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Interesting that a few people have said Catch 22....a close friend thought that it was terrible (she only read about a quarter of it though!)
I absolutely loved it!
Umberto Eco – Foucault’s Pendulum.
I really enjoyed it, was hard going, needed to consult the dictionary regularly (but not too much) it's like a decent version of that 1st Dan Brown book, and it made me feel more cleverer than I really am.
Suspect I might fund it more difficult to reread since not being able to pull myself away from screens anymore.
Catch 22 for me also, but I was about 15 so probably worth another shot.
Most stephen king stuff, it’s like he gets to the end and thinks how am i going to finish this, ooh, i know a giant spider, or whatever.
I thought the God of small things was beautifully written, like lovely poetry, but got half way through and had absolutely no idea wtf was going on or who was who, so gave up!!
+1 for zen and motorcycle maintenance, iirc it started ok and was thought provoking but soon got unreadable.
Also +1 for Catcher in the rye, but, like others, i was early 20’s when i read it so might get it now, deffo didn’t feel urge to kill a beatle!
I've only ever not finished one book - 1984. Really, really boring. Not sure if it was because I started reading it after watching a stage version, or if it was just that it's boring.
Been a while since I've read a book, so can't remember many bad ones, but...
Shadowmancer by G P Taylor. Think it was a bestseller at the time but I found it boring and just didn't get it.
Anything by Terry Pratchett, Dan Brown or Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.
Catcher in the rye is a favourite but apart from that I'd agree with most suggested. Catch 22 and Zen and the art most definitely.
I'll throw in A Picture of Dorian Gray. Could not get into the dialogue at all. That was a recent chucked before finished.
I don’t get Pratchett at all, just can’t get on with that jokey, self referential style.
Terry has said himself that his early books were where he learnt to write.
Anything featuring the watch or moist von lipwig is pretty bloody good, i'd go with jingo as a good example of him being a very clever fella. And Tiffany Aching, i think that they're supposed to be a kids books though they might be my favourites.
think even accepting that Harry Potter’s for kids, Rowling basically figured out how to write in about the 3rd book of the series
If you want books about a school for wizards by someone who can actually write try the Earthsea series by Ursula Le Guin.
Another +1 for Moby Dick
I was also tempted to say Tess of the D'Urbervilles, I so nearly sacked that off, but glad I didn't. The last 40 or so pages, wow, where the aliens invade. Totally didn't expect that.
Straight in at No1 spot is Naked lunch by William Burroughs. A mate raved about it and lent it to me. Just bored me like nothing else. I think it seems worse after the glowing write up it was given.
Jane Eyre - my English teacher excitedly announced she had arrange for my class to study this during my GCSE English course. It was the book that had meant a lot to her and with the benefit of hindsight, what a nice thing to do. Sadly at the time as a 15 year old boy it couldn't have been less engaging. I struggled to get through the study guide.
I picked up a Dan Brown book on holiday once. Feel dirty thinking about it (not in a good way).
The Dirk Pitt book by Clive Cussler I read once was jaw-droppingly awful, painful to finish but I hate giving up on a book, even a bad one.
Ridiculous characters and plot, like 1970/80s Bond films, and he writes himself into the books as some kind of chiselled swarthy hero.
Utter tosh!
When they were popular, I gave 50 shade of Grey a go to see what it was like. I forced myself to endure maybe a 3rd of the book and left it in the Queensferry bothy of the Forth Bridge. Maybe some track worker is busy enjoying it now. The writing was terrible and the characters were limp (maybe not in all senses of the word).
And Down and Out, because Orwell’s just such a bloody tourist and hypocrite
Is it any worse than sleeping "rough" for charity? Different times.
Ursula Le Guin.
Urgh, more social science fiction, admittedly that was one book but I really never enjoyed Four Ways to Forgiveness.
Glad I'm not the only one who has struggled with Catch 22. Can't decide if it's beyond my level of satire or just right up its own arse.
Satanic Verses, Rushdie's most notorious book, is bloody awful, turgid stuff. Only the fatwa made it famous. Read it after loving Midnight's Children, which is a masterpiece.
