.

Maybe not the worst book I’ve read–I’ve read books that showed less competent craft–but certainly the book I dislike the most. The truly badly written books I tend to discard unfinished and forget. There are too many good books out there waiting to be read to waste time on the bad ones.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tesseract](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bb73d2/32.png) [@tesseract](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tesseract)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/86 "2002-03-14T08:44:57Z")

</div>

I know this has turned up on best books lists, but I HATED _Me Talk Pretty One Day_ by David Sedaris. Idiotic, uninteresting, narcissistic drivel.

Anything by John Grisham…apparently he doesn’t bother with character development, description of anything, correct grammar, or tying plot lines together. The only thing he can do is think up a somewhat entertaining story.

I liked _Interview With a Vampire_ and I didn’t mind _Lestat_ either (then again I was in high school), but what I truly hated was one of Rice’s attempts at erotica. I think it was called _The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty._ I rather liked her descriptions of blood-sucking in _Interview_ – they seemed somehow erotic, so I thought she’d be good at the genre. Maybe some would have liked it, but it was like reading a book about torture. Some serious S&M there, and it wasn’t erotic at all.

I love that so many people hate _Atlas Shrugged._ She’s so _subtle,_ though – was she trying to promote a philosophy or something?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![tetsusaru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f14d63/32.png) [@tetsusaru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tetsusaru)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/87 "2002-03-14T09:05:34Z")

</div>

The Waterworks, by E L Doctorow. I like most of his books, but this was so dull and dry it was like being forced to eat plates of chalk. How anyone could take a story about a cabal of 19th century robber barons faking their own deaths and paying a mad doctor to prolong their lives by abducting children and draining them of their vital juices {the children`s, not the robber barons`} and make it stupefyingly boring is beyond my feeble ken. I counted, and one thing happened every 25 pages. The rest was taken up by turgid metaphorising about the city as emblem of the human capacity for cruelty and greed: then it all ends at the titular waterworks, which symbolises redemption or the importance of personal hygiene or something. The steam-powered lesbian robot assassins were quite good. though.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![RiverRunner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/977dab/32.png) [@RiverRunner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RiverRunner)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/88 "2002-03-14T16:13:13Z")

</div>

I liked The Waterworks; at least, I liked a lot of Doctorow’s phrasing in the book. He can put some beautiful sentences down on paper. It _was_ a very slow book, though. I haven’t bought anything else by him since reading that. Maybe I should give him another shot.  
Re: Aztec: I’m glad your friend, liked it, Winnowill. It probably was not as bad a book as some that have been mentioned; it may have been that it just didn’t suit my taste. Of course, I didn’t read enough of it to decide.  
RR

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/89 "2002-03-14T18:28:48Z")

</div>

Now, that’s too bad. I liked Atlas Shrugged, although I think Rand could have written it in about half the pages.

Black House by Stephen King…I LOATHE books written in present tense, and to boot, it was also written in the second person. Very VERY hard to get into, but I finished it because, well, it IS Stephen King. If I had to list one book I thought was a waste of time by him it would be The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. It seemed rather pointless.

I read the first few Wizard’s First Rule books by Goodkind…didn’t get to Faith of the Fallen, I lost interest in it.

But my number one, top of the heap, most hated book would be The Bear by Faulkner. I had to read it in high school and I never got past the first chapter. Stream of consciousness sucks. I did like A Rose for Emily though.

Life’s too short to read bad books…I have no compunction slamming a book shut if I’m bored with it or disgusted with the storyline.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![slortar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@slortar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slortar)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/90 "2002-03-14T20:47:48Z")

</div>

> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by ITR champion \*  
> \*\*
> 
> I’ve never understood why _Pamela_ is so thoroughly despised. From my Eighteenth Century British lit class, all I remember thinking is that it was a lot better than _Moll Flanders_. I’ve always just assumed that Daniel Defoe was hired to churn out rubbish at fifty cents per page and that the idea of having an editor proofread the story hadn’t yet caught on in those days. \*\*

My brain is actually suppressing the memories. The reasons that (immediately) come to mind are the glacial pacing, lack of strong characters and the preachy overtones. Moreover, the shift when Pamela’s suitor goes from beyond an abductor/would-be filandering rapist to the very epitome of a suitable husband drove me over the edge. I strongly suspect the plot was derived by flipping coins.

At least _Moll Flanders_ had a strong main character and a few laugh-out-loud moments. At the very least, it was interesting to read about the dark and sordid details of her life.

