I too despise Scarlet Letter. Quite frankly, it's odd how many stories they made us read in school that are utterly depressing and have vague, half-definable and undefeatable antagonistic concepts. Like how fate somehow seems against the MC in Their Eyes were Watching God, or how "rich people culture" is the villain in The Great Gatsby. The weakened, missing-tooth prisoner Shukov in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich had a more optimistic ending despite the fact that he was in the Soviet gulag and was likely to never see his family again. It really makes me wonder where the label "classic" comes from and how one decides whether a book is classic or not. But there's really no limit to bad. It's hard to pick the absolute worst.
With regards to books I despise, I can pretty much say that all of the books I was required (read: forced) to read in junior high and high school. Really, is it *THAT* difficult to ask the students to choose a book from a list of "100 greatest books ever written" to study? Does it *HAVE* to be by the Bard? Does it have to be "The Great Gatsby"? "The Scarlet Letter"? Really, at the end of the day, I can't see what the point was. Sort of like having to take algebra. Outside of a classroom, I have never found any use for Shakespeare or algebra. The best things schools can do is teach kids how to read contracts for mortgages and car loans and credit cards; oh and in the math realm, to calculate the interest rate and the cost of borrowing $X amount of money......
The Great Gatsby is wonderful. I am glad I was assigned that. I went back and found my old copy and I saw underlined passages on almost every page. It made me appreciate what good writing could do. I actually wept several times on my first reading. I was not an avid reader or aspiring writing back then, but it clicked something in my brain. Even if you hate the tediousness of Shakespeare at times, you have to appreciate the insight he had into human nature.
I must respectfully disagree on Shakespeare. He helps readers understand old english, and a lot of our sayings come from his work. Also, his stuff the one bunch of stuff they force us to read where the villain is an actual person, rather than an abstract force. Richard III is my favorite.
I liked The Scarlet Letter actually. As for terrible books, it's hard to say because I never read very far before quitting, but there have been a lot.
You can’t blame Shakespeare for the most terrible book. If any of them are it, blame the guy that wrote it
The thing about Shakespeare is that he was never intended to be 'read.' Shakespeare was a playwright, of his time. A damn good one. But the language is difficult for modern readers. The references he uses meant a lot to a Tudor-era audience, but need to be 'explained' to us. When we understand these references and language, the stories begin to take off. But students should probably watch a well-produced play or movie of Shakespeare's work to really appreciate him. I remember teaching Romeo and Juliet to high school freshmen during my student-teaching days. And hey ho! Franco Zefferelli's movie had just been released, and most of the students had seen it! Consequently they were very keen to dig into that play. I got very lucky. There are lots of books out there that I never liked, and authors I never cottoned on to. Some of those authors were good ...I just didn't like them much. But other people did. So it's hard to pick 'bad' books from the so-called classics. And of course there are many non-classic books out there that got published somehow, but are absolutely dire. For me, however, the worst book I've read recently—hands down—is Cross-Stitch/Outlander. I struggled about 3/4 of the way through it, then threw it in the bin. Awful in so many ways, it's hard for me to pinpoint one. Of course some people loved it (some people loved 50 Shades of Grey as well) so mine is not a 100% popular stance. However, I also know many people (many Scots people) who found Gabeldon's conception of Scotland's culture ludicrous, her series of 'events' laughably melodramatic, and her characters singularly unpleasant/silly/blinkered overall. One of my Scottish friends who is a lot younger than me (she's in her late 30s) turned up at our writers' group meeting, to say she'd just stopped reading Outlander herself. She told us: "I kept asking myself why am I reading this? And realised I didn't have to. So I stopped." The time-travel premise of the story was interesting, but its execution was dire. It's a shame, because it could have produced a good book, if the silly crap (oooh, look, a hunky guy in a KILT, I'll have some of THAAAT...! ) had been curbed, instead of allowed to run rampant. I believe the TV version has smoothed over some of the anomalies, and has actually got real Scots actors and actresses to play the parts, and is 'better' than the books—which wouldn't be a difficult achievement. I can't say. I've watched clips, and the series looks to be well-made, but I wasn't inclined to invest in it.
