Worst book you ever read???

Most of my freinds know I'm a voracious reader. I lost count, it's somewhere over 3000 or so. They always ask me my favorite/s but none until recently have asked me my least favorite.

I thought about it for awhile and I would have to say Mein Kampf by Adolp Hitler. I found it to be tedious and pendantic, other than the first chapter in which he outlines his plans if he ever comes to power the whole tome was in serious need of and edit job. His meglo-maniacal personality is readily apparent in the narrative and its unabridged ramblings.

I might get blasted for my second least favorite.....Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I enjoyed the story of the hunt for the whale but every other chapter being devoted to what was considered 'science' and the understanding of sea creatures seriously disrupted the flow of the story for me. I ended up skippng them all together by the end of the book. I realize that this was how the Victorian reader was kept aprised of advances in the so-called scientific world but it was completely contemporary and hardly any of it is excepted now.

Anyone have any 'duds' that they have plodded through? What were the reasons that you were disappointed with them?

[edit on 28-10-2007 by AugustusMasonicus]

reply to post by AugustusMasonicus


Stephen king bores me to tears, I've tried to read a few of his books and just given up every time!

MonKey

As much as I appreciate Ayn Rand, her book, The Romantic Manifesto, was as dry as toast. It's the only book that was so bad I had to force myself to finish it. If it had been anyone but Ayn Rand, I would have tossed it after the first chapter.

reply to post by ChiKeyMonKey


Ouch!! King is my favorite....which one's have you read? When anyone tells me they are not King fan I usally recommend reading Bag of Bones or Eyes of the Dragon. Have you tried those?

[edit on 28-10-2007 by AugustusMasonicus]

The Da Vinci Code. It is the most over hyped, oversold, overexposed piece of crap of all time. There may be worse books, but none made their talentless author as rich as a Rockefeller.

It amazes me what people think is good.

reply to post by ChiKeyMonKey


ChiKey, comments like this leave me tempted to take you off my friends list and add you as a respected foe..

i'll try and keep my cool though.. this time

anyway, i know i've read boring books.. i just don't remember them because well.. they were boring

most of them were probably required reading in school

i hate having to read books i'm not interested in, no good comes out of it

The Broker by John Grisham. I thought the book was really slow. I kept reading the book hoping something more would happen. Not a lot went on in the book.






-tts

[edit on 5-11-2007 by The_Truth_Seeker]

"Lightning" by Dean Koontz

Any of those book mill artists are lame. I haven't read one like it since 7th grade. Ghost, time traveling, angels, fighting Nazis. Oh, and everybody has an UZI.



Stick with the classics like Kerouac and Bukowski.

The book "Something Happened" by Joseph Heller was a big mind****

on the people that had enjoyed his previous book, "Catch 22"

Nothing Happened in "Something Happened"

I'd Say that Grahm Hancock's new book "Supernatural" was a pretty big disappointment to me..



[edit on 5-11-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

The one I just finished is right up in the top few. Usually if a book is so bad I stop reading it. But this one had a story I wanted to hear, despite the execrable writing, so I forced myself through it at gunpoint.

The Donegal Woman by John Throne.

The story was about a young girl at the turn of the 20th century, sent out by her father to work for a local farmer in what pretty much amounted to slave labor. She was raped by the farmer, and when she became pregnant, they forced her to marry a not-so-nice man. She had one child a year until she died of the flu at age 20.

It was a very heavy story, and her ultimate fate still makes me feel both sad for her and very lucky that my life is better than hers.

But the writing! Argh! It was written in a style that I can only describe as bordering on senile. Repetitive. Redundant. The author would go into a character's train of thought and then repeat himself over and over again. It was almost as if his editors told him to add a hundred pages so he just went through the book and copy and pasted sentences to flesh it out.

It was an excruciating read, but at the end, not only was I relieved to be finished, but I had the feeling I sometimes have after a great book, when I'm thinking about what happened to the main character and pondering what effect life had on them.

Originally posted by MajorMalfunction

But the writing! Argh! It was written in a style that I can only describe as bordering on senile. Repetitive. Redundant. The author would go into a character's train of thought and then repeat himself over and over again. It was almost as if his editors told him to add a hundred pages so he just went through the book and copy and pasted sentences to flesh it out.

Sort of like Catcher in the Rye? I know, I know, it's considered a "Classic," but I thought it was horrible!!

[edit on 5-11-2007 by SpeakerofTruth]

reply to post by Musky


The Da Vinci Code was awesome. I litterally couldn't put it down for two days. Now the movie on the other hand, the movie sucked.

Everybody should check out "House of (blue) Leaves"...


You think anything you've read so far is a mind#... Try that on for size.


Some people hated it, I'm all about it!

reply to post by DeadFlagBlues


I read this as well. One of the best books I have read. I did stop in several places and did not pick it up again until I had digested what I had just read. It is not a book I would recommend for a casual reader, this is a work for people who want to be challenged.

I love to read. Fiction, non-fiction, periodicals, newspapers, anything. And I can read just about anything. Personally, I really like Stephen King and Dean Koontz (yes, I liked Lightning) and Harlan Coben writes a compelling thriller, I think. Check out "Tell No One" or "Just One Look" for some page-turning entertainment.

I liked DaVinci Code, and Angels and Demons even better.

So I'm definitely no literati type.

This is actually a tough question, because if a book's all that bad, I put it down. But if I had to mention the worst book I actually finished voluntarily, it would probably be this book I read several years ago by a guy named (I think) Mark Smith. I don't even remember the title. I just remember a significant section of the book dealing with the protagonist having to compulsively clean his basement. I mean clean to the point it was practically sterile. And it went on in detail FOREVER. And nothing really ever happened in the book. It was unbelievably boring.

[Edit for typo]

[edit on 11/5/2007 by yeahright]

reply to post by Musky



Oh, thank god...someone else who couldn't stand that sorry excuse for a book, it was an hour of my life I'll never recover.

My top five...(if anyone cares).
1) Devinci Code...ugh.
2) Crime and Punishment...I know its a classic, but yuch...
3) Anything by Dean Koontz, oddly enough I liked Phantoms...
4) Stephen King's newer books. I like his first few, but lately not so much.
5) Any thing called a thriller. Most are anything but thrilling, excessively violent, yes...thrilling? No.

Originally posted by DeadFlagBlues
Everybody should check out "House of (blue) Leaves"...


You think anything you've read so far is a mind#... Try that on for size.


Some people hated it, I'm all about it!

Absolutely terrific book. Takes a little work to read, but once you abandon the idea you're trying to read a typical novel, it is worth every moment you invest. As a matter of fact, I should read it again.

reply to post by Musky


Oh, man. I'm stoked somebody on here as read it, seeing as how it's kind of this shadowy cult classic. Definitely a wild book and I couldn't put down the first quarter of the book. Kind of the ulitmate mind#. I should probably give it another read too!

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