What is the worst book you've read?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce is almost as bad as Ulysses.

[codysblackbox]

Catcher in the Rye made me violent... and I am a pacifist.

[lee_merrill]

Not that, just the most BORING book ever. I had to read it and take a test on it in my minister's credentialing classes. SNOOZER! Worst book I ever read!

"The Way of All Flesh" is another similar such book.

A man was born, he lives and he dies, another man was born, he lives and he dies.

Kind of like reading the genealogies in 2 Chronicles? but I don't think the genealogies were supposed to be literature!

Blessings,
Lee

[Baphomet]

Catcher in the Rye made me violent... and I am a pacifist.

try reading it again. Salinger wants you to hate it and its characters the first time around. The second time is when everything clicks and you love it. promise :D

[nomad]

The worst book I ever read was some Heinlein book, that apparently was written early in his career ('for us, the living' maybe?) Read like an 8th grade essay. I don't even know why I read it; I think Heinlein has some interesting ideas, but his writing style is unbearably tedious. This was amazingly worse in style than any of his others that I read.

[Sir-Think-A-Lot]

Probably Twilight. After finishing that book I had to find a copy of The Vampire Lestat to remind me why I used to like vampires.

The Davinci Code comes in as a VERY close second. Partly because I'm something of a conspiricy buff and might have enjoyed the premise of the book if the writing, diolgue and characterization had been so god-aweful, but mostly because it doesnt try to portray a stalker and pedophile as a romantic male lead.

I think Left Behind deserves an honorable mention. I did manage to make through 2 or 3 of them before realizing that they are basicly a series of sermons from a futerist, Christian-right point of view, loosely strung together by a series of insipid plot twists and mind-crushingly dul characters.

[uberliber]

Either Leviathan or Beyond Good and Evil...

I read Leviathan to put me to sleep at night.

[Quantummaths]

The Old Testament is the most contemptible text ever assembled. The God of the Old Testament reminds me of a giant, narcissistic, tribalist, genocidal toddler.

I have yet to read a more deceptive book than "Darwin on Trial" by Phillip Johnson.

The New Testament actually has some sort of wise lessons to teach, with the exception of the Apocalypse of John.

[Oolon Colluphid]

'The Dawkins Delusion' by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt-McGrath is the worst non-fiction (although it nearly qualifies as fiction) book I've read. I know some of you may be thinking 'you're just saying that because you disagree with his conclusion. However, I also disagreed with Keith Ward's conclusion in his answer to Dawkins, and I thought that was a pretty good read.

Worst fiction has to be (not very original this, sorry) 'The Da Vinci Code'.

[Baphomet]

Tale of two cities - Dickens' worst imo. boooooooooring book

[MattPalumbo]

'The Dawkins Delusion' by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt-McGrath is the worst non-fiction (although it nearly qualifies as fiction) book I've read. I know some of you may be thinking 'you're just saying that because you disagree with his conclusion. However, I also disagreed with Keith Ward's conclusion in his answer to Dawkins, and I thought that was a pretty good read.

Worst fiction has to be (not very original this, sorry) 'The Da Vinci Code'.

I liked "Dawkins God" by McGrath, but The Dawkins Delusion was boring

As for worst book: Rocket Boys, was a book we had to read over the summer for school.. Ugh

[Macgawd]

For me, it's a toss up between Michael Crichton's Timeline, and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Timeline is an utterly predictable and lazy piece of crap by an author I usually enjoy. By the second or third chapter, the original premise of the book is completely abandoned, and it seems (and probably was) as if it were written with the idea that this would some day be turned into a B movie.

Atlas Shrugged is simply atrocious on every level. The characters are ridiculous, the writing stilted and juvenile. I don't think I've ever made it more than half way through.

=M=

[Number Six]

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. I loved Ender's Game, but the sequel was just awful, pretentious, flat, and filled with cardboard characters. I couldn't get past a third of the book. It turned me off to the whole series, although I went on to read The Memory of Earth, which I did enjoy.

[Sir-Think-A-Lot]

I actually liked Speaker For the Dead, its tone and story was quite different from Ender's Game though, so I can see why some people were dissapointed.

Have you tried reading Ender's Shadow, or any of the other Bean books. I actually like Ender's Shadow more than Ender's Game, and the rest of the books were also very enjoyable.

[Beukeboom]

This is an easy one. Back when I was in college the library had a big book sale and I picked up a hardback copy of Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard for only a couple of dollars and it was (and still is) the worst book I ever read. I had to force myself to read it telling myself "It can't get any worse." I was wrong. It started at a low point and kept spiralling downwards. No wonder the movie made by and for Scientologists based on the book bombed so massively.