I thought Huck Finn was racist the first time I read it.
I got to the part where someone said “Anyone hurt in the boiler explosion?” and the answer was “No ma’am, killed a nigger” and she said “That’s fortunate because sometimes people do get hurt”.
At that point I stopped reading and didn’t care if it cost me a bad mark. But the book got dropped before the report was due, because of parental flack.
Wow…I didn’t know anyone else hated Catcher in the Rye (I thought I just didn’t understand it). Also most of the things by Mark Twain that I’ve been forced to read in school were really terrible (I did like The Prince and the Pauper though) but last summer I had to read The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County…probably you’ve never heard of it (maybe it’s better that way).
Faced the same ordeal with Finnegan’s Wake, but found solace here: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mjoyce.html
I have to agree about the crappiness of “Silas Marner”. The book would have been put to better use as toilet paper, but I would be afraid of boring my ass to death.
I had to read it in high school, and we were given an entire week of class time to read it, since no one would have done so otherwise. After the first day, I realized what I was dealing with, went out and bought the Cliff’s Notes, and told the teacher that I had stayed up late and finished it. She rewarded me by letting me spend the rest of the week reading “Death Be Not Proud”, which was even worse. (Summed up: “My boy was a great boy. Then he got a brain tumor and died.”)
Also on my list–“On the Beach” by Nevil Shute.
“American Psycho” gets an honorable mention as a book that I’m glad I read, and can’t really say that I didn’t like, but I would never, ever recommend to anyone else. It disturbed me, and not in a good way.
Dr. J
Anything by Tom Robbins. Third rate Vonnegut wanna-be.
I liked some early Grisham (The Firm and A Time for Killing), but The Testament really stinks up the place.
Although I love Southern lit in general, I HATE everything I have ever read by William Faulkner.
And Eternity, by Piers Anthony.
I’m actually quite glad I read it. Anthony’s crap is what finally got me to wake up and kick my 6-year SF addiction. Kind of fitting, considering that his book On a Pale Horse (when I was 13) is what got me hooked on the stuff in the first place.
I expect Anthony’s next work will be the adventures of a loaf of bread, in 20 volumes. Each volume will be written from the point of view of a different slice. The first volume might well be entertaining and quite creative, but the only original work after that will be the 50-page author’s note (a separate one for each volume) in which he describes at great length how wonderful a writer he is, how we are so truly blessed by his presence here on earth, and how anyone who dares criticize him is a drooling sub-simian cretin.
–sublight.
If all you’ve read of science fiction or fantasy is Piers Anthony, you don’t know much about science fiction or fantasy. Here’s a pretty good rule: Don’t read anything in these fields unless every volume of the series is already out and someone you trust says the entire series is worth reading. Better yet, don’t read anything that’s multi-volume at all. Even better, don’t read any book unless it’s well under 600 pages. Ideally, science fiction and fantasy novels should be 300 to 400 pages.
This will mean, of course, that you will have to do most of your science fiction and fantasy reading from a library or from books found at used book stores. Find someone who knows the history of these fields well and have them recommend good old books to you. Find books about the subjects that recommend good books. Don’t subsidize the endless crappy series that currently infest science fiction and, even more, fantasy publishing at the moment.
and I mean anything. The guy couldn’t write a believable grocery list. His men are manly men, the women are either loyal stand by their man types, or secret liberal lesbian she devils. His descriptions of locations are inaccurate and his plots are laughable. Oh how I hate him, I’ve read a couple of his novels just because they were so bad. A poor man’s John LeCarre.
Mary Higgins Clark.
I forget which one the Mrs. was reading, but I picked it up and dove right in only to quickly climb back out and set it down when I realized how two dimensional her characters were and how trite her plots were.
Wow, was that just one sentence?
Piers Anthony. Ugh.
I liked “On a Pale Horse”. I tried the second one, found it dull and didn’t even bother past page 3. Picked the third off the shelf, read a few pages, and caught the general idea of the series and gave up.
I have to agree. Wait a few novels into a series until you pick it up. I didn’t start reading Zelazny’s “Amber” chronicles until his second set, but went and bought the previous 6 novels when I liked it. I’ve got all of them around here someplace, and love it. I’ve got Ted William’s Memory Sorrow and Thorn and liked it. But not all series are worth it. Witness my hatred for L Ron the Moron’s mission earth series.
Piers Anthony
I’ve actually read the works of many other SF authors, it just so happened that my SF fandom began and ended after reading books of his.
My favorite US SF author would probably be Joe Haldeman. I still enjoy reading his books. My favorite SF author of all (and the one who got me started reading more outside of SF) is Stanislaw Lem.
–sublight.
anya marie: those V. C. Andrews sites are unbelievable! How can someone devote so much time to books that are so bad? I could see doing it for the camp value but as a serious project?!
Has anyone mentioned any Jackie Collins “novel” yet? More proof that some people will buy anything if it’s shoved down their throat. I read one of her “novels” once and besides having no talent for writing, Ms. Collins is apparently short on vocabulary - she used the phrase “a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude” about 50 times throughout this one “novel.” Everyone had a “take no prisoners” attitude.
Why oh why can people like her get published when so many others with true talent are rejected time after time?
The character is young, but she is a woman; this is well established in the novel. However, he does rape her.
Aagh! NiceGuyJack, I really wish you would have given the Covenant series a chance! I would email you this URL, but you have elected not to recieve email from the board. Anyway, you can (if so inclined) read what I had to say about Lord Foul’s Bane here:
http://www.epinions.com/./book-review-7BBF-D109B74-382C4683-bd3
Anything by Kurt Vonnegut. Fourth-class Robbins antecedent. grin
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.
Circa 1990 I came across a novel Cyrus Cyrus by an author styling himself “Adam Zameenzad” (an obvious pseudonym, if you know Urdu). He was trying so hard to be a bad boy like Salman Rushdie and was obviously trying to cash in on the notoriety of The Satanic Verses. All he could do was spew random vile pointless sarcasm. I dropped it after a few dozen pages.
I welcome this chance to get back at John Knowles, John Fowles, and the rest for the dreary crap they put me through.
Looks like unanimity that Silas Marner reeks. That takes me back . . . When I was a kid, I read the whole Danny Dunn series of juvenile science fiction novels. In one of them, one of the kid characters is trying to persuade his parents to let him go to England. He gives a random speech about the “scepter’d isle” that mentions in passing “that rotten book Silas Marner, and that great book The Hobbit.” Well, I went out straightway and read The Hobbit, and loved it, and that got me to read The Lord of the Rings, and my life was permanently transfigured!
Still haven’t read* Silas Marner*.
I’m really surprised that Ayn Rand hasn’t come up more on this list. To be perfectly honest, she isn’t the worst author I’ve read, John Case or early Michael Crichton would probably take that prize. What is frustrating about Rand is the way that her hack writing ends up contradicting what is IMHO her strident and sophomoric philosophy.
Bridges of Madison County, without a doubt. Should be in shelves marked “aging male fantasy”. YUCK.
There’s a difference between writing about racism and being racist. This passage is meant to show both the common view of blacks as well as Huck’s acceptance of that view. Later, Huck’s view is changed through his interactions with Jim. The point of the novel was to show the idiocy of Huck’s former views on blacks.
Now, on to the subject at hand. I can’t say what the worst novel of all time is, since I haven’t read them all. However, I detested Interview with the Vampire. I know a lot of people might rise to defend it, but I found it unreadable. I picked up the book thinking I would really like it. It is one of the few novels I was unable to finish, despite picking it back up two or three times. The story is an interesting concept, but the book turned into a self-indulgent “look at how flowery and descriptive my writing is” exercise.