What is the worst book you ever read?

[dev22]

Jun 22, 2012 16:28:44 GMT -5 @kcpokergal said:

The worst book ever was definitely "Confessions of a Shopaholic."

Others that made me irrationally angry: A Separate Peace, Red Badge of Courage, Madame Bovary

I loved Ethan Frome.

I think I had blocked a Separate Peace out, hated that one too.

[basilosaurus]

I loved a separate peace. You guys suck.

Ethan Frome pissed me off, though.

summer, there's no explaining life of pi. It was just bad, but idiots said it was meaningful and deep and stuff, to make you feel bad for not getting the point.

[StrawberryBlondie]

Kim by Rudyard Kipling and Middlemarch by George Eliot.

Also not a fan of Time Traveler's Wife.

[StrawberryBlondie]

Jun 22, 2012 10:02:25 GMT -5 asdfjkl said:

I think the book that made me the most angry was "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down." Ostensibly, it's written in a journalistic style, but it's anything but objective. The author clearly wanted the reader to be sympathetic to the parents of the child, but I was just furious with them. This goes to my cultural relativism issues, which essentially is that I have no tolerance for other cultures when those cultures cause harm to a child. Sorry that you thought the doctors were being disrespectful to your desire to treat your daughter's epilepsy by burying a chicken in your back yard. Turns out Phenobarbitol is the way you treat epilepsy.

I had to read this in college and I was the only one in my class who felt this way. I hated this book so freaking much.

I just couldn't get past the fact that the parents ultimately lived in this country for decades and couldn't be assed to learn a lick of English when it was pretty damn clear that learning even a little English would help them with their daughter's medical condition.

[AllieHound]

I liked A Separate Peace. That might've just been the teacher I had, though. I also freaking loved Beowulf, so maybe I'm just weird.

But both Wuthering Heights and 100 Years of Solitude can suck a big one. HATE.

Also, The Awakening was the stupidest, most annoyingly...ugh book I've ever read. And my sophmore English teacher RAVED about it for weeks. All I could think about was how incredibly selfish and anti-feminist the main character was- but if you talked to my teacher about it...it was the most empowering book she'd ever read. Ugh.

[kcb]

Walden. fucking Walden.

i don't care. just no.

[Deleted]

Definitely Eat Pray Love. Ick.

[laurenpetro]

The Tempest. does a play count? i fucking hated that piece of shit and was thrilled when i heard the tinfoil hat theory that shakespeare didn't really write it.

i was supposed to read a book in college, Kate Vaiden but got out of it thanks to my family's amazing ability to kick the bucket at just the right moment to get me out of term papers/exams. i tried to read it but just couldn't get into it. is it any good? is it something i should try to read now?

[StrawberryBlondie]

Jun 22, 2012 10:36:27 GMT -5 ering1115 said:

Jun 22, 2012 10:27:27 GMT -5 wawa said:

I'm curious - did you fail because you refused to write anything at all,, or did you fail because you wrote an essay about how she was a douche?

I failed because I wrote about how abandoning your chosen adult responsibilities was not honorable and how running away from hard decisions was the easiest and not most difficult decision to make. I am sure it wasn't the best written essay in the world, but my 17 year old self was PISSED at this crap. Especially coming from an all-girls Catholic high school. No divorce, no abortions but just go kill yourself in the ocean. Yup, that's a good way out of it.

Interesting. I hated this book too (actually, I loved it until the last few pages when she decided to off herself) but reading your critique is making me want to defend it and ramble on about how she had literally no other way to take control of her life.

But I do think your teacher was an ass for failing you for expressing your POV.

[twotrue]

I tried and tried but I could never get into Interview with a Vampire. I even thought about watching the movie first (I've never seen it) and then going back to the book. I realize it is a well written story but it never captured me.

sent from phone

[scout8]

Cold Mountain. Hated it. Depressing, depressing, depressing, and then . . . spoiler alert

















not even a happy ending.

[Deleted]

Oh confessions of a shopaholic WAS bad. Like not even bad chick lit. Just bad .

I'm at my moms house and picked up her copy of 50 Shades of Grey. I read two sentences on the third page (he murmurs her name like a caress, she bites her lip and turns away) and almost died laughing. My mom was just like "I told you."

[Deleted]

Jun 22, 2012 22:39:08 GMT -5 twotrue said:

I tried and tried but I could never get into Interview with a Vampire. I even thought about watching the movie first (I've never seen it) and then going back to the book. I realize it is a well written story but it never captured me.

sent from phone

I slid into Rice's Vampire Chronicles sideways - I read The Vampire Lestat fist, then went back to Interview, and then forward to the others...

I don't know if that's the reason, but I liked Lestat much more than Louis, and enjoyed his book more. I mean, if you're gong to be a vampire, then be a goddamned vampire, you know? None of this pussy assed feeding on mice and rats!

