# Worst popular books **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 13, 2009, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445 "2009-11-13T15:06:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/121 "2009-11-15T03:53:51Z")
> [@Athena](#): > > 3 pages and nobody’s mentioned James Joyce yet? I’m astounded. Agreed. \*\*Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man \*\*was so bad, I never could get through the first 20 pages. He must have been on an LSD trip in front of a typewriter. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/122 "2009-11-15T05:10:13Z")
> [@fiddlesticks](#): > > _The Celestine Prophecy_ is probably the worst thing I’ve had the misfortune of slogging through. James Redfield was the Dan Brown of the early 1990s, but for whatever reason did quite end up reaching Dan Brown’s level of “success”. I was once in a book club that chose this, _The Da Vinci Code_, _Left Behind_, and _White Oleander_ (a so far unmentioned piece of dreck that was recommended by Oprah. She’s very hit and miss.) I’m no longer in that book club. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/123 "2009-11-15T05:21:03Z")
Regarding _High Fidelity_: I adore Nick Hornby and have read almost everything else he’s written (_How To Be Good_ is one of my favorite books of all time; I know fuck all about soccer, but I loved _Fever Pitch_), but every time I consider reading _High Fidelity_, I pick it up at the bookstore or library and thumb through it and…no. I just can’t bring myself to read it. It just looks eminently stupid. I think it’s also his first book, though. ---
**Author:** ![anu-la1979](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/47e85d/32.png) [@anu-la1979](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anu-la1979)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/124 "2009-11-15T08:37:37Z")
The Dante Club: where the author reminds us on practically every page that he went to Harvard. “You guys, I totally went to Harvard! Hey, any of you ladies want to f\*\*\* me? I went to HARVARD.” ---
**Author:** ![CutterJohn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/91b2a8/32.png) [@CutterJohn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CutterJohn)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/125 "2009-11-15T13:56:26Z")
> [@bucketybuck](#): > > **Terry Goodkind would like a word with you all!** Horrible books, terrible dialogue, but the man can do Crowning Moments of Awesome with the best of them. Kept me reading up till at least the 6th book just to see what badassery would happen next. Though i still bear mental scars from the rest. \>\_\< My own contribution, the Wheel of Time series. Words can’t describe how awful this series is, but Robert Jordan, may he rest in peace, certainly didn’t let that stop him using some of the most boring, pointless, and _lengthy_ descriptions ever used in a book. If there was an out of place blade of grass, chances are there are 3 used to describe it. Also, the plot became nearly unmanageable to read with the number of additional plotlines and secondary characters he added. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/126 "2009-11-15T14:33:38Z")
Al Franken’s first 2 books were terrible. Not because I expected great literature, but because they weren’t even funny.His last attempt was far better. ---
**Author:** ![crypto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b3f665/32.png) [@crypto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crypto)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/127 "2009-11-15T15:08:39Z")
Another one to add A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking I heard this book was written in simple terms for non-cosmologists. Please. I have a degree in math, and I still thought my head was going to explode. I think people just said they understood it so they wouldn’t look stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Ponch8](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponch8/32/9883_2.png) [@Ponch8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponch8)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/128 "2009-11-15T16:20:28Z")
I nominate _Sex and the City_. It’s a miracle they could make such a good TV series out of such a crappy book. The book focuses on a hodgepodge of spoiled airheads going back and forth from New York to Aspen, the Hamptons, and other places. By the end of the book, I didn’t care one bit about any of the characters. There was no character development at all. The series, on the other hand, did a good job of focusing on just a few people and how they dealt with the consequences of their actions. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/129 "2009-11-16T00:38:26Z")
Another vote for the bible. ---
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/130 "2009-11-16T02:27:35Z")
> [@stpauler](#): > > Anything by Dean Koontz. > > Stephen King is the WalMart of Horror literature and Dean Koontz is the Pamida. Dean Koontz can write passable airplane books (and I think _Odd Thomas_ is actually really good), but _Your Heart Belongs To Me_ made me want to track him down and hit him repeatedly on the head with a baseball bat while shouting “Show, not tell! SHOW, not tell, for Og’s sake I can do better than that!” ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/131 "2009-11-16T21:19:08Z")
