I’m still going to kill you for this you infidel!
Madpoet, Dianetics was a total piece of shit too.
Just make yourself comfy while I shoot nuclear particles into your heart.
(Courtesy of Wally)
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.
I had to read it for a class. Everybody hated it. We all said that it made no sense. The instructor told us that that was the point–that Pynchon was innovating by throwing out the “rule” that stuff had to make sense. 
As a die-hard Star Trek fan, I have read virtually all of the novels.
Virtually.
You see, there are these two authors, or rather, a team of two co-authors, Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, I believe their names were, who put out the most incredible drivel the series has ever seen. In the order I read them: The Promethius Design, Triangle, and The Price of the Raven, or something like that. The Fate of the Raven, the sequel to the latter book, has sat unread upon my shelf for over five years. Basically, their crimes consist of over-metaphorizing, and having their characters given to speech so grandiloquent as to become incomprehensible. (Like I’m one to talk…) When the two are combined… where’s the aspirin? Mercifully, these books were all written early in Star Trek’s literary career, and not a single page has been printed by a reputable publishing house since around the time The Wrath of Khan came out.
Heck is where you go when you don’t believe in Gosh.
Gore Vidal’s novel DULUTH.
Vidal’s usually so GOOD. What the hell was he thinking about when he wrote this piece of shit? Maybe he was sitting in on that lecture of Green Bean’s about Pyncheon.
Uke
Dirty Devil…you…you…Oh, god, what is wrong with you?? Have you no soul? I can maybe understand not liking CITR, but you didn’t like anything else from Salinger? I just don’t know what to say. Did you skip from age 12 and go straight to 30?
Salinger’s “Zooey” is pretty much literary perfection in my book, I honestly don’t how a careful, objective reading of it cannot be enjoyable for anyone. Anyway…
Great stuff put out there, “Celestine Prophesy” was just a huge steaming pile. Also, “Insomnia”, “Rose Madder” “Hearts In Atlantis” “Bag Of Bone” all by S. King were terrible, terrible. But I have a sick, masochistic devotion to SK cause he was the first novelist I started reading when I was a kid.
The WORST book I’ve ever read cover to cover may have been “3001: The Final Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clark. A sequel to the “2001” series. He was obviously outta ideas, way past his prime, but either needed the money or couldn’t stand the idea that he was finished.
The Unlikely Ones by someone whose name I cannot dredge up out of my memory. I managed to slog my way through most of the book, only had one chapter left to read, and I put it down, never to be picked up again, with no curiousity whatsoever about how it ended up.
“She’s Come Undone” by Wally Lamb. A friend told me it was a great book, but it was just plain out bad.
“The Joy Luck Club” by Amy Tan. I loved the movie and took the book out of the library. I just couldn’t get through it.
Oh, Oh, Oh!
Democritus said:
I can’t believe I forgot this one in my earlier post!
One of my classmates in grad school was reading this on one of our research trips. She was always laughing, and I asked her what was up. She said “You’ve just got to read this!” referring, or course, to The Celestine Prophesy.
By the time our trip was over, we had all read this total piece of crap. But at least we were able to have fun with it…making up our own insights (“The 12th Insight is ‘Don’t Eat Yellow Snow’”).
I think the kicker was the blurb in the back where you could join Redfield’s little movement if you sent in a check for $25.00. How many people have fallen for this, I wonder?
The Trial by Franz Kafka and The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco were hugely disappointing, considering I picked them up because I loved Kafka’s and Eco’s other works. Those were the only two novels I never finished. My other choices aren’t really bad novels; I just don’t see why people keep recommending them. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley don’t have much literary value. They might stand as essays (the former, weakly), but the characters are poorly developed and the plots are pretty implausible. I also don’t get why people like Slaughterhouse-Five so much, given Vonnegut’s other novels.
``You’re just an empty cage girl if you kill the bird.’’ – Tori Amos.
Oh, whoops. I just caught the ``had to have finished’’ part. Well. I skimmed through the rest 
``You’re just an empty cage girl if you kill the bird.’’ – Tori Amos.
For the life of me, I cannot remember the titles of any books that I absolutely hated. Whenever I get half way through a book and I think it really sucks, I stop reading it and forget about it. So, I suppose that I’ve never finished a book that I absolutely hated.
The books that I expected to rock, but were just tolerable enough to finish are the ones that stick out in my mind. The three that come to mind right now are:
Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (that’s Blade Runner)
It was supposed to be a classic Sci-fi, but I can’t understand why. This book had plenty of potential, but just wasn’t developed enough. I felt like I had just read the Reader’s Digest version of it when I was done. Too much was left out.
Stephen Bury’s (that’s Neal Stephenson and his uncle) Interface
What can I say? I just expect way more from Neal Stephenson. I suppose his uncle could have dragged him down a bit. The plot was well thought out, but was not well executed. Here too, the potential was there, but…
Things are random only insofar as we don’t understand them.
BTW… To answer your question… Yes, I do read to much Sci-fi. 
Things are random only insofar as we don’t understand them.
Oh, yes, yes…(deep breath) but to keep the list short, I’ll limit it to books that had some claim–critical or popular–to fame:
Stephen Donaldson; I wasn’t missing something, the whole series droned, died then turned black in the sun and stunk.
Celestine Prophecy; overblown twaddle.
Forrest Gump: 'nuff said. (Bridges of Madison County falls into this WTF? category)
David Copperfield; okay, Dickens was the Stephen King of his day. “DIE, Dora, die!”
(worst as measured by hype): everything by Norman Mailer.
Sorry, got carried away here–and I have bile to spare.
(BTW, gotta disagree w/ CITR and Salinger; not an icon for the ages but not minor either)
Veb
Sorry to disappoint, voquevixen, but the movie with Michelle ISN’T better, it’s worse, save your money on the video rental!
Worst book? Barbara Mandrell’s autobiography, mucked big time.
I would have to say that pride and prejudice was pretty bad
i also hated tess of the deurbervilles (i dont know how to spell that)
Check out my site:
Chief’s Domain
Hate Steven Donaldson and Tanith Lee. They don’t even have the grace to be bad on page one so I can pitch the book and not waste my time. They suck you in, and then they just suck.
I’m a huge John Irving fan, so I was really disappointed by Son of the Circus. I think he’s said everything there is to say about quirky people in improbable circumstances.
Same with Tom Robbins. A humorous journey to enlightenment was good for five or six books, but Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas just seemed “Same S***, Different Book”.
Heinlein wrote several horrible books: Number of the Beast, I Will Fear No Evil, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, and Time Enough for Love. I have a lot of respect for his earlier work (when he knew he was competing for my “beer money”), so I was happy to see him go out with a bang with Friday.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
The worst book I ever read all the way through was Chicago Loop by Paul Thoureaugh, or however his name is spelled. I understand that he really isn’t that bad a writer, but I never, ever had an inkling of sympathy for the asshole who was the focal character of the novel. In the course of the book, he transforms from one kind of irredemable asshole to another kind of irredemable asshole, and eventually kills himself almost summarily, in a way which suggests that that the author ran out of ideas about how to make the guy more obnoxious.
Geek Love. The story of a circus family whose parents deliberately ingest toxins to make their children freaks. It was the book to read in the late 80s, early 90s, something like that and good GOD it was the worst piece of writing I’ve seen in ages.
Atlas Shrugged.
Finally, I’ve found some kindred souls who also think that Catcher in the Rye was stupid yet pretentious. Ugh, can’t stand it.
I never finished Cold Mountain, never got out of the first chapter, so does it count? All I’d heard was how wonderful it was, but I kept falling asleep.