Worst book you've ever read

[Sak01]

The Bourne Betrayal by Eric Van Lustbader. Awful.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. Wit overkill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Van_Lustbader

 

[Rooferkev]

Catch 22

 

[Peter D]

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.

Although I know quite a few people who vehemently disagree with me.

 

[ScottColbert]

If a book doesn't grab me in the first chapter or so, I don't finish it. This saves me time and the pain of reading a bad book.

 

[Rooferkev]

.....and very good ones that start slowly

 

[ScottColbert]

.....and very good ones that start slowly

If a book starts slowly it's not good.

 

[Rooferkev]

yes it is, it just starts slowly

 

[ToastPwnz]

I assume I'll get a bit of "hate" (not the best word) for this, but oh well.

The worst book I've ever read has to be The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I absolutely dreaded reading that book. The autobiography, or something close to one, that I read after it (The Glass Castle) was amazing in my eyes compared to Huck Finn.

 

[ScottColbert]

yes it is, it just starts slowly

Matter of opinion I suppose. As a writer and publisher, if a book fails to capture my interest, it's not worth investing my time. A book's plot can develop slowly and still be interesting. John Irving's work comes to mind, in that respect. However a book that starts slowly without keeping me engaged is simply a bad book to me.

 

[NYCHitman1]

Anything Harry Potter

 

[DoAndroidDream?]

Some Dungeons & Dragons novels. Truly horrendous stuff.

The first Wheel of Time novel. Same as above.

Pretty much any large multi-volume modern fantasy series that I have ever attempted.

 

[BabyBlues]

The worst book I ever read is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bront​

 

[Tangent]

Wicked. My wife and I were going to see the play with a couple of friend and figured we should take the same approach we do with movies based on books: read them first so we aren't lost because of stuff cut out due to editing. We got the audio book to listen to on a longer road trip we were going on.

Holy crap what a steaming pile of bizarre idiocy that was. Imagine some nut job political activist reading the Wizard of Oz, then taking a really bad acid trip.

On the other hand the play was absolutely brilliant and I highly recommend it...

 

[[TheAndroid]]

The grapes of Wrath. I swear I fell asleep at least 10 times reading that darn book.

 

[karandpr]

The telephone directory.Never got to finish it !

 

[NightAngel79]

The telephone directory.Never got to finish it !

 

[shawn1224]

The Bourne Sanction.

 

[NYCHitman1]

Harry Potter.. the very first one

Ever since then.. I've hated Harry Potter

 

[NYCHitman1]

The Bourne Sanction.

That book was a little odd but I kinda like the whole Bourne vs Arkadin thing. It was the worst of the 6 of them though.

 

[A.Nonymous]

Tuesdays with Morrie. Read it because a hot chick suggested it to me and ranted about how it was her favorite book. Looking to score some points with the ladies I read all 100 pages or so of it hoping it would get better at some point. It didn't. Waste of my life right there.

 

[Wei55zach]

Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, pointless clap trap with a less than impressive ending

 

[rwagnes]

What is the worst book you've read or worst piece of literature?

For me it has to be the metamorphosis. I just didn't like the beginning or end. Its kind of stupid when the main character dies, and how he magically turned into a vermin.

Ditto. That was the summer reading for my sophomore year of high school. I was an avid reader and I couldn't get through that book. I eventually finished it, minus the explanatory notes, etc. that we were supposed to read (and that were longer than the book itself).

My teacher threw a couple of fake cockroaches at us the first day of class without warning. (Granted one was a puppet, but the other was a little more realistic; both were unexpected.) It was her way of breaking the ice on the summer reading. Her justification? She'd do the same thing to our parents on parents' night.

 

[karandpr]

Yeah I know .Lack of sleep I guess .50+ hours with only 4 hours of sleep.Decoding morse codes without any spaces makes you do weird things ....:

 

[NightAngel79]

Yeah I know .Lack of sleep I guess .50+ hours with only 4 hours of sleep.Decoding morse codes without any spaces makes you do weird things ....:

Don't sweat it.... just have to throw a good facepalm pic up every once in a while for good measure, lol

 

[UrsusVIIILXXXVII]

Any recent Steven King book. I'm half tempted to even preemptivly throw his upcoming sequel to The Shining. The last book I somewhat enjoyed of his was Cell though apart from the idea of a sound broadcast through cellphones turning people into zombies is unique, every other portion of the story is as if he just forgot he wrote The Stand. It almost feels like he's run out of ideas and is just writing what worked in the past.

I may be in a small minority with this opinion but I didn't much care for The Catcher in the Rye. The stream of consciousness style was well executed but I just didn't care much for the actual story.