[bqbride]

Jun 22, 2012 10:02:23 GMT -5 @copzgirl1171 said:

The Poisonwood Bible.

I quit with like 75-100 pages left. It was awful

SO glad to hear you say this. I have tried to read this book so many times and just cannot even get halfway through it. I love Barbara Kingsolver, the topic interests me, the plot sounds interesting, it's a perennial favorite of everyone on the planet, but it is so painful to read. I also can't get through Middlesex or Running with Scissors (interesting that those 3 books are hated as a group by so many people in this thread.)

I refuse to suffer through books that I don't enjoy, so I can't really name the worst book I've ever read all the way through. I'll just disgrace myself and admit that I have a very low tolerance for the classics. Hate them. Pretty much all of them.

[gault]

I had to fake so many Dickens essays in college because I couldn't get through any of his damn books.

I love Jane Green - trashy British lit at its finest.

[basilosaurus]

Screw you guys. I loved Poisonwood bible. I read it probably a half dozen times.

[mmmomof2]

I was going to say The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates. So self-indulgent and plodding. I didn't love We Were the Mulvaneys, but there was something about it I liked. I've written off JCO forever now.

But then I remembered:

Jun 22, 2012 12:20:45 GMT -5 @mjmksb04 said:

Did anyone else read Edgar Sawtelle? I could not finish it. I just couldn't give a fuck about any of the characters, they were all written in such a detached fashion.

Yes! Worst ever! The only character remotely interesting was the dog, and even then he felt half-assed. I gave up about half way through.

I also never really got into Wicked, but lots of people seemed to love it.

[StrawberryBlondie]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned The Book Thief. I personally really liked it, but I've noticed amongst my friends that it seems people either really love it or passionately hate it.

[pugz]

Candide and also Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead. Could not tolerate either in AP lit. Had to cliffsnotes that shiz!

I love Ethan Frome.

[MrsAxilla]

Jun 22, 2012 11:20:08 GMT -5 @majorwife said:

And yes, never, ever, ever read the last few vampire chronicle books if you want to have fond memories of all the characters

Really? I've lost track of those books. I think the last one I read was the one about Armand. Can I get a spoiler on the rest?

[aurora]

Jun 23, 2012 14:28:20 GMT -5 basilosaurus said:

Screw you guys. I loved Poisonwood bible. I read it probably a half dozen times.

/stands with sibil

[SmartyCat]

Another vote for Cleaving by Julie Powell. After Julie & Julia I suspected she was whiny and self-indulgent, but clearly I lack imagination because I was still blown away by the extent of what a horrible person she is when I read Cleaving. And a chapter of "I'm such a horrible person" penance is not an antidote for the rest. Ugh.

Not a fan of Ethan Frome or Life of Pi.

For YA fiction, I liked the first third of Divergent and scanned the rest after it started to get predictable.

[MarmeeNoir]

To kill a mockingbird.

[IIOY]

Jun 24, 2012 1:23:12 GMT -5 toledo said:

HOW have I read this many pages and seen no mention of Jodi Picoult? My Sister's Keeper should be fucking barred from publication.

Agree. Also, House Rules, which I'm reading now and really wish I hadn't started.

ETA: JP has been added to my list of authors whose crap is permanently banned from my reading list.

[dulcemariamar]

Time Travlers Wife

[EllieArroway]

Jun 24, 2012 2:42:28 GMT -5 MarmeeNoir said:

To kill a mockingbird.

What?? How is that possible? I have never heard of anyone who didn't love that book.

[ESF]

Jun 22, 2012 9:50:55 GMT -5 heyjude said:

Time Travlers Wife

Right there with you. God that book was wretched.

The other book that I hated with an intense passion was The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

The thought of reading either Life of Pi or Eat Pray Love gives me hives. I'm pretty sure I'd hate them with the fire of a thousand suns.

[ESF]

Jun 23, 2012 19:08:10 GMT -5 pugz said:

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead.

Ohhhhh I took a 20th century drama class in college, and that was my second most hated play. The one I hated the most was Waiting for Godot.

I also forgot another book that I hated -- The Memory Keeper's Daughter. OMFG that book was just so awful.

[seventeen]

tossup between Twilight and 50 SOG.

[Nonny]

For just random novels, Dust -- www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380787423/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d1_g14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0GBV1YQYZ7YEFVQWJQEQ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

Basically all of the world's insects die, except for some tiny mites or something that eat EVERYTHING, causing mass chaotic destruction of the entire ecosystem. The premise behind the book wasn't bad, but the execution was awful... I think the writing was even worse the the shit Stephanie Meyer craps out.

For more "classic" novels I'd have to go with Old Man and the Sea and Catcher in the Rye.