Best/Worst books you ever read

Aldebaran

crayolastereo wrote: »

Best was Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Read both of those recently and loved them, especially Middlesex, an absolutely absorbing book. The Virgin Suicides also by Eugenides is a great read too, one of my favourites.

Not a book, but Shakespeare's Hamlet is probably the greatest thing I've read, something I keep going back to.

I don't know about the worst I've read but Crash by JG Ballard was particularly tough going at times, he's a great writer, but I can't say I enjoyed reading it.

Out of interest, has anyone here read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace? I'm making slow progress through it at the moment, it's enjoyable but I'm just hoping it's worth getting through the 1000+ pages!

ghiertal

Bestbooks ever read:
The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (Profound, existential, life-changing)
Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord by Louis de Bernieres (Humourous, social conscience)
The Great Crash 1929 by JK Galbraith (Very topical, interesting perspective, readable in novel form)
A House for Mr.Biswas by VS Naipaul (Exotic, funny)


Worst book:
The Love Secrets of Don Juan by Tim Lott. I did actually throw this book across the room. Utter tripe written by a middle-aged loser trying to be hip.

leahyl

thetonynator wrote: »

Book depositary is the place to go if you don't want to actually buy in a shop. Its dirt cheap!

Thanks for the heads up - must try there next time!!:) prob paid way more than I should have on amazon alright! Now back to my latest selection - The Kite Runner:)

ArtyM

Not a single mention of Catcher in the rye - must not be any serial killers among us. Always thought there would be a few in AH.:D
Some great book mentioned here, some I have to revisit.
Here are a few more on my favorites list, some already mentioned...

• Prometheus Rising - Robert Anton Wilson
• Running Man - Stephen King short story
• Dirk Gently's holistic detective agency - Douglas Adams
• Anything by Tom Sharpe

Doublin

thetonynator wrote: »

Best: I really loved A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks, brilliant book, really well written.

Worst: The Road, everyone said how great it was and it was unbelievably shít.

Agreed, Sebastian Faulks is a very good writer. You should try Joseph O'Neill.

Cormac McCarty is very overrated, I've never saw the reason for the hype about his books. Couldn't wait to finish them & not in a good way.

bnt

Worst books: it's hard to say, since a bad book doesn't linger in my long-term memory, assuming I actually finish it. One I remember for its sheer preposterousness was an "airport thriller" named Sunstrike, in which some mad scientist organises a hijack of the Space Shuttle. He remotely deploys a large "umbrella" that stops sunlight reaching the Earth, and when world authorities refuse his demands to make him world dictator, the result is an ice age. I wasn't quite sure it really existed, but it does - it's on Amazon with a bunch of 1-star reviews.

A book that really caught my imagination as a teenager was The Giant Under The Snow by John Gordon - which is over 40 years old but still in print today. It's really hard to describe: a group of friends stumble on the ruin of a buried ship in England, awakening an old warlock and sparking off a war involving witches and strange flying leathery men. The teenagers have to learn to fly, with a witch's help, to defeat the warlock and his minions. Stunning stuff - I remembered the author's name and was able to find it again a few years ago.

I'm reading more classics in recent years, thanks to e-books. Every SF fan should read books authors like HG Wells and Olaf Stapledon - whose Last And First Men I read recently, and will soon read the sequel Star Maker.

Honourable mention: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. If you can make it through the whole thing, to the end, there's a lot more going on than the caricature the media presents. The idea that the book advocates "selfishness" is only half the story, but the clunky, melodramatic writing style doesn't make it easy on the reader. I suspect that many fans of the book haven't read the whole thing either!