Genuine question: when do you use any fiction? Honestly, I think Shakespeare is badly taught in schools. The dude's so much fun once you get used to the language - it just has to click. There's a lot of sex and bum jokes in his plays, the guy was (in his comedies, not talking about his tragedies) the South Park of his era. Edit: although, honestly, there's a lot of jokes in his tragedies too. And his tragedies are really amazing ... when they are good. No one can tell me Titus Andronicus is a good play.
I can't believe I missed that...dude, algebra is super important. It applies to accounting, any of the multifarious (and growing) computer fields, statistics, and all the sciences...and not to mention planning budgets. Also, math is a logic skill, and relates to how one is able to observe the world and interpret information. Large numbers of philosophers have mathematic backgrounds. So even if you don't use math specifically, learning it in school trains your brain to think. But back on topic, Shakespeare is refreshing. Or maybe I'm just saying that because publishing nowadays is so abundant that it's pretty easy to find stuff that's...less than stellar. And OurJud, even if those conspiracy theories are true, people are still going to call the plays Shakespearean. It's just shorthand at this point. To whine a bit about nonfiction, I'm utterly flummoxed by the abundance of emotional writers. Like, manipulating people's emotions is important in fiction because you have to make the reader believe it, but nonfiction should be stone cold so that we see the subject, not the author (aside from if the author was actually present at the event they're talking about).
Ashamed to admit that this is exactly the reason why I liked it! I like a bit of fluff when the world feels overwhelming. It's comforting to know there'll be no shocks and surprises zero stress
I’m with @Cdn Writer - not so much on Shakespeare as I’ve never read him so don’t feel I’m in a position to diss, but algebra is an utter waste of time for the layman.
It's an utter waste of time if you don't want to learn to think or to get a career in a scientific/technology/accounting/business field. But yeah, other than that, algebra is useless. /sarcasm.
My thing with reading - any reading - is that if someone *ANYONE* (teacher, parent, priest, you-pick-whomever) says that I...... *HAVE TO READ IT* it automatically gets a bad rap with me. I believe in order for anyone to develop a love of reading, they have to be involved in the process themselves. They have to be introduced to great stories, their curiosity needs to be sparked by the desire to learn more about X, Y, or Z. But a teacher saying, "We're going to read X or Y and then you HAVE TO WRITE a paper on it, do a book report, give an oral presentation....." - way to go, I hate the book already! What I thought was an interesting take on assigned reading encountering a honest student was covered in Gordon Korman's "No More Dead Dogs" when the main character has this brutal honest streak and is assigned to read a book about a dog. The book won numerous awards and the english teacher in the book is in love with this assigned reading so when the honest student basically says it's the worse book he's ever read, there's a battle of wills between them. With regards to math, the basics are enough - division, subtraction, multiplication, addition. Algebra is NOT. I have *NEVER* used algebra outside of a classroom setting and I resent being asked to waste my time on this. What I and many, many other people need is an in-depth understanding of consumer mathematics - how to calculate the interest rate on a mortgage, car loan, credit card, etc. Have you ever seen a mortgage contract? Can they possibly make it even more obscure???? All the legalese terms and then they write it in 2 pt font.......am I signing a contract with the devil for my soul? Because it really feels that way..... (Hmm....topic for the debate room! Sorry for going off topic!)
books not algerbra people... if you want to fight about the merits of algebra do it on mathematicsforum
I used to be this way until I found a way around it. For my courses, I stopped saying I have to read the assigned books, and instead adopted the idea that I get to. I believe now that I have firm reasons for reading the assigned books and that it's a privilege to find time for reading them as part of my schedule. Maybe it's a strange form of self imposed indoctrination, but I found myself enjoying my studies far more ever since.
