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

A lot of people have answered this question with timeless classics (some of which I loved, myself), so I have no problem saying that I hated "Ulysses". Boring and LONG, it seemed more of an attempt to shock than to entertain. I didn't complete it.

 

Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard was complete rubbish. Unreadable as a matter for fact.

 

All of the Mills and Boone books, if you try to read them with a straight face.

 

That's because it was shocking for people at the time...yeah...

 

Agreed. His books aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

 

Yet a whole religion was founded on this book. More or less anyways.

 

The Red Pony By John Steinbech was pretty bad. Lord of The Flies was pretty bad, but I may just have hated it because it was the first thing that we ever did close reading with and literary analysis. Probably better than I thought but the analyzing killed it. Plus its plot was pretty stupid

 

The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir

Scared the hell out of me, because when I read it I was 15. Our litterature teacher thought it would impove our essays skills (among other books). I'll never forgive her for that.

Anyway, growing up I saw that
a) love and sex don't always lead a woman to pain, humiliation and destruction
b)not all men are creeps
c)nobody should ever suggest this book to young girls.

I don't care if it's a classic, I honestly think it's a stupid book.

 

When it comes to "classics," I'm not a fan of Romeo and Juliet, The Great Gatsby, and Heart of Darkness. The first one just made me angry, the second I felt like the story was an exercise in writing through a drunk man's eyes, and the last one was just weird and creepy and I didn't like it.

As for new books, my all-time least favorite book is The New Rules of High School by Blake Nelson. The main character parties like mad, has random sex, crashes his car while driving drunk, but everything is magically OK at the end as he gets into Princeton or some other prestigious university. What made me hate this book was that the author made it out like this was the obvious and common path most high schoolers take with their lives-- oh, of course they partied and had drunk sex in high school, that's how they find themselves! And of course, there are never consequences for any of this! Ugh. I read it as a high schooler, and I hated how it portrayed experiences I never had as "just what high schoolers do."

 

I have found that most "classics" are just terrible reads, some are quite unbearable. I hated Farhenheit 451, 1984, Catcher in the Rye, The Stranger and Clockwork Orange. I don't recall Great Gatsby, but I recall being bored out of my mind being forced to read this one in HS. It's no wonder so many ppl today have such an aversion to reading if they were forced to read all the classics while in school.

 

Really? I find I usually love what they have me read for classes. To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 451, The Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, Animal Farm, The Great Gatsby.... I loved all of them.

Books that I really hated... I'm having a hard time coming up with any at all, really. Mostly I don't remember books I hate because I put them down after a few chapters and forget about them. I remember really disliking Eragon and Twilight, because of the awful writing (IMO). Also I tried to get into Anna Karenina and just couldn't do it. It was way too dense. I remember too I put down The Joy Luck Club after a few chapters, but I'll probably try it again sometime.

 

This is exactly why they make Wishbone

 

This makes me a sad panda. ='[

 

Oh and your my hero for reminding me of this show. I grew up on it. haha

 

Each of those novels are brilliant.

 

Your opinion is wrong. This is not an oxymoron, it just is simple fact.

 

And I suppose you loved Harry Potter?

I find it somewhat rude of your part calling those books "terrible reads" and "unbearable", because these books are loved by many people in here, counting me in. Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 are two of my favorite books, and I haven't read the other two, but I have heard a lot of praise about them.

PD: No offense meant, just trying to illustrate a point.

 

Recently read a bad book. The Babbysitter's Club: Stacy's Mistake. Its been laying around my house and not quite sure where it came from, but I recently decided to read it. Now considering its like the 18th book in the series, I was sorta surprised by the giant Info Dump at the begining. It starts off with describing a cockroach and how they are EVERYWHERE in New York. After that, its never heard from again. Though I find the idea of a cockroach where she lives in New York rather odd. Then it jumps to a infodump about her friends and all that. A few pages that were just boring. None of the information in this infodump was ever even needed to enjoy the story anyways.

The problems were solved without any real effort. One of the major problems was between one of her best friends meets another best friend. But that was easily solved with a 6 great tickets to some Broadway play, a stretch limo, and a few laughs later...

I guess considering the target group it wasn't a bad book. For the most part it seemed to have lots of potential and decided not to fulfill any of it.

 

This could almost be a haiku.

 

I can't really say any of the classsics are bad, some of them I really love and some I can't stand. For instance I can't stand the Grapes or Wrath the most boring book in the English languauge. Why do English teachers like this books so much??? I never understood that. Most classics I can appreciate even though I don't care to read them much. I really don't like Huck Finn, but in some ways I can appreciate Mark Twain's style and the way he writes it. The story itself doesn't appeal, but that doesn't make it a terrible book, just something that doesn't interest me that's all. After giving this a lot of that I think one of the worst books I have ever read (and I know I'll get yelled at for it) was the Gunslinger by Stephan King (book 1, Dark Tower series). It was interesting at first but then I found myself wondering what his point of the whole story was. Yeah I know one motive was to spook his readers, but what else was he getting at? I never had any desire to read the other books so maybe it gets better, but I had a feeling he was just going to keep rambling about things that he believes in. Does anyone know what the series is really about? Maybe I'm just dense, but I think I was just bored.

 

The only thing I like from that book was the fantastic duel with the bird. As you can see by my horrendous description, I can't hardly remember it. That's all I really took from it. As for Mark Twain, I really don't care for Huck Finn either, but some his short stories are incredible. Go read The War Prayer aloud sometime, absolutely fantastic.

 

at the risk of sounding cliche, anything by dan brown or chuck palahniuk. so juvenile and corny.

 

Dan Brown I can understand (see my countless rants against him) but Chuck Palahniuk? Cmon! Its subversive posmodernism at its finest!

 

Wha--aa--at???

I thought you liked Dan Brown!

 

A couple of cheap thriller's that I began reading but stopped almost instantly. I have blocked out any memories of the author's or title's.