# Worst novel ever published **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 13, 2009, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097 "2009-01-13T14:44:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/61 "2009-01-13T20:21:17Z")
> [@Erdosain](#): > > However, I think he was trying to write one of the characters as English as a Second Language, which explains some of the nonsense in the dialogue. Unfortunately, it seems to spill over into the prose as well. I read it as if it was that cartoon character with the German accent. The guy who looks like Professor Calculus from Tintin. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/62 "2009-01-13T21:01:00Z")
> [@Stan\_Shmenge](#): > > The titles suggest that the books were of limited runs, appealing to a certain very small niche of political/espionage junkies. Even if you’re just trying to have fun, you can’t accuse him of having the worst novel specifically because it was published by a major publisher and then turn around and accuse him of having limited niche books, even though they were published by equally major names. You’re making yourself look sillier than him. He is a major nonfiction writer who happened to write one silly novel when he was just starting out. If you want to mock the silly novel, fine. But draw the line where your ignorance starts. ---
**Author:** ![WF\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d9b06d/32.png) [@WF\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WF_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/63 "2009-01-13T21:18:41Z")
Let’s get back to poking fun at Mr. Hersh’s bad first novel. I’m sorry I dragged his other work into it. **Stan Shmenge** , how does the book end? ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/64 "2009-01-13T21:51:29Z")
I adore Salman Rushdie, but IMO _The Satanic Verses_ is his least compelling and definitely least comprehensible novel. And I actually know quite a bit about the Jahiliya and understood the allegory he was going for, sort of. Maybe? I don’t know, it didn’t make much sense to me. Worst novel ever: _Message in a Bottle_, by Nicholas Sparks. Seriously. This is so bad it would make me not want to be friends with anyone who liked it. ---
**Author:** ![PeacePlease](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/71c47a/32.png) [@PeacePlease](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PeacePlease)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/65 "2009-01-13T22:24:35Z")
> [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](#): > > Yup! “Pillars of the Earth” gets my vote, too. I have this book. I swear it was recommended on the SD, but it could have been another site. What is wrong with it that makes it so bad? I’m curious whether I should just toss it in the ‘take it to the used bookstore’ pile or give it a try. Thanks, in advance, for the input! ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/66 "2009-01-13T23:11:41Z")
This needs to be shared, and this seems to be as good a place as any: [Books that make you dumb](http://booksthatmakeyoudumb.virgil.gr/) ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/67 "2009-01-13T23:13:25Z")
No one has yet mentioned the award-winning yet deeply flawed mystery, [The Glory Hole Murders.](http://www.amazon.com/Glory-Hole-Murders-Tony-Fennelly/dp/0595089844/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product) Yes, I picked it up in a hospital staff lounge one dark and stormy night. > [@](#): > > I don’t consider myself part of New Orleans’s gay subculture. I ceased to patronize the hangouts and bathhouses somewhere between herpes and AIDS. And of late, I’ve deemed it prudent to limit my physical expression to a single partner. And to watch him like a hawk. > > Of course, I’m gay. Unabashedly so. But heaven knows that isn’t the sum total of my identity. > > So when some closet queen turns up seriously dead with his dick pinned through a hole in a toilet wall, I can hardly identify with his problem. > > My name is Matthew Arthur Sinclair. Matty to my friends. I don’t, never did, have a drag name. Or, apparently, a writing lesson. ---
**Author:** ![Darryl\_Lict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/68 "2009-01-13T23:38:53Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > I tried reading _Midnight’s Children_, it had **one** moment of decent writing, literally nothing more than a decent paragraph in the first quarter of the book. I never made it much farther than that, however, as the book just plunged into the worst kind of meandering navel gazing, as it was more about him talking about writing the book, than actually writing the book. I’m really glad you mentioned **Midnight’s Children.** It started out pretty interesting but ended up just muddled blather as far as I’m concerned. I dragged that fucking book book across two continents for 6 months trying to read it, and got within about 10 pages of finishing it, only to accidentally leave it on a bus in Chile. The last time I mentioned that I hated that book on these boards, everyone else said that they thought it was the greatest book they ever read. I have not actually met anyone IRL who has read the book, but most of my friends aren’t the kind of voracious readers found around these parts. I’m at a loss to explain how it could have won the Booker of Bookers Award. That said, I don’t think it’s even close to the worst book ever written, only that it isn’t even close to the greatness attributed to it. ---
**Author:** ![Roadfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@Roadfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roadfood)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/69 "2009-01-14T01:05:37Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > I wish I could remember the author who wrote the following paragraph, seared into my brain in its idiocy: > > > [@](#): > > > > Dust moved randomly in the air, like particles in Brownian motion. > > I chucked the book against the wall then. Wow. Or, in other words: “Dust moved randomly in the air, like dust moving randomly in the air.” That’s just so cosmically deep that I have to go off and contemplate it now . . . ---
**Author:** ![ryobserver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b2d939/32.png) [@ryobserver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ryobserver)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/70 "2009-01-14T01:13:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Men slept. Women slept. Children slept. Dogs and cats slept. The mice and cockroaches, now, they were another matter. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/71 "2009-01-14T01:44:26Z")
> [@Darryl\_Lict](#): > > I’m really glad you mentioned **Midnight’s Children.** It started out pretty interesting but ended up just muddled blather as far as I’m concerned. I dragged that fucking book book across two continents for 6 months trying to read it, and got within about 10 pages of finishing it, only to accidentally leave it on a bus in Chile. > > The last time I mentioned that I hated that book on these boards, everyone else said that they thought it was the greatest book they ever read. I have not actually met anyone IRL who has read the book, but most of my friends aren’t the kind of voracious readers found around these parts. I’m at a loss to explain how it could have won the Booker of Bookers Award. > > That said, I don’t think it’s even close to the worst book ever written, only that it isn’t even close to the greatness attributed to it. I’m one of those who think that Midnight’s Children is a fantastic book. Oddly, my problem was with the first chapter, which I almost didn’t get past. Once I did I didn’t want to put it down. But no book works for everybody. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/72 "2009-01-14T02:30:48Z")
