The worst book you've ever read or had to have read

Eragon definitely ranks down there, but the book that I just can't stand to have exist in my universe is Nothing But the Truth by Avi. The 'protagonist' is a whiny little loser and quite frankly an @$$, while the only good character winds up losing their job and dignity and having to move away. And the ending sucked. The worst part is, it's the kind of book that's supposed to make you think- hence the dubious nature of the characters- but obviously from my negativity, it just didn't work. It was bad.

 

Please, please don't kill me, but I HATED the Lord of the Rings series, i don't know if it was the characters themselves, or the time it took Tolkien to describe them and their lives. All, I know is that we started the first book with eight months left in the school year, and we weren't even two thirds of the way done by the end of the year. Bluh.

 

Hands down worst book I ever read was Angela's Ashes. Yeah, yeah, it was on Oprah's book club list, whatever, I HATED it. Threw it across the room half way through and never picked it back up. I made my best friend read it because she can't NOT finish a book and she told me how it ends and it just got worse and worse.

That's my vote. :0)

 

I had to read a book for school called The Green Dog by Suzanne Fisher. Not a fun book. She's a lot older than me and I could write a book better...or at least one more entertaining. I would have killed the book if I wasn't being forced to read it.

Also, Sunshine by Robin McKinley drove me insane. I went to Borders looking for a good book and this guy said this book was great. The only interesting parts were the beginning and the end. There were parts where nothing happened for 100 pages. And the pages were long and took forever to read, I thought it would never end, but since I bought the book, I had to finish it.

 

Heart. Of. Darkness.

'Nuff said.

Don't spoil this for me! I just ordered the book from Amazon a few days ago because I loved '1984' in high school and figured I should check out Orwell's barnyard treatise on communism.

 

I agree! I was surprised to see the continuous listing of Jane novels as peoples' least faves! I absolutely love her work. I'm taking a capstone class this fall based on her novels and also the fiction to film.

Worst Reads:
Heart of Darkness
Treasure Island
Stranger
The Hobbit
LOTR series

 

Yay, I found someone who agrees! I could not stand that trilogy! I almost told the teacher off for even assigning it!

 

The worst book has to be Ceri Grafu, it was so childish and I felt like saying, 'Ie, wel cer i grafu d' hunan, hefyd miss,' halfway through it. Yuck. Dreadful book.

 

Things Fall Apart for me...I had to read it in World Lit, I just copied a friends annotations and then finally read it the day before the test. It was horrible.

 

I'd have to say the entire Henry VI series by Shakespeare. It was incredibly dull. I liked Shakespeare until I read that. My heart broke after Henry VI and I haven't touched anything by Shakespeare since.

A self-published book titled Wild Animus is pretty bad, too. The characters are two-dimensional, the main character is an idiot, and the girlfriend exists to provide money and sex.

I was rather disappointed by The Demolished Man, too. While it was technically and stylistically proficient, it just didn't. . . sparkle. Know what I mean?

 

I don't blame you one bit zorell. I read The Hobbit and really enjoyed it. I then started reading the LOTR trilogy and couldn't get halfway through the first one. I'd already seen the movies and just wanted to get to the good action in the books. After the group spent like 100 pages in the forest with the singing trees I gave up from boredom.

My least favorite book though would have to be one of these:

Amos Fortune: Free Man - Elizabeth Yates
The Old Man And The Sea - Ernest Hemingway

I'm convinced the dude in The Old Man And The Sea was stuck in a tidal pool the whole time. He is a senile old man who has no idea what he is doing.

 

Shadowmancer. Couldn't read more than a few chapters. So badly written it offended me.

 

Blackwood Farm by Ann Rice. Phewww, what a stinker. I think the 100th page actually squirted concentrated estrogen in my face.

 

It has got to be The Scarlet Letter. I honestly cannot stand the book. Such a snore. I'm easily turned off by a book if it doesn't catch my attention within the first few chapters, and this book was so droning. I never actually read it, even though it was a class assignment for AP Lit. Sparknotes, thank you so very much. I don't even find any of the themes/motifs/etc. the least bit interesting or well carried out, from the excerpts I was forced to read. Overrated book, imo.

 

The prize for Worst Story Ever would have to go to one of the short story "classics" I was forced to read in English 101. Possibly "How to Talk to a Hunter" or "What we Talk About When We Talk About Love". Of course there were so many boring and pointless ones, its hard to pin it down to just one story. Then too, these are all short stories, and not novels, so I'm not sure if they even count.

 

The new Borne novels, so far, there are two of them.
And they are BOTH terrible, honestly, I would have found more enjoyment out of reading the dotted lines on toilet paper.
And the information given are way off... Not only do they get Borne's own past wrong, but the technical info is wrong too.

 

Oh man. I loved old man and the sea. I understand about the LOTR trilogy though. I enjoyed the books, but it took me at least four attempts to actually make it all the way through.

I would have to say mine was probably the scarlett letter also. I actually enjoyed most of the stuff I read in english. A lot of that was because I had an excellent teacher. He explained all the dirty jokes in shakespear's stuff, and trust me there's a lot of them.

 

Uhm..let me think...

I haven't really hated anything I've read recently...

Oh, I got one. The Odyssey. (I know that's spelled wrong) I hated it, I know a lot of the guys loved it, but it was so...guyish. It bored me. I wasn't too fond of The Iliad either.

 

I'll list the worst classic I think I've ever read (in my literature class), and then the worst modern book.

Worst Classic:

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Ditto to Afterburner on this. I'm usually pretty open-minded to reading classics, but this one made me want to tear out my eyes.

Worst Modern Book:

Maximum Ride by James Patterson. I know this one's pretty popular, but I couldn't stand to finish it, no matter how hard I tried. It's cliched, poorly written, and all around awful.

 

Yeah, it is kind of weird, sure it's creative but you can tell the author is totally in love with the character and the bad things that happen to them aren't that bad
But I don't like the Lord Of The Rings either, i saw the movies and i was like. WOW That looks really good! And i read the books and then Gandalf is singing a little song and Aragorn is also. Then it takes them half the book to get to the prancing pony and they sing and they run around getting mushrooms.

 

I have to say the worst books I have ever read would be Dear Mr. Henshaw, or The Golden Goblet. The first ione I had to read in 4th grade, all I remeber was that it was really boring, the second one I had to read in sixth grade. It was really stupid, the main character pretty much sat around talking about how bad his brother was and how much he wanted to work with gold without ever doing anything. However the worst book I have ever read is Z for Zachariah. Man that book was awful!!! My sixth grade teacher made us read it, everyone literally cheered when we finished the book.

 

Mannn if I knew you in real life I'd kick your ass!

I'd like to say right now that I really don't like Charles Dickens. His ideas were interesting and I've tryed really hard to read them, but I just can't.

I don't read many terrible books though, and schoolwise I usually skim or use cliffnotes if it doesn't capture my attention after a few pages or I'm busy with something else.

I didn't love that book, but I don't think it was supposed to have a happy ending, nor were you even supposed to like the main character. :\

 

The worst book I've ever read was The Merchant of Venice, the Shakespeare play. We had to read it for English literature, and I didn't like it at all. Maybe it was because I wasn't used to the format since it's sa play.

 

Or perhaps wading through the archaic language?

I'm a bit surprised though. The Merchant of Venice is to me one of the more accessible and delightful of Shakespeare's comedies.