What is the worst book you've read?

[gharfish]

"So the God it speaks of is a fantasy and therefore cannot be met someday by you."

Yep, your God is a fantasy. .....

I said that you know it, Baphomet. What else do you want ?


>

[justgin]

"The Lovely Bones" - I stopped torturing myself by pg 83.

And they even made it into a movie.

[Teluog]

Did I ever mention Henry Blackaby's Experiencing God? I stopped halfway through. More like Experiencing Eisegesis, Logic Contradictions, and Pablum

[moreta]

Reading "As I Lay Dying" in High School senior English completely turned me off William Faulkner. That was nearly 30 years ago, and the thought of reading any thing he wrote is nauseating. It can't be blamed on my age at the time either. We also read "Return of the Native" by Thomas Hardy the same year, and I finished the book before everyone else did, then went out and bought my own copy.

[BadGrad]

I was on a boat this summer and borrowed a book called Operation Sunshine, and it was definitely the worst book I have ever read (and I once read a vampire romance called Tall, Dark, and Hungry). The premise was that a girl who hates her plain-jane appearance works as a looked-down-upon receptionist at a plastic surgeon's office. Finally she gets to go along to a conference in the south of France, where adventure ensues. All of the "sexy" male characters were totally unappealing, and I am sick of female characters who talk about how ugly they are (while simultaneously putting down the "attractive" women around them). I also hate it when irresponsibility is presented as charming—this woman was supposed to be taking notes and generally being responsible at the conference but didn't read any of the crucial briefs she was given. This was presented as amusing and adventurous but I thought it was lame.

I will probably miss this book when crying over my Foucault this semester.

[Matt the Bat]

Tenderenda the Fantast by Hugo Ball,. German dadaist novel that is 100% randomness. That beats everything posted here, without a doubt.

[Jnthn]

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.

I stalled with Speaker for the Dead. I think it may have just been my depression-induced short patience at that time. I need to give that another go before diving into Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle again. Tough going.

J

[Jnthn]

"So the God it speaks of is a fantasy and therefore cannot be met someday by you."

Yep, your God is a fantasy. Good to see you came to the rational conclusion with only marginal nudging. I wont get to meet your God because he doesn't exist.

Now if I could just persuade to purchase a copy of John w. Loftus' book 'Why I became an Atheist' then we'd really have achieved something here.

Is that the self-same documented liar and disabilities-hating John Loftus who's been battered so much in exchanges here on TWeb that he's punch drunk?

In fact he's had his backside handed to him so many times it stays on with velcro strips.

J

[Teluog]

Is that the self-same documented liar and disabilities-hating John Loftus who's been battered so much in exchanges here on TWeb that he's punch drunk?

In fact he's had his backside handed to him so many times it stays on with velcro strips.

J

He has a new book out as well that is apparently just as bad.

[Jnthn]

He has a new book out as well that is apparently just as bad.

Can self-published books be remaindered?

J

[One Bad Pig]

I may have to change my entry. The Shack makes me want to hurl. :spew:

On further reflection, this is maybe second place. I have less patience with bad books lately, so I tend to move on to something better rather than forge on in an attempt to finish the work.

[Deof Movestofca]

Tactics of Conquest by Barry Malzberg. It's a sci-fi book based on a chess game: specifically, the game is a Fool's Mate, the shortest and most contrived way to lose a chess game. And the book is, likewise, a contrived loss. It was the first and only Malzberg book I ever read; I literally swore off ever again letting my eyes touch his work, and as far as I know I kept to that pledge. I've even skipped over Malzberg stories in sci-fi anthologies.

The (there wasn't even any humour in it to justify it) Curtmudgeon

I wouldn't call "fool's mate" totally contrived. I have won at least one game in a high school tournament in 5 moves IIRC back in the day.

As for worst book read, I can't remember the tile, but it was by Ingersoll, who is on better terms with a thesaurus than a book of logic. His main approach seems to be if you don't have a sound argument, just use some big words to baffle the reader into thinking you know what you're talking about. Someone in this thread mentioned a similar malady that afflicts Dawkins, but it's a one-man epidemic when Ingersoll wrote.

[Deof Movestofca]

The world renowned Existentialist masterpiece The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner, worst, book ever written which snuck in and presents itself as something of substance. The books almost made me give up Existentialism... j/k.

http://www.usask.ca/english/faulkner/

... call it a hunch, but I just had this feeling that it wasn't Moby Dick?

[Rushing Jaws]

"The Two Babylons" - though having re-read it (several times) one can see why it is as bad as it is. But no amount of sympathy can make up for its many defects. It is well-written, however; that is one of its two virtues, the other being its allusions to dozens of interesting books. For those at least one can be grateful.

"Salvifici Doloris" - it may be a Papal Encylical, but I found it unreadable; like wading through treacle. It's far too long, uses five words if one will do, & is riddled with abstractitis.

Even worse - if possible - is the 1997 "General Directory for Catechesis". One might almost imagine it was written as an excuse for felling trees. The perfect gift for all who are afflicted with chronic insomnia.

"Europe since Napoleon", by David Thompson. About 500 pages of close-printed, unillustrated, heart-breaking tedium, this tome takes the history of 130 years and reduces it to something less interesting than the draft of an EU legal instrument. That it was a set book of which parts had to be read within a certain time did not make it more fascinating. "Ned's Hot Tin Pie" (see below) is better-written, more varied, & more readable:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Hall_Kennedy

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...dy-942649.html