Books to avoid like a bookworm on a diet

Echelle

Douglas Kennedy, "The woman in the fifth" I am two thirds way through, dumb plot,badly written,lots of factual errors.A real waste of time.So annoying, glad I got it in a bargain bin....

Beldarin

Never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never never
waste your money on Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
Oh My God its an awful read, I read it like i was watching a trainwreck

Please just take my word for it...
:eek:

dr.bollocko

Thats nice use of alliteration there.
And the iambic... ehhh.... unimetre? really gets the point across.
Oh wait.
Wicked.
Is that the one about like the Wicked witch of the west or some ****?
Isnt that a musical now?
Not a good sign.
Never a good sign.

Beldarin

Yeah, thats the one, the life story of the disturbingly misunderstood wicked witch, who by simple fact of being born green skinned and with razorsharp fangs, doesn't settle in to rural life somehow
I believe they have indeed made it into a musical, though in a seriously edited form
i bet ya anything they have not included the carnival show where a guy gets raped by a tiger, or the guy with 2 d**ks, who manages to do both mother AND daughter at the same time, among many other charming highlights, and no, it aint all about kinky stuff, but somehow those images just wont die....
Ick

dr.bollocko

Happily get through the rest of my life never having read that.
Woohoo.
Thanks Bald erin.

madser

Ma he sold me for a few cigarettes, I read it a few months and for a true story told through the eyes of a child I found her memory and and detail of her story very unbelievable.:o

StormWarrior

Two books I had to read at school that I absolutely HATED were George Eliot's Silas Marner and Cynthia Harnett's The Wool Pack. I found them both so unbearably dull that I was bored to literal tears by being forced to read them. Pointless, boring garbage!

Acacia

StormWarrior wrote: »

Two books I had to read at school that I absolutely HATED were George Eliot's Silas Marner and Cynthia Harnett's The Wool Pack. I found them both so unbearably dull that I was bored to literal tears by being forced to read them. Pointless, boring garbage!

Oh god, 'Silas Marner'. I had to read it for my Leaving Cert. If I remember correctly there's an entire chapter dedicated to a discussion about a cow. I remember my teacher commenting that that particular chapter was held in regard as one of the best examples of English literature ever.

mct1

Although it goes right against the grain to mention Ben Elton's indescribably bad Gridlock in the same thread as George Eliot's evocative novel, I have no choice.

My brother in law keeps sending us Ben's books - I always found him quite an endearing comedian but am less impressed with his literary skills. We both gave up on Gridlock after Ch 1 and now his books go straight to Oxfam as soon as the gift wrap comes off. Sorry, Ben.

youcancallmeal

Lance Armstrong's second biography 'Every Second Counts'. Pretty much a rehash off most of the first book which wasn't even that good to begin with. I don't think I've ever disliked somebody so much after reading their biography.

How so Joe

Harking back to page 8 or so, I have to agree with How Many Miles to Babylon.
I studied it for my leaving and it is just utter pain to read the book. I hated it, absolutely detested it. It seemed to me that nothing really happened, even though there was like, a whole war thing going on. It just didn't capture my interest at all.

I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet... The Twilight Series, by Stephenie Meyer.
It has some huge following but it's just ridiculously badly written.
A poorly developed, main character who's hard to empathise with, a ridiculously perfect love interest, a completely un-realistic second love interest... The whole series just bored me.
I know it's a fantasy series, but even fantasy series have to be vaguely plausible!!

sloppydrunk

Not Everyones cup of tea but im a big fan of Irvine Welsh, i thought "Trainspotting" "Glue" "Filth" and "Porno" were all savage,

But his last book "The Bedroom Secrets of the Masterchefs" was just really really bad.. i so wanted to like it but not a hope it sucked.

Crap

Goat Mouth

sloppydrunk wrote: »

Not Everyones cup of tea but im a big fan of Irvine Welsh, i thought "Trainspotting" "Glue" "Filth" and "Porno" were all savage,

But his last book "The Bedroom Secrets of the Masterchefs" was just really really bad.. i so wanted to like it but not a hope it sucked.

Crap

exact same thoughts here mate!
love the early stuff but felt like the scraping away from his original style of writing very contrived!

Kaizer Sosa

Has anybody read "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers. I read it and absolutely hated every page of the self conscious tripe. The smug self appreciation was so grating right through but he is still considered one of American writing's wunderkinds. Loathed it.

