What is the worst book you've ever read?

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MissPickwickian
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22 Mar 2008, 9:58 pm

GreatScott wrote:
Eragon. My little sister listened to it obsessivly on tape, and it was so freaking cliche I couldn't bring myself to read it, despite my friends recommendations. Really- did that book have ONE original idea?


Unoriginality nothing. Paolini actually utilized a rather original fantasy weapon: The Prose of Death, wordsmithed in the boiling feces of the damned. :roll:


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31 Mar 2009, 10:03 am

I don’t remember if I already wrote this but I’d add to my private list of the most boring books “The Elder” – the second part of “Eragon”. I won “The Elder” in a contest (you had to send a question to Paolini; 10 chosen questions were answered by him during some interview and their authors got the book). It even has Paolini’s autograph. But this novel was boring as hell, I bet everything on that Paolini became popular only because he was a teenager when his first novel was published.



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31 Mar 2009, 10:14 am

Some might say I haven't read many books if I put this, but it quite literally was grinding my brain to death with how long it seemed to be dragging itself out for.

The first Wheel of Time book by Robert Jordan. Sure, there were bits I liked and stuff, but as I said, it felt so damn slow.



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31 Mar 2009, 10:36 am

Purplefluffychainsaw wrote:
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad - had to study it last year in school, and it bore me to tears.



And now something funny for those who didn’t like this book: in English „heart” means the physical organ but also something’s core. In our language “heart” was replaced by “jadro’ (I’m writing with no diacritics) which also has two meanings – a metaphorical one, like a core of something and a physical one because this word means… testicle :twisted: . So for the next time when you read this novel, recall this “The Testicle of Darkness”. :lol: It’s exactly how we call this book in the Polish translation (but nobody even laughs because we are too used to double meaning of this word).



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31 Mar 2009, 11:32 am

I'm reading Wuthering Heights for school at the moment, it is mindnumbingly boring at the moment, even for me. I'm disappointed cos I thought I would enjoy it. But apparently it gets better a bit later on. I hope so.

I don't normally read books I don't like, cos I stop reading if they start to bore me. So this would be the first.


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31 Mar 2009, 12:24 pm

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

This piece of *@$! and other Kiyosaki books on real estate investing were best sellers during the expansion of the housing bubble. For years, I had to endure a culture of people buying overpriced homes they couldn't afford and trying to explain to me while channeling Kiyosaki that its all about cash flow and leverage. The book read like an infommerical, which allowed people to apply their own mis-interpretation and led to the purchase of more Kiyosaki books. I read the book looking for actual concrete information and didn't find much. I grew more annoyed at every page turn.



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01 Apr 2009, 10:17 am

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni. God I have to stuggle reading that piece of s**t. All it was was about some boy from Afghanistan trying to atone for his sins for leaving his friend while his friend was buttraped by a child sociopath. Buttraped I tell you. That buttraped scene, besides not being written well, was unneccesary. Just makes me want to puke.

The main character was a narcissist in the beginning trying to claim his father's love. The boy's friend is his slave who he treats like dirt. The boy was spoiled and a coward. By the time he goes to America he finds his love, but instead of having the courage to talk to her father, he lets his dad propose her for him. After that the story became too predictable, and the dumbing down. Oh the dumbing down. He basically explained everything to us without letting the reader have the fun by guessing. Made me felt so stupid.

By the time we get to Afghanistan we know the the boy's friend has died. Sure, why not let the book have no point anymore? Anyways, we also learn that the boy, now an adult, and his friends were actually half-brothers. After that we soon learn that the man's brother had a son, and his father's friend tells the boy to take his brother's son. We finally go to the main character's hometown, and we get to meet the Taliban Official, who, obviously, is the sociopath who raped the main character's brother. We learn that the sociopath have the son, but he gave the main character a chance to take him. Of course, that only chance would be to fight him. The fight scene was tedious and worse than the climax of Eragon. Instead of showing us the Author listed the actions. He actually put that colon and made a series of actions. Finally, the main character is beaten so badly that he needs the little boy's help. The little boy shoots a metal bead into the sociopath's eye with his slingshot, and the two escape.

After that I put the book down. It seriously had no point after the main character's brother died, and it felt like something I read or seen before. Don't know what, but it sounded like a soap opera only worse. Overall, no likable characters, hatable main character, dumbed down prose, and no plot whatsoever.

Gosh. Never felt so stupid in my life. My teacher told me this book would be good, but I didn't believe her. Go Amazon.com and read an excerpt of it to see how bad it is. THat's the last time I'll read a #1 Bestseller book.