I find Terry Pratchett to be a bit uneven, but when he's good, he's very very good. My first of his was Mort, which is simply excellent storytelling, and then I also enjoyed Equal Rites. I went off his books for years, but then found Night Watch, which I think contains some of his greatest "literary" writing. An example, from the scene in which the "revolutionaries" led by Reg are discussing what to do, when Sam Vimes (from the Guards) arrives:

A match flared in the dark, and they turned to see Vimes light a cigar. “You’d like Freedom, Truth and Justice, wouldn’t you, comrade sergeant?” said Reg encouragingly.
“I’d like a hard-boiled egg,” said Vimes, shaking the match out.
There was nervous laughter, but Reg looked offended.
“In the circumstances, sergeant, I think we should set our sights a little higher–”
“Well, yes, we could,” said Vimes, coming down the steps. He glanced at the sheets of paper in front of Reg. The man cared. He really did. And he was serious. He really was. “But… well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I’m pretty sure that whatever happens we won’t have found Freedom, and there won’t be a whole lot of Justice, and I’m damn sure we won’t have found Truth. But it’s just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg."

Zimmerframe

Best :Catch 22
Worst: DaVinci Code (wasn't that bad, but I can't think of any other)

nathanl

Best books I read lately:

* Karoo by Steve (World accordinging to Garp) Tesich
* Broken Evolution by Brendan Cody http://amzn.to/gLhbTX

Worst book:

Definitely Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
(how many times in one novel can people "wheel around"?!)

Tayla

Worst book I ever read was 'my sister's keeper'........absolutely terrible cop out at the ending, very lazy writing IMO!

Conor Bourke

crayolastereo wrote: »

Best was Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

Sweet jeebus that was a terrible book! I cannot understand the fascination with it. The premise was good but the charachters were so desperately unlikeable, it was painful reading. I don't know why I even bothered finishing it, I guess I was worried that the ending would be amazing and worth it all, but it wasn't. It was tripe.

Another absolute work of sh!te was the dreadful Wheels Within Wheels by Dervla Murphy. It was on my syllabus for L.C. English, so I read it in the Summer after I did my J.C. (Mum was very organised with the school-book shopping lol). Hated every page of it. IIRC the references I made to it in the actual exam were scant, as I just despised it.

Yell0 Man wrote: »

Best - The Dice Man (Luke Rheinhart), The Life of Pi (Yann Martel), LOTR, Capote: A Biography (Gerald Clarke) and The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Night-Time (Mark Haddon)

Really enjoyed that one- picked it up at random last year, couldn't put it down. Did the same thing a few months ago with The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Heidi W. Durrow. Wasn't expecting much from it, but it captured my imagination and I had it finished in about 36 hours

Love most Terry Pratchett books and Tracy Chevalier, particularly The Virgin Blue As a young child my Grandmother read the unabridged original Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. That woman had the patience of a saint, she'd read me a few chapters a night for however long it took until each book was done.

I finished Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann the other night, definitely worth a read.

Dangerous Man

1984 was the best I ever read by a long, long way.

The worst was probably the Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson. And, as an immense fan of the late doctor, I derive no pleasure in saying that about something he wrote. But... it was awful.

TemptationWaits

Best: The whole Harry Potter series, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, and Misery by Stephen King. I also read the novel Push by Sapphire recently - that the movie Precious was based on - and it was amazing. The Shining by Stephen King is one of my favourites too.

Worst: Twilight series without question. Just awful.

aligator_am

KnifeWRENCH wrote: »

Also don't like Tolkien's style of writing; tedious description, awkward dialogue and pointless characters that are there just to annoy you (*cough* Tom Bombadil *cough*)
Why read LOTR when the films are far superior?

Hahaha, I tried to read LOTR, got to Tom Bombadil and wanted to punch someone in the face, likely his wife, goldbitch or whatever her name was, with her fcuking golden hair and her fcuking golden shoes, ruined it for me, hope she died in a car fire!!!!!!

dark crystal

Another vote here for Steinbeck's East of Eden. Also love Angela's Ashes and my favourite Stephen King short(ish) story, The Long Walk.


Worst? May get pummelled for this, but I hated Wuthering Heights. i just found the characters unlikeable and the story itself rather dull.