This chunk of crap probably doesn’t deserve the elections I’m using to dis it, but anyway. My nomination is for something called “The Last Mammoth”. The title made me think that it would be a gritty quest sort of novel, a band of Native Americans from 12,000 years ago goes in search of the last living Mammoth on Earth, perhaps learning about themselves in the midst of the uncaring wilderness. Nope. Instead we get lots of pages of two horny teenagers screwing each other constantly as they do absolutely nothing of consequence. The “last” mammoth is actually just a metaphor, as the protagonists at last realize that the megafauna must die for the future good of humanity, and that’s it. When no desperate quest was forthcoming, I felt very cheated. And instead of coined vocabulary (a la Tolkien), I was constantly subjected to the constant use of modern slang which constantly threw me out of the story. And this excretable chunk of crap has 2 4-5 star reviews over at Amazon, something I might as well go over there and remedy while I’m at it. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/73 "2009-01-14T02:46:00Z")
> [@PeacePlease](#): > > I have this book. I swear it was recommended on the SD, but it could have been another site. > > What is wrong with it that makes it so bad? I’m curious whether I should just toss it in the ‘take it to the used bookstore’ pile or give it a try. IMO it left no historical-fiction cliche unturned: - Noble woman who runs away rather than enter an arranged marriage to a man she doesn’t love - Except for one attempted infanticide pretty much everybody has late 20th century attitudes - The villains are all ancestors of Snidely Whiplash - The good guys are all gorgeous and “thoroughly modern” in their views of sex, relationships, the role of women, sex (other than a lingering death from a completely untreatable STD or an unwanted pregancy that results in social shunning and the mother dying in childbirth, and of course the fact that adultery is both punishable by death on Earth and results in eternal hell, what’s the worst that could happen from a little unprotected pre- or extra-marital sex in the 12th century?), religion (other than being burned alive and…etc etc worst that could happen?), and even architecture. \*The historical characters (i.e. the ones who actually existed) stop just short of having a “special guest appearance by Richard Chamberlain and or Jane Seymour” credit- historical namedropping Prime example of the “presentism”: there’s a scene in which the heroine’s clothes have been ruined and she asks a peasant woman “do you have a spare dress I can keep?” and, of course, the peasant woman does. This is at a time when a single outfit, not talking about royal robes but just your typical “peasant dying of bubos or going to the pub” wear, either took weeks to make or cost more than a peasant earned in weeks/months- it ain’t an “ain’t no thing” thing for a peasant woman to give a woman a “spare” dress- even in Colonial America most yeoman farmers had 2 or 3 changes of clothes if that many. Basically it’s "Society of Creative Anachronism’s LIFETIME FOR WOMEN movie of the week’ feel. That said, I know people I respect who really liked it, and while critics and imdb voters and some Dopers alike all _raved_ on SYNECHDOTE, NEW YORK I thought was the worst movie I’ve seen in many years, so to each his/her own. Apart from the anachronisms it’s probably light and fun enough. ---
**Author:** ![Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hazle_Weatherfield)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/74 "2009-01-14T03:48:51Z")
> [@PeacePlease](#): > > I have this book. I swear it was recommended on the SD, but it could have been another site. > > What is wrong with it that makes it so bad? I’m curious whether I should just toss it in the ‘take it to the used bookstore’ pile or give it a try. > > Thanks, in advance, for the input! It’s been ages since I read it back when it first came out (the FIRST time!) The basic problem I had with it was the characters using “current” language. It wasn’t exactly as if the characters were saying “like” or “you know” or “like, Oh, my God,” all of the time, but it was damned close. Like I said, it’s been so long since I read it that I don’t have specific examples, but it was bad enough that I’ve hated it for nearly 2 decades. I’d try to find my copy and give you some actual examples, but it’s long gone! ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/75 "2009-01-14T04:32:45Z")
> [@Stan\_Shmenge](#): > > And look at even the title, “The Ski People”. A book about people at a skiing resort. What should I call it. I know! I will call it “The Ski People”. I mean the dude didn’t even TRY! Dark Continuum at least has a little bit of evocativeness about it. Sorry, mine’s crappier! When you first quoted it, I thought it sounded like the inimitable Travis Tea. A sequel to _Atlanta Nights_. But I guess not. ---
**Author:** ![PeacePlease](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/71c47a/32.png) [@PeacePlease](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PeacePlease)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/76 "2009-01-14T13:01:33Z")
Thanks, Hazle and Sampiro! I think I’ll take a pass on it. After all, so many good books, so little time! ---
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/77 "2009-01-14T13:13:40Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > Never read it myself but for all the controversy it created **Salaman Rushdie’s** _The Satanic Verses_ was known to be a crappy read. As stated no book works for everybody. I also liked Midnight’s Children. In my opinion the Satanic Verses, is experimental, challenging and incomprehensible in a couple of passages. It is not a crappy read though. It is good and worth the time. Edit: _The Thorn Birds_ ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2009, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097/78 "2009-01-14T15:53:26Z")
The Thorn Birds is The Mammoth Hunters with less sex and more priests. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-novel-ever-published/481097.md?page=3)