The Worst Book You've Ever Read - Page 2

http://chud.com/forum/showthread.php...t=House+Leaves

And the worst part of it is that it's all set-up. It establishes Ryan Jr. and the Campus and leaves a ton of stuff up in the air.

I like American Gods, but Anansi Boys is better.

To paraphrase Nick "Chelsea Cain makes me want to be a better misogynist."

She so desperately wants her Gretchen Lowell to be the new Hannibal Lecter without actually understanding the character of Hannibal and his relationship with Clarice.

I don't claim to be a literary scholar. Not remotely. And I expected this kind of reaction, honestly. I could tell you that my reading habits are more highbrow than they are right now, but I'd be lying...I read lighter stuff these days mostly, Christopher Moore, Terry Pratchett, etc. not slouches, but not Salinger either...so I'm not going to impress you with my current reading list. The best I can do is tell you that Pynchon's new book Inherent Vice is sitting on my bedside table unopened, and overdue from the library. But I'll most likely return it before I get a chance to read it. The intention of reading "important" books is always there, but more often than not I fall back to favorites these days.

But to be fair, I'm shitting on the *one* of DeLillo's novels that I've nearly read all of. I really wish that I had read it for a class and was able to discuss my frustration with it in a better setting. I'll even grant you that there might be some deeper level to it that I'm missing, but I didn't see it. Maybe being bored senseless by the characters was the point, I don't know. It probably hurt my perception of the book that I didn't really have anyone to discuss it with. I got the satirical jabs at academia, I get that it should be funny that an emergency preparedness organization is using an actual emergency to practice their emergency preparedness, I get that it's a postmodern reflection on our attitudes towards death, but everything about it fell flat for me. The satire was ham-fisted, the characters uninteresting, and the philosophy stagnant.

It's just an opinion. One that isn't well respected, I know. But it's by far the worst book I've read recently. One that should have been much better, in my opinion, based on the praise it has received. Write me off if you like, but there are *much* better "important" books out there. Probably even by DeLillo.

I'm sure I've read plenty worse but there was something profoundly annoying about Choke. I couldn't break the 60 page threshold with that pile. I get it Chuck, you're dark and filthy. Now, stop acting like a 14 year old.

... but he never did.

Oh, perish the thought!

I'd still like to hear what the issues with A Separate Peace are. I can see not liking it, but putting it on a worst list seems excessive.

Illuminate me then, man. Have you read it recently? Is there something about it that makes it unreasonable for a person to find it tedious and uninteresting?

Maybe they had to read it for school and that tainted it.
I must admit I hated Ethan Frome, but I read it in 10th grade. It hardly spoke to me at the time.

Never read it. But judging by your posts alone I think it's safe to say you were missing "something deeper."
I just thought it was funny that you presented the idea that it went over your head as a mere possibility and not a foregone conclusion.

Bob thinks he's so great cuz he read "The Pearl".

A Separate Peace and Atlas Shrugged. The former is just a badly written book that commits the dual sins of being melodramatic in the worst sense and having prose that is clunky as fuck. The latter is possibly the worst thing set to paper in the English language. It's not only a bad novel that says everything it has to say in the first half and then repeats its points in a more shrill and obvious way--for those in the audience who may have missed the point the first time, I guess-- but it's also a "philosophical" work that would embarrass most second year students at a decent school. I'd never been angry enough with a book to throw it against the wall hard enough to break the spine before I read that book and I haven't experienced the urge after.

I think his books should only be read when you are a teenager.

Worst book I ever read was a "Choose Your Own Adventure". I hated the ending. However, it was probably my fault.

Yes.

What the hell have some of you been reading all your lives. American Gods? White Noise? If these are the worst things you've ever read you've been horribly sheltered.

Am I going to have to post the picture of my bed covered in Magic: The Gathering books again?

That was followed by a short listing of the ideas that I *did* get. My point, poorly illustrated as it may have been, is that while I acknowledge that it is possible that it went over my head, I don't think that it did. I think the book lays it all out there, subtext bare for all to see, symbolism screaming to be noticed, and fails.

