The 10 Worst Books

[radleyp]

You can't "test" a book to determine whether it's "good" or "bad", you can only express your opinion of it and that's what we're doing here. I don't know if that's a worthwhile exercise, since it's too easy to take potshots at what we don't like (it was W.H. Auden, I think, who said he didn't review books he didn't like for that very reason). I taught Russian language and literature at a university-level for 20 years: that does not make me an "authority", but simply a better-read judge (at least where Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc... are concerned). And I do disagree with many of the opinions expressed here: Da Vinci, to me, was a very good thriller, the Harry Potter books (which I listened to, in recordings by Jim Dale) were delightful, L.Ron Hubbard absolutely unreadable in the way Tom Clancy and Ayn Rand are - use maximum verbiage for minimum content, a common ailment in SF books which is why I rarely read them.

The expression is "de gustibus non EST disputandum".

And congratulations to those of you who have responded to Lobolover: I can't, since I don't understand most of what he wrote, save that he is in strong disagreement.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Okay, folks, deep breath time.
CUT
I very much agree that uniformed opinions are pretty valueless, views of them.

Hey, NatCh:

I agree with you: This is a thread of opinions on why we dislike/like different books.

By the way, I NEVER, EVER wear my uniform when giving opinions!!

Thanks, NatCh.

Don

[Patricia]

Originally Posted by radleyp

The expression is "de gustibus non EST disputandum".

You are grammatically correct, but in Latin (and Greek) you are allowed to assume the verb 'to be' in many contexts.

As Wikipedia says:
'Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, without attribution, renders the phrase as de gustibus non disputandum; the verb "to be" is often assumed in Latin, and is rarely required.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_officio#E

(Sorry: I can't help being pedantic occasionally.)

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by radleyp

You can't "test" a book to determine whether it's "good" or "bad" ....

Oh, I don't know. You could get into an analysis (remember: the first half of "analysis" is "anal"!) of writing style, word usage, plot and character development, and such, but that requires a lot of work, and at some level even that will come down to some sort of subjective evaluation (this plot technique is better than that one, etc.). Matters of taste may be indisputable, but they're a lot easier to discuss, and they're probably more informative to discuss for the non-literary critic type.

Just my opinion, of course.

Originally Posted by Patricia

(Sorry: I can't help being pedantic occasionally.)

Occupational hazard, I'm sure (said one pedant to another).

[Moonraker]

Books I dislike:

I hated all of the Rama series by Arthur C. Clarke. I felt conned waiting for something to happen book after book.

Wheel of time books by Robert Jordan. I dislike all stretched out stories with too much filler in them (and was probably put off initially by Rama above).

Brave New World by Aldus Huxley. Couldn't get on with all those repetitive sentences.

Duma Key by Stephen King. Didn't care for the characters, and felt that the supernatural elements were unbelievable.

The majority of fantasy books particularly any book about dragons.

The Bible.

Anything published by Mills and Boon.

Any book suggested by my book-snob brother-in-law



"All the good stories have already been told, we're just retelling them the way we want to"

-- Stephen King

[radleyp]

True, but the "analysis" you or I do is there to justify what is already our opinion. OTOH, analysis might help to change one's opinion. My point is that there is no objective test: it's not like taking two kinds of glue and determining that the bonding from one is "objectively" stronger that the bonding of the other. It all comes down to opinion, which is where discussion, what we are doing here, comes in.

And my apologies to Patricia: my phrasing came out wrong, it's just that that is an expression I use a lot (my wife looks for the nearest club when I use it or "that's what makes horse races").

[NatCh]

I think our wives might get along well, radlyp.

[HappyMartin]

Its all terribly simple really. If I think it, it is an objective position. If you think it, it is a mistaken subjective opinion. What is so complicated about that?

[jmorton]

I find this one hard to answer because if I don't like a book, I usually stop reading it pretty quickly. One book I thought was so bad that I intentionally tore it in half and threw in the garbage was Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice. That was after only fifty pages. Now there's a bad book!

I agree that Atlas Shrugged is pretty awful. That was the book that finally turned me off to Ayn Rand. I actually enjoyed The Fountainhead, in spite of its silliness.

Jim

[astra]

Originally Posted by jmorton

One book I thought was so bad that I intentionally tore it in half and threw in the garbage was Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice. That was after only fifty pages. Now there's a bad book!


Jim

Now...now...now I think it is time and place for me to hit the roof!
(Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned are among my favorites!)

Heathens hide!

[tompe]

Originally Posted by jmorton

I agree that Atlas Shrugged is pretty awful. That was the book that finally turned me off to Ayn Rand. I actually enjoyed The Fountainhead, in spite of its silliness.

I did not finish Atlas Shrugged. It was bad fiction. I stopped just before John Galt's speech. The setup to the speech was just extremely badly written and not convincing. What I do not get is people thinking this book is good fiction literature.

[DixieGal]

Hi Everyone! These are my opinions, so please love me for my differences as well as my sames. Here goes:

1. The Davinci Code - It was taken too seriously by some confused people, because Dan Brown marketed it as "fact." However, kudos to Brown for managing to slap together a mega blockbuster with nothing more than lifting a plot from other authors and using travel guides as resource material.

2. Songs of Earth and Power - It is 2 books cobbled together into one with a badly matched seam. Both halves are boring, except for the horror parts, which are very funny.

3. Anything in the "for Dummies" series - Instead of being ashamed of being too dumb to read a manual or take a course, people in my office proudly display this series.

