What was the worst book of all time?

[Dr.Phool]

I'm going with "The Celestine Prophecy".

And I'll put Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full" in second place.

[JHB]

1. "How to Read a Rock" by Ugg

It's a bit of an oldie

:evilgrin:

[SharonRB]

2. I thought it was me...

...but I couldn't get through "A Man in Full." I forced myself about halfway through and then had to stop reading. The Southern dialect was just too hard to read. I must be a glutton for punishment, but now I'm reading his latest, "I Am Charlotte Simpson." Hopefully I'll have better luck. I enjoyed "Bonfire of the Vanities," so I've at least got a shot at it.

[Dr.Phool]

4. I forced my way through A Man in Full

And I finally got to the ending, and threw it against a wall.

Bonfire of the vanities was good.

[SharonRB]

8. Have you read Charlotte Simmons?

I said "Simpson" in my first post, but it's actually "Simmons." :)

[Dr.Phool]

19. Naw, but the Right Stuff was great

[HawkerHurricane]

71. "Not a book to be set aside lightly...

Rather, it should be thrown with great force." - 1920's book review

[jonnyblitz]

76. I liked that book. I just read it. n/t

[redqueen]

3. It's not Battlefield Earth?

I thought it might be...

[commander bunnypants]

6. good book

bad movie

CB

[redqueen]

16. Horrid movie, yes

but I could barely get through the book... sooooooooooooooooo slooooooooooooooooooooooow... took me years! (I kept putting it down, then felt bad and wanted to finish.)

The story wasn't bad, but it was written horribly (IMO anyway).

[ET Awful]

11. See my reply below :) :) :) n/t

[NNadir]

67. No, but close. "Dianetics" is the worst book ever.

[Left Is Write]

5. Anything written by Jackie Collins or Danielle Steele.

Or should we only be including "real" books? ;)

[hfojvt]

36. you would ignore Sidney Sheldon and Harold Robbins?

have you really read either of those authors? Or do you just believe that they must suck because they are popular?

[Left Is Write]

37. I have read several Jackie Collins books.

They all have the same plot, the same characters, the same over-the-top writing, and the same cliches. I don't have to read any more of them to know I'd probably be getting the same recycled stuff.

I tried to read Danielle Steele. Twice. It was painful. Whoever is editing her ought to be taken out back and shot.

I have never read either Sidney Sheldon or Harold Robbins.

Now - why would you assume I would disparage authors, thinking they "must suck" because they are popular? Why would you assume I didn't have a basis for my opinion?

There are plenty of popular authors I do like. Mary Higgins Clark and James Patterson are two.

[hfojvt]

51. I believe I asked, rather than assumed

Although I might have made an ass out of me. I used to do the same thing myself, especially with the whole "trashy romance" genre. Twain said: "when you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to change your opinion."
I was the other way around. I finished one Danielle Steele book, but was repulsed after about thirty pages of Collins. I only read those authors because I owned a bookstore.

[mitchum]

55. Sidney Sheldon actually had very good narrative skills...

Sure, it's trash, but he was really good at propulsive plots. I would recommend "Bloodlines" and "The Other Side of Midnight"
Harold Robbins' "A Stone For Danny Fisher" is surprisingly VERY GOOD

[TlalocW]

7. Billy Budd by Herman Melville

Actually, anything by Herman Melville including "Moby Dick." His writing is just too... cluttered. He tried to make his descriptions too... flowery - not in a feminine sense, but like he was trying to showboat, and it just gets tedious after a while.

TlalocW

[Squatch]

9. State of Fear - Crichton

The book is nothing but a soapbox for his cherry-picked views on global warming.

The worst is when one of the book's protagonists lectures another character on global warming while they are both bound in a tiny hut in a S Pacific isle filled with cannibals.

Whenever the characters jet off to a new location, Crichton uses those flights (invariably) to launch his lectures on global warming.

Really a horrible, horrible book.

[ET Awful]

10. I'm not sure, but I know it was written by L. Ron Hubbard :) n/t

[AllegroRondo]

45. The whole "Mission Earth" series

10 books? my god.

its like Hubbard was just trying to see how long he could keep up the 'one thing after another' story.

I quit after the second one.

[ET Awful]

75. I quit after the first chapter :) n/t

[scarlett1]

12. Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis

I HAD to read Metamorphosis in College. I HATED it.

I understood all of the analogy but I COULD NOT STAND IT
:puke:

[klook]

50. Aw, come on! Kafka is great.

Maybe because I wasn't forced to read it for any class, I thought "Metamorphosis" was cool. I always liked the oddball stuff, though, and it doesn't get much odder than waking up after a night of uneasy dreams to find you've been transformed into a giant cockroach.