There are plenty of absolutely terrible books out there, the disappointment is when you get one which is suprisingly awful, given the author's reputation or previous work.
For example, Philip Pullman - loved the Northern Lights trilogy (OK, the third one was slightly overblown), was bored senseless by his first follow-up novel. Can't even remember the title, something boaty.
Most stephen king stuff, it’s like he gets to the end and thinks how am i going to finish this, ooh, i know a giant spider, or whatever.
Again, loved his earlier stuff, picked up a couple of recent ones (Under The Dome) - it was a dreary idea for a short story stretched out well beyond breaking point.
Oh damn, just remembered the Dark Tower series. First few books were decent enough if long winded but the last ones just felt rushed and long for the sake of it rather than story telling.
Kite Runner - utter tosh.
The Remains of the Day (unless anything actually happened in the last third of the book that I didn't bother reading).
Hobbit / Rings / Tolkein - Why? Just Why? I cannot bring myself to concentrate sufficiently to try and extract any content from the whimsical shite.
(Quite like Catch 22, but it was a bit of a cult thing at the time. Also Catcher in the Rye is OK, and quite liked Birdsong, but not any of his others.)
robinson crusoe is the worst in recent memory.
i liked the jason bourne books, although he does go off topic for 200 pages in the second or third book
Hobbit / Rings / Tolkein – Why? Just Why? I cannot bring myself to concentrate sufficiently to try and extract any content from the whimsical shite.
It beautifully written ( IMO of course) and paints a lovely set of pictures with words. Its a good v evil parable with side excursions into greed and avarice. Its an adventure story. It has a lot of depth to it.
When they were popular, I gave 50 shade of Grey a go to see what it was like.
At last someone has actually been able to give the definitive answer to what is the worst book ever written. Someone bought it for me as a joke, I read quite a lot of it because the pleasure of hating something so much was addictive. Truly the most talentless writer ever to be published, 99.999999% of the population would write a better book if they were sat blindfolded at a typewriter wearing boxing gloves!
Philip Pullman – loved the Northern Lights trilogy (OK, the third one was slightly overblown), was bored senseless by his first follow-up novel. Can’t even remember the title, something boaty.
Yeah, picked that one up last summer, made it to the end but god it was crap. The ones I generally end up hating are those billed as "literature" (as opposed to genre), where a beautiful use of language neatly conceals a piss-poor plot. Birdsong, Oscar and Lucinda, The Magus, that kind of thing.
I absolutely loved Robinson Crusoe when I was a kid but like a number of the books referred to, I liked them when first read/I was younger but can't get on with them now. On the Road and Catch 22 being two of them but also as non-'classic' I tried re-reading some Flashman books and they were just dated dross.
Books I felt were rubbish rather than just not liking them were 50 Shades of Grey, The Da Vinci Code and most recently the autobiography of that bloke from Eurythmics.
It's not often I don't finish a book, but two I haven't managed to get past the first 50 pages or so are:
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
Should I try again?
P.S. I love The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - some great characters along with the adventure (also IMO).
gormenghast, wasp factory and into thin air, all utter utter crap in their own joyfully @@#$ way.
Lee Child's Jack Reacher books. The same story written 30 times over.
I’ve never touched Lord of the Rings books since I changed schools at about 11 years old and my new class were having The Hobbit read to them by the teacher. It made no sense and just sounded stupid to my Commando comic reading self. donner und blitzen! I knew it was only for dirty collaborators and not my type of thing at all.
It beautifully written ( IMO of course) and paints a lovely set of pictures with words. Its a good v evil parable with side excursions into greed and avarice. Its an adventure story. It has a lot of depth to it.
I'm a fan of LOTR, I read it at an impressionable age and continue to revisit it. But unlike some books which I revisit I don't think I'm finding much new in re-readings of LOTR, it's just pure escapism. None the worse for that and I suspect it's something I'll keep returning to for most of my life but I find it a bit one dimensional now.
Embassytown - China Mieville
The Silmarillion - JRR Tolkien
The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy.
The last one is okay, but it takes a bloody long while getting there.
