I have just read possibly the worst book in the world

[Mrsrobertduvall]

A Cold Season by Alison Littlewood.
Disclaimer...I bought it in Smith's on a buy one get one half price, and grabbed it as the cover looked good.
It's about a mother and son marooned in a small Lancashire village with unfriendly locals...a bit Wicker Man-ish. And of course there are witch/devil undertones.
It is utter tripe.
It is now in the charity shop for some poor sod to buy.

Victoria Hislop's The Island. Horrid, obvious, clicheed.
And Room - painfully bad.

marmite, No worries. But you could ask for a deletion if it helps! Take care.

Aargh, aargh, why did someone mention The House at Riverton? A day's otherwise delightful holiday I'm never going to get back, and I thought I'd wiped it from my memory .

Formulaic, derivative, writing-by-numbers tedious drivel. And shite to boot.

Oh, and that fucking tractor book, too. [grrrrrrrrrrr]

coffeeandcream, I have found it almost impossible to forgive VH for such appalling ruination of what could have been a brilliant book. Even now, so many years later.

I read Twilight out of curiousity. Wtf? - embarrassing that any adult likes these books imo.

I was once given a Jodi Picoult book. So bad, I don't know where to start.

I had a revelation when I read Ralph's Party (Lisa Jewell) that actually changed my life. Some books are so shit you should throw them away shamelessly. In fact few books are actually worth keeping. This honestly changed my life. I got rid of literally hundreds of books that I'd read because they were, you know, books, and you can't throw books away. Turns out you can and sometimes, you should.

Two Week Wait by Sarah Rayner is the latest into the bin. Dreadful.

I think "free with a magazine" is a good clue as to where this is going to end.

I read lots (two books a day is feasible) so I have read a lot of old rubbish but mostly forgotten the more useless ones. I have a lifelong hatred of Tolkien, though. And DH Lawrence. And I find Isaac Asimov completely unreadable.

And the Shopaholic books - I don't mind some chicklit, quite fond of Marian Keyes and love Louise Bagshawe, but the Shopaholic ones are utter drivel.

Liked Room, though.

Herrena now I'm strangely tempted...

There's one called North by Northanger! OMG...

Dily I agree completely re Digital Fortress, I couldn't finish it. I have never been so bored and it was so boringly scientific, which bought nothing to the book!
Thanks for the heads up with 'Room'. I knew it sounded dull.

Cider with Rosie was quite possibly the worst book ever, and I had to read it because it was a set book at school. Utter, utter garbage.

BelleDame - I should feel guilty for corrupting you, but I'm just relieved that it isn't only me who thinks of reading that stuff!!

My rule of thumb with books is to avoid anything which has the title re-printed on the back. Several times. Interspersed with the book description. Although sometimes they do end up under the 'So bad it's good' category....

I read The Waterbabies to my DD. It's supposed to be a children's classic. It is dire. Also Tarka the Otter.

Herrena the titles are enough to have me itching to order them. They sound dreadful.

I loved the waterbabies - but then I was a weird child. I do remember it being fully odd.

DameHermione, I started a whole thread on the boringness of the Hare with the Amber Eyes. Think as a yawn.

I also loved The Waterbabies as a child - but I was also quite a strange child. I had a beautifully illustrated copy which was bought as a prize for something at school iirc.

I also liked Vernon God Little and Cider With Rosie.

margo I had a copy of Hideous Kinky free with a magazine, that was a proper good book; it was the cash-in edition from the film, though.

Lent it to a friend & never got it back, so I had to buy a new copy anyhoo.

Glad to see others mentioning Kate Mosse, I am not a high-brow reader by any means but Labyrinth... I was just reading it thinking, Surely no-one would publish a book this bad? it must get better! But it never did.

Agree with SGM about The Children's Book. I was rather enjoying meeting the characters and reading about their lives, until I realised I was halfway through the book, nothing had happened, and nothing was likely to happen. At that point I gave up.

WatershipFuckingDown

My mother made me read it to her everyday before I went to primary school. Seemed to take at least 5 years to get through it.

We need to talk about Kevin-drivel.Martina Cole-same plot each time,I can guess how it's going to end after the first chapter.Heart of Darkness-unreadable.Ulysses,DH and I know no one who has managed to finish it.

Does anyone else get fed up with finding spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in books? It really puts me off,I remember finding 4 mistakes in the first chapter once and it annoyed me so much that it spoilt the book for me.

Herrena - my rule of thumb is never to buy anything that claims to be "witty" - IME, "witty" is code for "boring shite that tries to be amusing but fails every which way".

Mirage - me me! to the grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. But also to worn-out clichés - or over-use of a phrase or word (every chapter? Really? Just not necessary)
One of my least favourites is "she slicked on more lipstick"

I had to 'do' Jane Eyre at school and I don't think I ever finished it. Even now I just remember it neon to most terrible shite I had ever read. When a group of friends went to see it at the cinema recently and asked me to go along, I think I put a couple of them off by saying just how awful the stupid story was.

Othello by Mr Shakespeare was also terrible (I like some of his others though), again a school text. Why on earth didn't they just talk to each other instead of Othello listening to odious Iago? (And the answer isn't 'because it's a tragedy'. You can have a great tragedy without having stupid plotholes). I moaned about it so much in our English class that our teacher set us homework to write an essay on 'Why Othello Is Dramatically Dull'. I'm still quite proud of that!

DH reads and usually loves all the Booker short listed books but I try them and get bored fairly easily with most of them. I did enjoy Midnight's Children though and McEwan's Amsterdam so I'm not completely thick.