In my opinion, the only good thing I got out of _Pamela_ was the ability to read _Shamela_ afterwards and get all of the jokes.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cleops](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/2acd7d/32.png) [@cleops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cleops)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/91 "2002-03-14T22:19:06Z")

</div>

I am so heartened that at least two people mentioned Stephen King, who seems to have such a convinced following, as among the ‘worst’. I have never been able to get past page 15 without feeling that I am REALLY wasting my time. It’s not so much that it’s boring, but that it’s so cheezy (as in, hmm, a sort of with-it high school junior is putting has hand to pen). I’d rather be bored by Ethan Frome and Moby Dick.  
Of course, I haven’t bothered to pick up King book for 18 years. Maybe he’s gotten better?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![shelbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@shelbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shelbo)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/92 "2002-03-14T22:52:48Z")

</div>

> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Estilicon \*  
> All the latest books by Anne Rice and Tom Clancy are horrible

They are both suffering from Stephen King disease - they’ve gotten so big that they’ve stopped listening to their editors (or their editors are too terrified of them to try to edit their books). So you get pages of repetition and mental mastrubation. I liked Interview With a Vampire, I liked Hunt for Red October, but I’ll probably never read any more of the new stuff. Stephen King I’ve also given up on (of course, I’ll read all of the remaining Dark Tower books!!).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/93 "2002-03-14T22:56:57Z")

</div>

It never fails- something like Titanic," or “Gladiator.” It’s almost always a film that was highly successful and/or highly acclaimed.

Ask for the worst song of all time, and you’ll invariably hear the name of a multi-platinum hit single (“Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” “Billy Don’t Be a Hero,” “My Heart Will Go On”).

Now, even people who hated “Gladiator” will usually admit that it wasn’t REALLY the worst movie ever. But one just feels compelled to say such things when something we dislike is just so dang POPULAR!

Truth to tell, the worst movie ever made is undoubtedly something that wasn’t even good enough to find a distributor, and the worst song of all time is being played in a dingy club by a band you’ve never heard of.

The worst books ever written are ones we’ve never read… or that we put down in boredom and disgust after a few pages, and promptly forgot about. However, as expected, virtually everyone who’s posted has named a book that sold millions of copies or that’s widely regarded as a “classic.”

Hey look, I was tempted to name Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections.” NOT because it was a horrible novel. In truth, it’s just a so-so novel. Still, I was tempted to choose that one, simply because every literary critic on earth overrated it unforgiveably, and because Franzen himself struck me as a pompous jerk.

- 

Still, since everybody else is naming famous, popular books (rather than the unknown books that are REALLY the most wretched), I’ll be a sheep, and follow suit. The worst POPULAR book I ever read was “Who Moved My Cheese.”

Not just because the pop philosophy was so annoying.

Not just because the underlying message is repulsive (i.e. that anyone who expects loyalty or stability in his relationships or at work is a whiney rat).

But mainly because that super-short book, consisting of fortune cookie philosophy, cost as much as a brtand new, hardcover bes seller.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Winnowill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/4491bb/32.png) [@Winnowill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winnowill)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/94 "2002-03-14T23:03:01Z")

</div>

> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by cleops \*  
> \*\*I am so heartened that at least two people mentioned Stephen King, who seems to have such a convinced following, as among the ‘worst’. I have never been able to get past page 15 without feeling that I am REALLY wasting my time. It’s not so much that it’s boring, but that it’s so cheezy (as in, hmm, a sort of with-it high school junior is putting has hand to pen). I’d rather be bored by Ethan Frome and Moby Dick.  
> Of course, I haven’t bothered to pick up King book for 18 years. Maybe he’s gotten better? \*\*

Well…

I read _The Green Mile_ after I saw the movie - it finally made me break the vow I had made after finishing _Thinner_ years before. _Thinner_’s ending made me so very angry that I said I’d never read another King book until I had a damn good reason to do so. So I read _The Green Mile_, which was really well-done, well-written, and a great story. So I thought I’d venture a little farther and read _The Stand_, since I had enjoyed the miniseries so much. Blew me away. Figuring that I had give Mr King a bad rap all those years and that I had missed something fantastic, I purchased a whole buncha King novels at the used bookstore, and started reading. _Needful Things_ - eh…maybe he was in a slump. _Rita Hayworth & The Shawshank Redemption_, one of my favorite movies - where the hell is the rest of the plot? Good, but…what the hell? _Dolores Claiborne_. Hmm. This is really pretty dull. _Misery_. I hate this. Why am I putting myself through this? Do I really care? _Insomnia_. Nope. I’m done. That’s it, I’ve had enough. Taking back _Rose Madder_, _It_, and any others I have around.

