Board index › Topical Discussion › Art, Writing, and Music

Worst Book You've Ever Read

Page 2 of 2 [ 27 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2

Previous topic | Next topic

DuckHairback
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Jan 2021
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,669
Location: Durotriges Territory

14 Feb 2021, 5:31 am

The one that immediately springs to mind is Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. I'm not the target audience for this book, I read it because I was going to a literary event where the author was giving a talk and I wanted to be prepared. Gallingly, to me, this book has enjoyed incredible success and it baffles me as to why because I think it is objectively bad. The writing is terrible, the treatment of childhood abuse and subsequent mental illness is so superficial its offensive. There's really no redeeming features to it. Yet its sold millions.


_________________
The Andaman Sea, the Andaman Sea, I'd like to be, on the Andaman Sea.


hurtloam
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Mar 2011
Gender: Female
Posts: 8,747
Location: Eyjafjallajökull

14 Feb 2021, 8:33 am

I've got 2 one fiction and one non-fiction.

Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. So depressing. The guy's life just goes from bad to worse. Hardy tried to write real life grit, but this is just over-the-top misery. The characters just make the most stupid decisions. People react so dramatically.

Uncanny Valley by Anna Weiner. It's her memoir of leaving publishing industry in New York and working in tech industry in Silicone Valley. Sounds really interesting. Nope! She thinks writing a description means you list everything around you. She tries to be quirky and call all the companies she works with or the ones that people use as "the online supermarket" the company with the "octopus cat logo". Amazon and Git Hub. Just say Amazon and Git Hub!! !! Argh!

Quote:
Technologists were plucked from the Valley’s most prestigious technology corporations and universities and put to work on a campaign that reëlected the United States’ first black President. The word “disruption” proliferated, and everything was ripe for or vulnerable to it: sheet music, tuxedo rentals, home cooking, home buying, wedding planning, banking, shaving, credit lines, dry-cleaning, the rhythm method. It was the dawn of the unicorns: startups valued, by their investors, at more than a billion dollars. The previous summer, a prominent venture capitalist, in the op-ed pages of an international business newspaper, had proudly declared that software was “eating the world.”


A list is ok every-do-often, but not every other page!! ! This book is unreadable.



Last edited by hurtloam on 14 Feb 2021, 9:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

PhosphorusDecree
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 May 2016
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,552
Location: Yorkshire, UK

14 Feb 2021, 9:00 am

hurtloam wrote:
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. So depressing. The guy's life just goes from bad to worse. Hardy tried to write real life grit, but this is just over-the-top misery. The characters just make the most stupid decisions. People react do dramatically.


I was with him up to the infamous "Done because we are too menny" bit, at which the trials and tribulations tipped from realistic and plausible to frankly hilarious.


_________________
You're so vain
I bet you think this sig is about you


hurtloam
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Mar 2011
Gender: Female
Posts: 8,747
Location: Eyjafjallajökull

14 Feb 2021, 9:11 am

PhosphorusDecree wrote:
hurtloam wrote:
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. So depressing. The guy's life just goes from bad to worse. Hardy tried to write real life grit, but this is just over-the-top misery. The characters just make the most stupid decisions. People react do dramatically.


I was with him up to the infamous "Done because we are too menny" bit, at which the trials and tribulations tipped from realistic and plausible to frankly hilarious.


Yup



CockneyRebel
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 17 Jul 2004
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Posts: 117,015
Location: In my little Olympic World of peace and love

14 Feb 2021, 9:42 am

Pygmalion. I don't understand for the life of me why having an accent is such a bad thing. It also reminded me of the speech therapy that I went through in my early childhood. My 9th grade English class had to read it.


_________________
The Family Enigma


GGPViper
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Sep 2009
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,880

14 Feb 2021, 10:51 am

I never made it past page 20 in The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.

Whiny chatterboxes.



NaturalEntity
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 Jan 2021
Age: 20
Gender: Non-binary
Posts: 1,234
Location: UK

14 Feb 2021, 2:20 pm

I don't really know.


_________________
Opinion polls have officially begun!
Posting will be on and off due to school studies for a while. I am still around though and will occasionally pop in!


mohsart
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Feb 2020
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 741
Location: Southern Sweden

14 Feb 2021, 6:59 pm

I've read the bible from start to end, a bit uninteresting how people were related, but not too boring of a read.
The Quaran was a bit harder to dig into.
I rarely stop reading a book even if it's garbage, but one I stopped reading was "hård rock" ("hard rock").
It's by a reputable journalist who has made some really great documentaries tv-shows, but he cannot write.

/Mats


_________________
Interests: Comic books, Manga; most things to do with Handicraft, wood, textile, metal etc, modern materials; horror, true crime; languages, art, and history to an extent
Uninterests: All things about motors; celebrities; fashion; sports; career; stock market
Feel free to PM me!


AnonymousAnonymous
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 23 Nov 2006
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 72,322
Location: Portland, Oregon

15 Feb 2021, 11:16 pm

50 Shades of Gray

I could not get past the first chapter; the book was poorly written.


_________________
Silly NTs, I have Aspergers, and having Aspergers is gr-r-reat!


diagnosedafter50
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

Joined: 15 Dec 2020
Age: 58
Posts: 309
Location: United Kingdom

18 Feb 2021, 7:35 pm

The Mr twiddle series by Enid Blyton when I was six.
He was forgetful and all the stories were about silly mistakes he made and there was no resolution or positive ending or anything about Mr twiddle learning something.
As I am forgetful and make silly mistakes I felt like Mr twiddle I identified with him and thisContributed towards an inferiority complex and fed into my propensity to make mistakes in my opinion. What a pointless waste of paper these books cost me nothing.



DIVAIR
Raven
Raven

Joined: 9 Feb 2021
Age: 57
Gender: Male
Posts: 120

24 Feb 2021, 12:42 pm

Anything by Robert Heinlein, but, his "Sixth Column" is so laughably bad I just had to finish it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Column

Imagine the "Rover Boys":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rover_Boys

only embarrassingly racist and sci-fi in it's naivety.

"Starship Troopers" is a big stink fest too: it takes itself so seriously, it's like watching the old "Dragnet" TV series from the the late 1960's.

DIVAIR