Dangerous Man

dark crystal wrote: »

Another vote here for Steinbeck's East of Eden. Also love Angela's Ashes and my favourite Stephen King short(ish) story, The Long Walk.


Worst? May get pummelled for this, but I hated Wuthering Heights. i just found the characters unlikeable and the story itself rather dull.

On Writing, by Stephen King, is fantastic - any aspiring writer should read it - and then read it another four or five times.

landsleaving

dark crystal wrote: »

Worst? May get pummelled for this, but I hated Wuthering Heights. i just found the characters unlikeable and the story itself rather dull.

I preferred Kate Bush's version.

Da Shins Kelly

Best:
A Clockwork Orange - really well written, interesting investigation of morality and freedom of choice. A great narrator too, who you feel a little guilty about liking so much.
Dracula - everyone knows the story now, but it's well worth the read. Excellent writing and very suspenseful (even though I knew the story). The character of Dracula himself is fantastic too. It's even worth reading just to see the beginning of the vampire as a charismatic, seductive man. It's a brilliantly written character, and one who is so detailed despite never having the story told from his own perspective. You are completely captivated by him even though he's supposed to be the ruthless creature and the force of evil.

Worst:
PS I Love You - don't really know why I read it to the end, to be honest.
Pride and Prejudice - this will probably get me in trouble, but I didn't like the characters, and the story was very, very predictable. In fact, not really a fan of Jane Austen in general. She's technically a good writer, but her plots are are just mindless rubbish intended to play up to women's fantasies of perfect men sweeping them off their feet. Any powerful female characters usually end up selling out at the end. As a woman, this disappoints me.

ArtyM

dark crystal wrote: »

Another vote here for Steinbeck's East of Eden. Also love Angela's Ashes and my favourite Stephen King short(ish) story, The Long Walk.

The Long Walk = + 1 from me.

Posy

aligator_am wrote: »

Aye sorry, I'd posted then went back through and saw your message, will have to pick up a copy soon, have heard it's a tremendous book.

Just don't expect a 'normal' book with suspense or a beginning/middle/end and you'll be fine with it! :pac:

dark crystal wrote: »

Worst? May get pummelled for this, but I hated Wuthering Heights. i just found the characters unlikeable and the story itself rather dull.

I haven't read this book for YEARS but I can remember really disliking it. Boring, long-winded and I didn't really like the characters either. So you're not alone at least!

tony 2 tone

Best reads, McCarthy's Bar by Pete McCarthy and any thing by Malcolm Gladwell. I loved the All Creatures Great and Small series of books as a kid.
Worst books, can't really remember any, although I thought the Ross O'Carrol Kelly books were a bit much to take. The one page a week in the Irish Times is enough for me

Oh remembered a **** one, Diary by Chuck Palahniuk, loved Fight Club, Rant and Snuff but this one just felt like a crappy half assed story.

Da Shins Kelly

Doublin wrote: »

Agreed, Sebastian Faulks is a very good writer. You should try Joseph O'Neill.

Cormac McCarty is very overrated, I've never saw the reason for the hype about his books. Couldn't wait to finish them & not in a good way.

I respect your opinion, but I couldn't disagree more about McCarthy. The Blood Meridian is heavy going, but it's a f*cking masterpiece. On the basis of that book alone he's one of the best living writers (if not THE best), in my opinion.

mrsdewinter

Bit of an obvious one if you've read it but I'm going to plump for Rebecca. I literally couldn't put it down when I first read it as a 19yo. In nonfiction stakes, I loved Into Thin Air, now-legendary account of disastrous Everest climb. Another one of those books where you wish the commute to work was longer. Bad books? There's lots of them out there. But I especially resented the hours I wasted reading Autograph Man by Zadie Smith. Over-hyped pedestrian fare

KnifeWRENCH

thetonynator wrote: »

I thought the ending to th HP series was quite good! it was a childrens series so she couldn't really have killed him off in fairness. Agree about LOTR though, brutal books, tried to read them because the films were so good, but they were just awful.