The Dirk Pitt book by Clive Cussler I read once was jaw-droppingly awful, painful to finish but I hate giving up on a book, even a bad one.
Ridiculous characters and plot, like 1970/80s Bond films, and he writes himself into the books as some kind of chiselled swarthy hero.
Utter tosh!
Oh man - my dad used to love 'em, they are truly awful.
The Information by Martin Amis was truly awful.Got a feeling I would really struggle with Ulysses as well.
Embassytown – China Mieville
Glad you said this one! Big fan of CM but I've started this one so many times, thought "WTF?" and put it back on the shelf. I've had it a few years and it's in pristine condition. Might give it another pop at some point but I doubt it.
I once tried a Tom Clancy book, probably in the late 90s, and in the 1st chapter it had the line:
"...Wisconsin bred, entrepreneurial zeal"
I said out loud NOPE, put the book on a shelf and never looked at it again.
Haven't tried TC since.
MrsDeth once read the Hunger Games books and insisted they will change the word (I am exaggerating) and suggested I read them.
I did, and they are not that good, certainly declining quality as the tale trudges on.
I hate these threads, am sorry to say that so much of the above just looks like empty posturing - "ooh look at me, I can dismiss revered classics as 'shite'"
I reckon many of the titles above would not have been suggested if they weren't already famous, e.g. if expectations weren't already high.
I loved Catch 22, but I stopped trying to read it as a story from start to finish and just read it as a series of chapter long picture postcards from a time and place, allowed me to enjoy the imagery, writing and humour without tying myself in knots trying to follow a story.
Virtually every book has its merits, it's the fault of the reader if they can't appreciate them, although I'll concede there is such a thing as the wrong book at the wrong time, I wouldn't take Gormenghast on a beach holiday...
Blimey, I thought this was just a lickle thread about books we didn't like much, not whether we thought the author had wasted their lives writing them.
Got a feeling I would really struggle with Ulysses as well.
If you don't struggle with Ulysses, you haven't read it properly. It's not designed to be an accessible work, although many of the symbols and themes would be instantly recognisable to a classically-educated audience at the time. Not recommended for light-hearted page-turning 🙂
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
I used to browse the local charity shops for reading material, and the common theme was that every one of them had at least one copy of this. 🙂
“ooh look at me, I can dismiss revered classics as ‘shite'”
I totally disagree with that. I read lots and mostly I enjoy everything that I read however sometimes I do not like a book. I am entitled to an opinion on my enjoyment of a book and shouldn't just assume it is my lack of ability, or that I read it at the wrong time or whatever. It's the same with anything that is subjective - music, art, film, food, dance etc etc etc.
It is also interesting that you exampled Catch 22 as my OP lists my dislike of Something Happened which I only read because I enjoyed Catch 22 so much.
It is also interesting that you exampled Catch 22
To be fair I just exampled it because it gets mentioned a lot and I really liked it, maybe just took it personally!
My post was a bit knee-jerk, I have absolutely no problems with people not enjoying books, lord knows there's a stack of half-read unlikely-to-be-revisited 'classics' on my bedside table, but dismissing virtually any book with a one word epithet is just lame, the very fact that this thread is about books suggests it should be attracting people that can muster more than just one-word reviews!
“ooh look at me, I can dismiss revered classics as ‘shite'”
No, trust me, The Jam: Our Story is properly horrid, in a "I've read this, so you don't have to" sort of way.
On LOTR, I can't help feeling that there was a meeting with his publishers after 250 pages or so where the publisher noticed that the Hobbits hadn't even got out of the Shire yet; and had a bit of a rant...After which you can tell the pace decidedly picks up it's skirts and starts jogging for a bit...and you can tell it gets out of breath just as it meets Tom Bombadil....which just seems like JRR's revenge...
the very fact that this thread is about books suggests it should be attracting people that can muster more than just one-word reviews!
Okay then...
Something Happened by Joseph Heller was really very shite and nothing happened.
the characters just miraculously find what they need exactly when they need it. Oh we’re starving and there’s no hope of finding food, oh, here’s some. It lost all sense of jeopardy, which is kind of important.
