What’s the worst book you ever read?

Answer 1

The Tommyknockers by Stephen King, it was very drawn out and oh so boring!

Answer 2

I try to keep going and finish any book I start no matter how dire, but recently found one I just couldn't cope with - The Bone Hunter by Tom Holland. I got it out the library cos the synopsis looks good - golden days of dinosaur discoveries, murder, fueds etc, but I just found it such heavy going. There's not even anything specific I can say made it so much worse than any other book... there was a tendency to write a chapter where a sentance would do but that's not so unusual!

One I really didn't like but have now read twice, because I keep convincing myself that I must be missing something as it has such a huge reputation, is Lord of the Rings. Too long, too much description of the scenery they're travelling through and not enough of what's going through the characters heads. I loved the Hobbit, and I love Middle Earth and think it was fantastically constructed, the Lord of the Rings movies are some of my favourites of all time, but the book(s) left me cold.

Answer 3

Quite a few candidates...

'Dublin - A Novel' by Sean Moncrieff - just stunningly shallow and awful

'Mein Kampf' by Adolf Hitler - turgid, pretentious and dull with all-too-brief flashes of self-knowledge

'I Will Fear No Evil' by Robert A. Heinlein - although high marks for camp value, basically skin-crawlingly icky

'Revelations' by John - yes that book from the Bible. It reads like the fantasies of a criminal lunatic

'The Amityville Horror' by Jay Anson - schlock fiction posing as fact, fraudulent and exploitative

'Jewish Cookery' by Florence Greenberg - quite the most stomach-churning recipe book I've ever seen, unless that is you like the sound of curried bananas with spaghetti, or steaks cooked for 20 minutes

'Dianetics' by L. Ron Hubbard - ten pages of basic Freud watered down and spun out into 600 pages of coma-inducing drone, with a lot of fancy extra jargon to conceal the theft

Of all these, though, the worst has to be the Moncrieff novel, a book of such surpassing badness - it manages to be simultaneously lurid and dull, which is quite a neat trick - that I was compelled to bury it at low tide on the beach near the house where I was staying when I read it. (Why did I read it all the way through? To make sure it was bad all the way down.) I did this not purely out of vengefulness, but so that at least one copy of it would be lost forever to the elements, so that nobody else need waste hours reading the stupid thing.

Having said that, the Hubbard book and the Hitler book between them have probably prompted more actual harm in the world.

Answer 4

When I was a Teenager I picked up Das Capital by George Friedrick Engels and Karl Marx the Communist Bible in the local Library and tried to read a few Pages. It is Extremely hard stuff to get Through, it is better than counting Sheep for making you fall Asleep. I started to nod off standing up reading it. All about the Prolitariate and the Capitalist Etc EtcEtc Etc.
Turned over a few Pages and it continued in that vein on its merry way ad infitnitum Etc Etc. Turned over some more Pages and the same. Believe me its the most boring Book Imaginable on this Planet. It is about Four Inches Thick it makes an Excellent Doorstop. I put it down and had to go outside in the Street for Air I was getting Dizzy. Good Luck.

Answer 5

I've never been able to read more than a few pages of Lord of the Rings so I have now given up although it seems that 'everyone else' thinks it is great.

Recently I got Steven King's "Lisey's Story". It has got to be the worst book he has ever written - a big disappointment.

Answer 6

It`s a toss-up between Dan Brown - the da Vinci code and one called Spiral by Andy Remic (I had the misfortune to be stuck with a book of his that had this and it`s sequel Quake that I was told I "should read") both as bad as each other.
The worst I tried reading was Ghormenghast - never got past the first chapter - boredom set in.

Answer 7

I know it sounds lame, but 'High School Musical' the book of the film. It's very badly written, with so many mistakes and un-readable scentences that I felt like screaming and throwing it in the bin. Truly the worst book I have ever read.

Answer 8

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis is the worst by several miles. Super Cannes by J G Ballard was a huge disappointment after his others, and like some others I can't get past page 1 of either Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit.

Answer 9

Okay, I'm going to say it...Eragon. Seriously. I think it's because I read, many years ago Anne McCaffrey's series, Dragonriders of Pern. Loved it and love the genre. Saw lots of positive reviews for Eragon, but once I started it, I found it difficult. It seemed disjointed and was full of short sentences and transitions that frustrated me. Sort of walking along a curb and continually falling off - just didn't flow for me. I couldn't finish it. No, I haven't seen the movie and probably won't. I'm a bit curious about the second book, just to see if the style of writing has changed any as the author grew.

Answer 10

Algorythm by Jean Mark Gawron. One of the WORST science fiction novels ever written. So boring, it could be used to put bricks to sleep. Made NO sense whatsoever. Second worst was a book by Jaqueline Lichtenberg, but I can't remember which one. Dull as dishwater---worse the Danielle Steele! At least there's sex in Danielle Steele books!

Answer 11

Ive read a few naff books in my time and couldn't remember the names because they were so bad but i do remember i couldn't get into the Tolkien books and also Steven King was a struggle to read they were just sooo boring and hard work, books should be a pleasure to read not hard work.