What was the worst book you read in you life?

Question

The worst book I've ever read was:

"The Fountainhead" By Ayn Rand.

It was so horrible, I hated it with passion! It had extremely out-of-the world right-winged ideas of objectivism and extreme atheistic beliefs (*I have nothing against atheism, but I thought the author was way over the top with it), which I found really sickening. Ayn Rand siphons one's optimism and the true meaning of life down the drain, leaving you with the bleakness and monotony of the world. I got a major headach just reading it! I knew I was reading a landfill of garbage. Two words I would use to sum up the whole book would be: H U M A N G A R B A G E!

Richard E: I DID read "Atlas Shrugged", believe it or not because of this scholarship. The book was torture, but I couldn't do anything about it! Now that you mention it... I think that book was the WORST BOOK EVER WRITTEN!

Answer 1

okay I'm so happy to read this - someone else sharing my passionate hatred for the worst so-called "respected" writer in the universe!

The other day I was wondering "what IS the worst book I've ever read?" because like other people I realize that often I just don't FINISH a book I don't like, so that's where the bad books slide, leaving assigned books from school the only candidates for "worst book ever." So I'm racking my brains and can only come up with "The Grapes of Wrath" and that stupid chapter with that damn turtle that will never finish crossing the road.

why pick on poor old boring Steinbeck?

because my experience reading THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand was so horrible that I'd blocked it out of my memory! And *lol* I also read all of "Atlas Shrugged" as well for the same darn reason that you did.

I had all these pretentious friends in HS who were bragging about reading Ayn Rand and so I sat down and read it and hated it so much it made me want to smack everyone in the universe who thinks "objectivism" is a legit philosophy on their smug little self-centered objectivist bums. I spent a couple of weeks on a campaign trying to figure out if everyone who'd recommended the books either A: didn't understand them and thought they were deep because they are long, or B: everyone who recommended them believed in objectivism and thus were complete jerks.

so was it over after HS - lalabee's Ayn Rand horror?

oh no. Cut to - a horrible almost-blind date (I'd met him but didn't know him well and a friend was pushing us to go out to dinner.) We're flailing around at the restaurant for something (anything) to talk about and I say "well, do you like to read? I do" and he proudly trots out the fact that he'd just read "The Fountainhead!" I have to confess I was pretty darn mean from that point on. He'd already fallen into the category of "not cute enough to give my phone number to without having a great personality" (hence the friend nagging to get me to agree to the date) and now he'd just started bragging about how deep and intellectual he found the worst book ever! Needless to say I didn't think much of his personality (after a couple of sentences I also determined he didn't seem to really understand the book, leaving him solidly in category A.) argh!

Human Garbage is right! Rand is Wrong! Blech!

(ps aw.. how can anyone hate "From the mixed-up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler?" I love that book!)

Answer 2

Three come to mind:

"Deception Point" by Dan Brown. It was badly written, uninteresting and quickly lost all sense of control or realism. I got the impression that Brown had no idea what was going to happen next so it was badly thought through. It didn't seem as if he's even read the book.
"A Long Way Down" by Nick Hornby; disappointing considering what a talented writer he is. The narrative in which four people told the same story from their different viewpoints was certainly interesting but it lacked substance or believability and the characters seemed very one-dimensional, with the possible exception of Martin. I suppose I just expected too much from this.
"The Bourne Identity" by Robert Ludlum was not as enjoyable as the film - the book quickly stopped making sense, although that may have just been me. I gave up on it when the main character was in a Parisian clothes shop telling them to open a branch in the Bahamas, for no apparent reason. There may have been a reason, I don't really know.

Answer 3

I am surprised that some of you thought really good books boring, like Hemingway or Heller. It's a matter of perspective I guess. But you know there are certain books for which you just have to grow up both literally and figuratively before you can truly appreciate it. I had many authors which I hated, like Shakespeare and Dickens. And about seven years ago I would have said that the worst book ever was Dante's Inferno, I had so much trouble understanding and reading it. Now, I can truly say it's a masterpiece and so are Shakespeare's works, too. The worst book I ever read was....hmmm I don't even remember the title or the author, but it was something about a girl who run away from home. I just took it out of the library and started to read, but after a few pages I realized that it's not worth it. That was a book specially written for foreign learners of English, probably that's why it was so bad. One author I like to avoid though is Joseph Conrad. I don't hate his fiction, but I don't enjoy reading it either, although he was a master of the language. But his stories just don't take my breath away.

Answer 4

A book could be garbage, but I have never seen a book that was human, so I disagree that The Fountainhead was 'Human garbage'. I rather liked it, buy Rand's best book was 'We the Living'. If you hated 'The Fountainhead' , you will REALLY hate 'Atlas Shrugged'.

I tend to not finish or remember books I dislike. There are so many good books I don't waste my time with the bad ones.

Answer 5

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

It was assigned in a college class I had. I started it, boredom set in. On page 145 or so I realized that the narrative had switched from first to third person and I had missed it and had absolutely no idea who was talking! I went back to the begining and gamely read through to the shift again, hating every minute.

I gave up, went to my Prof, told him I would read every other book he assigned but simply could not slog through Heart of Darkness. I later found out that he had written his dissertaion on Conrad. I still got a B in the class, I don't know if I would have gotten an A if I hadn't told him the truth or if he gave me some extra credit for at least being honest.

Answer 6

Deception Point by Dan Brown, oh dear, Da Vinci is an ok pulp fiction book, deception point, garbage, utter garbage.

Either that or a book by Hanz Holtz (I think) called Witches, which looks at modern day wiccansd and thier practices, basically all he wanted was nudity and sex,i think he was dissapointed when he didn't find ritual blood drinking, orgies and human sacrifice.

An example a chapter on a midsummer ritual performed naked, mentioning how beautiful everyone was and how they looked when they moved, did it mention anything about the ritual. Only that there was some chanting and dancing.

The man is an idiot!!

Answer 7

I belong to a book club. The same person picked my votes for worst book. She's since dropped out.

One for the Money by Janet Evanovich
Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons by Lorna Landvik

Pointless blabber, of course what do you expect from an underwear model turned bounty hunter?????

Answer 8

I HATED a book I read when I was in 8th grade. It was about some writer who went to Alaska and ended up getting eaten by a bear. Stupidest story ever.

Other than that, a book called" Jemima J" was STUPID. When I picked it up, I thought "Oh! Hey! It's about weightloss!" What it turned out to be was a book about how you really do have to change your looks to get the guy you want,even if he was a jerk to you before you lost weight. Even when she was "heavy" she wasn't fat.

I wasn't a fan of Billy Bathgate either, mainly because the author had no realization of grammar or structure.

Answer 9

Did not like "The Sun Also Rises" Hemingway is such a jackass. I could actually feel my EQ (emotional quotient, as opposed to IQ or intellectual quotient) dropping as I turned each page. Yuck. The final straw was a six letter word used to describe people of African descent. Granted, the book was written in the twenties, but ignorance in any era is icky.

Answer 10

well i dont finish books i cant get into but there were a few i got to the end of and thought that it was several hours of my life i will never get back

for me it was green eggs and ham by dr zues (kidding)

no really it was a book i found amongst my grandparents belonging when i stayed there, (i know the signs were there werent they) it was a book written in the 1910's canned curse of the pyramid or something like that. luckily it was only a 200 page book but even so...