KyleBovine

Ben Okri's The Famished Road.

I'm an avid reader, but I have never come across a book I have hated so much.
Magical realism when done well, Garcia Marquez, Rushdie, can be quite astounding.
Okri, with professional skill, manages to turn the magical into a mundane, non-event, offers up barely sketched characters, a plot as threadbare as one of Jodie Marsh's tops, an allegory of post-independence so understated it's status as 'allegory' is severely under question.

A book that makes you want to kick the author around the place should be put down as soon as it starts to annoy you. Take no pride in finishing it regardless, throw the wretched thing in the fire at the first opportunity.

EamonnKeane

Acacia wrote: »

Oh god, 'Silas Marner'. I had to read it for my Leaving Cert. If I remember correctly there's an entire chapter dedicated to a discussion about a cow. I remember my teacher commenting that that particular chapter was held in regard as one of the best examples of English literature ever.

I found it confusing that a female author would write interesting male characters and incredibly dull, clichéd female characters.

Kirby

Well, an author that can write true to life should be applauded.

Belfast

Tom clancy's Op-centre Games of state
I think Tom clancy did not write this own. someone elese was paid to and he put his name on it to cash in on his brand.

Peig by Peig sayers
life is too short for to read Peig in any language.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented is a novel by Thomas Hardy,
I dreary and depressing book

Grandpa's Marijuana Handbook: A User Guide for Ages 50 & Up by Evan Keliher
this guy smoked too many joints while writing this book.

WindSock

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I don't see what all the hoo ha is about.

romdjoll

The Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco (couldn't finish it)
The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith (What, pray, was the point of it? Resent the time spent reading it.)
The Diviners - Rick Moody (Ooh look how "clever" he is, look how bored I am, 42 pages about a freaking sunrise?! Another 1k pages about...zzzz)
anything at all by Dave Eggers (for reasons of saccharine teeth-hurtiness)
Adam - Ted Dekker (a "Christian thriller" - every bit as wojous as it sounds, had to read it for work)
Finnegans Wake - Joyce (Because life is just too damn short for books that are so much like work with so little reward)

On the other hand, I love Neal Stephenson, but it took me two goes to get into "Quicksilver" - worth it though.

Shacklebolt

Anything by Brendan Behan.

Acacia

EamonnKeane wrote: »

I found it confusing that a female author would write interesting male characters and incredibly dull, clichéd female characters.

Well, in the 'cow' chapter it was all men having a discussion about what breed of cow it was! :pac:

In general, the female characters were quite cliché. However, George Eliot was writing under a male pen name, perhaps she made such annoying female characters so she wouldn't be found out?!:p

Greyfox

Ulysses...lets accept the fact that the majority of people that start this book never finish it simply because they find it to be incomprehensive gibberish! Ok so you may say it's the readers fault for not understanding it but maybe the reader just realised that theirs hundreths of thousands of better books out their!

Their's an episode of Black books were a sales clerk says "I just sold that customer a copy of Ulysses, The Guide to Ulysses and A Handbook to the Ulysses Guide, I think I'd need a guide to the handbook as I'm 1/4 of the way through reading it online and I've no idea what its about!

It's great to see people slating the mighty Lord of the rings, their were times when I was really enjoying it and then their were times the endless descriptions were making me lose the will to live...I'm convinced the book was 5,000 words long and it took Froddo and that constant whinger Sam about a year to get to Mordor!

For me the worst book ever has got to be Dicken's Hard Times!!

theCzar

I really hate this thread (but keep coming back) because reading preferences is such a personal thing. Further, while there are lots and lots of very bad books out there, the ones mentioned here are often critically acclaimed classics and/or extremely popular books that someone else didn't like/were disappointed by.

Just looking up the page as I write, we have Joyce, Tolkein, Dickens, Behan, Kerouac and Hardy to name a few. I'll fight to the death for anybody's right to not like a book, regardless of popular acclaim and indeed I don't like to read Joyce myself but I would never have the arrogance to dismiss their works, to call them bad books because I personally don't like them.

*sigh* I'm sensitive, indulge me.

Six of One

Sophie's World by Jostien Gaarder :mad:

This was recommended to me by a close friend. We had always had similar taste, this was the first occasion where we differed. Holy God, I tried. When I realised that I was actually skipping pages and pages at a time and just reading the bits where she headed off to school I decided to jack it in! Its one of those that I just can't understand anybody without a PHD in philospohy bothering with. (My friend and I have had several more differences in opion since- she hated The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, a book I thoroughly enjoyed and even laughed out loud at.)