It was an attempt to say that if someone were to point out to me some grand meaning that I missed, I'd be more than willing to offer a "my bad". I don't think there is, but my literary analytical skills may have dulled over the years.

Easy...Brimstone by Lincoln and Child. Picked it up in an airport for a cross country flight and hated it so, so much. I am still stunned it is so well reviewed on Amazon and that these two guys get paid to put out crappy book after crappy book. In all honesty I did like the first Relic book if for no other reason that it gave birth to a Tom Sizemore starring vehicle with the guy who sees boobs in Just One Of The Guys. But Brimstone and its horrible Pendergrast (sp) character was the worst. The fact that people eat up Special Agent Pendergrast and beg for more just blows my mind. Imagine every thing that makes Holmes, Davenport and Cross interesting characters and somehow make it shitty = Pendergrast.

And a close second is anything by James Rollins. Anything.

Ghoul is easily Keene's weakest I've read. I generally like his stuff but taking Stand By Me and adding monster rape with throbbing demon penis isn't a good combination.

Those books used to be fun, and Special Agent Pendergrast was a cool character, but series did go off rails.

I know the chorus is already borderline deafening (lol) but....WHITE NOISE?!?

It's not only good, it's fantastic. I might be putting it on a bit of a pedestal since it was my first DeLillo read, but come on. Any book that contains this could have nothing but the words "dickdickdickdickdick" typed for pages before and after that very passage and I'd still give it a pass.

This deserved acknowledgement. So on behalf of... me: Ha!

Interview With the Vampire. Good god, Anne Rice needs to shut the fuck up.

Yeah, I agree with Tim Q.

I'm just digging myself in here deeper, I know. But it was the things like that scene at the barn that got me stuck on the idea that the whole point of the book was to illustrate concepts from a freshman, or maybe sophomore, philosophy class. It didn't come across to me as fresh at all.

The classroom riffing between the Hitler Studies professor and the other (was his obsession Elvis?...I'm having trouble remembering) visiting professor made sense in the context, two masters of their niche subjects jamming, but for me it crossed the line from interesting satire to pointless self-congratulatory rambling.

It's not fresh enough in my mind to really get into detailed debate, and like I said, I didn't finish it. But I spent a few months after reading it trying to get my wife to re-read it (she had recommended it in the first place) so I could have someone to talk about it with. It really drove me crazy.

One of the first things I mentioned in my trouble with it was that I couldn't distinguish between the philosophical meanderings of one character and another. They ran together for me, and I've been dying to see if a person who loves the book could accurately identify the speaker from a random reading of their thoughts. That was really what vexed me the most. Every character seemed to be driving home the central theme exactly, I couldn't see any variation. That's the thought that stuck with me as I kept reading, and it bothered me immensely.

Fuck. I have it on the shelf and I was debating if I should read it or not.

Damn.

ah, good to hear you were referring to that 'Ghoul'. Michael Slade's 'Ghoul' is a great mind-fuck horror novel.

Read "The Pearl" by John Steinbeck instead.

Read that 10 years ago. Next.

The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom-Y'know, the concept of heaven as a place where you learn about how your life affected others really isn't a bad one. Too bad it's pounded into the ground here with absolutely no subtlety whatsoever and writing so saccharine it makes you want to puke. It's like a mashup of Hallmark cards and Chicken Soup for the Soul (full disclosure: I'm actually not too hateful towards CSS because they tend to be good pick-me-up reads when you've had a really crappy day, but they are pretty sappy) gone horribly wrong. Is Albom's other stuff as bad as this?

Oh, and thank God I never had to read A Separate Peace in high school, because the movie version sucked ass.

I'd heard that you'd read that one. Shall I assume that it will go over my head?

My apologies to you and everyone else for being pissy about White Noise. My frustration with it has been knocking around in my brain for a couple of years now without an outlet, and I'm probably venting inappropriately. It took a reference to a throbbing demon penis for me to realize where my priorities should be...

I'm generally fine with monster boner as long as it's well written monster boner. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN has some finely written monster boner in it.

Right, because movie adaptations of books always translate exactly from the source material and never suffer along the trip from printed page to screen.