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01 Apr 2009, 10:43 am

Finally, someone else who disliked the Kite Runner! Call me heartless, but I thought it was sappy, manipulative, and poorly written.
Worst book I ever read was probably Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness. It was basically a slim volume of masturbatory gloating about the superiority of Objectivism over just about everything else on the planet.



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01 Apr 2009, 11:10 am

Batz wrote:
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni. God I have to stuggle reading that piece of sh**. All it was was about some boy from Afghanistan trying to atone for his sins for leaving his friend while his friend was buttraped by a child sociopath. Buttraped I tell you. That buttraped scene, besides not being written well, was unneccesary. Just makes me want to puke.

The main character was a narcissist in the beginning trying to claim his father's love. The boy's friend is his slave who he treats like dirt. The boy was spoiled and a coward. By the time he goes to America he finds his love, but instead of having the courage to talk to her father, he lets his dad propose her for him. After that the story became too predictable, and the dumbing down. Oh the dumbing down. He basically explained everything to us without letting the reader have the fun by guessing. Made me felt so stupid.

By the time we get to Afghanistan we know the the boy's friend has died. Sure, why not let the book have no point anymore? Anyways, we also learn that the boy, now an adult, and his friends were actually half-brothers. After that we soon learn that the man's brother had a son, and his father's friend tells the boy to take his brother's son. We finally go to the main character's hometown, and we get to meet the Taliban Official, who, obviously, is the sociopath who raped the main character's brother. We learn that the sociopath have the son, but he gave the main character a chance to take him. Of course, that only chance would be to fight him. The fight scene was tedious and worse than the climax of Eragon. Instead of showing us the Author listed the actions. He actually put that colon and made a series of actions. Finally, the main character is beaten so badly that he needs the little boy's help. The little boy shoots a metal bead into the sociopath's eye with his slingshot, and the two escape.

After that I put the book down. It seriously had no point after the main character's brother died, and it felt like something I read or seen before. Don't know what, but it sounded like a soap opera only worse. Overall, no likable characters, hatable main character, dumbed down prose, and no plot whatsoever.

Gosh. Never felt so stupid in my life. My teacher told me this book would be good, but I didn't believe her. Go Amazon.com and read an excerpt of it to see how bad it is. THat's the last time I'll read a #1 Bestseller book.


I haven't read it, but I saw the movie and it was great. And I don't think it was THAT obvious that the Taliban official was the rapist from when they were kids, because my dad and brother were just like, "What, does he know this guy or what?" I was the one who worked out that it was the same guy. I agree that the main character was spoiled and cowardly, though.

I think the movie did a good job of showing my little brother that the whole Taliban mess isn't something to be joked about in the playground, anyway.

On a side note, I hope I'm not becoming one of those people who have seen the movie of everything but never read the book. I just happen to have seen a lot of movies, LOL.


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Batz
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01 Apr 2009, 4:20 pm

gina-ghettoprincess wrote

Quote:
Batz wrote:
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseni. God I have to stuggle reading that piece of sh**. All it was was about some boy from Afghanistan trying to atone for his sins for leaving his friend while his friend was buttraped by a child sociopath. Buttraped I tell you. That buttraped scene, besides not being written well, was unneccesary. Just makes me want to puke.

The main character was a narcissist in the beginning trying to claim his father's love. The boy's friend is his slave who he treats like dirt. The boy was spoiled and a coward. By the time he goes to America he finds his love, but instead of having the courage to talk to her father, he lets his dad propose her for him. After that the story became too predictable, and the dumbing down. Oh the dumbing down. He basically explained everything to us without letting the reader have the fun by guessing. Made me felt so stupid.

By the time we get to Afghanistan we know the the boy's friend has died. Sure, why not let the book have no point anymore? Anyways, we also learn that the boy, now an adult, and his friends were actually half-brothers. After that we soon learn that the man's brother had a son, and his father's friend tells the boy to take his brother's son. We finally go to the main character's hometown, and we get to meet the Taliban Official, who, obviously, is the sociopath who raped the main character's brother. We learn that the sociopath have the son, but he gave the main character a chance to take him. Of course, that only chance would be to fight him. The fight scene was tedious and worse than the climax of Eragon. Instead of showing us the Author listed the actions. He actually put that colon and made a series of actions. Finally, the main character is beaten so badly that he needs the little boy's help. The little boy shoots a metal bead into the sociopath's eye with his slingshot, and the two escape.

