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yeah..what's the worst book you've ever read?


Mine are

Anything of Anne Rice (burn!)
and Catcher in the Rye

and perhaps Trainspotting..but it was written in Scottish so it's a bit cool, but still a piss poor read.

William Saroyan's "A Human Comedy."
John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony"
John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men"
John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" (noticing a pattern forming?)

anything R.L Stine, i hate that guy

William Saroyan's "A Human Comedy."
John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony"
John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men"
John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" (noticing a pattern forming?)

W@hy dont you like thoughs books, There great.

I havent read a bookI dont like..

Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind
I just put it down like 2/3s of the way through, and returned it to the library.

Raina The Werewolf Queen wrote: Why dont you like thoughs books, There great.

"A Human Comedy" kept trailing off into pointless chapters about Ulysses staring at people; it was like two thirds of the book's material had been written to make it longer.

And Steinbeck... Well, the list goes on forever, but I'd wager that the English departments from both St. John's Prep. and Ipswich High still have the essays I wrote about why Steinbeck is full of s***. B+ from the Prep. and an A- from Ipswich.

One more I forgot to mention was "Johnny Got His Gun" by Dalton Trumbo. It was a decent concept and a worthwhile story towards the end, but it took so long for it to actually start making sense that, by the time it finally did start making sense, I just didn't give a crap anymore.

My literary personal demon is William Faulkner. I had a Faulkner nut as an English professor early in college. Not that I thought The Unvanquished was all that bad, but she wouldn't leave it alone. Everything was about Faulkner. I honestly had to look up and read books about critical commentaries about Faulkner--critics of the critics! Get off the Trekkies' backs; these are the people who really need to get a life!

Edit: One additional note. At one point, half-way through the course, I was on the verge of failing, because I was trying to write papers that I believed in. Once I gave in and wrote meaningless crap about the symbolism that was allegedly there, over-reaching about every little petty detail and how it "meant something," I got one of the few 100s on any paper in the class. It was total BS, and I threw the thing away when the class was done, but it got the grades up.

Scott Gardener wrote:I was trying to write papers that I believed in. Once I gave in and wrote meaningless crap.... I got one of the few 100s on any paper in the class. It was total BS, and I threw the thing away when the class was done.

Unfortunately, that is all too common. *sigh*

There have been many classes where I have put in extensive effort into writing assignments and have gotten poor grades in return (well, for me a B is a poor grade; I imagine your classes were more difficult than mine). But then, at one point or another, I find myself short on time and write a paper full of BS, and they love it! My Ethics teacher was especially bad at doing that sort of thing.


Ah well... Sometimes you just have to jump through the hoops and give the teacher what they want, rather than what you believe. It's a short period of time in life, and then you move on to (hopefully) better things.

-- Vilkacis

At the time, B's were normally bad grades to me. I was not used to worrying about passing or failing. I had a few more close calls in college afterwards, but by medical school, I learned to live with getting by.

And yes, I also learned to live with "playing the game." I didn't let it cause me to lose perspective, however. I still have my own ideas, and I'm not afraid to use them.

Mark Twain wrote:I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.

-- Vilkacis

Scott Gardener wrote:Once I gave in and wrote meaningless crap about the symbolism that was allegedly there, over-reaching about every little petty detail and how it "meant something," I got one of the few 100s on any paper in the class. It was total BS, and I threw the thing away when the class was done, but it got the grades up.

I've had similar expierences, there were a couple of papers I wrote where all I did, was ramble on for $PAGEREQUIREMENT. I figured I would get a failing grade on the paper, but ended up getting B's.
Fortuneately for me, my social inepitude gives me a very good poker face.

Lupin wrote:

Scott Gardener wrote:Once I gave in and wrote meaningless crap about the symbolism that was allegedly there, over-reaching about every little petty detail and how it "meant something," I got one of the few 100s on any paper in the class. It was total BS, and I threw the thing away when the class was done, but it got the grades up.

I've had similar expierences, there were a couple of papers I wrote where all I did, was ramble on for $PAGEREQUIREMENT. I figured I would get a failing grade on the paper, but ended up getting B's.
Fortuneately for me, my social inepitude gives me a very good poker face.

I've never experienced anything like that...I always write what I want to not what I think the teachers will like..and in the end it seems the teachers like what I write because it's not so A4...and if they don't, well, that's their problem not mine..hehe

"A Lesson Before Dying" by Ernest Gaines or someone with a name like that. Read it for English class.

Dull as hell. It has all of one fight scene and the execution (which the plot was based on) as the only good parts.

IblisPendragon wrote:I've never experienced anything like that...I always write what I want to not what I think the teachers will like..and in the end it seems the teachers like what I write because it's not so A4...and if they don't, well, that's their problem not mine..hehe

*nods* Same here. I do know there are some English professors out there that just like to pretend they love the classics and that slandering them is the result of either blasphemy or rock and roll, but what I've found is that if your professor is worth half his salt and you can at least explain why you disliked a book, they'll at least respect your honesty (some professors give into B.S., others can recognize it a mile away).

