the worst book you have ever come across

[cacian]

and why?

Lots of books appear to have a sense of originality about them but as soon as you pick them up and start reading they may end in total disappointment because the beginning ,middle or end is simply not good enough.


so what is according to you the worse book you have picked up and felt like throwing across the room?
one of the many I have encountered is

the girl with a pearl earring I thought it waste of paper.
the worst of it all it was made into a film which I thought was even more duller then dullest itself.

[Mutie]

I was just thinking the other day,

2 books I have abosolutley no memory of reading (though i finished them)

Popcorn by ben elton

Vernon god little, by i forget

I read VGL 6 years ago at the same time I read To Kill a Mockingbird. I have read neither since, I could not tell you a single thing about the story of VGL yet I could quote exact lines from Mockingbird.

[AlysonofBathe]

Twilight

It may be fashionable to hate it, and I may hate being fashionable, but I just can't comprehend the love for this book. I get tweens don't have developed reading tastes, I didn't when I was a tween, but this is something altogether different. I won't rant about it, it's been done, it's gotten old, but I do recommend this excellent comic via The Oatmeal explaining the stupidity that is Twilight.

Cheers,
Alyson

[hawthorns]

Pretty much all my school textbooks. Learning disabilities aren't fun...

[cacian]

Pretty much all my school textbooks. Learning disabilities aren't fun...

I can just imagine the dullness of it all. Sorry to hear about it.
What books do you prefer?

[cacian]

Twilight

It may be fashionable to hate it, and I may hate being fashionable, but I just can't comprehend the love for this book. I get tweens don't have developed reading tastes, I didn't when I was a tween, but this is something altogether different. I won't rant about it, it's been done, it's gotten old, but I do recommend this excellent comic via The Oatmeal explaining the stupidity that is Twilight.

Cheers,
Alyson

Yes I agree.

[cacian]

I was just thinking the other day,

2 books I have abosolutley no memory of reading (though i finished them)

Popcorn by ben elton

Vernon god little, by i forget

I read VGL 6 years ago at the same time I read To Kill a Mockingbird. I have read neither since, I could not tell you a single thing about the story of VGL yet I could quote exact lines from Mockingbird.

How interesting. I tend to do something like that too.
I can read a book outloud all the way through and I still could not tell you anything about it. It is amasing how I can just see and read words but don't actually know what I am actually reading. I could not tell you teh story. This is only with books I am not interested in.

[kasie]

....the girl with a pearl earring I thought it waste of paper.
the worst of it all it was made into a film which I thought was even more duller then dullest itself.

This made me smile because my first thought when I read the book was that it looked like an exercise from a creative writing course! You know the sort of thing: 'Look at this picture - what do you think is the story behind it?'

The worst book I've read in a very long time has to be The Cairo Diary by Maxim Chattam. I picked it up when I was collecting background reading for a trip to Egypt and wanted some fiction to leaven the factual books; the blurb was promising but oh dear, what a mistake - sloppy grammar, ludicrous characters, an unbelievable plot, so many twists to the tail you could have opened a wine bottle with it - sheer bad writing. I apologise for even mentioning it on a Literature Forum but you did ask! It makes Dan Brown look like literature - need I say more?

[ave d]

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. Mediocre writing geared single-mindedly towards its obvious and simplistic moral. Plus all the characters are so annoyingly well-adjusted. For entertainment value I'd prefer the other (reactionary) kind of after-school-special book, that's at least bad in a sensationalistic and ridiculous way.

The Mysteries of Udolpho. I read it because it's parodied in Northanger Abbey (which I liked), and I wanted to get the jokes. The main joke is that the heroine is useless and the bad-guys and setting are cardboard cutouts. The prudish sensibility of the author and her mechanical prose gets old pretty fast, however, and that leaves you with 600+ pages of sheer boredom.

For well-respected classics, one that I could not get into was Don Quixote. There are some quasi-interesting meta-textual devices throughout: Don Quixote acts out fantasies based on books he's read; every other character he meets seems to have read Cervantes' book about him and plays along with his fantasies; in the second part he meets a doppelganger out of an "unauthorized sequel"; it's a frame narrative with large portions of plot devoted to travelers telling each-other stories on the road. Unfortunately it's very long (my copy was almost 900 pages) and lavishes most of its attention on its two worst themes: 1) blunt cruelty inflicted on the main character ("practical jokes" include knocking out most of his teeth, hanging him out by his wrist out of a second-floor window, and unleashing feral cats on him when he's in bed), and 2) tedious pastoral sentimentality (seemingly all the people who play those pranks on Don Quixote alternate their brutal, mind-numbing acts of sadism with sappy, mind-numbing discussions on the virtues of the simple, peaceful lives led by shepherds!).