4. Battlefield Earth 1 & 2 - For all of the reasons stated by others, and also because it is the only set of books I ever read that made me angry twice: First for wasting so much time reading the first book, and then secondly, for making me angry again by fooling myself that surely the second book must be better. It wasn't. But at least I learned that it's OK not to finish a book.

5. The Two Towers (Lord of the Rings) - It is a very long segue from book 1 to book 3. Don't yell, I know 2 Towers is more character driven than event driven as in the other books, but I just seem to skim the whole book whenever I re-read the series.

6. A Fire Upon the Deep - Vernor Vinge's prequel to his masterpiece A Deepness in the Sky. Deepness was magical, but Fire was merely tedious.

7. Anything Jane Austen - Sorry, Dr D, but I'm a lit graduate and had these prissy, precocious books shoved down my throat again and again throughout college. Since then, anything that reeks of rural spinsters with good manners just sort of riles me up.

8. .........

I ran out of titles! I guess it's not so bad to have an extra-short list of books I dislike. It's a good thing. Oh crap, that reminds me....

8. Anything Martha Stewart writes. She is the anti-Christ's housekeeper.

[mazzeltjes]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I LIKE "Battlefield Earth". It's too long, but it's a great story. Let's not forget - Hubbard may have had some odd ideas, religiously-speaking, but he was also a damned good SF writer.

He was a good sf writer in the 30's and 40's
after that he lost the plot
Ole doc Metuselah
is a great story
but his later career stinks


Worst books ever
John Norman
Gor

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by tompe

I did not finish Atlas Shrugged. It was bad fiction. I stopped just before John Galt's speech. The setup to the speech was just extremely badly written and not convincing. What I do not get is people thinking this book is good fiction literature.

When I read it, in my early 20s, I was just a pimple on a donkey's ass, without much common sense but a great thirst for knowledge.

The novel is really, I feel, a way for Rand to talk about her philosophy of Objectivism. As such, now that I've popped that particular pimple , I'm able to see how preachy the book really is -- for ME.

Don

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by jplumey

Interesting, I rather enjoy her writing style. It's fast paced, witty, and detailed. Plus, and this is what I like the most, it's almost entirely from Harry's perspective. I've read books by other authors where the perspective changes every paragraph. Dan Brown is notorious for this and his inability to stay inside one character for more than a single chapter is a major reason why I can't stand his books. Call me a chickenhead, but it was so confusing to read The DaVinci Code, half the time I was saying, "wait, how can SHE say that? Oh ok, now it's HE that's talking...and talking...and talking..."

J.K. Rowling's books use all of the great hooks of a good mystery. She's a fan of the best literature (classic and modern) and their influence is on her is visible, though not overpowering.

It may be a matter of taste, but I really think that in years to come people will go back and read the books after all of the hype has died down and they'll find some hidden jewels.

"chickenhead" ! ha !! i have to add that to my master list o' insults.

as for harry potter... i usually run in the opposite direction of anything that becomes a planet-wide phenomenon on principle alone, as this often seems to be a more certain garantee of mediocrity than quality. so i was completely uninterested in the harry potter books when every single one of my friends tried in turn to lend them to me (well... at least a solid majority of my friends).

then we had a record-breaking heat wave (this was about 4 or 5 years ago i think, i'm not very good with dates and chronology) and in paris it was too hot to *live* (for about 2 weeks it never dropped below 38°, including at 3 in the morning, and frequently was hotter). the slightest mental effort was out of the question. half way through, the daughter of a friend of mine lent me her harry potter books (i think there were 3 or 4 by then, i can't remember) and told me they would distract me from my overheated misery. to be honest i only accepted them to be polite, but i was agreeably surprised.

i think what i appreciated the most is the fact that rowling is quite clearly very intelligent and this comes through in her writing style, and also that she clearly loves language and litterature and makes innumerable and excellent subtle references, allusions, jokes and plays on words. but, i think this playfulness was lost through the series, and i was greatly disappointed by the last one, which seemed graceless and heavy as if she had written it rather mechanically while checking things she needed to mention off a list. it was so dramatically different than the beginning of the series that if i had not been reading a paper copy of it i would have really wondered if it were the real book, or a clumsily fan-written fake.

so, not on my list of worst books of all time, but i wouldn't go so far as to call them classics either. i suspect that a large part of my appreciation for them was purely contextual, since they were light and easy to read, escapist fiction at its best : just what i needed during that summer.

however, i've just remembered a book which caused me real suffering when i was forced to read it for school : "La Vie de Marianne" ("the Life of Marianne") by Marivaux. it drags on for a full lifetime, too ; hundreds and hundreds of pages, which feel like millions (and it was never completed ! i shudder to imagine what it could have been...). never has a fictional character made me want to inflict pain on them like stupid, simpering Marianne, who spent the duration crying out that it was all too much for her pure innocent heart and swooning, with her limp wrist flung (melo)dramatically across her forehead. seriously, the whole time i wanted to slap her silly and tell her to shut up and grow a pair (only in much, much stronger language).

i would like to point out here that Marivaux's style, exemplified in Marianne, was so completely, unprecedentedly affected and tortuous that it gave rise to a brand new verb, marivauder, and noun, marivaudage, which at the time of their coining (18th century) were quite pejorative, and rightly so.

also, "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis (although this is mainly because i am a delicate flower and couldn't stomach the graphic descriptions of violence ). another book which was assigned for a class. caveat, i am judging this book without having read it through : i tried, honestly, but when i got to the description (not very far in...) of the knife to the cornea my stomach turned over so strongly that i decided life was much too short to inflict any more of that on myself and told my prof that i would be out ill (never was an excuse so apt) for the discussion of that book.