Worst Books You Have Ever Read

miguel1984

miguel1984

Grimscribe
The absolute worst book I have ever read is this piece of crap. Skip it like plague.

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I had some friends enjoy Peter Clines "14" but I thought it was absolutely terrible. I really hated Gary Fry's "Conjure House" too. And ST Joshi's "The Assults of Chaos" is awful, what I could stomach reading of it anyway.

I've read many books I felt "blah" about, and some that I couldn't even finish. I enjoy some fantasy sometimes, but try to be very choosy about which fantasy books I give my time to. I couldn't finish "Dawnthief" by James Barclay, and it's rare that I allow myself to get a third or more of the way into a book before I have to throw in the towel and just give up on it.
 
Malachi_Constant said:
I had some friends enjoy Peter Clines "14" but I thought it was absolutely terrible. (..)
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I didn't think it was absolutely terrible, but I was surprised that people thought it was good. The prose was workmanlike at best and the story dragged. Badly. I got about halfway through before I realized I was wasting my time.

14 and Barron's The Croning made me realize that I shouldn't go for what most people recommend.
 
American Psycho by Bret Ellis. Snuff porn masquerading as literature. One of the few books I can honestly say that the world would be a better place had it never been written. I found no redeeming qualities. Obviously others did.
 
Revenant said:
American Psycho by Bret Ellis. Snuff porn masquerading as literature. One of the few books I can honestly say that the world would be a better place had it never been written. I found no redeeming qualities. Obviously others did.
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I loved that book. The film is great, too.
 
James Sucellus said:
Revenant said:
American Psycho by Bret Ellis. Snuff porn masquerading as literature. One of the few books I can honestly say that the world would be a better place had it never been written. I found no redeeming qualities. Obviously others did.
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I loved that book. The film is great, too.
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I thought it was excellent too. Yes, it is heavy on explicit violence, but there is a point to the madness. It's been maybe 20 years since I read it, so maybe it's time for a re-read.
 
I think the real worst writing of the past decade or two comes out of middlebrow white man literary fiction, with writers like Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer being strong contenders for straight-up worst books that are both godawful on the sentence level and eye-gougingly, pretentiously self-important. Their books are like hearing a tone deaf person trying to sing punishingly technical operatic solos when "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" would be testing the honest limits of their range. I'd probably rather read Brian Herbert Dune fanfiction or the Wheel of Time than this kind of thing, and I hate both of those.
 
I liked American Psycho very much, after initially hating it.

I think the humorous yet macabre musings of Patrick Bateman, at every perceived slight or case of pathological one-upmanship, was its redeeming quality. I laughed hard throughout the book.
 
Re: American Psycho
As my fellow connoisseurs of literature, I must respect your conclusions. I only wish I could join you. Whatever Ellis was attempting, I suppose he simply missed the mark with me.
 
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