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.

YY to Jodi Picoult writing THE SAME BOOK over and over again

Read My Sister's Keeper, promptly bought The Pact. Gave up about 20 pages in as I realised it was exactly the same.

akaemmafrost - have you read Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes? All the way through? Because yes, it starts off as empty-headed Irish girls on the lash in NY etc. but it evolves into quite a dark book on rehab. I lent it to a friend who only read the first chapter and wanted to give it back for much the same reason you said - but I made her continue with it because I knew she'd like the in-depth stuff later on. She did.
Of course, you may have read it all through in which case I apologise! :)

1950shousewife - I've read that Lionel Shriver tennis book!!! I thought I was the only one! It was HORRIBLE!!!!! the characters had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I think that's her theme actualy.

yyy to Eat Pray Love. Snooze, Sleep, Coma...

The Accordion Crimes was awful.
The Incredible Lightness of Being very very annoying.
Hated Middlemarch, Gone With the Wind, Moby Dick.

Lesley somebody other. Wrote a book called 'Stolen' about a girl who'd been kidnapped. She written about 5000 books which mil keeps giving me. They are all utter toss.

I didn't get far with Room or The Slap either.

I like Marion Keyes's books. I liked One Day as well. I am not dissimilar to the heroine though.

One Day - meh
Starter for Ten - quite funny
Love Kevin, Slap, Kate Atkinson, Room (if you find it unbelievable you need to move to Austria)
Jodi Picoult, Dan Brown, Shack book, Eastern Jewel (book club read) - utter shite.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet -shite of the highest order. Seemed to be about internal audit in the 17th century

Yes, in defence of Marian I think she has been pigeon-holed in chicklit as a genre because there's nowhere else very obvious to put books which are comical, light-hearted and dealing with very serious issues all at the same time. Particularly not when they're written by a woman I think if she were Mike Gayle or Tony Parsons she would be marketed simply as adult fiction.

Another vote for Pemberley - I wish I never read it - almost ruins my own thoughts on what would happen after the end of P&P. And by the secretary of the Janeite society, too.

Oh god, somebody mentioned Paul coelo. Veronica decides to die is the worst book ever,really,what the actual fuck? Just jaw droppingly shite!

marshmallowpies our charity shops are the same, there are usually several copies of whatever the latest prize winner/recommended by R & J/ Oh Darling you must read... novel.
I live in a fairly well-heeled area where spending £8 on a book you read once, or never finish and then get rid of is very common. I read them for around £1.50 a time and donate them again if they were ordinary. I'm getting fussy about shelf space in my home.
In fact the only times I buy a new book is when the FWR boards give me a recommendation that is too good to pass up.

morgan I had my suspicions about that Sarah Rayner one although it seemed to have good reviews (at least the ones that were written up on the cover of Two Week Wait). As you say, emotionally manipulative drivel.

LOL at Shanghaidiva re Austria. What is it with those Austrians? Closely followed by Belgians for weirdness.

Also hated Middlemarch and Wuthering Heights (get a grip,fgs). But love Mansfield Park, probably because I loved the tv version with Sylvestra Le Touzel who should be on that thread about Damian Grammaticas having the world's best name.

I loathed 100 years of solitude. Not too keen on magic realism as a genre, though it does see quite convenient for getting out of a hole with a character, make them live to 500 or disappear in a literal puff of smoke...

mrschemist you read my mind, was gonna post and nominate every james herbert book (well the two i read anyway)
had same morbid curiosity, thought once was a pile of utter tripe, and thought maybe it gets better. it doesnt. could swing for the bugger who gave me a load of his books thinking i'd like them. cheers for that.
same plot, same sex scene (aft at "secret hole", or how bout "glistening erection" blee..) just the scary thing that changes.

I once read a bizarre one from The Works called Meat by some guy called Joseph DeLacey, I think.

Horrible, it covered torture, cannibalism and child rape all in one. I like books that "make you think," but that just left me with a nasty taste in my mouth.

Oooh yes, well done whoever brought up James Herbert!

Similarly crap, IMO, is Jodi Picoult. Her female protagonists are hugely irriating and unlikable, IMO.

Far from the Madding crowd.

"..and grabbed it as the cover looked good."

The problem OP is that you judged a book by its cover.

I dimly recall having to study Coriolanus for A level lit. Not one of the bard's finest. I much later saw a production of it at Newcastle Theatre Royal with Charles Dance in the lead and not even he could invigorate the misery of this text.

I do think on this thread that we need to distinguish bad books (piss poor writing, ridiculous or far-fetched plot, undeveloped characters) from books that we just don't like.

Labyrinth. Kate Mosse. Truly, truly tragic.
I read that one that Esther Freud did a chat on here about - I read it when it came out. It's about actors and employs 'spare prose', ie normal things happen, hair is described, or not, he might have an affair, or not. That sort of thing. It was all I could do to not warn people beforehand. Just such a nothing book. But she seems like a lovely lady.

Agreed. In my defence I list the piss poor undeveloped characters of all the women in Coriolanus. Now I might just shut up about it.

(Sorry that was to duchesse)

I loved Nick Hornby's earlier books, but absolutely hated "How to be Good", he can't write from a woman's point of view to save his life and I struggled to get to the end.
The Da Vinci Code, read about six pages and flung it back to the charity shop from whence it came.
All the three inch thick books my mum passes on to me, about mad, rich, very rude aristocrats, who think everyone else in the world is beneath them and all float around being irrationally bonkers. I usually just read the resume on the cover before discarding them. Nothing ever really happens, and I can never work out why they insist on staying rattling around in their crumbling mansions that they can't afford to keep up, when they'd be much better off in a nice normal sized house!