Wasn't just a childrens series by that point though; the last 3 HP novels are pretty fúcking dark for childrens books! I always liked how Rowling made them more adult as she went on, realising that those who read the Philosopher's Stone when they were young would be grown up and want something a bit more as the series went on.

However, the whole love saves everything/happily ever after ending was total bollocks. She didn't have to kill him off (though I think she should have; would have made the plot much better) but a woman of her obvious creative abilities and wild imagination could surely have come up with something less corny and cringe-inducing to finish off on.

Blush_01

I can't remember a fraction of the books I loved reading - Shantaram, The Wasp Factory, Shadow of the Wind, Oryx and Crake (and pretty much anything written by Margaret Atwood), Fast Food Nation, Secret Scripture, Million Little Pieces, The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book & The Well of Lost Plots (have only read the first 3 Thursday Next books - must finish the series, very good fun), Atonement, The Raw Shark Texts, On Beauty, Jane Eyre, Daddy Long Legs, Goodnight Mr Tom, The Bolter, the Twilight Saga, Middlesex, Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicolson series, most of Marian Keyes fiction, Starter for 10, Melmoth the Wanderer, Confessions of a Fallen Angel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Little Stranger, The Secret Lives of Pippa Lee, The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Of Bees and Mist, We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Damned United, Pride & Prejudice, Tsotsi, The Little Friend, The Book of Lost Things... it's a start. Yes, some of the titles above are chocolate (Twilight, Marian Keyes etc...) but they all stand out for their own reasons.

I absolutely cannot abide misery lit. I also found The Other Hand to be the greatest pile of crap. I can't stand the fiction of Danielle Steele, Cecelia Aherne etc.

Love books.

Tesco Massacre

Aldebaran wrote: »

Out of interest, has anyone here read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace? I'm making slow progress through it at the moment, it's enjoyable but I'm just hoping it's worth getting through the 1000+ pages!

Yeah, I've read it twice. Along with Homage to Catalonia it's probably my favourite book of all time. Tough going at the start, but once you pass the first 50-75 pages it actually moves along at a fair clip.

A few others I like:
At Swim-Two-Birds
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
Amongst Women
Jude the Obscure


Worst:
Atlas Shrugged

wild_cat

The best:

The post office - Bharles Bukowski
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thomson
Choke - Chuck Palahniuk
Generation X - Douglas Coupland
Mr.Nice - Howard Marks
The Cat inside - William S. Burroughs
Animal Farm - George Orwell (probably my favourite)
For whom the bell tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Jane eyre - Charlotte Bronte
A clockwork orange - Anthony Burgess
Mr. Fantastic Fox - Roald Dahl
Squirrel Nutkin - Beatrix Potter


Plus a good few biographies by comedians and political books.

Guilty pleasure:
Secrets - Danielle Steel (found it one night when I was beyond bored)

Worst:
The alchemist.
Crime and punishment (just never got into it, left it down and didn't go back same thing happened with Catch 22 might try them again)
Lipstick Jungle
Cùnt - A declaration of female independence (Just no.)

Seaneh

Best:
Murakami's After the Quake, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Tolkien's Lord of The Rings or C.S. Lewis's The Pilgrims Progress.

Worst:
J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in The Rye or Joyce's Ulysses.

First is about a moany little pissy rich kid who gets expelled from school and spends a few days spending his families money in Manhattan and felling sorry for himself before going home and then being sent to a mental home and the second is just the most hard to read waffle ever written, absolutely horrid piece of crap.

