Hmmm...let me see.
The Stranger by Albert Camus. Why? Because the author makes everything seem pointless from the very beginning! Why bother reading it? (Obviously, I'm far from existential in my thinking).
Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Can't even get through a page without wondering where my brain is (or the author's at that).
Other than that, I guess I could say that in general I don't care for modern/pulp/present day fiction at all. I'm stuck in the 1800's.
Anything by Jackie Collins - pure garbage.
Ham on Rye - made me feel sick, really don't care for that type overhyped rubbish if you know what I mean. Same with Phillip Roth 'portnoy's complaint'.
These (to me) are far, far worse than of Mice & men and white noise, which were perfectly acceptable in my own personal opinion.
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"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
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The worse book I ever came across was a lit crit book on postmodernsm. It made me really annoyed because it was unreadable. I wish I had kept some photocopies of this awful book as a demonstration of how not to write, or the title. It was truly awful, and perfectly clear why they were doing lit crit and not novels.
I started the Mill on the Flos....zzzzzzz......... sorry, once, but couldn't get on with it. I can't say it was the worst book I ever read because if it doesn't cut it for the first few chapters, then I'm afraid I'm onto something I really want to read. I have read books I didn't like for courses and stuff, but now - well I've got no time to waste on dislikeables.
The Bible is the worst, it is also one of the best.
My Antonia and Atlas Shrugged, I had to read both of them for school, though. My Antonia- nothing happened and the writing wasn't that great. Atlas Shrugged- just about everything in the whole book was terrible. Maybe I should read The Fountainhead, though.
White Noise was hilarious. Up there with A Confederacy of Dunces.
The worst: Atlas Shrugged. The Fountainhead is only better to the extent that it is shorter, so not very much better. Anything interesting Rand had to say had already been said incomparably better by Nietzsche. Anything else Rand said was rubbish. And she was just a poor writer. That d'Anconia speech covers, what, 70 pages? Ridiculous.
Another that was terrible, by an author who is worth reading, is Jack Kerouac's Sartori in Paris. I guess by the time he wrote it, he was too old and flung over on alcohol to rise to the occasion. Big Sur was masterfully sad; Paris was just unreadable. Almost as bad as his last novel, Pic. It's a shame, too. This is the same guy who wrote the unthinkably brilliant The Subterraneans.
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Oh, I can't believe Of Mice and Men and My Antonia have been mentioned! I like both of those. I like anything by Steinbeck really and I thought My Antonia was a beautifully written story.
My least favorite (right off the top of my head anyways) is The Leopard by some author I've forgotten. It was so incredibly boring. I can't tell you exactly what I didn't like about it because I don't actually remember the book at all, which shows how boring I found it.
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille.
I read about half of it before violently throwing it out the window (literally). It's easily the most depraved disgusting thing I've ever encountered, and I have a pretty high threshold for that kind of stuff.
'twilight' and anything by James Patterson. My parents love those books, but when I tried to read one I didn't get past page ten.
I read about half of it before violently throwing it out the window (literally). It's easily the most depraved disgusting thing I've ever encountered, and I have a pretty high threshold for that kind of stuff.
Yes... Bataille's Story of the Eye is pretty damn disgusting. Be glad you didn't get to the last chapter and the scene with the priest. You don't wanna know what they ultimately did with that eye. I'd advise you steer clear of deSade as well. More of the same... but even more repetitive, monotonous, and poorly written.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
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Whilst they were good books in themselves I could never enjoy anything I studied in school/college courses.
Also, there have been a lot of books I have stopped at the 50 page mark. The most recent of which was A Handsmaid Tale. Although I suspect this was far more due to personal taste than it being an, objectively speaking, 'bad' book.