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The only book I can think of off-hand that I really hated was A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer. I finished it thinking "what a waste of time". I only bought it for 50p, but I still felt cheated.
I couldn't bring myself to finish On the Road, either. I was convinced that I was going to like it, so I ended up very disappointed.
And although I probably haven't read enough to judge, I'm not a fan of Dickens.
I could do without The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. Yep, that's my ten books right there. The world would be a better place without them.
I can't honestly say that I've ever hated a book, to the point of wishing to be rid of it.
I can't really ever say I've hated a book. Yes I found books to be boring in places, but that in my opinion does not make them a bad book, its just means that they require a re-adjustment of my thinking to the point where the book is enjoyable.
If I had to point the finger, then I could quite honestly say that the Dungeon series by Philip Jose Farmer was brilliant, up to the last novel.
Since each novel was wrote differently, by four different authors, (It complicated.)
I was dissapointed with the last authors efforts.
To put it quite bluntly, he tore the story a completely different ***HOLE.
I could not make hide nor hair of it.
The characters in the former books acted completely disconected, things weren't explained at all, they just coasted along, and the ending was complete and utter CRAP!
No I was quite put out when they let the author of the last book completely ruin the series, the story and plot arc that had been so deliciously building since the third book, and even the characters, damned character development was all shot to hell!
Everyone acted like they hadn't spent the last year down in that hell hole of a place, the main character reverted from a clever gentleman to a complete baboon and womanizer. I could go on and on.
Do yourself a favour if you read the dungeon series, stop at book five and make up your own ending. If you want dissapointment in cartloads then read the sixth.
Bradbury is a decent writer, and he seems quite smart, and he has some really good ideas. But does he have to be such a jerk?Quote:
Originally Posted by mono
P.S. I would like to take this oportunity to challenge everybody who said A Tale of Two Cities or Crime and Punishment to a fight.
very interesting thread.. in lots of posts there are books/authors i like, or even love.
I never keep reading a book if I'mm not enjoying it - life is too short, and there are too many books to be read, to waste time on stuff you don't like.
Here's a few that spring to mind:
1. anything by John Grisham
2. "chick lit"
3. A Hundred years of Solitude - and all his others
4. all of Ayn Rand's oeuvre
5. Ulysses - yeah, I did finish that, but only cos I had to
6. The Color Purple
I agree, cuppajoe, as Bradbury does not seem a horrible writer necessarily . . . just far from my favorite. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9
And with your second statement, I furthermore agree, especially with Crime and Punishment. :brow:
I just read great expectations, and i must say i loved it! it's hilarious!, and as usual dickens is a great author!
This is an interesting thread although it can hardly be considered as objective.
However I can really do without Stendhal's Le rouge et le noir.
I would also put books by Jelinek on my list and when I read Madame Bovary many years ago, I disliked it, but I don't know how this would be now...
I'm sure there are more books I could do without, but they just don't want to come to my mind. Probably because I already completely forgot about them.
I actually like Dostoevskij's work who was named sometimes here, although I admit that I didn't like the end of Crime and Punishment so much.
Concerning Harry Potter, come on, I know this hype about the books might be too much, but J.K. Rowling has a good writing style and the books are entertaining.
Wasn't that John Steinbeck? I love that book.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pendragon
Challenge accepted!Quote:
P.S. I would like to take this oportunity to challenge everybody who said A Tale of Two Cities or Crime and Punishment to a fight.
Ray Bradbury is among the best authors of the 20th century. ;)
www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Steinbeck/row.htmQuote:
Originally Posted by enskyment
:blush: Yes! You are correct, I meant Upton Sinclair's The Jungle of course! Duh, what was I thinking? :confused: See the Edit.
lol, you are awesome! :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9
I agree with each to his own. i have loved many books mentioned here like Dickens, Dumas, Da Vinci, Harry Potter and esp The Scarlet Pimpernel!
Begad! That elegant Sir Percival Blakeney Baronet is a genius!
I wouldn't say i hated any books but there are some i didn't care for.