I came to A Separate Peace much later--a few years ago--actually, and found it to be moving and well written. It's far from my favorite book, but I'm kind of baffled at all the hate being leveled at it even by people who haven't read it.

TOO FAT TOO FISH by Artie Lange

Added to the list. Hopefully it's not gonna me wanna stab myself repeatedly.

It's a well known fact that Artie Lange was clean before reading The Historian.

The series is back on the rails, for the time being. It went on some mystifyingly horrible arc with Pendergast's twin brother and a twisted romance, but came back nicely with their latest, Cemetery Dance. Hopefully they stay on track for a while, because the last few books were crap, and I'm sure they were justifiably written off by more than a few readers.

All of those Pendergast books have turned into 'product'. I thought that 'Cemetary Dance' was pretty weak, actually.

I quit reading the first book of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series about twenty pages in. I have no idea why I read the first four Legend of Drizzt novels by R.A. Salvatore, but they all sucked shit. And it's not like I only realized it later, and I read them when I was young. I read them on the bus to class while in college.

I also read a bunch of Star Wars EU shit but I was in my early teens back then, so I thought they were pretty awesome.

It has nothing on their earlier books but definitely much improved from the last few in the series. I think they learned their lesson. And it's always nice to see when an author has the chops to whack major characters at the start of the novel.

I'll agree 100% with what you put in your spoiler text. I just wish that they could put out another book on a par with 'Cabinet of Curiosities'.

A Separate Peace isn't necessarily a bad book, so much as it's a monumentally depressing one. Moral of the book: "Your friends are jealous of you and subconsciously want to kill you." That's a great message to hear in junior high!

Fair enough, though I think the problems I had with the movie version (insanely pessimistic for the sake of being pessimistic, flat characters, awkward melodrama) are being echoed by people's complaints about the book in this thread.

I forget what it was called, but it was by Zora Neil Hurston. My god I hated that book.

Yet Lord of the Flies isn't singled out.

Maybe I'm morbid, but I'd prefer my kids hear truthful messages that speak to real issues, regardless of whether they're necessarily happy ones. Plus, much like Flies, the social structure at the boys' school might be illuminate the politics of their own situation a little.

I think The Chocolate War does a better job with that sort of thing than what I saw in the movie of Separate Peace, personally. Good point, though (especially about Flies).

Seconded on Chocolate War, another book I didn't read till I was well out of college.

Agreed. That book is great, and they haven't come close to matching it since. Their style of writing is pretty unorthodox; they take turns writing and fax pages to each other, while working on their individual novels. They may have fallen into a rut the last several years. Hopefully the books continue to improve.
Their next title comes out in a month or two, so we'll find out soon enough.

One thing about CoC, iirc at one point they were considering whacking D'Agosta instead of the NYPD cop who buys it in the book. Glad they didn't. He works as a pretty effective partner for Pendergast, I find.

This is probably because Lord of the Flies actually has some style. A Separate Peace reads like a story written about boys by a female creative writing major on the functional end of the autism spectrum. The account of the accident that uses the engine imagery made me want to tear my fucking eyes out after reading it.

I'm still hoping Lincoln/Child have tha balls to have Pendergast fall under the 'curse' that seems to drive all other members of his family insane.
I honestly feel that could reinvigorate the series...or just kill him off.

Until then, fuck these books.

So help me God, if you're talking about Their Eyes Were Watching God...

Jesus--White Noise, Zora Neal Hurston and The Bible (I get where you'r coming from with this one, but from a literary standpoint The Old Testament is fantastic)? I don't know what's more dismaying, that these get tossed out or that so many of you have given Dan Brown a chance.

The worst book I ever tried to read was The Poet In Exile, by The Doors keyboardist, Ray Manzarek. Yes, it's about Jim Morrison, a 'what if he did fake his death then came back' story. It, ,like everything Manzarek has done since the Doors (and much of what he did while still in the band), is laughably bad. I read it when I was a dumb middle schooler who thought Jim Morrison was the most amazing man to ever live. Sue me, it happens to lots of us (there should be a support group for former Morrison acolytes). I haven't tried to read any of Morrisons actual poetry since I started shaving, but I have a feeling that if I tried they'd probably find their way in this thread.