When I wrote my review of The Grapes of Wrath, for example, I didn't just say "the characters are lousy." I forget what I said about most of them, but I do remember writing about Pa Joad: "Does Steinbeck really expect his readers to have sympathy for a starving old man when just a few chapters prior he'd stuffed himself until he barfed on his crotch, and then smiled proudly over it?"

It is true that a lot of professors naturally want you to pretend you like a book, but if you can at least prove during your rantings that you read it, it could make it harder for them to deny it.

Worst book? Interview With A Vampire by Anne Rice. That was the most boring piece of trash I've ever read. I stopped reading it about halfway through, and I never do that. Not even with ones that aren't good. That book was just so...ugh.

There's gonna be a couple heresies and surprises here...

Shane (so boring I even forgot the author). We had to read it for Freshman English and I didn't make it past Chapter 5.

Decision at Doona by Anne McCaffrey. Good premise, some interesting ideas, the aliens' language was very cool but the whole thing went downhill fairly rapidly and devolved into near-naked stereotypes by novel's end.

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, believe it or not! And even though I dug the movie, I never made it past the second chapter of The Two Towers.
Edit: H'mm. I'll probably pick those books up again and re-read them, the years have a tendency to give perspective and appreciation. I had to read 1984 in high school too, was scared but not too thrilled, just re-read it a few months ago and loved it.

Let's see worst book would have to be the second part of Dante's inferno, or the Devine Comedy I can't remember where they leave hell and the heaven part gets all confusing... oh and House on Mango street it was horrible I had to read it for English last year I BSed the report and got an A+

Why don't you like Gone with the wind ? It is like one of the most popular books ever written

Aki wrote:"A Lesson Before Dying" by Ernest Gaines or someone with a name like that. Read it for English class.

Dull as hell. It has all of one fight scene and the execution (which the plot was based on) as the only good parts.

THAT BOOK SUCKED!!!!


I also didn't like the final book in the Animorphs series. Did anyone ever read those? The series was awesome up until the final book, but in the final book, there was this big, stupid cliffhanger. GAH!!

A Man's Fate. Andre Malraux.

ARRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!! I cannot describe to you how tedious this book is!! I hate it! The plot overall isn't so bad but it just takes so long to get from one thing to the other. I would probably like it a lot if it were trimmed down into a short story, but it's just not a good novel...

if a book seems bad i dont read it, therefore i havnt read a bad book(well possibly when i was a little kid but i dont remember many of the books i read back then)

Maybe I'm lazy. Maybe I'm just feeling brain-dead right now. But I can't really think of what the absolute worst book I've read is. Probably something from English class, though since I graduate I realized half the problem was that I *had* to read those books, not thatthey were especially bad. At least, not all of them.

To see what I've considered rotten lately - in the last two or three years - go to my web site at http://xodiac.fo.cx/rankings.html and take a look at anything that got a D or an F grade. Some of them are real stinkers.

Excelsia wrote:I also didn't like the final book in the Animorphs series. Did anyone ever read those? The series was awesome up until the final book, but in the final book, there was this big, stupid cliffhanger. GAH!!

I have the first 40-someodd books in my closet. (Along with some of the other books in the series.) I don't know why I never finished the series. I probably won't now that I know that.

'A Farewell to Arms' really, really, sucked in my most humble opinion. So boring, and poorly written dialog. Got confusing. I had to read it for some high school english class. 20th Centry Novel, it was. I actually never finished a book in that class; just read a bit and rented out their movie counter-parts Actually passed as well

I thought Interview with the Vampire was one awsome movie Never read the book though...

Excelsia wrote:I also didn't like the final book in the Animorphs series. Did anyone ever read those? The series was awesome up until the final book, but in the final book, there was this big, stupid cliffhanger. GAH!!

I stopped reading Animorphs roughly halfway through. Maybe 40%, ifyou want to get picky. It wasn't because the writing was bad, or I didn't like the transformations or anything. The writing was actually good, generally, and I very MUCH liked the transformations. But after 20 books or so, a pattern becomes apparent in the writing. The gang gets wind of a plot by the bad guys (what were they again? Zergs?), tries to foil them and fails, often making it worse in some way, and then they must correct their error as well as the initial problem. Over and over. Every book has the same outline, with new bad guy plots and guest aliens each book. Plus, after twenty books, I'd expect a setting to grow, the characters to change. There was some of that, but not enough. Not nearly enough, even taking into account that it was a series intended for kids. I could put book 26 in between book 10 and 11 and there'd be little chance anyone would notice. I hated that.

Each book, on its own, was fine. Taken as a whole, though, the series started getting stale somewhere in the late teens.

Silverclaw wrote:I thought Interview with the Vampire was one awsome movie Never read the book though...

Well the book was not worth the paper it was printed on. I've never seen the movie though.

And the bad guys in Animorphs were called the Yeerks.