Please don't pick books "inspired" by movies, comics, roleplaying games or the like. Books like that are simply too easy to hate.


1) Left behind. Number one with a bullet. It boggles my mind that this series is a best seller. The american public really must not be able to read, because this series is just staggeringly poorly writen. Insanely unrealistic, absurd dialouge and character development. Just the worst. The movie stars Kurt Cameron as the male lead. As bad as the movie is ( and it's well bad) it's a better movie than the book is a book.

2) The wheel of time series ( particularly after book 4) I started this series as a youth. And I liked it. Looking back, I'm not sure if the first books were really that good at all, or if I was just a young kid. I mean, they did have really repetitive writting, repeating the same ways of describing things and people. They all had the adolecent view of sex and sexuality. But they still seemed kinda fun, and big and epic. But then book 4 rolled around, then five, then six, then seven, then eight. More and more and more charagters were introduced, and less and less actually happened in the books, and it became clearly apparent that the wheel of time wasin't big for artistic epic value, but big just to sell more books. THe books are just filled with filler. This series should be three books long, not 11 ( and counting). Mercifully, I've been able to tear myself away from this series. If you want more review, please go to amazon. The user reviews put it best. Terrible series.

3) Clear and present Danger. I hate Tom Clancy. His writing ( if he even writes his own books any more, which I doubt. Most writers that are brands like Clancy, and Steven King, and John Grisham have teams of ghost writers that actually write the books..) is just freaking terrible. The action is ludicris and boring. I hate "thriller" books in general, and Clancy is exactly why.

4) Old Jules, By Mari Sandoz. Iread this book in middle school. It's about this old farmer who beat his wife with barbed wire, and shot ranchers in western nebraska. We had to read it because we were doing a nebraska history section in my english/social stuidies hybrid class, and Nebraska has such a void of literary talent ( Wila Cather being our most shining star) that we read this peice of crap because there was nothing else to choose from. the main character was completely unsympathetic, and not in a cool way, and I didn't give a shit about his stupid farm, and his stupid war with ranchers. I'm sure no one outside of nebraska has ever read this abomination.

5) All Steven King's Dark Tower books after the first one. Again, King was a childhood love, and I dodn't really know if the books that I liked were really that good, or if I was young, but I'll still stand by books like "The Stand" and IT and the Shining. I think they are solid horror. The first Dark Tower, however was freaking briliant. Not like any other thing king ever wrote. Magical, post appoaclytical and old western epic. Just perfect. Which is why the rest of the Dark Tower series, the progressively more steaming pile of crap that it is, was so disappointing. I stopped reading after book four, as it had completly turned into just another late king book. AKA Trash.



Edit: I should have specified Novels. Otherwise Play Poker like the Pros would be number one.

Double Edit: Please strike "Old Jules" from this list, and add Divinci Code. best sellers generally boggle my mind, I Have no earthly clue how they can possibly sell so much, except that the american public is very stupid. Expect, I would think that if they were really that stupid, why would they read at all? I mean, TV is much easier and less straining on the mind than reading, you'd think the people who love the Divinci Code would just turn on the boob tube and veg out. There must be a special subclass of stupid in the US, that likes to read, but their mind has been so dulled by TV and magazines that they can't handle too much effort, so the Divinci Code, and Grisham, and later King, and Clancy just click with them.

The Divinci code is cheesey, abusrd, terrible, terrible tripe,. Terrible dialouge, terrible character development, terrible history, terrible plot, Just bad bad bad.


Also, I'd like to mention the Celestine Prophesy. I had a very intelligent female friend of mine give this to me to read, someone I love and respect. I couldn't believe what a steaming pile of new age bull sht it was. It's philosophy for people who like to think they are smart and thoughtful, but really don't want to think too hard. Fcking garbage.

triple edit: I noticed the title of this thread starts with "5 five" Go captain redundant me.

Great Expectations. God was that a borefest.

hahah I remember hating that as a kid. I have a feeling I would like it more now than then, but perhaps not. I also hated the abridged verion of Les Mis that we read. The orginal is like 1000 pages, but the abridged version is 200. nad it read like it. Terrible, boring book.

1) Of Mice and Men - I did not enjoy steinbeck

2) The Wars - We had to read this in school, it was horrible, written by Timothy Findley

3) 20 Years After - The sequel to the three musketeers, it was so very long and boring, not Dumas' best work...

that is all I can think of at the moment, I imght think of others.

I had to read the bean trees for english.

it had drool marks in it after i was done

oh man, barbra kingsolver sucks ass.. I had to read that piece of crap in 11th grade when I read all these crappy books by women authors.


Man, I hate women authors in general. Maya Angelou is the only one that I've read that I like.