Greyfox

theCzar wrote: »

I really hate this thread (but keep coming back) because reading preferences is such a personal thing. Further, while there are lots and lots of very bad books out there, the ones mentioned here are often critically acclaimed classics and/or extremely popular books that someone else didn't like/were disappointed by.

Just looking up the page as I write, we have Joyce, Tolkein, Dickens, Behan, Kerouac and Hardy to name a few. I'll fight to the death for anybody's right to not like a book, regardless of popular acclaim and indeed I don't like to read Joyce myself but I would never have the arrogance to dismiss their works, to call them bad books because I personally don't like them.

*sigh* I'm sensitive, indulge me.

In a way your right that this thread should be dominated by books that are'nt popular or Critically acclaimed as their should be some "ah well I didn't like it but it was something that other people rated very highly so perhaps the book just wasn't for me"..for example I didn't like the Catcher in the Rye as I though Holden was a moaner but I can see why many other poeple liked it. The problem is when you pick up something that's very popular and you don't enjoy it you feel the need to tell people about it as you were expecting more...wheres if you pick up something that's not got any hype about it and it doesn't deliver you tend not to feel the need to slate the book as much.

It's not Arrogance to dismiss their works, it's just expressing your opinion which your entitled to do but only if you've made at least decent effort to get into the book!

Dr. Worm

Harry Potter. Any of them. Just... Eurgh... I read one, the fourth or fifth; it was possibly the dullest thing I've ever read.
What Rowling does is take a reasonably okay idea -wizard school- and beats it over the head. Maybe, just maybe, someone else could have made the idea into an acceptable book, but geez.
It takes skill to make wizards boring, but she does. The dialog is wooden, the plot is just plain black-and-white good versus evil stuff. There's no doubt that Voldemort will be killed, justice will prevail, and so on.
Harry himself has got to be the most irritating protagonist I've ever read about. For God's sake, simply dropping your glasses won't make you instantly blind.

And that owl... And the elf... Must you mourn them, Harry?

Yes, the plot twist was quite clever... But y'know, I think it would've been greatly improved if all the good little wizards just randomly exploded at the end.
Or something like that.

Greyfox

Dr. Worm wrote: »

Harry Potter. Any of them. Just... Eurgh... I read one, the fourth or fifth; it was possibly the dullest thing I've ever read.
What Rowling does is take a reasonably okay idea -wizard school- and beats it over the head. Maybe, just maybe, someone else could have made the idea into an acceptable book, but geez.
It takes skill to make wizards boring, but she does. The dialog is wooden, the plot is just plain black-and-white good versus evil stuff. There's no doubt that Voldemort will be killed, justice will prevail, and so on.
Harry himself has got to be the most irritating protagonist I've ever read about. For God's sake, simply dropping your glasses won't make you instantly blind.

And that owl... And the elf... Must you mourn them, Harry?

Yes, the plot twist was quite clever... But y'know, I think it would've been greatly improved if all the good little wizards just randomly exploded at the end.
Or something like that.

Firstly you have to start reading the books from book one, you can't just jump in at the middle of the series as you won't have a clue whats going on and without reading the first book you crucially wont feel sorry for Harry...now that the greatest book series ever written has been slated it reminds you that no matter what the film, book, tv show or game their will always be someone that doesn't like it!

Secondly it's pacifically her creation of the wizard school Hogwarts that makes her books the kind that will be read by my children and my childrens children as everyone who went to school or is in school can relate to it...Rowling seems to capture what it's really like to be a kid better than any other writer and everything about Hogwarts gives a dazzeling sense of mystery and adventure...

In fairness in fantasy good pretty much always preveils over evil..but Rowling does at least let some of the goodies die!

orangecake

American Psycho is just a horrible book. It will leave the disturbing images in your head that you will never erase!

Atonement is one of the most overhyped books ever written. It is predictable and utterly unoriginal. Big disappointment.

damselnat

Kerouac's Lonesome Traveller just not for me
Likewise Burrough's Naked Lunch
Personally cannot stand anything by John Grisham
Don't get the hype about Dickens, though enjoyed Great Expectations
And can someone please explain the fuss about those Twilight books??