Worst book you've ever read?

[CommunistLegoBloc]

Inspired by the film thread, what's the worst book you've read?

I think mine was The Miniaturist purely because it was SO hyped. It was completely overwritten, ridiculous, boring, and you'd think for that amount the author got paid, she'd have bothered to come up with an ending.

This is easy - The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair.

It was hyped as a clever literary thriller. Ha.

It was a steaming pile of absolute shit. Awful writing, including the most execrable dialogue I have ever read in a novel. Horrible characters with the particularly creepily loathsome Harry written as someone the reader was meant to be sympathetic towards. Can't remember the plot.

Also the standout example of a phenomenon I really dislike: books by non-British/American/etc writers that gain literary points because they are translated. A book does not become clever or worthy because it was written by a non-English speaker. What a patronising attitude apart from anything else.

However, it was entertaining - I was marvelling over how terrible it was and immensely enjoyed reading Amazon reviews panning it.

Oh yes, Let's Talk About Kevin. Not at the Harry Quebert level, but so, so overhyped.

Somehow having a child turns the freewheeling main character's husband from her soulmate to a controlling, small minded homophobe. The author gets away with the ridiculously extreme characterisation of Kevin by hiding behind the unreliable narrator thing (what has she done or not done to make Kevin the way he is, hmm?) but unless she's lying outright about her husband it's simply unbelievable that she only notices what he's like now or that a baby forces a full personality change. On my edition there is a quote about how the novel makes you think about having children. Well, I'm child free by choice so inclined towards focussing on the downsides of motherhood and I found this book unutterably silly.

The English Patient. So dreary I didn't make it to the end. But I can guess what that was.

The Goldfinch. Just pages and pages of self indulgent nonsense

Also hated Eleanor Oliphant, I have no idea why it’s so popular. Boring, unfunny, unbelievable twaddle.
Tangerine by Christine Mangan is easily the worst book I’ve ever read - poor editing and general limping storyline. I have no idea how it was published.

@Byllis - translating books into another language isn't a 'phenomenon.'

I'm glad other people disliked the Goldfinch. I was the only person in my bookclub who disliked it. Didn't bother to finish it. A very heavy edit might have helped it.
I didn't like Eleanor Oliphant, but it upset me as my dad had dementia and it did not reflect our experience. May just have been the wrong time.,

Yeah Eleanor Oliphant was poor, the writing was contrived and the character very unbelievable.

@NeedToKnow101 - I used to be a translator so am aware of that! I'm talking about mediocre books that are treated far more seriously than a similar title written in English would be. Harry Quebert was marketed as a literary novel which is so far from true as to be funny, but I've come across others I'd put in the same category.

'How to build a girl' by Caitlin Moran. I love her and thought her other books were brilliant but this...oh my. It's been made into a film I believe - think I'll be washing my hair that night...

Nothing could be more badly written and just unreadable than 50 Shades.

I always try and soldier on with books, but We Need to Talk about Kevin had me in such incandescent rage that after about 20 pages I took the book outside and dumped it in the wheelie bin just to make absolutely certain I would never accidentally pick it up again.

Anything written by Jackie Collins, someone gave me a stack of her books after I was confined to bed after surgery, utter tripe but I must admit better written than 50 shades!

JK Rowling - Casual vacancy
Any of the 50 shades books

Where do I start?!

I love crime thrillers but some writers seem to be competing for how much they can make your stomach turn - Mo Hayder's The Treatment is particularly nasty and more recent books by Graham Masterton are basically torture-murder porn, I've stopped buying anything by him now.

In my younger years I was disappointed by how turgid A River Runs Through It Was - made the mistake of reading of after seeing the film.

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad, Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Hardy - found them depressing and dull as. Never read 50 Shades thank goodness.

On the other hand, I loved The Time Traveller's Wife and all of Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall series and A Place of Greater Safety - interestingly the only Dickens I like is A Tale of Two Cities, so maybe I have a penchant for the French Revolution

@CarrieMoonbeams

The Queen and I, by Sue Townsend. Read it years ago but I still get the rage when I think of that fucking awful, cheap shite ending. I actually threw the book across the room, I just couldn't believe how shite it was.

Oh and I used to read and enjoy Patricia Cornwell's books, until the one where her cat solved the murders when it was sitting on the washing machine. I kid you not. Something very like that anyway.

Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs both lost me when they started writing in short sentences. Like this. They lost me.

And then.

One sentence per paragraph.

It fills pages.

I understand that.

Just don't.

And PC started thinking Scarpetta, who is obviously herself, was just a totally irresistible sex goddess whom men, boys and dogs were panting after, and we were DONE.

Tangerine!!! That was truly terrible. I kept waiting for the promised tension...it was so boring!

@CarrieMoonbeams

The Queen and I, by Sue Townsend. Read it years ago but I still get the rage when I think of that fucking awful, cheap shite ending. I actually threw the book across the room, I just couldn't believe how shite it was.

Oh and I used to read and enjoy Patricia Cornwell's books, until the one where her cat solved the murders when it was sitting on the washing machine. I kid you not. Something very like that anyway.

I went off Patricia Cornwall when she changed the Scarpetta novels from 1st person narrative to 3rd person narrative and we had to put up with all the drivel about wonder woman Lucy

Gah - Cornwell!

Jude the Obscure. I had a deep and abiding wish to push prissy tight-lipped Sue into a nunnery where she’d never again have to even think about nasty men and their desires, so that Jude could marry someone who wouldn’t shudder at sex and enjoy himself instead.

Snuff, Raising Steam and The Shepherd’s Crown, because it was so sad to see what Alzheimer’s had done to Pratchett’s once-brilliant mind. Those last novels should never have been published, or should have been heavily edited by someone who could remember what the characters were like (the Elf Queen, dark and powerful, turns into a fecking flower fairy with gossamer wings? Puh-leeze) and didn't try to shoehorn yet another oppressed species to be rescued into each one. We get it, pTerry, discrimination is wrong.

@SunnySomer Yes! I was just about to reply with does my bum look big in this. Absolutely dreadful book. Irritating that she had it published due to her being already famous. There is so much talent out there

Eat, Pray, Love - self-indulgent, navel-gazing drivel - I hated her and her giant ego. Eat was the most readable section as I do like my food but the rest? Pah!
Time Travellers Wife - confusing and with two monumentally unlikable characters - I didn't care what happened to either of them. It's one of only a very few books that I didn't/couldn't read to the end.

Kay Scarpetta clearly fancies her own niece. 100%.

Life of Pie. Such a boring book. 20% in and the guy is still sitting on a bench talking about religions.