DEFTLEFTHAND

The best to kill a mockingbird and Star of the Sea. The worst Redemption Falls and Life like this.

dx22

P.S. I Love You has been mentioned as s***e book in few posts?? Why is this even being discussed in a thread with so many great writers?
Its like saying Michaelangelo had a couple of good paintings but that Rolf Harris was rubbish!

thischarmingman

ArtyM wrote: »

Best - East of Eden

+1. i even considered getting a line from that book tattooed on my arm (but wussed out). grapes of wrath blew me away too (the best ending to a book that i've ever read). actually, i've enjoyed anything by steinbeck.

the worst book i've read is the girl who played with fire.

TheEscapist

Favourite fiction: I'll limit myself to three, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger and 1984 by Orwell.
Non-Fiction: Friday Night Lights by HG Bissinger, Have a Nice Day by Mick Foley and Cash: the Johnny Cash autobiography.
I could add more but loved all of the above. As for worst books, never finish books that I'm not enjoying. Last book I didn't finish was the Life of Pi. Just didn't get it.

Cypher_sounds

The best book I've ever read has to be Paul McGrath's autobiography Back From The Brink, its fascinating very interesting really a bare all book about his life.
Also really enjoyed To Kill A Mockingbird even though it was for the English Hons paper in the leaving cert a few years ago:pac:

Posy

dx22 wrote: »

P.S. I Love You has been mentioned as s***e book in few posts?? Why is this even being discussed in a thread with so many great writers?

Well, it's best/worst books so it's being mentioned as a warning to anyone foolish enough to consider ever reading it.

major bill

Dont read alot of books but most enjoyable ive read has to be ''have ye no homes to go to'' by neville thompson

Witchie

OPENROAD wrote: »

Loved Nick Hornbys High Fidelity, very enjoyable read imo.

I'm a massive Hornby fan as I feel there are few writers who truly capture the mixed up fecked up nature of humans better than him. I just finished reading Juliet Naked by him the other day and it was really enjoyable but his best is "A long way down" and worst is "How to be good"

Quigs Snr wrote: »

Worst... well I would endure most books but I must confess that I was very dissappointed with the Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. It starting off as if it was building up to be something profound and then it was basically a scene from the mummy returns, the end. Pretentious new age twaddle. I will keep an open mind though and try another of his books at some stage.

I didnt mind the Alchemist, found it fairly good but The Zahir had me wanting to track him down and beat him to death with it. Didnt finish it.

Have read loads of crap when am stressed and just want to shut my brain down so cant pick a worst one but some of my favourites are:

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (way better than the movie, it disappointed me big time)
A horse with my name - Colin Bateman (he is my favourite comedic writer always makes me lol)
The Crucible - Arthur Miller (loved Death of a Salesman too)
The Lovely Bones - Alice Seabold (much better than the movie too)
The Twits - Roald Dahl (favourite childhood book that I still read from time to time!)
I'm Bono's doppleganger - Neil McCormack (cant wait to see the movie although history has taught me not to expect much from my fav books being made into movies!)
We are all made of glue - Marina Lewycka (actually love all hers but Naomi is one of the funniest characters I have ever read)

sherdydan

the curious incident of the dog in the night...



YAAAWWWWN

Tayla

dx22 wrote: »

P.S. I Love You has been mentioned as s***e book in few posts?? Why is this even being discussed in a thread with so many great writers?
Its like saying Michaelangelo had a couple of good paintings but that Rolf Harris was rubbish!

Is this book snobbery I hear?

Some people are into that type of thing but did or didn't particulary like P.S I love you.
Are they not entitled to post in this thread because others might think that they're not reading books by the right authors?

Manic Moran

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055232811

Worst: Dark Rose.

NTM

bnt

Possibly the most disappointed I've ever been by a book was when I tried to read Underworld by Don DeLillo. It was hailed as a masterpiece; the New York Times Book Review named it as a runner-up in their list of the best American novels of the last 25 years. I found it turgid, unreadable, unfocused, lacking in even the most abstract sense of narrative. That could say more about me than it does about the book, but that's the risk any reviewer has to manage ...

rainbowdrop

Have so many books that I'v read and loved:

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts
The Kite Runner/A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
Wild Swans - Jung Chang
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest- Ken Kesey
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
The Famished Road - Ben Okri

Love all The Chronicles of Narnia and anything by Hunter S. Thompson, Irvine Welsh or Roddy Doyle.

Worst book I ever read would have to be The Da Vinci Code; what a load of over-rated codswollop. Also any of the 'Irish Chick-Lit' books (Cecelia Ahern, Marian Keyes, Cathy Kelly etc.) make me want to take my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon;)

Princess Peach

I hated Angela's Ashes!!
Just cause he had a bad childhood doesn't make Frank McCourt a good writer. It was boring, had bad grammar and sentence structure, especially outside of the dialogue, and dragged on and on.

Made read Circle of Friends for the Leaving Cert, Maeve Binchy cannot write! It was like reading a book written by a 15 year old.

Pride and Prejudice, I didn't actually finish it because I couldn't get past the long chapter on what kind of handwriting is acceptable for a man to have.

Dan Brown the Lost Symbol was atrocious. Most boring book I ever read, and the ending was just rediculous and the biggest anti climax ever.

My favourite book is Wuthering Heights, excellent plot, great depth of characters and a beautiful use of the English language.

Gummy Panda

Best - Dune

Worse - Battlefield Earth (I bought it for the lulz)

Thatnastyboy

best : Escobar, probably a crap book, but I reccomend it for a read, for the facts and figures alone :eek:

worst:wouldn't say worst book i've read but most disappointing, Billy Connolly's book "Billy" written by his missus, brilliant quotes from Himself but she likes to put in big, complicated words and sentences for no apparent reason

thebostoncrab

Moby Dick is easily the greatest piece of fiction I have ever read. I don't think I have reread something as many times as this. Even just thinking about it makes me want to pick it up again.

robbie02

Best books: Einsteins Biography, Stephen Hawkings new book (cant think of the name), Lord of the Rings. Trainspotting, Filth, Mr Nice, Room Full of Mirrors bio on Hendrix, No one here gets out alive bio on Jim Morrison, Buddha bio, Paul Dirac the strangest man bio, Oliver Twist, Catcher in the Rye, I am Ozzy, hilirious book also Keith Moons bio Any books by Micheo Kaku esp impossible physics. All books by James Herbert

I ve not many worst books, if it doesnt appeal to me after a couple of chapters thats the end of that i did think the harry potter series and movies are complete muck even for kids

Amazotheamazing

Best - We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, anyone who loves 1984 or Brave New World should read it as it heavily influenced both books. War and Peace and Grapes of Wrath too.

Worst - The Secret History or The God of Small Things.

th3 s1aught3r

'Slash'
By Slash is brilliant
Also loved Great Expectations, Oiliver Twist by Dickens

Orando Broom

Best book
Issac's Storm - Erik Larsen.
Boys will be Boys - Jeff Pearlman
Into thin Air - John Krakeur and the Climb by Gary Weston DeWalt (both have to be read back to back. They tell the same story from different perspectives.

Worst
Catch 22 - Heller The most overrated ****e I've ever read

Paddy Clarke hahaha. The first half is written as a comedy the second half bleak, depressing and totally unnecessary denoument. Roddy Doyle's jumping the shark moment.

Ulysses - James Joyce. Pretentious over wrought ego trip by a man whose opinion of himself had far outweighed his talent.

Morlar

The Arcades Project By Walter Benjamin

Worst book ever, so bad I could not finish it. Just think of reading the in depth, rambling, meaningless drivel of a mentally ill person for thousands of pages. Or maybe I am just not clever nough to appreciate it. It's the kind of book that if you left it in a charity shop they would chase you down the road to make you take it back.

http://beta.adverts.ie/non-fiction/the-arcades-project-by-walter-benjamin-15-inc-delivery/260583

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project

Orando Broom

Vernon God Little is crap as well.