Now I just figure that _The Stand_ and _The Green Mile_ are the only excellence in the sea of mediocrity that is Stephen King.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2002, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/95 "2002-03-14T23:25:21Z")

</div>

I might as well add _The Tommyknockers_ by Stephen King. King really shouldn’t try to write science fiction. He has a bright six-year-old’s belief that if you take a bunch of junk from the hardware store and solder it together in the right order and attach it to a train set transformer, you’ll have a time machine or antigravity. (In King’d defense, according to his book _On Writing_, he wrote _The Tommyknockers_ while out of his mind on coke.) Now, when King is really on his game, he can be a damned good storyteller, and certainly thinks of stuff that Dean Koontz would never come up with.

(Scene from the cartoon _Family Guy_: a van runs over a figure on a country road. “Oh my God, we ran over Stephen King!” “No, that’s Dean R. Koontz.” And the van backs up and runs over him again.)

_Timeline_ by Michael Chricton. The author supposedly spent months doing research in France, yet seems to know less about the 14th century than I do. After thirty years of producing best-sellers, Crichton still has not learned how to write. His character development consists of a three-paragraph character sketch; his plot development consists of an endless series of arbitrary crises. Further, this particular book contains huge logical holes. Feh.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2002, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/96 "2002-03-15T00:29:30Z")

</div>

Anything by Tom Robbins.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2002, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/97 "2002-03-15T04:43:26Z")

</div>

In the worst fiction category, the _Book of Mormon_, hands down.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2002, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/98 "2002-03-15T04:55:10Z")

</div>

> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by booklover \*  
> \*\*
> 
> There can’t be two heinous sequels out there–are you sure you don’t mean “Return to the Secret Garden” by Susan Moody?  
> \*\*

Actually, I meant Misselthwaite! It’s by [Susan Moody](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0340610808/qid=1016167985/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-4955790-2611958) , so I guess it’s the same book under another title.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2002, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/99 "2002-03-15T05:26:39Z")

</div>

The worst book I’ve ever read is one that I’ve blocked the author and title from my mind. I think part of the title had “Lowman” in it, but I don’t remember. All I _do_ remember is thinking that its about some American-Indian who’s well-liked by all his friends and has a girlfriend and is horribly depressed by all of this and kills himself. I was forced to read it in a college English class, and I kept thinking, “What the hell’s this guy’s problem? He’s got a girlfriend, he’s got friends who like him? So why’s he so damned depressed?” (Mind you at the time I didn’t have a girlfriend or very many friends.) The class was ran by an instructor who’s whole point seemed to be that white people are bad and we make minorities suffer horribly at our hands. :rolleyes:

Same English class, this one I do remember _ **Native Son** _ by Richard Wright. A horrible, horrible, heavy handed piece of crap.

Then there was _ **Cassandra** _, which was a modern retelling of the Trojan War from the perspective of the Trojans. Whiny crap about how war is bad and it changes people into things they weren’t before the war and it’d be so much better if we could all live in peace and harmony in a world run by women. (Not saying that men have done such a bang up job of running the place, but anyone who thinks that women can’t be as tyrannical as men is so out to lunch that they might as well not bother trying to come back.)

Finally, anything by William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, two ham-fisted writers who seem to be incapable of creating characters that are anything other than Southern stereotypes.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![secretkeeper78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@secretkeeper78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/secretkeeper78)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2002, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896/100 "2002-03-15T06:05:05Z")

</div>

one of the worst books i have ever read was **if angels fall by rick mofina** I thought it was going to be pretty good. a man takes his children on a trip out to sea. and he wasn’t paying attention or something and they drowned. and he is now about 30 years later kidnapping children to replace them and plans on drowning them to bring his kids back.  
they told you who the kidnapper was in the very beginning and there is this dectective in there that keeps meantioning seeing a murdered baby. I read 280 pages out of 473. this book is pure crap!  
I aslo read half of the vampire lestat.  
I just couldn’t get into it at all. I read almost of of stephan king’s the girl who loved tom gordin or something like that.  
it wasn’t bad, It was just depressing. I found remember me by sharon sala to be generic and annoying.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896.md?page=4)

[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-worst-books-youve-ever-read/97896.md?page=6)