A Round Heeled Woman - Jane Juska (slow and a bit boring for me)
Water Babies - i never got into it
Stephen King stuff
Inspector Morse novels
Agatha Christie (i managed about three)
Lord of the Rings trilogy
there aren't that many i don't like
YAY!!! I am not the only person on the face of the earth that thought Ulysses was the most evil book ever written! Honestly, I have read books I did not like (De Lilo's Mao II comes to mind), but never have I despised a book so much as Ulysses. In fact, I just moved into a new place, and it is sitting in my fireplace, ready to burn. . . :brow:
The only Bradbury book I have ever read was Let's all Kill Constance and I couldn't even finish it. It was terrible! The writing was extremely poor.
I do not mean to judge Bradbury too harshly based on only one book, but it was really, really bad.
LOL! Don't burn it. Just send it to me. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Hyacinth Girl
He he he - do you want the supporting "Ulysses Annotated" to accompany that? It's on the burn pile as well. . . .Quote:
Originally Posted by Psycheinaboat
You can do without Dave Eggers's "You Shall Know Our Velocity." "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is pretty good (although it really starts dragging at the end) but "Velocity" is really mediocre, nothing particularly stands out.
That's too bad because I liked A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and I've seriously considered giving Velocity a try but maybe I wait with that.Quote:
Originally Posted by superunknown
Has anyone read any of the Best American Nonrequired Reading series edited by Dave Eggers?
I've been curious, but have not purchased any of them.
Behold! A vote for The Scarlet Pimpernel! And here I thought I was probably alone in advocating him. And Baroness Orczy has a short-story detective called The Old Man in the Corner that if you ever get a chance to read the series do so. They are great!Quote:
Originally Posted by Truth Untold
I also like the madcap adventures of one Doctor Cristopher Syn, alias The Scarecrow by Russell Thorndyke. Not at all like the Disney Movie, I assure you. :D :nod:
hard times- charles dickens
despartion-stephin king(I do like some stuff by king the stand is amazing)
naked prey-john sanford
stone angel(not sure the authors name)
kingcon(stephan j cannel)
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Originally Posted by Beaumains
You really feel that way about V.C. Andrews? Yeah incest is not good but think about it. V.C. Andrews has opened peoples eyes to whats going on in our modern day world and we can't ignore it. I think her books are really good and if you read the rest of the books in the series you might get why the incest is in the first book... Picture being locked away in an attic for four years being a teenage male and a teenage female. Im not saying that if I was in that situation, I'd commit incest... But.... Oh nvm I'll just get repetitive if I keep going. I hope you see my point. But it's just my opinion
--Jenna
Hey yeah.... Im 15 and I love The Da Vinci... It's amazing. Opens your eyes to concets you'd never really think of. And since your 13 and have read it, I've got respect for you. Not very many 13 year olds would have read it. But you got good taste.Quote:
Originally Posted by gumption
I think most of my favourite books have been mentioned in this thread so far :D
I'm struggling to come up with a list for a number of reasons, primarily because even when I don't enjoy a book, I can usually understand why it would be considered a classic/ground breaking etc.
for example, all that i've read of Atwood i've disliked, but I can see how people appreciate how cleverly she writes (not to my tastes however). There are also cultural factors to be taken into consideration, which doesn't make all books travel as well as others.
My only nomination would be Dan Brown, for the poor quality of english.
Leaves of grass (or any poetry by Walt Whitman for that matter)
The Lord of the Rings (apologies)
Great Expectations (Trying to read it was like trudging through quicksand)
But I'm not going to waste valuble time book bashing, for, as the late great Mr. Gunther Grass would say-- "Even bad books are books, and therefore sacred."
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley when it's translated to danish... never have i read anything so crass and poorly translated. it really distressed me while reading, so i ditched it and read the original, i was so relieved that i read it all in one day. :)
Though I have not read the other books in the series, I could not get into the second one (Petals on the wind....was its name probably?) but I will agree with you here that it is very difficult to control yourself when you are locked away in an attic for four years. I will consider Flowers In The Attic a very good novel.Quote:
Originally Posted by poetru_fanatic
I'm sort of dismayed to hear such great works as A Tale Of Two Cities and The Picture Of Dorian Gray denigrated, but to each his own. My personal five are:
1. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
2. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
4. Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
5. The Grapes Of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Oh and may someone calmly explain to Ruth Rendell taht her books are crap, and that she should stop writing them, and that she has no talent, and that her narrative is completely predictable, and that "it's like a mouthfull of something-too-hot-to-swallow". NO!!!
