Books You Wouldn't Wish On Your Worst Enemy

[Nathan]

Am I the only Neanderthal who couldn't get through A Confederacy of Dunces? I was away on a long weekend on Cape Cod and I actually tossed the thing into the barbeque pit half finished. (First and last time I've ever had that violent a reaction to a book.)

[Laura W.]

[quote="Nikitta"]I've only read the first three of them and I think that those are fairly good. The reason why I'm not buying book four is that everyone says that it really goes downhill and gets bad from book four. I liked the first three, though.

I will say that the first three of them were ok, they were the reason I plowed on as long as I did with the rest of the series. And there was still some 'will she, won't she' sexual tension in them. Further along in the series, that disappears, and she ends up doing everyone for a variety of ridiculous reasons, and still claims she is rather prude.

[JJS]

That would be L. Ron Hubbard.

But to be fair, I haven't read the Battlefield Earth dekalogy. (or whatever it is)

I presume you mean you haven't read The Invader's Plan. Well, if you already think he is the worst without reading those, you certainly should not read them. They make Battlefield Earth look like Old Man's War by comparison. Really total crap. I hate to get interested in something and then have to wait months to get the next installment, so I waited until all 10 volumes had been published, bought them all, then started reading. Partway through number 1, I thought it had to get better. By a little ways into volume 2, I realized this was never going to happen.

[JJS]

Am I the only Neanderthal who couldn't get through A Confederacy of Dunces? I was away on a long weekend on Cape Cod and I actually tossed the thing into the barbeque pit half finished. (First and last time I've ever had that violent a reaction to a book.)

No. I didn't read anywhere that much. The first two chapters were more than enough.

[cathy]

For me it's Shardik by Richard Adams. It's the only book i've never been able to finish. It's been so long since i've read it, I can't even tell you what put me off.

[Mulch]

anything by Jack Chalker in case it has an essentially-magically transformed hyper-female submissive nymphomaniac".

Haha, I didn't even remember the author's name of the book I was going to recommend not recommending until I read this.

When (or where) the Changewinds Blow.
By the above.

I remember it being awful, but more specifically, I remember one scene. The one in which the main character (A teenage girl I believe) gets stuck, or stays on purpose, in a mall overnight - strips down naked and runs around and looks at herself in the mirror.

I don't remember, but I hope it wasn't written in first person.

Even as a teenage dude, this scene bothered me. It shouldn't have, but since it was written by a fellow dude, of adult age no doubt, it was rather disturbing.
I did finish the book because the cover was so awesome the book had to get to the changing n stuff eventually. It did, but poorly. =(
Maybe his other books are ok? (read quote above?)

[Sergeant E]

Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. The first "important" book I ever read. Sheesh!

[K.V.C]

There are so many books.

But first I will defend Hamilton's Anita Blake, the first six or seven books are pretty good. After that then become porn. So I wouldn't recommend any of them.
(Laura maybe your thinking of the Merry books?)

Pixelfish - I actually read that book, and half of the next, which is even worse than the first. What I read of the book takes place underground, or in a tree, or tree root system or something and is so unreadable.

I guess I'd pick "the Fey" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Although I love her Retrieval Artist novels, I've never been able to get through more than about a third of this book.

[ScottM]

Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. The first "important" book I ever read. Sheesh!

Yeah, it really dragged. I think this was the first book where I skipped pages in the middle-- and it didn't really seem to affect my understanding of the book as a whole.

The one I hated was Jane Eyre (by Charlotte Bronte). I did read it all, but never found a plot...

[raptorinblack]

Arrgg, i came in so late, i have so many comments!

Re: Mary Sue. I've always known in general what a mary sue was, but have never come across one, nor seen such a checklist of their features. Some points at the beginning there made me blanch and run off to mentally reevaluate some characters of stories i've never written. But as I read on, i realized my characters are far too gritty and moody. I hope. >.> <.<

Re: Dashes. I love using dashes! :D And i use them properly *preen*

Re: Orn, by Piers Anthony. I liked that trilogy at the time, as a kid, mostly because a great big bird was one of the main characters, but looking back on it...that **** was ****ed up, dude. Same goes for most of Anthony's writings in retrospect, sadly.

Re: Dan Brown. In undergrad, I took an advanced creative writing class from one David Foster Wallace. Cant stand his writing, at all, but hes an enigmatic but dedicated teacher. Anyway, he said that when HE was in school, he took a writing class that Dan Brown was also in, as a student. He says his writings were absolute crap, he was a suck-up to the teacher, and he had absolutely nothing insightful to say about anyone else's work. Looking at his work now, well...shocked cat is shocked.