> [@jali](#): > > I can’t remember the author or the title, but I HATED this novel. > > It was the long and boring story of a relationship that was - then wasn’t - then was, for hundreds of pages. Nothing endeared me to either of the characters. > > At the end we learn that the hundreds of pages were all dreamt the moment before she dies in a car crash. I think I literally threw the book across the room. GAAAHH! I’ve blocked out the name too, because it made me so angry. Because I had invested all this time in a story that wasn’t true. But then that made me think–it’s **all** fiction so how can I really be angry? That made me angrier. There have been three other books I’ve read recently which used the same construct and it pisses me off. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/132 "2009-11-17T03:04:38Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > So, eh, you are not into record collecting? My daughter said I should see the movie because I was the main character. “John Cusack or Jack Black?” “Both.” Thanks, bitch. :mad: > [@Sampiro](#): > > I was about 15 or so when I loved it, and then I loved _Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah_ a few years later and loved it. Then I read a couple of his next books- _One_ and _Bridge Across Forever_ and realized “this guy is full of shit”. Best thing by Richard Bach I ever read was an article he wrote for _Flying_ telling of his chance to pilot one or two WWI fighters after a lifetime of hearing about their outstanding maneuverability. His conclusion was that they were “dogs,” barely capable of getting out of their own way. Which, given that the FIRST flight was only eleven years before the war started, is probably understandable. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/133 "2009-11-17T03:42:50Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > My daughter said I should see the movie because I was the main character. > > “John Cusack or Jack Black?” > > “Both.” > > Thanks, bitch. :mad: Could be worse, she could have said Todd Louiso. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/134 "2009-11-17T03:46:18Z")
> [@](#): > > I nominate Dreamcatcher by Stephen King. Not only is it the only King book I never reread, but the only one I’ve never been able to finish. You read Lisey’s Story again?!?! I liked Dreamcatcher but HATED HATED Lisey’s Story (and I LURVE me some King) ---
**Author:** ![3\_20\_59\_or\_bust](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/47e85d/32.png) [@3\_20\_59\_or\_bust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3_20_59_or_bust)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/135 "2009-11-17T05:43:45Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I’ve never read any of Thomas Harris’s books, but I remember seeing this one in a bookstore and picking it up to look at. I learned from the dust jacket that it features a Japanese character named Lady Murasaki Shikibu, which is enough to make me want to continue never reading any of Harris’s books. > > For those of you unfamiliar with Japanese history or literature, naming a 20th century Japanese character “Murasaki Shikibu” is like naming a 20th century Englishman “William Shakespeare”. Actually it’s even worse than that, because the historic Murasaki Shikibu (also known in English as Lady Murasaki) wasn’t even really named Murasaki Shikibu. Her real name is lost to history. “Murasaki” was a nickname. “Shikibu” isn’t a family name, it’s a title taken from her father’s position at court. So on top of everything else, naming a character Lady Murasaki Shikibu is basically naming her Lady Murasaki Lady. If that’s your reason for hating a Thomas Harris book, then you’ve CLEARLY never read Hannibal or Hannibal Rising. Trust me, there are better reasons for hating Harris. Harris has really run the novel gamut for me: Red Dragon - I thoroughly enjoyed it. Silence of the Lambs - A Solid Novel. Hannibal - What? Just! Happened? At! The? End! Did I hit my head on something? I must have imagined the last 50 pages - those 50 pages that totally ruined my memories of the character of Clarice Starling and the last two novels! Hannibal Rising - Utter crap, just vile, worthless, utter, crap. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/136 "2009-11-17T08:24:34Z")
> [@3\_20\_59\_or\_bust](#): > > If that’s your reason for hating a Thomas Harris book, then you’ve CLEARLY never read Hannibal or Hannibal Rising. Trust me, there are better reasons for hating Harris. > > Harris has really run the novel gamut for me: > Red Dragon - I thoroughly enjoyed it. > Silence of the Lambs - A Solid Novel. > Hannibal - What? Just! Happened? At! The? End! Did I hit my head on something? I must have imagined the last 50 pages - those 50 pages that totally ruined my memories of the character of Clarice Starling and the last two novels! > Hannibal Rising - Utter crap, just vile, worthless, utter, crap. Pretty much how I felt about them. Plotholes he never explained about Hannibal: Mason Verger is sooooooo evil, yet after Hannibal makes him rip off his own face and feed it to the dogs he never informs on Hannibal and lets him live free for several years. WTF? Plus what the hell is this Lithuanian prince nonsense? RISING had more plotholes per paragraph than any book I’ve ever read (and among other things Harris forgets that Hannibal has maroon eyes and eleven fingers when he’s running all over Paris without being spotted by all the mean men who et his sister [who are soooooo evil they torture virgin girls in cages and coincidentally all wind up in Paris after leaving their documentation in the Lecter country house in Lithuania which not only survives the war and tank blasts and Soviet occupation and annexation but is still legible and right where it was left and easy to get into and like most Soviet controlled places perfectly easy to get into and out of by eleven fingered maroon eyed noblemen who are trying to avoid detection… I am convinced that Harris completely forgot he owed another book on his contract and wrote this one on his way to his publisher’s office. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/137 "2009-11-17T09:50:57Z")