[Aristus]

64. "The Metamorphosis" is really only nominally about Gregor

Samsa's transformation. It's really about the change his family undergoes after he becomes a giant bug. The change is complete only after Samsa-bug dies. Great read. Great story. Kafka is one of the few writers I've read where my jaw has literally dropped because what I was reading was SO good, and so strange. Two other mind-blowing stories by Kafka: "In the Penal Colony", and "A Hunger Artist".

[jjmalonejr]

13. I'll probably get a lot of crap for saying this, but...

Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Important and socially significant. But a lousy book.

[mitchum]

30. It was a lousy book

no flames from me

[jjmalonejr]

34. Glad I'm not the only one who thinks so

[mitchum]

38. It's similar to much of Arthur Miller's work...

written with the best of intentions, but clunky and leaden. Agit-prop rarely makes for great art.

[MotorCityMan]

14. American Psycho

by Brett Easton Ellis. I only read it because there was such a stink made about the book and some wanted to ban it.

[CanuckAmok]

39. I used to think so, too...

I don't think Ellis is a gifted writer (having only read Psycho and Less than Zero), but I think he inadvertantly managed to capture the ethos of 1980s America in a literary time capsule.

The graphic nature of the content aside, it's an amazing tale of soul-lessness, greed, and apathy.

Plus, I'm from the camp of people who believe the later, escalating violence was a product of Bateman's imagination.

[KurtNYC]

15. Portnoy's Complaint or

Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" (eg. 'she told me to hush and I hushed' 250x)

[seemunkee]

17. Ulysses by James Joyce

Or The Sound and the Fury

[Tyrone Slothrop]

22. Sacrilege!!!

Ulysses is mind-bogglingly good!

[mitchum]

40. As is "The Sound and the Fury"

[ernstbass]

27. I am with you on James Joyce

I struggled with several of his books in college - hate them!!!!!

[seemunkee]

35. What the hell was I thinking?

Worst book? Why did I think this was about the best book ever?

Worst book would be House of Sand and Fog(I was so glad when everyone was dead, meant no chance for a sequel) or The Perfect Storm (BORRRRRRRIIIIINNGGG, so much filler so little story)

[ImpeachBush]

18. Moby Dick n/t

[NoodleBoy]

20. any of the faux 'Dune' books Brian Herbert tried to write

seriously... saying they suck is like saying the real Dune books by Frank Herbert were 'ok.'

[qnr]

43. Hey, I'm watching the Dino de Laurentis version of Dune right now n/t

[NoodleBoy]

60. unless you read the book,

a room full of weed couldn't make that movie make sense.

[qnr]

62. Please, I read the book when I was 8 :)

[Moloch]

21. anything by ann coulter

do those even qualify as books?

[Dastard Stepchild]

23. Anything by Anne Rice...

just could not read those books. I tried.

Also, I really could not get into the Lord of the Rings books <duck and cover>

[Danmel]

24. I hated "A separate Peace" and din't love the "House of Mirth "either

There are a lot of bad books- those two just came to mind.

[mcscajun]

25. Communion : A True Story -- by Whitley Striber

Well-written, gripping, scary. And then you get to the last page and find out you should doubt EVERYTHING you've read.

[bleedingheart]

26. The Bible - Because it has been used to justify slaughter

bigotry and a host of hideous deeds...

...but to some it is the best book ever written.

[the Princess]

31. Delete

[CO Liberal]

33. Agreed

The worst work of fiction of all time.

(Some peole think it's not fiction, but since many of the stories in the Bible are virtually identical to legends from other cultures, I believe that it's merely a collection of tall tales. Flame me if you want, but that's what I believe.)

[maveric]

42. I totally agree.

Utter bullshit that has caused the death and destruction of millions over the past 2000 years.
If ever a book to burn, the bible is the one.

[mr blur]

63. Me too

An awful tissue of fake history, superstition and other waffle which is extremely dangerous in the wrong hands - and there are plenty of those around.

However, burning it would just make it more "precious" to those who use it to justify their actions.

[Heimdallr]

73. Consider the lilies in the field....

Because ever they're not so dim as to dismiss the philosophical aspects found in the NT as 'utter bullshit'.

The stupid shall inherit nothing.

[jmowreader]

28. The Pet Goat

When it is read, 3000 people die needlessly.

L. Ron Hubbard's oeuvre comes in a very close second.

[CanuckAmok]

54. Really? I heard it was hard to put down...

n/t

[mattclearing]

58. , the Canuck said in perfect deadpan.