I liked this - this describes my frustration with 'Stardust' by Neil Gaiman, it just seemed a bit soft and fluffy and dreamlike and easy. But then I remembered my dad had read it and loved it whilst high on morphine and slowly dying of cancer, so I could see the merit of a book that was perhaps without jeopardy... Otherwise known as escapism which is justification enough for most trashy novels I reckon (Andy McNab probably included, not sure I've actually read any of his).
Same reason I will re-re-re-read virtually any of the first 15 of the Discworld Novels, they're popcorn, like re-watching Bojack Horseman endlessly. Some nights I'll want intellectual and literary stimulation so will pick up Danubia by Simon Winder, other nights I just need to rest my eyes on something familiar, colourful and funny e.g. Discworld.
...And TBH, some 'classics' are properly rubbish. Many many were reviewed and promoted by friends of the authors or reflect the zeigiest of the time, and these days are pretty much unreadable. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" falls into that category, as does fashionable (at the time) stuff like "On the Road" To us it feels as clunky as your dad saying "Cool" in an un-ironic way...Plus for that book in particular; the main character is a total shit to everyone he meets, and as that's Jack himself...you do start to form an impression of the man...
Most stephen king stuff, it’s like he gets to the end and thinks how am i going to finish this,
Funnily enough, the book of his I enjoyed most (read it in a day) was Green Mile.
It was written as a serialised novel, so every 1/4 ish of the book there's a climax... so it keeps you hooked. Maybe I should read more of his other stuff.
Maybe I should read more of his other stuff.
I used to read loads of his stuff as a teenager and there was some pretty gripping stuff but his later work really does get a bit samey.
Most stephen king stuff, it’s like he gets to the end and thinks how am i going to finish this,
See "It"...so wait, this is an multidimensional being and it's deadly foe is a (world creating) Turtle from an alternative universe?...OK Stephen
Catch 22 for me also, but I was about 15 so probably worth another shot.
I read Catch 22 in my teens and thought it was utter bilge, reread it again in my late 40's and thought it was really good.
Jodeph Heller served in a B25 squadron in Italy in WWII, and started writing the book around 10 years later. He was probably writing from the point of view of someone that had had experiences that had aged him prematurely. I think that is when you have to read it, when you're older and more jaded and cynical.
I thought the film was rubbish, and still do. The TV series from 2019 was a different matter though as that was very good, it caught the spirit (and ridiculousness) of the book brillliantly!
He was probably writing from the point of view of someone that had had experiences that had aged him prematurely. I think that is when you have to read it, when you’re older and more jaded and cynical.
Yep, when you work in construction and have to sit through meetings reviewing trackers of reviews of trackers of reviews, your thoughts immediately turn to Catch 22!
The TV series from 2019 was a different matter though as that was very good, it caught the spirit (and ridiculousness) of the book brillliantly!
I need to binge watch this some weekend, loved the first episode but am such a lazy TV watcher I never got round to watching any more.
Stephen King is great at writing characters I think, but falls down on plot two thirds of the way through 90% of his books. Never understood why he’s classed as the king of horror either. I’m a big fan and most of his books aren’t remotely scary.
When it comes to people not liking ‘The classics’ I think it comes down to a lot of them being of the time and written in a way that just doesn’t work for a lot of people now. I downloaded loads of them for free when I first got a Kindle. Only managed to finish Treasure Island and Heart of Darkness. Others such as Frankenstein, Sleepy Hollow, Grapes of Wrath etc were just hard work and/or extremely boring to read.
I’m also not a fan of Pratchett, Tom Holt or Catch 22. Humour is difficult to hit in a novel and I just don’t find any of them remotely funny. I do love Jasper Fforde though. Mainly because he writes a bloody good story that happens to have some humour. Where’s the sequel to Shades of Grey Jasper?
Wuthering Heights is the best bad book for me. I tried twice and didn't get past page 30. Indulgent, wordy drivel.
