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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To ask what is the worst book you ever read?

353 replies

Joey1471 · 18/02/2018 13:15

And why

I would say mice and men , had to read it for my GCSEs , so boring

OP posts:
MissMisery · 19/02/2018 13:34

'The Celestine Prophecy'. Unspeakably awful. In every possible way.

Awkward as it was recommended to me by a friend who raved about it Confused

aabidah86 · 19/02/2018 13:42

Oh and "Beauty" by Raphael Selbourne, picked it up in a charity shop as the story seemed interesting (British Bengali Muslim girl escapes arranged marriage), but was just terrible. What is quite funny is any negative reviews on Amazon are replied to defensively by an account which I definitely think is the author haha.

craigglen · 19/02/2018 13:45

I'd forgotten about The Other Hand. I hated it!

EnglishGirlApproximately · 19/02/2018 13:50

50 shades was utter shit, didn’t even get half way through! Probably the biggest let down was Purity by Jonathan Frantzen. I absolutely loved The Corrections and Freedom so waited for Purity with huge anticipation and didn’t even finish it. I can’t bring myself to throw it away, I need to try again with it as I just can’t accept that the person who wrote The Corrections produced something so bad.

Bananasandchocolatecustard · 19/02/2018 13:57

Never let me go - had to finish it as it was a book club choice.

Icantreachthepretzels · 19/02/2018 14:06

If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino

Oh god yes! I've agreed with a lot of books on this thread but this one takes the biscuit. Although I can't claim to have read it because I gave up very quickly - it was just awful. And he kept talking like the character in it was 'you' - the reader - except the character was very clearly male and creepily hit on some poor woman in a bookshop who was just trying to buy the same book as him. Which no female reader would ever do. Just goes to show that men really do think they are the default human beings and can't remember that there is an entire other 50% of the population who are just as likely to read their books.

Agree about 'room', 'the slap', 'LOTR', 'The Time traveller's wife' and 'Foucault's Pendulum.'

Those saying 'The Davinci Code' - I can only assume you didn't go on to read Dan Brown's 'Inferno'... It makes TDC look well written, well thought out and perfectly believable. The ending of 'Inferno' ...ffs. And it's supposed to be a huge twist (and tbf you don't see it coming) but then the twist makes everything that happened previously into a total nonsense. Awful awful book, and DB should be thoroughly ashamed of himself. I can't say it's the 'worst' book I ever read though - because I get so much amusement out of just how bad it is!

MickHucknallspinkpancakes · 19/02/2018 14:06

Nope, @CoteDAzur no empathy at all.

mynameisnotmichaelcaine · 19/02/2018 14:13

Icantreach - yes, I was so annoyed by the "you are" - no I'm bloody well not, you cringy old man!

Flightywoman · 19/02/2018 14:32

Oh God, The Slap was AWFUL! Every character was entirely offensive, I hated it and felt really grubby and tainted afterwards. I read it on holiday and then had to cart it around because I couldn't bear to sully anyone else with it!

Gone Girl - also full of hateful characters and just very poor. Yuck.

And yet, unlikeable characters is not necessarily a loser for me - Suite Francaise has some really unpleasant and hateful people but they're compelling and you want to know what happens to them. Same with Dorothy Whipple, some of her characters are deeply unpleasant but gripping.

I read a thing called When the Dead Cry Out by Hilary Bonner for a book club. Man it was bad! It's a crime thriller, the central character was a tough female detective, but she was saddled with the trope of "tough cookie but all she wants is a maaaaaaaaaaaaaan" which was annoying. The dialogue was completely unbelievable, and the central crime was solved about 3/4 of the way through so then there was a lot of book left with nothing to fill it. Badly plotted, poorly drawn characters and badly written, it was completely woeful and I hated it!

I also hated The Kite Runner. He was so completely up himself, I found myself saying out loud "it's not all about you" a lot of times.

And The Bookseller of Kabul - poverty tourism at its worst. She bangs on about how poor they are and then takes a lot of their hospitality without giving anything in return. I know there is a big hospitality culture in a lot of parts of the world, but it really felt like she was abusing it to her own advantage. And there are ways of returning the hospitality in some way that are not insulting, but I didn't get any sense that she did that.

pepperminttaste · 19/02/2018 14:54

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (drivel, clichéd drivel at that).

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (unlikeable characters and wooden prose, felt irritated just reading it).

An Untamed State by Roxanne Gay (the most ridiculous dialogue in amongst a terribly written story).

The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan (more drivel).

DullAndOld · 19/02/2018 14:59

agree with a lot of these.

Fifty shades was desperately awful but I didn't read past the first page. No literary merit whatsoever.

other unreadable books..(that are rated as 'literary')

Cloud Atlas
That awful book that everyone was reading on planes some years ago where someone ends up on a life raft with a tiger..
Anything by Coelho

Last night I was re reading 'Brick Lane' by Monica Ali and it was pretty dire. No wonder she was a 'one hit wonder'.

DSHathawayGivesMeFannyGallops · 19/02/2018 15:04

I forgot about the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime. I had to put it down, I couldn't click with it at all. I'm sure the point is that it's an uncomfortable read but I couldn't get through it

IHaveBrilloHair · 19/02/2018 15:05

Agree that Brick Lane was shite.

psychomath · 19/02/2018 16:00

Is The Other Hand that one where they're in Africa and the woman lets soldiers (?) cut her finger off to save a girl's life, but her husband refuses to do the same so the girl's sister gets eaten by their dogs? If so I have read it (evidently) but don't really remember what I thought of it.

aabidah86 · 19/02/2018 16:16

@psychomath

Yep thats it! I think the woman is a journalist or magazine editor or something and loads of the book is set in London where she's having an affair or something, can't quite remember.

anxious2017 · 19/02/2018 16:20

Me Before You

The Fault in Our Stars and The Curious Incident.

Twilight series

50 Shades

I also really hated Captain Corelli but I seem to be in the minority.

SongforSal · 19/02/2018 16:23

Faust. Only started reading it because of it being deemed a classic.

3luckystars · 19/02/2018 16:28

I'm reading* it at the moment. Its called 'So Much for That' by Lionel Shriver

*Its on audio book and I cant wait until its over. There is no nice characters at all, its really miserable and I should give up on it, but I am hoping something nice happens the main guy if I stay with it. I will give it another few days and then stop. It's just too much misery and rage. It has been given huge praise but I need happier things to read.

onewhitewhisker · 19/02/2018 16:42

psychomath i must say if i read that blurb on the back of the book i'd avoid like the plague!

Laculpa · 19/02/2018 16:44

Delusions of gender

Claims to be "the real science" while the author is clearly full of all the biases she tries to pin on everyone else.

beepthemeep · 19/02/2018 16:44

I tried to read katie price's "angel" because someone had left it by the pool and I'd finished my book and was too lazy to get another.

Fucking hell. Not sure if katie or ghostwriter. But whoever penned it should be hanged for crimes against the English language.

3luckystars · 19/02/2018 16:46

They have that on audio book in the library. Thanks for the tip off. I didn't think anything could be as bad as the one I'm listening to but that does sound really bad if you couldn't even read it by the pool.

aabidah86 · 19/02/2018 16:47

@onewhitewhisker

The problem is, the blurb on the back gives you absolutely NO CLUE of the utter hideousness of the book! Everyone is awful and none of the characters are likeable, they're all pretty selfish.

This is what it says on the back (which is what intrigued me to pick it up):

We don’t want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this:
It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific.
The story starts there, but the book doesn’t.
And it’s what happens afterwards that is most important.
Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

ARGGHHHHHHHHHH THIS BOOK IS TERRIBLE.

onewhitewhisker · 19/02/2018 16:52

aabidah i see your point! i've never heard of it till now, will remember to avoid...

aabidah86 · 19/02/2018 16:54

@onewhitewhisker It's a good marketing ploy on the part of the publishers, I'll give them that!