What is the worst book you have read recently and why was it so bad?

[Miaou]

I've been reading light stuff atm and just grabbed this off the "chick lit" stand at the library just before having ds2 - I struggled valiantly through to the end but was really disappointed in it. The story was turgid and predictable, the characters one-dimensional, and I felt that what could have been an interesting story with the potential for some really sinister turns, was in fact incredibly dull. The final "showdown" between the mother and son was jaw-droppingly badly written and really let the whole book down.

However I have had lots of fun picking it to pieces so maybe it was worth it

Got about half way through Interpretation of Murder and gave up. IIRC there was a discordant note in its lascivious lingering on the flogging and strangling scenes. Although probably not as arousing for the author as churning out all that explanatory narrative about New York's architectural history or the schisms amongst Freudian pyschologists.

You might as well give into Cod now MumInBrum and change your name. Cod will just hound you until you do

Issy (formerly known as 'Issymum')

issy are you rachel cusk?

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Ponce yourself. Spice Avenue is still here although I wouldn't say it was in Moseley, it's more Balsall Heath. Issy, you will see that I have given in to the mighty codforce.

Yep Aitch, that's me. The Book Club killer. Actually I've always wanted to belong to a book club but never found one that would have me. Too much lascivious lingering!

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Has fishface gone yet?

Agree with quite a few of these, particularly the Abortionist's Daughter, the Pelzer books and The Lovely Bones. Also read something recently called The Butterfly House, it was going cheap and obviously for good reason. I have The Memory Keepers Daughter on my bookshelves waiting to be read and given all the comments I think it might just stay there unread.

Glad to hear the new Kate Atkinson is good, bought that the other day.

Pruners I know what you mean about the Ginger Baby book but her first book, No Wonder I Take a Drink, was IMO hysterical and well worth a read, her latested on ONly STrange People Go to Church was drivel.

issy - what, you do the lascivious lingering or people linger lasciviously over you?

It's odd, just as many men read as women and from what i can tell just as many men discuss books online as women. But book clubs seem 99% female. I wouldn't want to join one.

What's so terrible about the lovely bones? Agree it's not perfect, a little mawkish perhaps. But I thought it was good. I read it shortly after The Little Friend (Donna Tartt), which made me feel almost sick with misery, and was surprised that the author of Lovely Bones managed to convey a plausible kind of half recovery from the murder of a child

What's wrong with The Lovely Bones?

Um, its existence.

Terrible subject + poor character development + bad writing + depressing as all fuck.

Its redeeming value is that it added to our warmth as it burned away on the bonfire.

A Perfect Life by Raffaella Barker, What was I thinking? How was I seduced by reviews from "matey" types in the press? Predictable writing, awful characterisation and little sense of readership. Am moving on to "Engleby" ASAP.

I now refuse to read anything by:

• Anyone whose biog reveals they have more than one home ("she lives in London and Hampshire").
• Anyone who "divides their time" between two places (especially in different countries).
• Anyone under 30.
• Anyone who has been excessively drooled over in the press.
• Anyone who looks too much like a smug yummy-mummy.
• Anyone who has had a recently well-publicised literary "spat".

I'm sure there are others...

bugger this, I'm obviously too lacking in literary discernment for this thread

or your taste is different, maybe that's all? what did you enjoy about the lovely bones, for example? i found it really shallow and trite and thought the sex scene was revolting. zillions of women i know LOVED it, so i was the odd one out.

Yoyo, the funny thing about Raffaella Barker is that The Hook, which I think was her first, is absolutely cracking. It's, like, a proper novel with plot and characterisation and everything, and very atmospheric in unexpected ways (IIRC someone is rebuilding a motorbike in the front room of a tiny flat and she evokes the claustrophobia very well.)

Then she got into all the yummy mummy pastoral stuff (I have read Hens Dance and that was very much as you describe A Perfect Life) and it just reads as if she stopped bothering.

ROFL @ UQD's list of exclusions. So right.

I also steer clear of things where the subject is so sexy you know they could have sold anything once they had come up with the idea of what to write about, eg serial killers, the Titanic, Brick Lane, unless I have had it recommended by people with good taste.

And the titles are a pretty good giveaway - anything that reminds me of 'Kafka's Motorbike' (in Bridget Jones's Diary) gets short shrift (and I don't know why anyone fell for that Ukranian tractors book, tbh.)

UQD has hit nail on head with "dividing one's time". If you google the phrases divides his time and divides her time you come up with a list of right mincing numpties. Also worth avoiding anyone who describes themself as an "author-(something else)" like author-activist, author-composer, etc.

How do you divide your time? Bluestocking divides her time between loitering on MN and wiping pooey bottoms.

Bravo, UD! I couldn't agree more with the list.

American Psycho. Read some it many years ago. It is not well written and I struggled to find a deeper meaning in the extreme and graphic violence portrayed, concluding that there wasn't one. It is the only book I have ever read that I binned immediately.

the horatio clare book was drivel, too long should have been a short story, how could they have little to eat, poverty stricken but still manage to go to private school, it didnt add up, i dont think they were as skint as he says they were. what pisses me off is an authour writes a relatively successfull book then knocks out an inferior one six months later thats crap, all this serial chick lit is a licence to print money.

Aitch - thanks for being diplomatic . I think I just loved the emotion it provoked in me, I cried so much while reading it. That may have been more to do with where I was in my own head at the time (ttc for ages) but then I also quite enjoy trash fiction like the shopaholic stuff so maybe there's just no hope for me and that expensive education was wasted on me after all!

Further to my boycott list, I'd add:

• Any author with a "de" in their name. (Obviously your trust fund means you never had to get a day job to subsidise your writing habit, you smug bastard.)

• Most people with famous surnames. Ditto.

• Americans. A few honourable exceptions allowed, but definitely not if they are Director of the Creative Writing Program (sic) at Shitkicker College, Nebraska.

• Any "writer" whose suspiciously photogenic mugshot suggests that they weren't exactly employed for their writing abilities.

• Anything touted as this year's Hot Young Thing. If it's good, it will depress; if it's bad, it will annoy. (I made an exception for "The Beach" and was annoyed and depressed in fairly equal measures.)

• Any "novel" about a wacky London career girl and her search for a man. Written in lunch-hours by illiterate bubbleheads and commissioned by same.

• Hideous memoirs about people who were forced to go and stand in sheds in pools of their own urine and were regularly beaten by their mother and the local nuns, before emerging to a greater understanding of it all through lurve or therapy.

Also, I impose quotas: in any calendar year, no more than one Irish novel, one gay novel, one family saga spanning the generations and one "sensitive" portrayal of growing up in an exotic locale.