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
I used to browse the local charity shops for reading material, and the common theme was that every one of them had at least one copy of this. 🙂
Thanks martinhutch. Probably quite telling. 🙂
Some of the classics are hard work for sure - don't know how widely read Henry James is these days but I found his novel The Ambassadors absolutely brutal. Each page felt like a heavy bench press. Very straightforwardly written as well but just a suffocating style - wouldn't call it rubbish, I'm sure there's a great inner book there, I'm just not interested in finding it.
I thought Nabakov's Pale Fire was rubbish. An early example of metafiction, it's probably one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, by an acknowledged master, so it's just barely possible I might be missing the point with it. But I thought it read like a giant nerd gotcha joke - ball-achingly smug and self-satisfied. To give a sense of this people argue over whether the central poem is either brilliant in its own right (it's obviously not), shite (it is), or deliberately shite as a key to unlocking the book's mysteries.
I thought the film was rubbish, and still do.
I’d agree, apart from the mass B25 take-off scene. That’s wonderful, but only about two minutes of the whole two hours.
Stephen King's problem is that most of his books go:
Beginning
_
_
_
Middle
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
_
End
_
This only gets worse as his books get longer, he just pads out the middle even more.
I might be missing the point with it.
theres so many ways of reading it (and the literary arguments have apparently split life-long friendships). I think you have to understand Nabakov’s own life to “get” it ( the exile, the mistaken murder and so on)... I can’t decide if it’s genius or like you, I’ve been had...
What about Italio Calvino? Anyone think any of his books where shite? (I didn't I enjoyed Numbers in the Dark).
Grapes of Wrath etc were just hard work and/or extremely boring to read.
:-O
I LOVED that book - and it has the most perfect last page ever written.
Catch 22 and Heart of Darkness are good calls. Anything by Graham Greene, Henry James and John Le Carre here.
I've found my tolerance for sticking with books has diminished advice got older . When I was 20ish I used to go into fopp records in Glasgow and you'd be able to get bukowski and Douglas Coupland and books like that for a couple of quid each and I'd read them and stick with them and force myself to finish , to be fair I really liked some of the Bukowski stuff . Now if something doesn't grab me pretty quickly I don't want to waste my time .
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Anything by Graham Greene, Henry James and John Le Carre here.</span>
I started reading John le carre stuff after watching the film of tinker tailor soldier spy and got really into it , I love all the George smiley books .
I LOVED that book – and it has the most perfect last page ever written
I first read it nearly 35 years ago and it's not something I'll ever forget. I was on the number 73 bus just coming up to Oxford Circus and I remember thinking I want to get up and read this page to everyone on the bus. It was 30 years before I re-read the book, I was always fearful that it wouldn't have been the masterpiece I remembered, I couldn't have been more wrong, it was every bit as moving and powerful as I remembered and also just as relevant.
^ Thanks for that - I recently looked for my copy so I could re-read it (like yourself I read it some time ago and haven't read it since) however I couldn't find it so I will have to buy myself a new copy I think.
Page 4 and no mention of Sven Hassel? I somehow read several of these war books as a teenager. The worst pulp fiction ever.
I was given Along Came a Spider by James Patterson by a relative and at the time knew nothing about Patterson. After about 30 pages I got very bummed out that so many people enjoy this cliched garbage, god almighty it was awful! The best way I could describe it was if a teenager had written a shoddy fan fiction about a bad 90s Hollywood blockbuster.
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace. Pretentious and ridiculously long.
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon. Long and ridiculously pretentious
When we emptied the house of the mil after her death she had a few James Patterson books. I picked one up and gave it a try, what struck me that this book wasn’t his first novel and he wasn’t some teenager knocking out an essay for their mock GCSE English exam. He was a many times published author with about 100 books to his name and a ‘reputation’ as a brilliant exciting author (at least to the people who wrote his blurbs for him on the back cover)
Every word was utterly contrived and cliche ridden bollox. Painfull, I lasted about 30pages and could take no more.
My mother once gave me a book by Harlan Corben (sp) awful nonsense, just awful.
You're all lucky to be able to read, i had a very poor upbringing and never had the opportunity to learn, oh to one day read a book, any book.