Not literature! (goes away and grumbles in a corner)
The great Gatsby - Fitzgerald (just boring)
anything by Tolkien (In my opinion he is not at all a good narrater)
The catcher in the Rye - Salinger ( nice story , but a 2 years old could have written it way better than Salinger did ! I'm shocked for my live that somebody call that book Literature )
nearly anything by Dickens and Paulo Coelho (Dickens writes so unreal and Coelho thinks he's a great Poet and very sagely when he writes such crab as The Alchimist , sorry , really had to say that)
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"Not very many 13 year olds would have read it."
Oh , really ?! Almost everyone of my circle of acquaintances (and me too) read and loved it and we are nearly all around the age of 13.
I fully agree with Leaves of Grass. I once jokingly referred to it as "The consummate pot-smoker's guide to weed", but I really wonder how dear Old Walt managed to write it without being wasted on something. I couldn't read it under torture! :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Jesourirai
http://www.smiliegenerator.de/s30/smilies-10859.png
Quote:
Originally Posted by Manfred
I'm a bit speachless, actually. What's wrong with The Grapes of Wrath?Quote:
Originally Posted by Manfred
It's dull, depressing, wordy, meandering.Quote:
Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9
No problem if you like it, many--even most--people do. But I don't personally care for angst-ridden tales of eternal optimism. This novel sounds hokey and simplistic to me, and it espouses values that feel like conservative propaganda.
I saw the best books but now lets name some of the books you regretted reading...
Mmm...worst books.
Obviously Dan Brown- The Da Vinci Code has to be there (ludicrous plot/poorly written).
Kate Mosse- Labyrinth (see above).
Stephen King- Cell (Characterization was poor, story lost impact about a third of the way through and tailed off to a less than thrilling conclusion).
Patricia Cornwell - Trace (Always something of a hit or miss affair-this novel though was probably her worst-sluggish and drawn out with a poor ending).
And last...but by no means least... 'Industrial Magic' by Kelley Armstrong.
I strongly disagree with dull. Depressing, wordy and meandering are all accurate, but none of them mean 'bad'.Quote:
Originally Posted by Manfred
Conservative propaganda? That's interesting. It reads quite a bit more like anarcho-communist propaganda from where I'm sitting (and I'd know). Grapes is one long critique of capitalism, specifically the divisiveness of the property system. What feels like conservative propaganda to you?
Hope I'm not getting too political for the mod-squad here.
Tomorrow's a better day, there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you work harder you'll succeed; these messages seem somewhat contrived to me. Of course, "Grapes" was written in another age, so I could be wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9
I never meant to imply that this was a bad novel, by the way, merely one that I didn't personally enjoy reading. Outlooks and opinions are a dime a dozen, and every reader is free to express their own. Appreciation is not necessarily the same thing as enjoyment.
*David copperfield... Maybe i dont understand it
*Anything by Terry Pratchett (Except Good Omens, but Neil Gaiman wrote it too)
*Lotr- I never even finished them
*The Scarlet letter- Read it for English class and i wish i hadnt
*Anything by Virginia Andrews
Cant think of any more now...
The way I remeber it they all *SPOILERS* starve to death at the end after working as hard as they possibly could.Quote:
Originally Posted by Manfred
Fair enough, but I think one of us is interpreting this particular book very weirdly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Manfred
Really, I had no desire to interpret the novel, I just didn't enjoy it.Quote:
Originally Posted by cuppajoe_9
I've always found that trying to ferret out an author's meaning gets in the way of the flow of the story. It either comes to you as you read, or it doesn't. I never enjoyed this exercise when I was in school, and still don't. It gives me a headache.
Still, every novel is worth reading--or at least a glance. I'm glad you enjoyed this one.
By the way, have you read "Elmer Gantry," by Sinclair Lewis? That was a novel I enjoyed quite a lot; Lewis is great at scathing satire.
Consider it on my list.Quote:
Originally Posted by Manfred