Also, I had to read Faust last year. It's supposed to be good, I just couldn't stand it.

The Notebook. The movie was 10X better.

That's a shame, it's a great book and Steinbeck's a great author. Try reading it again in 5 years, and see if you like it any more then.

Pride and Prejudice

read it in german, ya donk!

now i don´t know what you like (only what you dislike), but there´s a good chance that here´s another one you´ll enjoy..

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080213781...glance&n=283155

definitely in the top 3 of books of the last years IMO.

everyone, read this book!

most dickens stuff
brave new world (didnt hate it, just thought it was very overrated)

I really liked Brave new world.. Stranger in a Strange land I thought was terribly overrated.

Anna Karenina. Maybe it was a bad translation, but I barely got through it.

Tom Clancy sucks.

Also, the Sweet Valley High series.

Captain Underpants and the perilious plot of professor poopypants, couldve been the worst in the series, the story plot, and creatvity was lacking and i just feel dissapointed after reading it

so you liked wheel of time but its on the list just cuz they wrote 8 books too many?


i got through like 4 books and it was definitely tailing away, buti enjoyed the 4 i read......



barbara kingsolver = worst author ever


my female english teacher in 10th grade would cry while reading parts of her books outloud to us. **** that shit. she wrote books for lonely 35 year old single women. bleh

My 5 worst would be my 5 best, because I think I've only read about 5 books.

1) "Lord of the Flies"
2) "A Tale of Two Cities"
3) Anything by Tom Clancy
4) Anything written after 1975 by Phillip K Dick. This is when he went crazy.
5) "State of Fear" Easily Micheal Crichton's worst book. And I'm a huge Crichton fan.

lord of the flies wasnt that bad.

I couldn't stand reading it for English.

I thought Brave New World was interesting, but was kinda weird. Good book overall though.

it just came off as very heavy-handed to me. huxley wrote it very early in his career and later said he was embarassed of it.

I'm not too worried about it, not my style.

was ist das mephestophelis sie werden sturben die komfrombonnhoffer!

The Picture of Dorian Gray bored the hell out of me.

When I was a kid I liked wheel of time. I wouldn't go back and read the first books if you paid me now ( well, I would, but it would have to be 100 bucks a book) I don't hink you understand how unreadible and insufferable I have found each book after the first couple. It's hard to b elieve I find any book worse than these piles of dung, but I do.

Longshanks speaks german, there's a shock.

philistine.

play poker like the pros ??

hahahahahahahahahah How on either could I forget that.. I was kinda thinking novels, but man, that book is garbage.

Readers of this thread should notice that the OP has been edited to reflesh 3 books that I hate, Play poker like the pros, the Divinci Code, and The Celestine prophecy.

Also, if there was a book that I could put in my top five best AND worst lists, it would be Atlas Shrugged. I really, really really like the philsophy of Objectivism, it's the first thing I've ever read that describes the way I veiw the world ( with some modification, of course. I think people are WAY more a product of their envirnoment than rand believes) Rational Selfishness is me in a nutshell. How ever, The book is horribly written. It's like a bad romance novel, with philosophical airs. It's about 1000 pages too long, the plot is obvious, the writing style is long winded without saying anything, the characters are absurd, both good guys and bad guys. When some writes a novel with an obvious philosophical ( as opposed to artistic) ax to grind, very rarely does the art not suffer. I think Rand Crusified art in the book in favor of pimping here philosophy. Anyone who has not read it, I DEFINATLY recomend you reading the chapter " John Galt Speaks." Rand's philsophy is completely spelled out in this chapter ( as a piece of art, the chapter is completely god in teh machine. A terrble, terrible artistic device.) Spare your self the agony of reading the rest of the book.

Read the whole book once. Why didn't you like the Da Vinci Code?

That doesn't answer your question?

Hadn't read the edit.

hahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahahaha

POTY


youre far too subtle for forum humor mcgee

Yeah, I know. But I when some one gets it, it makes it all the more worth it.

Excellent book. I fully expected it to suck, but it didn't.

Now, On the Road bored the hell out of me.

Pick football games like a newb?

The Scarlet Letter

**eetheheheheh**

Jurassic Park was probably the first book I read just for fun (I think I was a freshman in high school when it came out). And still one of my favorite books, but I think most of his other stuff sucks. I recently read Prey and found myself skimming through a lot of it.

Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy is another one of my favorites.

I don't think I really have an all-time list of worst books, but I recently read Pipsqueak, or I should say I started Pipsqueak, and it was one of the least entertaining books I've read. I picked it up at an airport book store because it was one of the employee recommendation books and it was described as a bizarre, quirky mystery. Except that the story revolved around a stuffed squirrel, it wasn't all that odd of a story.

wow, get a life dude