Off topic slightly - has anyone ever taken a book back to the shop because it was bad? 🙂
Non Fiction rather than non fiction.... Many moons ago I decide to teach myself a bit of basic web design and bought a book that promised to teach you how to use Dreamweaver in a week. Three weeks later I took it back to Borders and said that basically, it was faulty - it hadn't taught me how to use the program at all, let alone in a week. So they gave me my money back. They said they'd regularly deal with returns for manufacturing faults - miss-printing, missing pages and so on but they'd never had a book return because the content didn't work.
(it was a genuine issue of cover miss-selling the contents - it claimed to cover both PC and Mac versions of the software but in fact only covered Mac specific elements about 10% of the time and the two versions had different menus and GUIs)
I'm an utter philistine when it comes to supposed great books.
My top three 'this is crap, I thought it was supposed to be amazing' books are:
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Notes from a Small Island
I can't get into any of them and have tried several times.
Also A Brief History of Time - but that is because my brain can't cope with it.
Tessaract by that bloke who did The Beach. No story whatsoever.
Then some book by an American sniper who was the last man standing mainly because he was protected by god and George W bush.
Stephen King is great at writing characters I think, but falls down on plot two thirds of the way through 90% of his books. Never understood why he’s classed as the king of horror either. I’m a big fan and most of his books aren’t remotely scary.
As above, his characters are wonderful.
I enjoyed pretty much everything up to IT, and disliked pretty much everything that came after.
And not scary?
Please, Pet Cemetery is utterly terrifying on the subject of grief and loss, as is The Shining on alcoholism and dysfunctional relationships.
Timing is everything.
Steinbeck is wasted on children, they don't have the life experience to relate to it.
And Catcher in the Rye is wasted on adults, because they do.
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Notes from a Small Island
I loved all of those! And a lot of others in this thread...
Two books that I tried to read twice and gave up twice:
Midnight's Children (felt like it was desperately trying to be Great Literature)
Brideshead Revisited (I hear enough about the aloof champagne-quaffing aristocracy in the news, I don't want to read about them for pleasure too)
And Catcher in the Rye is wasted on adults, because they do.
Ha, true. I absolutely loved that as a self absorbed 16 year old with the weight of the world on my shoulders. I imagine I would hate it beyond words now at 41!
LOTR, half a million words of overblown waffle. I couldn't stand it, never got past the first half the first book. Conversely, I quite liked the Hobbit.
People rail about the quality of writing by Rowling, but on the whole the Potter series is better, more to the point and hits the right notes for target audience at chez monkfinger, and yes, agreed, picks up greatly after the first two books. On a similar fantasy note, Le Guin is excellent.
Stephen King is awful. A one page summary of each book is more entertaining. And the plots all go wrong, as has been noted. When he actually stuck to "short" stories he was good.
Ayn Rand, just no.
Dickens, no.
I like Rushdies books in general.
People rail about the quality of writing by Rowling,
Her writing is fine.
Her editor(s) lost their nerve as she became more successful.
Anything by Shakespeare. It’s just not realistic. When was the last time you spoke in iambic pentameter, innit?
Chaucer. Some dirty bits but the guy can’t even spell. Did he even get an English O level?
Thomas Hardy. Even got the title wrong. Far From The Madding Crowd? LMAO It’s “maddening”, mate!!
Her writing is fine.
That's about the best you can say for the writing. They're decent stories with some good themes but the writing is nothing special and decidedly clunky in parts. That's not a criticism, I still like them, just an observation.
Moby Dick is excellent, although granted there are a few bits that are quite difficult to get through (mainly the "this is how a whale is chopped up bits" but I even found that interesting). My favourite quote:
"there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”
And Catcher in the Rye is wasted on adults, because they do.
Nah, even at 16, I thought Holden was an entitled prick.
I am Pilgrim - Terry Hayes. Just utter dross, basically Dan Brown with a US military obsession. Bleurgh.
Vanity Fair - found it in a free book box and it just drags.
More votes for Zen, Bourne, Hardy. Tolkien I did because I felt I had to and won’t do again, didn’t read any of his appendices (WTF)