Least Favorite Book

[mercy_mankind]

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. That was the most boring and pointless book I have ever read. She committed adultery and was shamed, then she had a weird kid and was shamed even more. The end.

You shortened the story in one sentence.
i think that the intersting point in the story is the way of punishment (the scarlet letter).
A Handful of dust seems to be boring for me, I didn't finish it, but I think it is not good.

[Heddi]

I`ll take the risk of appearing provocative (and going against the rules, as I actually haven`t finished the book yet, seems like it will take years for me). The Lord Of The Rings. It`s a black and white world with no deepness whatsoever: it goes on and on and on without showing the reader why he/she should bother turning the page. Troll-like little things climbing over mountains and occasionnaly reciting loooooong pieces of boring "poetry". Give me a break.

[Joreads]

I`ll take the risk of appearing provocative (and going against the rules, as I actually haven`t finished the book yet, seems like it will take years for me). The Lord Of The Rings. It`s a black and white world with no deepness whatsoever: it goes on and on and on without showing the reader why he/she should bother turning the page. Troll-like little things climbing over mountains and occasionnaly reciting loooooong pieces of boring "poetry". Give me a break.

This is one book I couldn't finish either. I found it frustrating beyond discription. I gave up on reading and as a general rule once I start reading a book I have to finish it, I am a little compulsive that way

[Silas Thorne]

About the Lord of the Rings. I didn't get the books at first.I read it when I was 10 and got put off by all the long speeches (I should've stuck to the Hobbit), but after I studied a bit of Old English literature and then came back to it 20 years later I got into it a lot more. It isn't really a very accessible fantasy work - but then again, a lot of fantasy nowadays derives itself from it.

I found the last Harry Potter book to be a long waste of time, but finished it to see if somehow it redeemed itself-to no avail.

[Karen_Leslie]

I found the last Harry Potter book to be a long waste of time, but finished it to see if somehow it redeemed itself-to no avail.

I wasn't keen on it either-- the previous books had a formula, but it was a formula that worked. The last one broke the formula so that instead of the kids at Hogwarts, we had the kids skulking around in the woods and generally not knowing what to do with themselves. Maybe there was some kind of profound statement about leaving childhood behind there, but it also completely abandoned the charm of the previous books.

IMO the merit of the HP series is in the world that Rowling created at Hogwarts and all the little details that were a part of it, like the magical school supply lists and whatnot. The overall plot with Voldemort is very average.

[AlexisAlexis]

I would have to say that my least favorite book was Ulysses. I do think that it is a true masterpiece and I enjoyed reading some parts of it, but I would never read it for leasure again.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Oh boy Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, I want to shoot myself!!!!

[faithalina]

Without a doubt...Ludmilla's Broken English...made me want to slit my wrists...Vernon God Little was great and i kinda hoped this one would be equally as good...

[Mopey Droney]

Dickens is strange because he is comical when he should be tragic. In fact he is always comical - the fact that there is suffering in a sadistic way makes his comedy. I think you are supposed to laugh at, for instance, David Copperfield getting beaten as a kid, or his mother being destroyed by her new husband. That's what makes him such a problematic author - he has no morals in terms of the way he writes, he's almost grotesque in the Bakhtin sense of the word, though I guess not as far as Rebalais was.

I think you would agree it's a little more complicated than that. I've always thought of him as a highly moral writer who juggles the engagement of the humor with tragic themes in such a way that by the end of the book there's no confusion of right or wrong.

[Mag Master 21]

Their Eyes Were Watching God... hands down worst piece of trash I've ever read.

On the Road was painful to get through as well though.

[Mopey Droney]

Anyway, they aren't my least favorite books, but I thought Blood Meridian, White Noise and Independence Day were all bad. If these are among the best the America of the last 25 years has to offer I need to start looking elsewhere for my fiction.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Anyway, they aren't my least favorite books, but I thought Blood Meridian, White Noise and Independence Day were all bad. If these are among the best the America of the last 25 years has to offer I need to start looking elsewhere for my fiction.

I've heard really terrible things about White Noise. Who was the author?

Least favourite piece I've ever read (I may have even mentioned it here, but I don't remember) was EASILY Steinbeck's The Red Pony (and not because I'm prejudiced about the dying horse thing).

[Infinitefox]

Like so many "best of" and "worst of" threads in this forum, I think a least favorite book, or least favorite books, is difficult to categorize, as *least favorite* seems to denote disappointed expectations, rather than feelings of repulsion; however, bearing my interpretation in mind, my least favorite classical author of general high repute is Charles Dickens, and although I find most of his melodrama nearly forgettable, at least beyond David Copperfield, the novel which seems to betray his talent, or portend creative exhaustion, is Hard Times, which is a fairly weak novel, as far as the classics go. Henry James only got stronger and more complex with age, minus his deathbed material on the crest of Napoleon, whereas Dickens seems continually to try one's patience, with age. My academic advisor, despite having his doctorate in AmerLit, loved Dickens, and defended him to me, writer to writer, in heated conversations about the Great Victorian.

And I will acknowledge, as a writer, that I see Dickens' points, but I simply don't care for them all that much; the guilty secrets on the conscience of his characters are too operatic and overtly larger than life, and by the time you get to a novel like Hard Times, those characters are barely three dimensional fictions.

I am not sure what other authors fall into this category for me, perhaps Tolstoy and his Anna Karenina, which again, has its points, but as a woman, pisses me off more than a little--although I cannot say a classic that makes me angry is a classic to hate--that would be a bit strong. I do dislike intensely Dostoevsky's The Idiot, which is why I don't include it, because I nearly do hate it as an almost insufferable work of fiction.

I cannot think of anything modern, modernist, or contemporary, which would fit here, since, as JBI suggests, dreck is dreck.

Why do you hate The Idiot? I didn't like it(Couldn't finish it) but I'm curious why you didn't enjoy it. I disliked it just because the characters weren't too interesting to me, and the plot didn't seem to go anywhere.

[Mopey Droney]

I've heard really terrible things about White Noise. Who was the author?

Don DeLillo. Right off the bat the dialog is especially ridiculous. Would a middle class housewife say this?:
"What are the people like? Do the women wear plaid skirts, cable-knit sweaters? Are the men in hacking jackets? What's a hacking jacket?"
I guess that's supposed to be funny but instead it just strikes me as painfully, self-consciously wanting-but-failing-to-be clever.

[*Classic*Charm*]

Don DeLillo. Right off the bat the dialog is especially ridiculous. Would a middle class housewife say this?:
"What are the people like? Do the women wear plaid skirts, cable-knit sweaters? Are the men in hacking jackets? What's a hacking jacket?"
I guess that's supposed to be funny but instead it just strikes me as painfully, self-consciously wanting-but-failing-to-be clever.

I'm trying to figure out in what context that would be appropriate? That is kind of brutal. You're right, it sounds like trying too hard.

Is it bad that I know what a hacking jacket is?