After that I put the book down. It seriously had no point after the main character's brother died, and it felt like something I read or seen before. Don't know what, but it sounded like a soap opera only worse. Overall, no likable characters, hatable main character, dumbed down prose, and no plot whatsoever.

Gosh. Never felt so stupid in my life. My teacher told me this book would be good, but I didn't believe her. Go Amazon.com and read an excerpt of it to see how bad it is. THat's the last time I'll read a #1 Bestseller book.


I haven't read it, but I saw the movie and it was great. And I don't think it was THAT obvious that the Taliban official was the rapist from when they were kids, because my dad and brother were just like, "What, does he know this guy or what?" I was the one who worked out that it was the same guy. I agree that the main character was spoiled and cowardly, though.

I think the movie did a good job of showing my little brother that the whole Taliban mess isn't something to be joked about in the playground, anyway.

On a side note, I hope I'm not becoming one of those people who have seen the movie of everything but never read the book. I just happen to have seen a lot of movies, LOL.


If you happen to read the book, you'll see the flaws in the story and the writing. By the time you get to the end of chapter five you'll know what will happen throughout the book as you read it. There was too much forshadowing, and the plotline was so predictable you could get a 100% on a test just by guessing if you haven't read the book. Like I said, Hosseni dumbed down every thing for you, so of course you could guess everything and know the unnecessary details of each character's life. The movie is better than the book in my opinion.



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01 Apr 2009, 4:55 pm

If I don't like a book, I usually don't bother finishing it, so for me the question is kind of difficult to answer. I mean, I can't really claim that such-and-such is the worst book I've ever read if I only got halfway through it.

For example, I loved the film Apocalypse Now, so I tried reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It's only a short book. But I found it boring as hell and just gave up halfway through.

I think one of the most disappointing books that I actually read all the way through was Destination Moon by Herge. I've read all the other Tintin books, and they were all far more action-packed. I don't know, maybe there were subtleties to the story that my young mind just didn't appreciate.



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06 Apr 2009, 3:08 am

I'm going to have to go with "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemmingway. I know a lot of people like him and think he is "classic" and such, but it is honestly the only book I've ever started reading and couldn't finish because I hated it so much. I don't know what people see in his writing, but whatever it is I appear to be blind to it :D...I hope not a lot of Americans hate me for saying that lol


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06 Apr 2009, 11:37 am

HAL_9000 wrote:
The first Wheel of Time book by Robert Jordan. Sure, there were bits I liked and stuff, but as I said, it felt so damn slow.

I actually enjoyed the first one. That was a mistake, because it meant I tried to read the sequels. Not only does the Wheel of Time never end, neither does the freaking series! And like the metaphorical Wheel, the series also never changes - ever. Nobody learns anything, nobody experiences any character growth; Nyaeve's motivations are exactly the same when she's the village wise woman, when she's an Aes Sedai novice, when she's on the run - she's always doing the same things for the same reasons. You'd think Mat or Perrin would have learned from their adventures with the sa'angreal, but no dice - Perrin winds up as basically King of the Wolves, but still has a peasant farmer's fear of wolves, while Mat is still a womanizing gambler who never thinks about the future, even after being shown the error of his ways and acquiring an angreal that made sure he always won his bets. Even Rand al'Thor, with everything that happened to him, and with an ancient dead madman whispering in his head, remained essentially the same person as far as I got (about halfway through the fifth book, I think - it's hard to remember exactly, with so few landmarks...).

Among the worst single volumes I have ever read would have to be Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. The creation of the monster, the really interesting bit IMO, was covered in one unremarkable paragraph. Then the doctor and the monster proceeded to drone on, for chapters at a time, about the moral and ethical implications of this act. "Purple" is scarcely sufficient to describe this prose; "turgid" is given whole new levels of meaning. It's just too thickly written to be entertaining, at least by my standards. Was this woman being paid by the word or something?


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13 Apr 2009, 6:10 pm

Life of Pi I think. Parents loved it, I just didn't get it. I couldn't imagine it in my head or believe it. Totally weird and alien and a bit disgusting and shocking for me. Dad still owes me £5 because he said he would give it to me if I didn't enjoy it!


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13 Apr 2009, 6:39 pm

twilight series, I consider myself a book worm but this, ugh, it raped my eyes. It reads like a poorly written 12 year old, christian girl's silly romance dream (and that is saying a lot about fan fics!) this book rapes the western idea of a vampire and sets an unrealstic expection to girls!


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14 Apr 2009, 4:40 am

I am actually reading it. Atlas Shrugged. The only reason I'm doing so is because of, well, a bet for want of a better term.


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