And now, submitted for the approval of the Bad Lit society: Dhalgren. By Samuel R. Delany. I read it as part of a science fiction class that focused on race and gender depictions in science fiction and we read a lot of marginalized scifi authors. So I can appreciate Delany for who he is and the importance of his works. But this thing....it was a brick, for starters, easily the longest thing we read. Every single person in the class despised it; in fact it was the only thing we all agreed on all year. Its like if James Joyce wrote science fiction. You have no idea whats going on, theres parts of it that are printed in two columns and describe two things going on at once, or something, the end loops back to the beginning , there is literally no plot at all. And on TOP of all that, its dark and weird and sexual (but not in good ways) and very disturbing in a lot of ways.... After the Katrina Disaster sort of blew over (heh) I read an article relating the situation in New Orleans as being frighteningly similar to the situation in Dhalgren. It's a city cut off from the rest of the world and has descended into chaos and violence--but also humanity and love, in its way--and the rest of the world doesnt know or doesnt care.

Intriguing concept, I know. But dont read it.

[Nathan]

Recently I read The Rising Tide by Jeff Shaara. Gahhhh!

Completely impenetrable. The man refuses to consider any sentence complete until he's jammed at least six commas and two semicolons in there. Someone should really edit the guy.

Just sayin'.

[green_hat]

I know lots of folks who loved The Hobbit, but hated Lord of the Rings. I'm just the opposite though-- loved LOTR, hated The Hobbit.

[Random Michelle]

Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. The first "important" book I ever read. Sheesh!

In high school one summer my mother tried to force me to read this. I believe my response was, "It's been FOUR CHAPTERS and he hasn't done ANYTHING but walk down some STUPID DUSTY ROAD."

The discussion went downhill from there, and I never did finish reading it. Unfortunately, this experience also turned me off of "literature" and I have been extremely leery to read anything that is classified as such. (However, I have read Virgil's Aenid and Hesiod's Theogony and loved them.)

Also, I preferred "Little Men" to "Little Women."

[Sergeant E]

However, I have read Virgil's Aenid and Hesiod's Theogony and loved them.)

Thucydides and Polybius are certainly more accessible than a lot of what passes for modern military and political history. And Gibbon is fun, so it's not like it's a "spirit of the age" thing.

[Random Michelle]

However, I have read Virgil's Aenid and Hesiod's Theogony and loved them.)

Thucydides and Polybius are certainly more accessible than a lot of what passes for modern military and political history. And Gibbon is fun, so it's not like it's a "spirit of the age" thing.

Oooh! I'll have to look for those next time I'm perusing the used book store.

[MisterStaypuft]

Frankly I'm surprised to find no mention of nonfiction in here. I nominate:

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

Not because of the content, but because it was written before charts, graphs, and jargon were invented - everything is explained the long way, making it a slow, painful slog between the groundbreaking insights from 1776.

[calico_reaction]

Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Please, no, drink bleach instead. Really, a gallon of it. Much better than a dragon-laden ripoff of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and EVERYTHING ELSE.

I'll drink to that. :) I, too, wouldn't wish Eragon on anyone.

[PixelFish]

I know lots of folks who loved The Hobbit, but hated Lord of the Rings. I'm just the opposite though-- loved LOTR, hated The Hobbit.

My dad tried to get me to read the Hobbit first. Probably because he thought it was more of a kid's book. I got bogged down in the damn tea party, which is probably the most condescending scene really....while Tolkein never completely loses that whole authorial "I'm talking to children at bedtime" voice, it's perhaps strongest in that chapter. And kinda frankly, I wanted to get to the action.

I love the whole series now, mind you.

.....



RE: Christopher Paolini - I picked up Eragon in the store, and put it back down quickly. It looks like a less interesting version of either Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles or David Edding's Belgariad. BUT.....my friend and I have a theory that we might be able to pick up a book or two into the series and find it more palpable since Paolini may have matured and he may be more used to the editing process by now. But the first Eragon didn't seem to have TOO much in the way of editing before being first self published, and then shined up for mass market. (At least not from the bits I read.) If anyone can confirm our speculation and say, "Hey, he gets better, pick up book X" then I am willing to give him a go.

[Academia]

I personally found "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke to be among the worst things I've ever read. I sincerely say that it's the only book that I really couldn't force myself to finish, and I was only about 40 pages to the end. It has little substance and draws it out over spans and spans of pages.

[ship]

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

OMG, that is the third time I've heard that book mentioned in the past week, and I haven't thought about it since I threw it away after finishing a class called "Communism, Socialism and Democracy" in 1994. Good ol Adam Smith...