> [@Raygun99](#): > > I left my copy of Timeline in hotel halfway around the world. I still don’t feel like I’m far enough away from it. Timeline may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever encountered. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/138 "2009-11-17T10:30:53Z")
> [@fiddlesticks](#): > > _The Celestine Prophecy_ is probably the worst thing I’ve had the misfortune of slogging through. James Redfield was the Dan Brown of the early 1990s, but for whatever reason did quite end up reaching Dan Brown’s level of “success”. I agree that reading the The Celestine Prophecy was as painful as punching my own nutsack at every page-turn. But I don’t get the Dan Brown equivalence, or the general Dan Brown disdain for that matter. Maybe I don’t know enough about Dan Brown the person, which is true - I don’t know a damn thing about who he is or where he comes from - but his novel Da Vinci Code wasn’t _that_ bad. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/139 "2009-11-17T12:09:07Z")
> [@anu-la1979](#): > > The Dante Club: where the author reminds us on practically every page that he went to Harvard. “You guys, I totally went to Harvard! Hey, any of you ladies want to f\*\*\* me? I went to HARVARD.” Oo, someone else who hated this! I love Dante’s _Inferno_, so I expected this would be great but I just could **not** bring myself to care about anything or anyone in it. It’s bad when some of the most influential/popular figures of that time period and region are terribly wooden and boring. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2009, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445/140 "2009-11-17T12:16:17Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > But I don’t get the Dan Brown equivalence, or the general Dan Brown disdain for that matter. Maybe I don’t know enough about Dan Brown the person, which is true - I don’t know a damn thing about who he is or where he comes from - but his novel Da Vinci Code wasn’t _that_ bad. I’ve written my complaint better [previously](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11059608&postcount=32) so I’ll just repost that: > [@](#): > > I don’t even remember how far I managed to slog through The DaVinci Code. It was a definite struggle, and believe me, if I want a light little thriller, my standards aren’t huge. > > I managed to not laugh when Brown breathlessly and repeatedly wrote (in chapter 3, checking the book) about how “the Citroën” navigated through traffic, as if this was an impressive vehicle class and he was speaking of it in reverent tones. He certainly wasn’t using the car’s make to distinguish it from another in a chase, as he was describing the exciting event of the protagonist being driven, uneventfully, to the scene of the crime. This is as if he repeatedly wrote phrases worded similar to, “As the Ford accelerated southward across the city,” for no apparently good reason. He identifies it once near the start of the chapter as a Citroën ZX, which is this [magnificent vehicle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_ZX). He also only referred to the driver taking action once (accelerating) or twice (turning off the siren), but the rest of the chapter wrote as if the car was doing the driving itself. > > That’s just one example, barely scratching the surface of how awkward his writing is. He drags the reader through with frequent chapter changes, often only a few pages each and frequently ending on some kind of urgent note. > > Finally, he states just before the Prologue that the [Priory of Sion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priory_of_Sion) is real and had many famous members, and that “[A]ll descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate” while repeating myths/urban legends like - for starters - the [Louvre Pyramid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre_Pyramid#666_panes:_an_urban_legend) has exactly 666 panes and was built with such at Mitterand’s demand. So either he’s quite deluded about conspiracy theories, or he’s intentionally misleading his readers by putting that after the title page (i.e., not in a foreword) and yet labeling the page with a big “FACT:” header. Unlike the Bourne books, he’s using religion and (often) deeply-held religious beliefs to manipulate his readers. And that irritates me. > > To clarify, I don’t think people shouldn’t read Brown. If you can get past the awkward language (I can’t), I can see how it would be an interesting read. Conspiracy theories are fun! But people shouldn’t think that he’s a highly skilled writer, or very groundbreaking, or that he knows what he’s talking about on the topic. He gobbled up a big pastiche of conspiracy theories, slapped an “it’s true!” label on a lot of it, and churned it out into a formulaic thriller, then (I haven’t read them but my husband has) rinsed and repeated for his other works. > > (My husband recommends the adventure novels of [James Rollins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rollins), who’s better with the science than Brown is - he typically follows real scientific fact and theory to a more-or-less logical extrapolation of where that could lead to. I’ve read a couple of them and found them quite entertaining. Rollins is a better writer than Brown, too. My husband adds that he thinks the last few books haven’t been quite as good as the others but he still enjoyed them.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-popular-books/517445.md?page=8)