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?

Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Cortex10 I didn’t finish it for similar reasons. I was baffled.

Flambola snap. I have point blank refused to take my eldest to see the show in London because the book is so diabolically dull.

50 Shades was shit as already mentioned several times obviously! The writer has zero talent.

The Husband's Secret (I think that's what it's called) by Liane Moriarty was a good concept but she bottled it part way through and it was terrible from about the last quarter onwards. Biggest cop out ending ever.

Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Yes that was shite as well

A dreadful book whose name I have mercifully forgotten was a children's book clearly based on a dream recounted by the author' small child. It had all the banal rambling nature and unsatisfying plot of a small child telling you their dream.

I was curious to see what some of these books were like, so I bought a few of them on my Kindle, just out of morbid curiosity interest.

I finished The Bunker Diaries a couple of days ago.

Jesus wept.

I have to agree with the pps who mentioned it - it's a good book, well written, but so bleak. It's just so unremittingly depressing. You keep thinking that all this grimness must be leading up to some sort of redemption, but no... It took me until now to shake it off, and that's saying something! And that was a children's book? Sorry, no.

It reminded me a little bit of What Niall Saw, which is another well conceived and cleverly written book that leaves you with the same feeling when you've finished it.

@MrsSpenserGregson
I don't blame your DH, I was bored shitless by Birdsong.

I also hated War Horse. Can't stand the author either.

FuckKnuckle Awful isn't it?

Please can somebody tell me whether Never Let Me Go is worth downloading? I know tastes differ but I'm still keen to hear...

I'm still on Big Little Lies which is alright.

Julius Ceaser. Only because I had to as part of an English course.
Usually if I start readimg and it's shite I stop and try something else.
Pru Leith's autobiography drove me mad.. She was quite a girl

I absolutely loved Never let me go, but lots of people hate it.
You'll never know if you don't try.

I have been skim rereading American Psycho as a result of this thread. It is as people say. Main point of interest is all the Donald Trump references!

A History of the World in 10 chapters (or something similar) by Julian Barnes. Drivel and a waste of my hard earned pennies.

Cheers Brillo

Atonement - don't know why people rave about it, I thought it was absolutely drivel.

And someone lent me A Discovery of Witches years ago, that started OK and then seemed to forget what it was about, dropped all the storyline from the first half of the book and turned into boring nonsense.

*absolute, not absolutely.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. (Pretentious drivel, and the only book ever that I couldn't finish).

Captain Correllis Mandolin.

The Wasp Factory

Whatever it was, it was by Richard E. Grant.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - just didn’t enjoy it. Frustrated me with lack of plot. Not everyone needs a plot, I discovered I do.
The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín - one-dimensional bitter, mundane and pathetic women (typical of Tóibín’s female characters.)
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe - irritating style of writing and a tedious plodding plot.

Agree with A Simple Favour. It was so awful I was convinced the debut author was a big Hollywood star and was writing under a pseudonym. Only star power could get this author published I reasoned.

Actually I've just remembered - The Stone Man by Luke Smitherd. Rave reviews but the endless repetitive detail bored me silly so I gave up.

I listen to everything on audible, and I could tune out for a few minutes, come back to it with a start and find he was still banging on about a windowsill or something.

One's just come to mind: The Land Of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel!

The only explanation for it I can think of is that someone had some harsh words with her after the fourth book of Earth's Children, and she sacked her editor and wouldn't allow anyone glance at the last two critically. (This is my own theory! I have no idea...) Especially in the last one, there's hardly a story going on, and same details repeated over and over - as if she forgot she'd already written that - and it's just sad and bad.

@IHaveBrilloHair I also love it but it always comes up on threads like this. I think it's profoundly moving and the contrast of the gentle narrator with the grotesquely explicit examination of what it means to be human haunted me for a long time after I'd read it.

Incidentally, I also have brillo hair!

Captain Corelli's Mandolin, utterly relentlessly awful.

Atonement, ditto.

War Horse and all the other crap by Morpurgo...yes I know this is heresy.