Worst Book Ever

[Trapper]

I was going to address this on the the "best/worst novel you were forced to read" thread, but...

I wasn't forced to read this.

Back in the days when music came on vinyl records I used to feel that I should listen to every track on the album (eg I didn't particularly care for "Bullet the Blue Sky" on U2's "The Joshua Tree", but I'd listen to it anyway as part of the artist's vision).

When I started a book I'd finish it no matter how much I hated it.

And I read this one novel...

It was called "Taurus". I don't remember the name of the author.

It was about an old one-eyed bullfighter and his rivalry with the bull that had taken his eye decades before. It centred on the bullfighters regret about drunkenly raping an underage girl outside the "cantina" many years before. Supposedly the bull (which had survived) knew all about this, and our "hero" had a recurring nightmare of being in a confessional booth, telling the priest all about it, and then hearing the snorting of a bull on the other side of the confessional screen.

I'm not even going to start about what the bull had been getting up to in order to provoke the final conflict between the two, as it was truly and utterly disgusting.

I cannot believe that that novel got published.

I don't believe that any other Watchers would have been stupid enough to read such a book in it's entirety, but I'd be interestested to hear about the worst books you all HAVE read.

[sgt.null]

I am so looking for that novel. if it got published, there has to be someone who will publish my stuff.

the worst book I ever read. the Great Gatsby hands down. it almost put me off of reading. the complaints of the idle rich...

[Waddley]

Worst book I ever read... hrm...

I can't remember the name, but it's about this guy who has some sort of incurable disease, and he's really a whiny bitch, and so he gets whisked away to another world with magic and stuff... anyway, it sucked, never bothered to finish it.

I kid! I kid! Hehe.

I'd probably put the most recent (ever book after 6) Wheel of Times on my "worst books ever" list. I don't know how I managed to pull myself through chapter after chapter of nothing happening, the same female character being used over and over again under different names (remember when Min was actually the one unique freaking chick? Yeah, not so much any more.) and the constant whining from everyone. (Except Mat. And the thief-taker. Whatever his name is... I love me somathat.)

Otherwise, I'm generally not too picky about my books and like almost everything.

[Alynna Lis Eachann]

I liked Great Gatsby. It was well-written, and the whole point was to showcase the waste of the rich.

Worst book ever read? Dunno - if I don't like something, I just put it down. By those standards, I've put down a great many things that other people loved. I think, though, maybe my least favorite book that I read all the way through was Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez . He went to school on a scholarship, and he bitched about it. Worked a summer doing construction, and complained about being the smartest one there - apparently what he wanted was to be one of the uneducated day-laborers... I don't like people who write about their own self-pity in anything other than scathing terms (and I am such a hypocrite for saying that), so this tops my worst book ever list, even as I admit that I might, might might appreciate it more at this stage in my life. But I don't think so.

[lucimay]

really? you didn't like Rodriguez? hmmm. i liked it okay. had to read it for an english class. he does commentary and essays on the Mcneil Lehrer report (or whatever they call it now that McNeil is gone) and i like his stuff usually.


worst book i ever read...well...usually if i don't like reading it...i just stop. i don't read something i don't like all the way thru. i might say Notes from the Underground is giving me fits but i don't think it's a bad book. just not hookin me.

[Marv]

The Alchemist by Paolo Cuelho (sp.).

I also hated The Da Vinci Code.

[Cail]

For the life of me, I can't remember the author or the title to this book...

When I was in 7th grade (12 years old, 1980) I found a paperback of a horror book in my mmath class. It was about a high school girl who was babysitting for a family of 4 or 5 kids for 2 weeks. No sooner did the parents leave than the older boys hit her over the head and tied her to a bed. Throughout the course of the book she was repeatedly raped (not a single character was over 16), sodomized, beaten, and tortured. The night before the parents returned, the kids tied her to the fence and pushed a hot fireplace poker through her abdomen until she died.

I read this book 26 years ago, and it still sticks to me. I can't remember if there was a point to it, of if it was just sadistic. I'd actually like to read it again to see if it really is as detestable as I remember it.

[lucimay]

wow. let me know if you find it. i'd like to see if its that detestable too!!

[DukkhaWaynhim]

A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole. It got placed on a summer new-classics-must-read list, and I bought it and read it on a whim. This is why I will never buy a non-fantasy book on a whim again.
I kept waiting to get the meaning of it - to pick up some irony that had so far escaped me. I still felt that way on the last page of the book. I will never get that time back. Crap. Pure crap.

DW

[Trapper]

Cail's book sounds like a genuine rival to "Taurus".

Like "American Psycho" if it was targeted at the tweener demographic...

[danlo]

If a books really bad I'll forget the author on purpose. I've said this before (somewhere in Gen Sci Fi\Fantasy) but the first book of Michael Jefferies' The Loremasters of Elundium, it may have been called The Runelord, was the most ridiculously written thing I've ever read. SRD should have sued the publishers for the blurb that read "Comparable to Donaldson and Tolkien at their best."

The most boring book I've been forced to read is Joyce's Dubliners. And, probably the worst book is (drumroll) Terry Brooks' Angelfire East, the third book in the, once promising, Knight of the Realm, trilogy-that had a good start with Running With the Demon.

[sgt.null]

damn I had forgetten American Psycho. that was a wretched book.

[drew]

One book we had to read in school was called I Am David.

It's about a boy who was set free from a Nazi Concentration camp at the end of WWII and then goes looking for his mother..it was a good idea but poorly written-like whn he wonders who the King of Englasnd is, and he's told there is a Queen now--Even though the war ended a good ten or eleven years before Li got the throne.

[Holsety]

I would have to say the book "Doom's Break", which concludes the "Ancient Enemy" series by Christopher Rowley. I've never really been able to rationalize why I like the Bazil Broktail books, but I'm a fan of Rowley nonetheless. My lack of decisiveness is probably because I read Rowley when I was rather young (around 10-13), though I have a clearer idea of many other books that I read as a kid.

Anyway, "Doom's Break" was to me a rather weak conclusion. Although Rowley writes interesting characters in his books in general, the conflicts are usually extremely black/white. In "The Ancient Enemy" there were slight shades of grey earlier in the series, but Rowley drops these towards the later part.

Basically, the series is about this kingdom of monkey-ish humanoids who've developed a society after the fall of mankind. The kingdom of Shasht, where humans still rule, attacks them. Although it's a generally evil place, we get some explanation that begins with a sort of look at how the culture might've degraded so far, but rounds out with "really it was all the fault of some evil wizard and stuff". Which made me not like it much.

EDIT-But truth be told I only list this book because I tend not to have remembered the really bad books I've read.

[duchess of malfi]

Good grief, some of these books (like Taurus) sound putrid.

[spacemonkey]

The Worst book......hmmm*scratches head* oh, yeah, the Warsprite. I remember the title but not the author, that ranks with the O-zone, never could finish that trash either, truth be known there is some really horrendous literature out there, tha sad part is , somewhere, that book is probably somebody's favorite.*shakes head* The Junk people will read.........

[duchess of malfi]

www.amazon.com/Prepare-To-Vomit-Worst-B ... 9SL6301R0J

Looking at this person's list...they must have missed Taurus.

[Cail]

Wow. I've read and enjoyed quite a few of those.

No accounting for taste, I suppose.

[Avatar]

Yeah...me too. Stranger?!? C'mon.

--A

[sgt.null]

Wizard of Oz?
I'd rather the grandkids read that than most kid's books.