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What is the worst book you have ever read?

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ge-man

Member
Shig said:
Is The Canterbury Tales considered a book or just a short story? Either way, the most horrible thing I've ever had to read. It makes patent copyrights look interesting.

It's written in verse so it's more like a long poem.
 

Mama Smurf

My penis is still intact.
madara said:
I'd mention mine but its so highly acclaimed by "fantasy" nerds this thread would spiral into 20 pages. Lets say I dont enjoy escaping into "fantasy" novel that mimics old england with more then hundred boring characters you have to keep track of with no sense of exploration or magic.

I can't work out if you mean LOTRs or A Game of Thrones.
 

Piecake

Member
iapetus said:
I can see his point about Pushkin.

Oh, and you forgot Lermontov, which is a crime against Russian literature in itself.


I didnt put it on there because I havent read any Lermontov yet. ALthough, once i finish reading The Metamorphisis, A Hero of Our Time is next on my list of books to read
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
Shig said:
The first licensed Star Wars sequel book, Truce at Bakura, was similarly dreadful.

Ah it was horrible, but that was far from the first licensed Star Wars sequel book. It came a while after the Zahn trilogy.
 

Shig

Strap on your hooker ...
ManaByte said:
Ah it was horrible, but that was far from the first licensed Star Wars sequel book. It came a while after the Zahn trilogy.
Ah, okay. Trash either way. What made it all the more worse was that I was coming off A.C. Crispin's excellent Han Solo trilogy when I picked it up.

...and I guess I had just read an excerpt from Canterbury Tales in a class. I can only imagine how dreadful the whole thing is.
NichM said:
The worst book I did read, though, has got to be Confessions of a Mask, Yukio Mishima's autobiography. I can barely stand any of his fiction, either, but his characters are usually at least grotesquely interesting. The autobiography, on the other hand, reveals exactly how dull and whiny an asshole Mishima was. Assuming he wasn't leaving lots of stuff out, then by his own account I couldn't find any problems in his life that weren't of his own making ...
Yeah, I picked up one of his books of short stories... Very blase stuff at a snail's pace.
 

Piecake

Member
I liked some of the Cantebury Tales. I remember i found one of them utterly hilarious. I think it was the Miller's tale.

I really cant think of a book that i hate. Sure, i like certain books more than others, but i havent felt hate towards a book. Guess im easy to please
 

Shinobi

Member
Being forced to read The Chrysalids in grade 9 English almost turned me off reading books completely. I'd rather impale my eyelids with fish hooks then read that piece of shit again.
 
i can't believe The wheel of time got mentioned :O
I'm another that really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice. My Year 12 (final year of highschool) Lit class studied it heavilly. I read through it 3 times and still enjoyed it.
I'd have to go Jackson's Track. A text we had to read for Yr 12 english that i found oh so boring and repetitive.
 

NLB2

Banned
Shitty book by Ayn Rand about the guy who's an architect and a rapist but he's not really a rapist because the girl wanted it, but she never told him she wanted it and she acted like it was rape at the time. I can't think of the title.
Strike East said:
Ordinary People
Ordinary People kicked ass and it took place in my home town :p
 

Tarazet

Member
Scrow said:
the only book i remember enjoying from high school was Brave New World. awesome book.

Same here, that book was fantastic. I actually wrote that report with some real enthusiasm.
 

KingGondo

Banned
NLB2 said:
Shitty book by Ayn Rand about the guy who's an architect and a rapist but he's not really a rapist because the girl wanted it, but she never told him she wanted it and she acted like it was rape at the time. I can't think of the title.

That would be The Fountainhead :p

Shig: Just because you can't understand The Canterbury Tales doesn't make them bad. Could you be a little more specific about what was so "horrible" about them?
 

Fowler

Member
Shinobi said:
Being forced to read The Chrysalids in grade 9 English almost turned me off reading books completely. I'd rather impale my eyelids with fish hooks then read that piece of shit again.

Haha -- I had to read that too, and yes, it sucked!
 
I only recently got into reading, mostly sci-fi. I thought Stranger In a Strange Land by Heinlein was really lame. I couldn't even bring myself to finish it. Yuck. 50's cornball garbage.

For a book supposedly set in the future, he had no vision at all. It's the '50s with flying cars and spaceships. No other technological or cultural advances to be found in the book. Now I don't expect a sci-fi author to predict the future with perfect accuracy, but come on.

Not to mention the self-congratulatory "the most famous science fiction novel ever written" right on the cover. Really? I only found it because I was looking at Childhood's End on Amazon and it was in the "people who bought this book also bought this stuff" section. Some Iron Maiden fan must have bought both. :lol
 
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