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

Capt Corelli is also on my list of books I never intend to read. Also
Bridges of Madison County
Anything by Annie Proulx
We have absolutely no need whatsoever to talk about sodding Kevin
Please Daddy No (who COULD read something with a title like that) and anything else engineered to create maximum vicarious and higly enjoyable mawkish sympathetic suffering in the reader
The Da Vinci Code and all works of that ilk

and everything on UnquietDad's list too. Except the historical ones, cos a girls needs some tosh in her life.

Agree - Labyrinth is dreadful. Also, imo, Captain Correlli's Mandolin. Just couldn't see the point.

Oh God I know I'm going to hate Labyrinth. Anyone want to give me the essential need-to-know guide so I can fake it for book group?

Agree Expat - the hero/heroine of poor historical fiction is always the one who looks and sounds Most Like Us.

I have another:
-anyone (with the three exceptions of Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Rose Tremain) who has studied Creative Writing at university level. They will write like graduates of creative writing courses.

To expound on UD's list, which is thorough and an excellent Guide to Reading Pleasure, I'd like to add:
-'Historical Fiction' - a la 'Girl w/the Pearl Earring' 'Galileo's Illegitimate Gecko' 'The Bolelyn Whores and Their Punters: Syphillis Mysteriously Absent'.

This tosh is this decade's 'chick lit', with 15th century chattels sporting some pretty 21st century ideas, all of which they effortlessly convince their 15th century peers to accept.

Yeah, right.

Message withdrawn

Tommy's Tale by Alan Cumming. The biggest load of self-indulgent-aren't-we-wacky-carefree-devil-may-care-bright-young-things-riding-the-zeitgeist I have ever come across in my life.

Tragically it has completely ruined Alan Cumming for me. Anyone who punctuates every "wacky" comment with an exclamation mark is obviously a tosser .

Don't read it. I beg you.

I also find Kathy Reichs really hard going
I read a book by Tami Hoag once - the word 'drivel' could have been invented for it. Lots of sex scenes with a bit of ghostly goings on when they weren't having sex. I don't think I managed to get to the end.

Very good UD (and your earlier list-that 'divides their time' shit makes me want to apply a stout stick sharply to said writer's rump)

Further to my boycott list, I'd add:

• Any author with a "de" in their name. (Obviously your trust fund means you never had to get a day job to subsidise your writing habit, you smug bastard.)

• Most people with famous surnames. Ditto.

• Americans. A few honourable exceptions allowed, but definitely not if they are Director of the Creative Writing Program (sic) at Shitkicker College, Nebraska.

• Any "writer" whose suspiciously photogenic mugshot suggests that they weren't exactly employed for their writing abilities.

• Anything touted as this year's Hot Young Thing. If it's good, it will depress; if it's bad, it will annoy. (I made an exception for "The Beach" and was annoyed and depressed in fairly equal measures.)

• Any "novel" about a wacky London career girl and her search for a man. Written in lunch-hours by illiterate bubbleheads and commissioned by same.

• Hideous memoirs about people who were forced to go and stand in sheds in pools of their own urine and were regularly beaten by their mother and the local nuns, before emerging to a greater understanding of it all through lurve or therapy.

Also, I impose quotas: in any calendar year, no more than one Irish novel, one gay novel, one family saga spanning the generations and one "sensitive" portrayal of growing up in an exotic locale.

Aitch - thanks for being diplomatic . I think I just loved the emotion it provoked in me, I cried so much while reading it. That may have been more to do with where I was in my own head at the time (ttc for ages) but then I also quite enjoy trash fiction like the shopaholic stuff so maybe there's just no hope for me and that expensive education was wasted on me after all!

the horatio clare book was drivel, too long should have been a short story, how could they have little to eat, poverty stricken but still manage to go to private school, it didnt add up, i dont think they were as skint as he says they were. what pisses me off is an authour writes a relatively successfull book then knocks out an inferior one six months later thats crap, all this serial chick lit is a licence to print money.

American Psycho. Read some it many years ago. It is not well written and I struggled to find a deeper meaning in the extreme and graphic violence portrayed, concluding that there wasn't one. It is the only book I have ever read that I binned immediately.

Bravo, UD! I couldn't agree more with the list.

How do you divide your time? Bluestocking divides her time between loitering on MN and wiping pooey bottoms.

UQD has hit nail on head with "dividing one's time". If you google the phrases divides his time and divides her time you come up with a list of right mincing numpties. Also worth avoiding anyone who describes themself as an "author-(something else)" like author-activist, author-composer, etc.

ROFL @ UQD's list of exclusions. So right.

I also steer clear of things where the subject is so sexy you know they could have sold anything once they had come up with the idea of what to write about, eg serial killers, the Titanic, Brick Lane, unless I have had it recommended by people with good taste.

And the titles are a pretty good giveaway - anything that reminds me of 'Kafka's Motorbike' (in Bridget Jones's Diary) gets short shrift (and I don't know why anyone fell for that Ukranian tractors book, tbh.)

Yoyo, the funny thing about Raffaella Barker is that The Hook, which I think was her first, is absolutely cracking. It's, like, a proper novel with plot and characterisation and everything, and very atmospheric in unexpected ways (IIRC someone is rebuilding a motorbike in the front room of a tiny flat and she evokes the claustrophobia very well.)

Then she got into all the yummy mummy pastoral stuff (I have read Hens Dance and that was very much as you describe A Perfect Life) and it just reads as if she stopped bothering.

or your taste is different, maybe that's all? what did you enjoy about the lovely bones, for example? i found it really shallow and trite and thought the sex scene was revolting. zillions of women i know LOVED it, so i was the odd one out.

bugger this, I'm obviously too lacking in literary discernment for this thread

I now refuse to read anything by:

• Anyone whose biog reveals they have more than one home ("she lives in London and Hampshire").
• Anyone who "divides their time" between two places (especially in different countries).
• Anyone under 30.
• Anyone who has been excessively drooled over in the press.
• Anyone who looks too much like a smug yummy-mummy.
• Anyone who has had a recently well-publicised literary "spat".

I'm sure there are others...

A Perfect Life by Raffaella Barker, What was I thinking? How was I seduced by reviews from "matey" types in the press? Predictable writing, awful characterisation and little sense of readership. Am moving on to "Engleby" ASAP.

What's wrong with The Lovely Bones?

Um, its existence.

Terrible subject + poor character development + bad writing + depressing as all fuck.

Its redeeming value is that it added to our warmth as it burned away on the bonfire.