To ask about the worst book you have ever read.

[Whereisthecoffee]

Title says it all really. What book or books have you absolutely hated and why?

Dan Browns rip off da Vinci is abysmal, as us the rest of his 'writing'. Has anyone read the original, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which he plundered for the story? Read it many years ago and found it fascinating. Far more interesting than Mr Brown's effort.

50 shades

Sex in the City - couldn't finish it

Twilight- never got past the first page.

I adore Dickens. I know I shouldn't. But I do. I'd love to write like Charles.
I'd be so proud.
He feels me.

I hated A secret History. I was so disappointed as I’d wanted to read it for ages but just found it slow and the characters very uninteresting.

Must admit I’m sniggering a bit at the “throwing” of books

Crash, two blokes getting off on watching car accidents, described in horrible detail in sexual way. Ugh.

The first book I chose not to finish is up there. I can't remember now what it was called or who it was by. It involved beings where the females had human bodies but beetles as heads and the males were just beetles. It was dire.

In a way I'm glad to have started it, though, because up to that point it was a rule of mine to always finish a book (even Atlas Shrugged, which I had to bribe myself to get through), and since then I have realised that if I don't want to keep reading something, it's fine not to!

The Hunger Games. Terrible writing. I persevered through the first one. Tried the first chapter of the second against my better judgement and noped out of that one.

Dan Brown books are rubbish. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell was an utter chore. Classic wise I could not enjoy Ulysses, Robinson Crusoe or Far From The Madding Crowd. Hated The Miniaturist and Labyrinth as well. I threw Twilight across the room after the 50th reminder about Bella’s pale skin and dark hair or some nonsense. Trying to remember the others I hated now.

A PP mentioned Dawn French.
I couldn't stand 'according to yes '
It made me feel really uncomfortable and it has actually turned me off her.
Never finished it and wish I'd never started.

On the other hand.

So awful. Badly written and badly researched. Didn't deserve the massive marketing campaign it received.

I loved atonement, on Chesil beach, the lovely bones and time traveller's wife. And I love Thomas hardy. He's dark, but he's good.

The biography of Billy Connolly by his wife ( Pamela Stephenson). Badly written and constructed and all over the place.
Anything by the Brontes. Boring.
Lord of the rings. Just didn't get it.
Dickens on the other hand, genius!
( And Shakespeare)

Agree with most on here.
‘Saturday’ was one of the worst.
A neurosurgeon pontificating in Bloomsbury with a daughter who plays jazz. It just felt incredibly cliched and I normally like Ian McEwan.
Any book with amnesia as the main plot device (girl on a train etc) or bloody ‘psychopaths’.

All time awful: Moby Dick

I actually liked The Goldfinch so read The Secret History last summer and remember thinking it was terrible. Although I had to go and check the plot synopsis just now as I had completely wiped it from memory.

One Day was terrible, glad it has been mentioned.

Eat, Pray, Love - didn't make it past 10 pages and I usually give books a good go.

Bleak House (is that the one with the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case?). Terrible.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin - never got past the first chapter.

Can't stand chick lit - bugger off Sophie Kinsella, Cecelia Ahern, et al.

Never read a misery memoir type book because I know I'll hate them.

The sort of stuff that Asda & The Works are full of - woman leaves London for "the sticks" after her boyfriend cheats on her, discovers a whole new side of herself, YAWN. They're always called something like "Cupcake Cafe on the Cornish Coast."

Oh, and I once read Naomi's Room by Jonathan Aycliffe. The violence was gratuitous and made me feel sick.

The time travelers wife is brilliant....

The moonstone by Wilkie Collins. In my school we had a reading list that you had to read over summer holidays. The moonstone was dire. I still haven't forgiven it nearly 30 years later

It's not my genre of choice but I actually think Cecilia Ahern is a good writer. I was surprised.

The miniaturist

I actually like a lot of these! The miniaturist, secret history, the goldfinch....

Onky got about 1 chapter in to Chocolat though.

Can't believe no one has mentioned Jonathan Franzen. Worst. Writer. Ever. I would rather chew off my ears than read any more of his drivel.

@Biologifemini I second Saturday. So so bad. I like pretty much all his other stuff. Hated the overt middle classness of it.