I really resent some teachers for turning me off of reading for so long. I've already finished more books this year than I read in my first ten years out of high school. I thought I hated literature. As it turns out, I just hate being forced to read outside of my genres and take quizzes on passages through which I was barely able to keep my eyes open. I also have the attention span of a gnat, so if I'm not engaged with the material, I'm out the window. I get what people like about Dickens and the Brontes, but I'm never going to enjoy them. If we have to read something from the nineteenth century, why not Frankenstein or The Picture of Dorian Gray? There could be at least some effort made to include genre literature in the list of "classics." Regarding Shakespeare, I love his plays, but that's what they are, plays. They're not meant to be read. They're meant to be watched. (I know @jannert covered this, but it's a point worth making twice.) And finally, I don't know that I would call it the worst, because it has merits that other people enjoy, I guess, but my least favorite fiction of all time is Notes from Underground. Guh, was it boring. I hated the MC/narrator the way I hate Holden Caulfield. @Homer Potvin knows what I'm talking about. He was a hateful misanthrope I couldn't identify with for a second. He despises the world for being phony while lying constantly. He can't stand anyone but desperately wants to belong for some reason. He never stops talking crap about everyone and feeling sorry for himself the entire book. Plus there's no story whatsoever, just an intimate study of a jerk. My least favorite non-fiction has to be Boardwalk Empire. How they made a great show from that terrible book is beyond me. It's a book about gangsters that focuses more on the city's fiscal history and the inner workings of the state legislature than it does organized crime. These were real life murderers and strong-arm thugs, but the author chose to talk endlessly about accounting and tourist revenue. It was unbearable.
I once read a book because it got a flattering review by a blogger I had been following. I hated it so much I stopped following that blogger. I won't mention its name here because it was a self-pub and I think we've got rules against that, but the author bragged in his blurb that it had "been rejected by over 500 publishers" because they weren't "ready for it." Umm, no, it was probably rejected because it was a bad copy/paste of Atlas Shrugged with even less believable villains, math that didn't add up in any universe, misspellings all over the place ("He aimed the canon and fired! Direct hit!"). The author wrote a review of it on Goodreads and gave himself five stars. Anyway, I wrote a ~1500 word review ripping it to pieces that was, for a while, the most helpful review of the book on Amazon. Then I suspect the author hired a botnet or something because Amazon got flooded with one-sentence 5 star reviews that were maddeningly non-specific. There's a theory that Titus Andronicus is actually a comedy written in the same vein as modern pro-wrestling storylines. But in general, I'm with @jannert on Shakespeare: He was a playwright, FFS. You don't go buy the screenplay for something like Minions or Fast & Furious: Furiously Furious Furiociousness or Sliding Doors or Behind the Green Door, you go to the theater or rent the DVD and watch them. The worst acclaimed mainstream book I've ever read is Middlemarch, by George Elliot. Six or three or seven interlocked tales of deadly dull people living deadly dull lives in the deadly dull English countryside. This is a book for people who don't want any cream added to their oatmeal because it would make it too spicy. A book for people who prefer watching paint drying to grass growing because grass has all of those startling movements when a gentle breeze wafts by. A book for people who don't like white noise because of all the sudden tempo and key changes. A book for the dead. On the other hand, I've tried and failed to get more than a chapter or two into Catcher in the Rye at least three times, at different ages and maturity levels. I guess that must be worse than Middlemarch, although I read that one when I didn't have anything else that was even in a script I was familiar with to read. Oh, shit, forgot about A Confederacy of Dunces. Dreck. Spoiler Moby Dick and Vanity Fair, on the other hand, are Great Books that are also great books.
It's another one of those Great Books that is allegedly full of something something but is just about a mendacious, morbidly obese (that figures prominently in the book) man with no respect for anything. The author couldn't get it published so he killed himself, then his mother found someone who thought it was genius and all the Important Literature Critics agree for whatever reason. Honestly I've forgotten almost everything about it other than him stealing hot dogs, sweating a lot, and how much I hated every word of it.
