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

End of the world running club. Probably not the absolute worst ever, but the first book I've hated but persisted with instead of giving up in disgust. I hate it more for the fact that there was just enough of a hint at decent characters and plot to make me want to keep going - but ultimately it was a badly planned, idealistic mess with so many lucky coincidences and badly explained consequences that it made me angry for wasting my time.

Lemonys I think you have missed the point.
1984. Was 11 yo and it horrified me
It was supposed to. It’s a dystopic novel. That’s the whole point - you’ve really just proved it is good as it achieved its purpose.
I disagree with whoever said ‘bast’ and ‘worst’ are just personal opinion. There are some objective measures of quality of writing - there are books I personally dislike which I can recognise as well written, for example. Worst is the superlative related to bad, which suggests it is to do with quality in some way.

Angels and Demons and the Da Vinci Code. Read both all the way through. Wish I hadn't. They were strongly recommended to me as something I'd like which is why I persevered.

Automated Alice, Jeff Noon. Didn't finish it.

Something terrible by Poppy Z Brite. Can't remember the name, but it was awful. Serial killer in prison manages to pretend to be dead to escape. Slices people up, something about HIV. Worst book I ever read, didn't finish. Really, worse than Dan Brown.

The Firebird by Susanna Kearsley. At least I only paid 99p for it.

Obligatory mention of a much loved classic - I do not get on with Pride and Prejudice. Have tried on more than one occasion. It bores me.

@Theducksarenotmyfriends

Slugs by Shaun Hudson (I think?). It's about 6 inch killer slugs, with one tooth.

Never heard of it, but sounds like a nightmare I had when I was about 8. The slugs were rabid in my dream and they buried themselves, before poking their heads out to bite you with their tooth.

I think the Slugs author is Shaun Hutson. I refuse to read his trashy books (can't call them novels) after realising one was about making snuff movies, including detailed descriptions about the making of said movies. Gratuitous crap.

The Teacher and the Secret by Katerina Dimond. I bought them as a pair and read both, the sequel was even worse than the first one. I normally like crime fiction but I like a puzzle rather than violence for the sake of it. I'm not really sure why I finished them. But they are the only books I have ever put in the dustbin.

We are all completely beside ourselves. I found the way that the twist was written was awful - “you’ve probably guessed by now” - if you have to write that... Also, I hadn’t guessed and that made me feel like a twat for not guessing that a human sister to all intents and purposes was actually a chimp. I was only actually invested because
of the sister, so she lost me there.

pastachucker God those elephants! Yes. Agree completely.

Arsenicinthesugarbowl Yes! I have an ally. And I felt bad because it’s so widely raved about.

Fifty Shades. Hands down.

Yes I agree with other posters that The Kite Runner is terrible. It was Khaled Hosseini's first novel though and he has vastly improved as a writer. I thought his following two novels were actually very good. I don't normally finish a book if I hate it that much but probably the worst one I slogged through was The First Phone Call from Heaven by Mitch Album. Oversentimental American tripe.

The Great Gatsby is a fantastic novel. No way does it belong on this thread!

William Golding's Pincher Martin. The only book I've ever thrown across a room. Guy gets shipwrecked. Spends precious moments struggling out of his heavy sea boots to stop from drowning. Spends miserable days/weeks/felt like fucking years eking out a pitiful existence on an inhospitable rock in the middle of the sea. Last page is rescuers fishing his dead body out of the sea...noting that he died before he had time to take his boots off. Awful, awful tripe

I can't remember the title, but I was by Sean Hudson, a man worked in a hospital and his job was to dispose of the aborted foetus, but he didn't and he kept them in his shed where they fed off his blood. I didn't finish it.

I read the great Gatsby and just didn't get the hype

Another vote for 50 shades. Terrible plot, awful characters, and the sentences read like they were written by an 8 year old (minus the explicit bits).

On the other end of the scale I also hate Shakespeare.

Oh and a lot of Laurel k Hamilton's books. I tortured these reading what was basically vampire porn after enjoying the first few in the series with some vague hope they should get better

Another vote for the utterly inane, dull and dire 50 Shades. I read it on Kindle before it became a ‘big thing’. Hated it then, hate it now!

Bridges of Madison County

The Magus - ought to be a law against writers setting up an intricate plot and then spectacularly failing to deliver.

Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro. And if I had to chose one this would be it. Constant cresendoing of expectations with absolutely nothing behind it. Awful awful book. I think he is a poor writer anyway.

Another one for 50 shades. Truly terrible book.

The Road. Deeply unpleasant, and not particularly original (and cannibalism has to be the least efficient way ever to feed yourself after a nuclear apocalypse. Breed rabbits or something if you insist on eating meat).

@didactylus was it an Anita Blake ‘novel’ by LK Hamilton by any chance?

50 shades
LotR/The Hobbit
GoT
The Amnesiac

All books that I didn’t manage to finish because they were either ridiculously badly written, or dull as dishwater.

Ian McEwan's Amsterdam. Utter bilge. On the plus side it's short and it left me feeling optimistic of my chances of winning the Booker Prize one day.

I agree with the poster who said The Labrynth. It was the only book I've not bothered reading to the end.

I'll always finish a book, even if I'm not enjoying it and even if it takes me years.

There's only been one I can remember giving up on and that's
Master And Margarita - absolutely could not get more than a third of the way through over a period of years. Cannot see what all the fuss is about that so called classic.

Am in a similar position with Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrell - its been over three years and I can't even get past the first 100 pages...

I cried during the last 10 pages of Middlemarch because I had to read it and it just wouldn't stop. I remember hating A Prayer for Owen Meany because of all the RANDOM caps, so annoying. But hands down the worst (I worked in publishing) was someone sending me their self-published novel about leprechauns which was racist and filled with cliched Irish stereotypes and grammatical errors.

Time travellers wife
Lovely bones
Catcher in the rye
Girl on the train
I actually wasted my time with these as so recommended
Ditto we are completely beside ourselves
Crash by j g Ballard - I loved empire of the sun and the kindness of women though