[irinmisfit92]

The book is titled Ugly. I thought it would be a good book as I suffer from lack of self esteem and I want to see how she goes through it, but the book was written in such a c*appy manner such that I couldn't stand it anymore.

Precious was also a bad movie that was a waste of time.

[cacian]

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. Mediocre writing geared single-mindedly towards its obvious and simplistic moral. Plus all the characters are so annoyingly well-adjusted. For entertainment value I'd prefer the other (reactionary) kind of after-school-special book, that's at least bad in a sensationalistic and ridiculous way

.
It makes you think about the publishing establishement and how poor it is.

The Mysteries of Udolpho. I read it because it's parodied in Northanger Abbey (which I liked), and I wanted to get the jokes. The main joke is that the heroine is useless and the bad-guys and setting are cardboard cutouts. The prudish sensibility of the author and her mechanical prose gets old pretty fast, however, and that leaves you with 600+ pages of sheer boredom

.
oh dear I would rather write my own book now and read it.

For well-respected classics, one that I could not get into was Don Quixote. There are some quasi-interesting meta-textual devices throughout: Don Quixote acts out fantasies based on books he's read; every other character he meets seems to have read Cervantes' book about him and plays along with his fantasies; in the second part he meets a doppelganger out of an "unauthorized sequel"; it's a frame narrative with large portions of plot devoted to travelers telling each-other stories on the road. Unfortunately it's very long (my copy was almost 900 pages) and lavishes most of its attention on its two worst themes: 1) blunt cruelty inflicted on the main character ("practical jokes" include knocking out most of his teeth, hanging him out by his wrist out of a second-floor window, and unleashing feral cats on him when he's in bed),

and tedious pastoral sentimentality (seemingly all the people who play those pranks on Don Quixote alternate their brutal, mind-numbing acts of sadism with sappy, mind-numbing discussions on the virtues of the simple, peaceful lives led by shepherds!).

Very brave of you to have read Don Quixote. I could not would not read it.
Interesting what you said about the tedious pastoral sentimentality.
It reminds me of the nazis, whilst they massacred thousands of innocent people they were able to carry on as if nothing had happened and they engaged in ceremonila discussions about art and listened deeply to classical music. Let's say they understood the importance of expensive taste but they were the very cheap of everything else.

[cacian]

The book is titled Ugly. I thought it would be a good book as I suffer from lack of self esteem and I want to see how she goes through it, but the book was written in such a c*appy manner such that I couldn't stand it anymore.

Precious was also a bad movie that was a waste of time.

Oh no sorry about this
That reminded me of the series of Ugly Betty isn't that part of it by any chance?
I would not buy books with titles such as these because I just know they are going to really poor.
Also it makes you thing about the book and wether they were actually ugly themselves to write and call a book ugly. They must be and they can't write on top of it..sounds really ugly.

[ave d]

It makes you think about the publishing establishement and how poor it is.

I think Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes is probably a case of the industrial education system making a big market for books that contain simple messages or life-lessons that are easy to teach.

I used to work summers on the grounds crew of a public school system, and I found the book discarded in the high school parking lot. I didn't expect to like it but I read it to pass the time one day when there wasn't any work to do. The thing is, these books do what they're supposed to. They're very easy to read and understand. It wasn't the sort of tedious chore that bad or primative "entertainment" books like The Mysteries of Udolpho can be and it's much shorter. They're just really dumb and the fact that the book probably only exists in the name of a lousy education is kind of irksome to me.

Very brave of you to have read Don Quixote. I could not would not read it.

Why do you think you couldn't or wouldn't read it? (I mean apart from my extremely persuasive negative review )

I personally wouldn't recommend Don Quixote to most people or feel like I'm a smarter or anything for having read it, but I think it's worth it overall to be open to finding enjoyment in classics (or just about any type of book, really).

[fb0252]

For me it's a tie: Of Mice And Men and White Noise, although I only made it through 50 pages of the latter. I never tire of knocking them either.

[Frohmankf1]

Pretty much all my school textbooks. Learning disabilities aren't fun