Awesome. Cheers.

:beer:

[mitchum]

29. "Atlas Shrugged" purple prose with a tin ear...

but one expects horrid work from the ridiculous Rand

Worst book by a great author: "The Mulching of America" by Harry Crews

[regularguy]

56. Oh yeah! Worst book ever.

I didn't mind The Fountainhead though.....

Who is John Galt?
Who gives a f--k?

[dave123williams]

32. Well, there's the obvious Paul Clifford (1833) by E.G. Bulweer-Lyon

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

[HughBeaumont]

41. Anything written by Toni Morrison

It was utter TORTURE to read this woman's prose in college. GOD.

[CanuckAmok]

44. "The Alienist" by Caleb Carr.

I expected a good historical thriller, but instead got the literary version of the worst serial film series you can imagine.

Seriously, it was like this:

Villain: "Ah hah! Finally I have you captured, (hero)...you're doomed now!"

Hero: "Oh, am I? Look behind you, villain!"

Hero's sidekick stands behind villain, pistol in hand

Villain: "Ah, you think you have outsmarted me, (hero), with your good friend (sidekick) behind me? Well look closely behind (sidekick)!"

We are then told that the villain's sidekick has the hero's sidekick in his sights...

Hero: "Clever, (villain), but not clever enough...look behind your sidekick..."

And then we see that the hero's sidekick's sidekick has the villain's sidekick surrounded...

and so forth, and so forth...

[klook]

46. "Listen to the Warm" by Rod McKuen

Also, I remember this horrible book of "poetry" by Hugh something-or-other from the early 1980s. As I recall the guy even wrote everything in lowercase with no punctuation, like e e cummings. A friend of mine and I used to write hilarious parodies of those.

This is driving me nuts, now. Who was that Hugh guy? Anybody remember?

[klook]

49. Hey, I found it! "Notes to Myself" by Hugh Prather

That's just hilariously bad. Schmaltz-o-rama, and exceedingly narcissistic to boot.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

47. anything written by coulter

[jonnyblitz]

48. ha! i just read A Man in Full and really liked it!

oh well...I never read Celestine Prophecy because I figured it was pure babble/crap.

[Shakespeare]

52. Can't believe no one's mentioned the "Left Behind" series.

Gotta be some of the worst (and most dangerous) books written.

[Blue-Jay]

69. Good call.

My ex got thoroughly pissed when I referred to that series as "science fiction minus the science".

[Carson]

70. I seriously doubt many here have actually *read* the books.

One has to read them before giving an opinion, I would think.

;-)

(Note: I haven't read the series.)

[Beaverhausen]

53. Malleous Mallefecarum

[mattclearing]

57. Pet Sematery was awful.

The movie was every bit as good as the book. :)

[Carson]

68. Loved the book, despised the movie.

As I do almost every movie adaptation of a King novel.

I'll give credit for "Shawshank Redemption", "Stand By Me", and "Misery". The rest sucked, included Kubrick's travesty, "The Shining".

[Bucknut213]

59. What's a book?

...as B* would say

[Endangered Specie]

61. Mein Kampf

[Blue-Jay]

65. ANYTHING by Danielle Steele.

I'm sorry, but if you think she is a good author, you need help.

[Carson]

66. "A Good Baby" by Leon Rooke....and...

99.9% of the "bodice-rippers" known as Harlequin Romance novels.
I just *love* reading phrases like, "As he took her maidenhead, her loins quivered." Ugh.

[SKKY]

72. "Gerald's Game" by Stephen King...

...and if I wasn't in the middle of a six-month deployment with that being my very last book, I don't think I could have choked it down. King is wonderful, but that book was just awful. It sucked. It suckity suck sucked.

[GOPNotForMe]

74. "Pamela" by Samuel Richardson.

I would sooner eat my fingers off before I would reread that crapola. My GOD that was a terrible, TERRIBLE book.

[DemoTex]

77. "Doom Pussy" by Elaine Shepard

The DOOM is the Danang Officers' Open Mess and the "Pussy" is the mouth of the cat of death that we "flew into" on missions over the Ho Chi Mihn Trail, North Vietnam, and all of South Vietnam. Doom Pussy was a poorly written chronicle/fiction that actually had the writer, Elaine Shepard, punching out of a B-57 Canberra and being captured by the NVA. Too, too much. I suspect that she, as an accredited journalist, hung around the D.O.O.M. -- as a fighter pilot groupie -- and misunderstood what/whom they were talking about when they joked of the "DOOM Pussy."