What are the worst books you've ever finished?

Dr. Loon

Ulysees. I don't think I even got further than a few pages and I've read some shíte in my time. I'm one of those people that has to not finish a book once I've started.

guest31

Hard Times ... jees that was hard, why oh why have that on curricular ..

Middlemarch ... got to p. 377, just had to stop ... might resume someday in event of a long hospital stay

As for LOTR, proud to say I finished it, if you think the film has a long drawn out ending, try the book. Still a class read tho'

Sick Puppy (Carl Hiasen) ... couldn't get that humour .. gave up

Trojan

Oh, honourable mention to Goodkinds "Sword of Time" series ... err, I mean "Sword of Truth" of course.

Zaph

guest31 wrote:

Sick Puppy (Carl Hiasen) ... couldn't get that humour .. gave up

:eek: Carl Hiaasen is one of the funniest writers around. It's unfortunate that they made such a hash of the film "Striptease" as it's unlikely anyone will bother to make a film of another of his books after that.

Yule3

"Dark Prince" by Terri Lynn Wilhelm...Absolute drivel. The characters were very one dimensional and the story was just an unbeleivble fantasy. It was hard for me to have any sympathy for the characters. It was like something a 14 year old daydreams about. Ah well, I only paid about 2 euros for it anyway.

"Two Women" By Martina Cole, don't ask me why but I couldn't get into it and therefore I couldn't finish it. However, a few people I know seems to like this book.

Thats all I could think of for now.

ronano

Generation x - Douglas Coupland

I really did not enjoy it and i just find his other work that i've read to be banal

theCzar

Dr. Loon wrote:

I'm one of those people that has to not finish a book once I've started.

lol, i love when one misplaced word reverses the meaning of the sentence...

The only book i never finished was Joesph Heller's something happened, it's still got a bookmark about a 100 pages in where i decided life was too short...

but since thread is about the worst books you did finish, I dunno, my memory for bad books is very poor, i'll finish it and forget i've read it ten minutes later...

bringitdown

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand - nearly burnt it afterward.
Tom Clancy books I generally regret afterward.
The last 3 Dan Browne books... the first I read was alright, but I mean didn't he just photocopy the others and change the names a bit....? You'd think I should have learned a lesson after 2... a well they only took me about 2 days each.

ExOffender

bringitdown wrote:

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand -

I've read Atlas Shrugged and feel similarly. She was a very strange woman. Quite intellectually dishonest, as well, she kept setting up these straw men to bash them to pieces in a 'hurrah for free-market capitalism' stylee. Yaaawn

MiCr0

Monday Mourning by Kathy Reichs
awful awful awful

Trojan

I'm too judgemental, but I'd never go near a book with a title like that.

Tobias Greeshman

John Grishams - The Chamber, completely crap ending

govinda

The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith

Dire, dire, dire; I don't know how I finished it. I'll read a lot of junk, but that was the worst ever.

MiCr0

Trojan wrote:

I'm too judgemental, but I'd never go near a book with a title like that.

i was walking out the door and it was the first that came to hand i hadn't read
never again!

Dublin's Finest

Atonement by Ian McEwan. It was overly hyped but really ****. The story was absurd too.

I hear Saturday is good but I don't know if I will risk it.

mycroft

govinda wrote:

The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith

Dire, dire, dire; I don't know how I finished it. I'll read a lot of junk, but that was the worst ever.

I didn't think it was terrible, and theres the simple fact that it's her 2nd novel by the time most of us are trying to figure out WTF we're supposed to do with an arts degree.

I've a friend, she has a 14 minute anti Zadie Smith rant (we've timed her, only takes three pints) basically her entire literary persona is a loathsomeness of intelligent left wing stable family units........

Branoic

The Legends of Dune prequels by Pinky and the Brian. The ones about the Butlerian Jihad. God they're awful. So so so awful. I read the first two when they came out. So far I've resisted the third one, even though its been out a while now. But I have an unsettling niggling sense of lack of closure. Like after a trauma. I just know i'll end up picking up the third, just to end the nightmare.........

The Bollox

the Alien books, they are so fooking tacky, and so obviously ripped of the films, its shamefull!

Trojan

I liked the "House" Dune prequels, haven't tried Legends yet. I was sceptical when I saw them, I must admit.

Branoic

Marts wrote:

the Alien books, they are so fooking tacky, and so obviously ripped of the films, its shamefull!

Well the Alien books (i havent read them) are supposedly based on their respective films, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a passing resemblance.

RE the "House" prequels, yeah, the first one was very poor, and had a shocking amount of typos, but after that it did pick up a bit.

Still totally amatuerish compared to the original, but that's to be expected when you combine a son feverishly trying to cash in on his father's genius with an "author" most famous for his dire attempts at Star Wars fan fiction. I swear to all mighty God, if I ate an old primary school Ann and Barry book, i'd sh*t better writing than KJ Anderson ever came out with.

Steer well clear of the Jihad series.

Nimrod's Son

Special mentions for the Da Vinci Code and Deception Point (both Dan Brown) and How To Be Good by Nick Hornby.

Keano_sli

Choke by that guy that wrote "Fight Club" and some ****e I read a couple of months ago by Dean Koontz, can't even remember the name.

The Bollox

Branoic wrote:

Well the Alien books (i havent read them) are supposedly based on their respective films, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was a passing resemblance.

right, when I say ripped off, I mean they give new characters but the same plot, I mean at the start of one of 'em they had new characters doing the end of Aliens

Larianne

Deception Point by Dan Browne was a disappointed. So was The Da Vinci Code by Browne. Angels and Demons was the better by far. Other than them I haven't finished a bad book!

vibrant

1. The Nanny Diaries
2. The Devil Wears Prada.

Both are set in NYC, and both have heroines who are "upset" that their bosses are rich! And that they have to do an awful lot of work! And even though they get paid quite well, whining for 200 pages about their difficult jobs and even more difficult bosses is just really super-awesome fun!

Seriously, I don't know how I finished the first one, let alone started the second one (glutton for punishment, me?!)

"...Prada" is a thinly veiled attack on Anna Wintour. Unbelievably awful (our good lady heroine sure shows off her feisty spirit to her fellow Condé Nast employees by eating soup and bread with (gasp!) butter for her lunch, instead of er... air?). I cringe.

aemilia

It's hard to remember the bad books... I forget them as fast as I can!

Capt'n Midnight

most of Clive Cussler's stuff.

theCzar wrote:

Generally, they start well with an interesting bit of historical fiction, then Dirk Pitt arrives and it's all down hill. The first one you read is the best, if you read another you suddenly think:

"hold on, isn't this the same as the last one, except the chinese treasure boat has been replaced with an incan treasure boat, or a confederate treasure boat, and the neo-nazis have been replaced with, um, neo nazis"

still, i enjoy reading them in the same way i enjoy james bond movies...

Facault's Pendilum - Umberto Eco. a long hard slog.

Zaph

Nimrod's Son wrote:

Special mentions for the Da Vinci Code and Deception Point (both Dan Brown) and How To Be Good by Nick Hornby.

Agree with you on How to be Good, that was awful stuff. The end was even worse than the rest of the book, it was just kinda pointless.

Branoic

I thought Foucault's Pendulum was an absolutely magnificient read. The Da Vinci code for intelligent people.

Doper Than U

Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert :mad: