To ask what is the worst book you ever read?

[Joey1471]

And why

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

Twilight. And I generally quite enjoy romance and fantasy genres. But ugh.
Ian M Banks (is that right? His sci-fi line.) I really wanted to like them, I love his writing style, but takes way too much pleasure in the more gruesome aspects. I can take violence, but I don't like it when the authorial voice seems to be rather enjoying it.
We had a book club at work once, that was responsible for some of the most trashy books I've ever read. Did introduce me to some good authors too though...

Da Vinci Code. The number of factual errors in the first chapter enraged me. I didn’t get any further.

I loathe The Magus too.

Time traveller's wife, poorly written and just annoying.

Fifty shades of grey. Thought it would be diverting. Couldn't get beyond the awful writing.

Fifty shades.
Twilight.
Time travelers wife.

Appalling.

50 Shades of Grey.
Twilight.
The Husband's Secret.
Siddhartha.
The Alchemist.
King Lear.
Prom.

The Life of Pi. I rarely don't finish a book but I got to something about an island with teeth wrapped in trees (WTAF??) and decided life was too short

Lots on this thread I agree with - 50 shades, the Alchemist, but also lots I enjoyed- Gone Girl, Time Travellers wife, Girl on a Train (tho won't watch the movie as really can't see a Emily Blunt as the main character!!).

Have never read a bad book. If it doesn't grab me by two or three chapters, that's it! Life is too short!

Captain Corelli's Mandoline - tried 3 times but didn't get beyond page 100.
I couldn't get going with it either.
I also gave up on Wolf Hall. Hilary Mantel turned Thomas Cromwell into Nick Clegg.

Loved The Goldfinch and The Great Gatsby, though.

Some of my favourite books are being listed here: OMAM; Gatsby; The Goldfinch. None of these are badly written.

The one that sticks in my mind was a crime thriller about a professor who kidnapped women and kept them starved and chained up in his basement for sex and violent abuse, then ferried them about at night to be prostituted. It had no moral message at all. It was pure voyeurism. Repulsive. It was the most sensationalist piece of misogyny I have ever read. My flesh crawled. Only read it as it was a freebie at a conference I was at (why?) so I skimmed it on the train on the way home then chucked it in the bin as I left the station. Can't remember the author. A man, of course.

The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling. All of the characters were so loathesome that I couldn't finish it because I didn't care what happened to any of them. They could have been wiped out by a tsunami of rabid wildebeest and it would have been a relief frankly.

Mein Kampf for me was the singular most boring and convoluted book ever written. But it did give me an insight into the mind of Hitler, he was truly mad. This book was recommended to me by my psychoanalitical therapy teacher, I have an interest in the psycopathology of the criminal mind and how it impacts on society.

The second most tedious and boring book I have ever read is the Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.

I have tried many times but have never managed to get more than half way through Wuthering Heights before giving up.

Harry Potter. I may be lynched and stopped wasting my time aboit half way through. God, it was dull. I've never watched the film.

We need to talk about Kevin. I hated this book. I can't put my finger on why but I really strugged to finish.

I'm currently reading Gods behaving badly (quickly grabbed from the £1 rail at awHSmith for a train journey). Rambling and unfunny.

Anything by Henry James. Awful. I could barely open The Bostonians without falling asleep.

Oh! Anything by Will Self. What was his famous one? That was truely awful and pointless.

50 shades of grey

The diving bell and butterfly... although one of my best friends says it’s the best book they’ve ever read.. I read it on holiday on a beach as it was all I had. So depressing.. (a true story I know but still). That book made my decision to immediately go out and buy a kindle and load up on books before I go anywhere.

A thousand splendid suns was one of the best books I’ve read.

Girl on a Train was baffling. It was like the author had just stuck any old sentence on the page and then tacked on a sort of ending. Really poorly written.

The Slap is probably the most hateful book I've read. Upon finishing it, I couldn't tell you much about the characters or the ridiculously convoluted plot, but I knew for sure that the author hated women over a certain age, viewed younger women as empty headed but enticing fuck dolls, and simultaneously hated himself for aging, while loving himself for HAVING A PENIS. Honestly the whole book was so transparent that someone needs to buy the man window blinds

50 shades and a book by B A Paris I read last year about a woman whose husband kept her locked up. Utter drivel.

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton. Absolutely dreadful. Anachronistic drivel, with such poor characterisation their voices were interchangeable and their actions were completely inconsistent. I hated it so much I read it all the way through just so I could articulate how fucking awful it was. Which I quite enjoyed; does that disqualify it?!

No-one has mentioned Moby Dick yet!
It's supposed to be a classic but I have no idea why as it's so so dull. I gave up at the half way point as they'd only just arrived on the boat and I couldn't take any more of the tedium. I've ploughed through all of LOTR quite happily, it really does take quite a lot to make me give up on a book.
Anything by Alexandre Dumas. Perhaps it's the translation from French, but there's so much waffling on about nothing that the plot gets totally lost.
I don't care they're considered classics. They're still shit.

The last in the Divergent trilogy. Allegiant? It gave me rage. It’s like the first two were unexpectedly popular so she had to get the last one done pronto, couldn’t think of a decent way to wrap up the story so just farted out the first thing that popped into her head.

If you’ve read the first two but not the last, do yourself a favour- don’t read it. Imagine your own ending. I guarantee it’ll be better.

To add- they had to abandon making the third one into a film. That’s how awful it is.

Gone Girl was diabolical. It made me furious. There was an awful Jodie picquet one about sisters. Never read another one of hers again. Fifty Shades, how bizarre, badly written, and ridiculous plot. I didn’t get it.
And controversially, Wuthering Heights. Depressing, creepy, made me feel horrible. I reread it to see if teenager me was missing anything, and no, it was still grim.