I have to nominate a few craptastic books:

Slant, by Greg Bear. I could not get through the second chapter. I kept it in my car as a back-up book, in case I finished a good book and forgot to bring another good book with me to work. I ended up using to kill an angry wasp that got in my car last September and finally threw it out.

Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs. I am the only heterosexual male I know that read 80 pages before finally putting it down. Don't know what that says about me...

Accelerando, Charles Stross. I don't know, it just made ZERO sense to me and I could not get past the first 50 pages.

[Spherical Time]

I thought of another author: Sharon Green, writes John Norman-esque novels along the vein of "Ooh, I'm a competent woman that really needs to be dominated by a big strong man so I can realize just how incomplete my life has been". Barf.

That is absolutely the person that I would nominate for worst writer of all time. Due to a bored streak in college, I bought her entire collection.

The first five books of one series were insanely repetitive. There are five main characters, and every event that occurs, occurs to each of the characters. Then the next event occurs, and we see it from the point of view of each of the characters. Then the next event occurs, and so on. Then the characters meet up and we see their meetings each from FIVE perspectives.

And then they start sleeping around. You know, because it increases their magic powers. Only boy-girl though, but in every combination of boy-girl available.

And then in the second or third book, a sixth character is introduced and we have to go through it again!


The other books that spring to mind are Michael Crichton's State of Fear and Timothy Zahn's Angelmass. Both were horrible wastes of paper.

[ora]

reMix by John Courtney Grimwood. Every time he realises he can't write he chucks in some overly graphic violence or sex in an attempt to keep people interested. I have no idea how Grimwood has got so popular with the effendi novels unless he a: suddenly learned to write or b: got a ghost writer.

jPod by Douglas Coupland. Horribly self referential, Coupland writes himself into his story as a guru figure to my extreme distaste. I liked Microserfs but this isn't a book, its self gratification on paper.

I also wouldn't wish Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle on any of the many fans of Cryptonomicon out there.

[izanobu]

I think the lesson of this thread is that one man's enemy book is another's favorite. Some of my favorites are listed here.

I can't stand much written by Heinlein.

As for worst book I've ever read, I think is probably Mark of the Angel by Nancy Huston. It hurt. And pretty much is the poster example of why writing MFA programs destroy people sometimes.

[penfold]

I tried to read Left Behind (or whatever the official title of the first book in that series is) a few months ago, and although I got all the way through it, it was a rough ride. It looks like it was written by a third-grader for a bible school project. Horrible. Just horrible.

[ethyachk]

The Remains of the Day by by Kazuo Ishiguro. I was forced to read this book for an English class in high school. It's supposed to be some masterpiece, but all I got out of it was the urge to eat broken glass because that couldn't possibly be more painful than reading that book.

[DG Lewis]

I read The Sword of Shannara in junior high school. Lord of the Rings after a search-and-replace, without the linguistics or the backstory. And though my now-middle-schooler has literally read the covers off LoTR - twice - I make sure he avoids the "B"s in the F&SF racks at the local book megamart for fear he'll want to pick up Shannara.

[Marko Kloos]

Meg, by Steve Alten.

The only book I've ever physically tossed into the trash, and that was before reaching the last page.

[Randy Johnson]

I tried to read Left Behind (or whatever the official title of the first book in that series is) a few months ago, and although I got all the way through it, it was a rough ride. It looks like it was written by a third-grader for a bible school project. Horrible. Just horrible.

My family tried to get me to read this series for years. I finally broke down and waded in. Believe it or not, I got through the first three before I screamed,"Enough."

[cicely]

Great Expectations. Dickens. High school aged kids have enough angsty stuff to worry about, without having to deal with this load of depression. Together with The Red Badge of Courage (also plenty awful), it put me off of anything labelled "literature" for years.

[Reba]

Silas Marner. I do not care that it's a "classic." It was painful and nearly impossible to read. Why they asked us to do this in high school, I will never know. That was the same year we had to read Nectar in a Sieve[i]. I will grant that it may have been well written (wasn't much of a critic then so I don't remember), but never was a more depressing story told. Totally unfair to put teenagers through that. Oh, yeah, and I hated [i]Heart of Darkness but I understand why I had to read it and my prof. understood why I hated it with a passion.

I have to agree with the Hamilton detractors. I liked the series when Anita had a job and, I dunno, THOUGHTS instead of simply walking around with the irresistable cootchie of doom. Why the hell is it so hard to understand that sexual tension is almost always way more interesting than actual sex?? I couldn't forgive LKH the devolution into porn because it wasn't even good porn. If this was her Mary Sue transition (okay, so more of one), I feel sort of bad for her. But not bad enough to pick up another one of her books.

