What is the worst book you have read recently and why was it so bad?

That Kevin book by Lionel Shriver. It was an interesting schlock-horror idea but it was the worst written thing I have read for many a long year. Sheesh but it was bad.

Highlander - well, how many of the writers that you actually like have MAs in writing?

I haven't come across one since McEwan and Ishiguro.

Whereas books I haven't liked by people with Creative Writing MAs have all been big on writing in different styles but without much conviction in the characters, and given to clever-clever methods of storytelling without the plot having the drive I want it to have.

Given how many really talented people must do those courses, I find it hard to believe they add much value.

I'm reading 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth' by Malcolm Pryce. It's shite. Writing is flat and dull, plot doesn't make sense, and it's full of jokes that I don't find funny.

Normally I'd have abandoned it by now, but it was lent to me (well, thrust upon me really) by my boss, who thinks it's hilarious. I did consider pretending I'd read it but she'd rumble me, so I just have to soldier on, loathing every minute.

another thread has just reminded me how turgidly endless my life seemed in the brief period when I attempted to read 'Birdsong'

aha

What's wrong with MAs in Creative Writing? Writers of chick-shite have them, that's what's wrong with them.

my sister gave me some chic-lit shite to read (hmm, I know now why she piled it all into my bag) Jodi Picoult - Perfect Match.. Utter dung. And some other crap called 'my Best Friend's Girl' - didn't egt further than the first 2 chapters. Can't remember author.

I am returning to the comfort of Sebastien Faulks and Ian McEwan.

What's wrong with MAs in Creative Writing? I was thinking of doing one.

Lol, Bonaventura.

I didn't read the worst book I've read recently, it was that bad. Or I didn't finish it anyway. But it was by Jack Higgins. I was sick of chick lit, so I thought I'd try a bloke book. It had mercenaries in it, and one of them was introduced to us as "a very dangerous man", because he wore paratroopers' boots. Later another man came along, also in paratroopers' boots, who was called "a very dangerous man indeed". I was looking forward to the scene where the dangerous man and the very dangerous man indeed took flying kicks at each other in their paratroopers boots, but then I thought about it and realized I wasn't looking forward to it at all. So I stopped reading and watched telly instead.

I did rather like "Other People's Children" though. Agree that she goes for a stoic acceptance ending to signify being a serious writer but since she gets so much aga-saga type flak which similarly formulaic male writers completely avoid, I'm not going to beat her with that stick.

I tried to read her novel about adoption but tossed it across the room in disgust after a couple of chapters. It read like she had decided to research the 'issue' and then devised a plot and characters to animate her research. It may have got better but I couldn't be bothered to find out.

Shadowmancer by GP Taylor. Supposed to be the church's answer to Pullman but it's badly written, poorly plotted and, even for a fantasy, completely unbelieveable.

Sorry, don't want to be cryptic or elliptic. Both Joanna Trollope and Mary Wesley strike me as very formulaic.

Joanna Trollope has two basic formulae:

1. Take one discontented middle-aged woman. Add uncommunicative husband, unappreciative teenagers. Warm thoroughly at Aga. Introduce extra-marital frisson, generated by Being Seen as a Woman Again. Veer perilously close to happy ending, decide it would be more literary if it all ends in tears.
2. Take one discontented middle-aged man. Add cardboard cut-out wife, use symbolism to indicate frigidity. Introduce extra-marital frisson, generated by expensively highlighted hair, beige cashmere and sheer stockings. Veer perilously close to happy ending, decide it would be more literary if it all ends in tears.

Mary Wesley sticks to a tried and tested formula as follows:
Set scene of faintly bohemian shaggery pokery just before and during WWII, alternating the setting between sooty London and idyllic countryside, insert force-of-nature woman (probably called Calypso), add uniformed stiff upper lippish men, stick in some hideous family secret and a bit of bereavement. Veer perilously close to happy ending, decide it would be more literary if it all ends in tears.

Agree about Raffaella Barker's later books,Green Grass and A perfect Life were awful .Quite liked Hens Dancing and Summertime though.
Have Labyrinth and Interpretation of Murder on one of my bookshelves but never read them.

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I think that entertaining 3 bored children would be more fun.

Thanks OrmIrian. Sounds awful. Will take it on hols with me - maybe if our flight gets delayed or something it will come in handy. Or maybe entertaining three bored children will be more of a priority.

"Joanna Trollope and Mary Wesley"

Blue stocking - you hate them, the worst books you've ever read? Just not sure.

Just because you've "dumped the Mum" there's no need to come over all Cod-esque elliptical!

Joanna Trollope and Mary Wesley.

rosa - if Labyrinth is the Kate Mosse book I mentioned earlier (it was so bad I'm not sure what it's called and it's in the bookshelf outside the bathroom so I look at it whenever I sit on the loo ) I can give you a synopsis of sorts. ...

actually no I can't. I can't actually remember much at all. It was set somewhere in southern France in the 14th C (??)where there were groups of Cathars who held some kind of heretical beleif involving that fact that Jesus didn't die on the cross and had children with Mary Magdalene. Which tended to make the Pope a bit cross. So 'crusades' were sent to wipe them out. There were other political reasons involved of course. There was one very seductive and evil sister and one simple and pretty one who was a good as her sister was evil. And the naughty one shagged her sister' husband I think. But the biggest bit of hokum was the present day (there was a dual time frame - clever device eh!!) which required some woman (who I seem to remember looked amazingly like the 14th C nice sister) doing some investigation and running up against a modern day equivalent of the bad sister and some sort of descendant of the Cathars that appeared to be a sort of Round Table with incantation and incense. And in the end there was some wierd happened with a cave and a light and some old chap .......gawd I can't remember but really.... couldn't you just go voluntarily blind ? It would be preferable.

near unanimity on this thread then.

(except for Brick Lane, which I enjoyed)

The Ukranian Tractors thing was total crap. I picked up another book in the bookshop yesterday, and it was endorsed on the cover by Ms Ukranian Tractors author - biiiig mistake, I feel. V offputting.

Has anyone noticed, a hideous tendancy lately to add an extra bookclub section in the back of the book, where the author explains his/her motivation behind creating the characters, and there are some leading questions ("Why is the book called A Pile Of Shite? In what way do Delilah and Dierdre face up to the terrible things that happen to them?") FFS! Weren't these people tortured enough at school in English Literature lessons?

have to agree, Labyrinth was a load of old codswallop.

Can't stand anything by Tony Parsons- smug, pseudosensitive and generally nauseating.

Labirynth again falls into the category of books lent to me by a friend/colleague which i haven't managed to read because they were so dire but don't know what to say to friend/colleague so books are still sitting on nightstand collecting dust.