There are lots of things I start and can't finish, but it's usually because I don't like the voice or the genre, not because they suck out loud. I'll give anything a try, but as someone said, reading time is precious and should not be wasted on things you don't enjoy.

[Nikitta]

I keep fighting the urge to reply to this thread to say that I would't wish any of my favourite books on my worst enemy because they just don't deserve the pleasure. I lost.

[willywoollove]

Love in the time of cholera............gag..........I can't believe I even finished it

[Randy Johnson]

I keep fighting the urge to reply to this thread to say that I would't wish any of my favourite books on my worst enemy because they just don't deserve the pleasure. I lost.

Good point. That makes sense. We've all been talking books we hate and those surely WOULD be the ones we wish on our worst enemy. Thanks for clearing that up.

[DG Lewis]

I keep fighting the urge to reply to this thread to say that I would't wish any of my favourite books on my worst enemy because they just don't deserve the pleasure. I lost.

Good point. That makes sense. We've all been talking books we hate and those surely WOULD be the ones we wish on our worst enemy. Thanks for clearing that up.

I think the point is that the books are so bad that not only would one not recommend them to one's friends, one wouldn't even wish them on one's worst enemy.

[Nikitta]

I keep fighting the urge to reply to this thread to say that I would't wish any of my favourite books on my worst enemy because they just don't deserve the pleasure. I lost.

Good point. That makes sense. We've all been talking books we hate and those surely WOULD be the ones we wish on our worst enemy. Thanks for clearing that up.

I think the point is that the books are so bad that not only would one not recommend them to one's friends, one wouldn't even wish them on one's worst enemy.

I know; I just couldn't resist.

[Wyzeguy]

I also have some favorites that have been mentioned as "worst book ever" here. Different strokes . . .

Let's see, about the only books I can think of that I really tried to read and couldn't get through were Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon and Ulysses by James Joyce. Considering that those are considered two of the greatest works of literature by so many academics, I've got to wonder about my level of literacy or their level of veracity.

[Cindi in CO]

I would have to pick "anything by Jack Chalker in case it has an essentially-magically transformed hyper-female submissive nymphomaniac". Most of the other fetish books are straightforward slave-porn and go for it if that is your thing, but his have pretensions of having plot and character, so you can get sucked in before The Great Gazonga is created.

I totally agree with this. I read a lot of Chalker in my 20s (3 full series, I'm ashamed to admit) but I finally figured out that all of his female characters were either submissive sluts or militant lesbians. Just too wierd for me.

I too, loved LOTR, but hated The Hobbitt. And I wasn't all that wild about Harry Potter either; I read the first three books, and gave it up.

[Gentleman Haole]

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. - Liked Apocalpse Now however I just could not read Conrad's novel. I tried multiple times to finish it when it was assigned in Grade 12 English. I've read thousands of novels and rarely fail to finish them. When assigned novels for school I usually read them in a day or 2. But this novel was so incredibly boring and I tried repeatedly but I could not get more than 1/3 into the book.

I hate that book deeply, largely because the edition I read (I'm not sure if this is the case of all editions) did not other to put a carriage return between different people speaking. I had an impossible time following the thread of plot. Even if the original manuscript did not do this, I honestly do not think it would a considered a travesty by anyone if they'd just start a new freaking paragraph when a different character started speaking.

As for other books, has anyone here read Mcteague by Frank Norris? I read it in my high school Honors English class, and it's probably the book I hate most, largely because it subscribes so strongly to the naturalist / realist idea that you are ultimately controlled by forces and traits inherited from your ancestors. It's hard to enjoy a book that takes every opportunity to snidely remind you that the protagonist is an unthinking brute by nature and no matter how hard he tries he'll never escape that essential fact. It's even harder to enjoy a book when the tone of it is so condescending. I've tried to re-read it any number of times (to see if it's really as bad as I remember) and invariably I give up a chapter in.

Oh, and The Awakening. It's only redeeming features were that I paid a dollar for it and it was short.

[Major Major]

Rhapsody, by Elizabeth Haydon. I'm terrible at culling books from my library but I let this one go in no time flat. (Here be spoilers of a sort.)

The main character is a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue in all of her too-perfect glory. You could go down the Mary Sue checklist:

I thought I had bought this book once, and never read it. I may have to get a copy just to have a supreme bad example to hand.

[willywoollove]

I hated The Tommyknockers, loathed it. I threw away each page as i finished reading it.