Books to avoid like a bookworm on a diet

How so Joe

Harking back to page 8 or so, I have to agree with How Many Miles to Babylon.
I studied it for my leaving and it is just utter pain to read the book. I hated it, absolutely detested it. It seemed to me that nothing really happened, even though there was like, a whole war thing going on. It just didn't capture my interest at all.

I don't think anyone's mentioned this yet... The Twilight Series, by Stephenie Meyer.
It has some huge following but it's just ridiculously badly written.
A poorly developed, main character who's hard to empathise with, a ridiculously perfect love interest, a completely un-realistic second love interest... The whole series just bored me.
I know it's a fantasy series, but even fantasy series have to be vaguely plausible!!

sloppydrunk

Not Everyones cup of tea but im a big fan of Irvine Welsh, i thought "Trainspotting" "Glue" "Filth" and "Porno" were all savage,

But his last book "The Bedroom Secrets of the Masterchefs" was just really really bad.. i so wanted to like it but not a hope it sucked.

Crap

Goat Mouth

sloppydrunk wrote: »

Not Everyones cup of tea but im a big fan of Irvine Welsh, i thought "Trainspotting" "Glue" "Filth" and "Porno" were all savage,

But his last book "The Bedroom Secrets of the Masterchefs" was just really really bad.. i so wanted to like it but not a hope it sucked.

Crap

exact same thoughts here mate!
love the early stuff but felt like the scraping away from his original style of writing very contrived!

Kaizer Sosa

Has anybody read "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers. I read it and absolutely hated every page of the self conscious tripe. The smug self appreciation was so grating right through but he is still considered one of American writing's wunderkinds. Loathed it.

KyleBovine

Ben Okri's The Famished Road.

I'm an avid reader, but I have never come across a book I have hated so much.
Magical realism when done well, Garcia Marquez, Rushdie, can be quite astounding.
Okri, with professional skill, manages to turn the magical into a mundane, non-event, offers up barely sketched characters, a plot as threadbare as one of Jodie Marsh's tops, an allegory of post-independence so understated it's status as 'allegory' is severely under question.

A book that makes you want to kick the author around the place should be put down as soon as it starts to annoy you. Take no pride in finishing it regardless, throw the wretched thing in the fire at the first opportunity.

EamonnKeane

Acacia wrote: »

Oh god, 'Silas Marner'. I had to read it for my Leaving Cert. If I remember correctly there's an entire chapter dedicated to a discussion about a cow. I remember my teacher commenting that that particular chapter was held in regard as one of the best examples of English literature ever.

I found it confusing that a female author would write interesting male characters and incredibly dull, clichéd female characters.

Kirby

Well, an author that can write true to life should be applauded.

Belfast

Tom clancy's Op-centre Games of state
I think Tom clancy did not write this own. someone elese was paid to and he put his name on it to cash in on his brand.

Peig by Peig sayers
life is too short for to read Peig in any language.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented is a novel by Thomas Hardy,
I dreary and depressing book

Grandpa's Marijuana Handbook: A User Guide for Ages 50 & Up by Evan Keliher
this guy smoked too many joints while writing this book.

WindSock

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I don't see what all the hoo ha is about.

romdjoll

The Island of the Day Before - Umberto Eco (couldn't finish it)
The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith (What, pray, was the point of it? Resent the time spent reading it.)
The Diviners - Rick Moody (Ooh look how "clever" he is, look how bored I am, 42 pages about a freaking sunrise?! Another 1k pages about...zzzz)
anything at all by Dave Eggers (for reasons of saccharine teeth-hurtiness)
Adam - Ted Dekker (a "Christian thriller" - every bit as wojous as it sounds, had to read it for work)
Finnegans Wake - Joyce (Because life is just too damn short for books that are so much like work with so little reward)

On the other hand, I love Neal Stephenson, but it took me two goes to get into "Quicksilver" - worth it though.

Shacklebolt

Anything by Brendan Behan.

Acacia

EamonnKeane wrote: »

I found it confusing that a female author would write interesting male characters and incredibly dull, clichéd female characters.

Well, in the 'cow' chapter it was all men having a discussion about what breed of cow it was! :pac:

In general, the female characters were quite cliché. However, George Eliot was writing under a male pen name, perhaps she made such annoying female characters so she wouldn't be found out?!:p

Greyfox

Ulysses...lets accept the fact that the majority of people that start this book never finish it simply because they find it to be incomprehensive gibberish! Ok so you may say it's the readers fault for not understanding it but maybe the reader just realised that theirs hundreths of thousands of better books out their!

Their's an episode of Black books were a sales clerk says "I just sold that customer a copy of Ulysses, The Guide to Ulysses and A Handbook to the Ulysses Guide, I think I'd need a guide to the handbook as I'm 1/4 of the way through reading it online and I've no idea what its about!

It's great to see people slating the mighty Lord of the rings, their were times when I was really enjoying it and then their were times the endless descriptions were making me lose the will to live...I'm convinced the book was 5,000 words long and it took Froddo and that constant whinger Sam about a year to get to Mordor!

For me the worst book ever has got to be Dicken's Hard Times!!

theCzar

I really hate this thread (but keep coming back) because reading preferences is such a personal thing. Further, while there are lots and lots of very bad books out there, the ones mentioned here are often critically acclaimed classics and/or extremely popular books that someone else didn't like/were disappointed by.

Just looking up the page as I write, we have Joyce, Tolkein, Dickens, Behan, Kerouac and Hardy to name a few. I'll fight to the death for anybody's right to not like a book, regardless of popular acclaim and indeed I don't like to read Joyce myself but I would never have the arrogance to dismiss their works, to call them bad books because I personally don't like them.

*sigh* I'm sensitive, indulge me.

Six of One

Sophie's World by Jostien Gaarder :mad:

This was recommended to me by a close friend. We had always had similar taste, this was the first occasion where we differed. Holy God, I tried. When I realised that I was actually skipping pages and pages at a time and just reading the bits where she headed off to school I decided to jack it in! Its one of those that I just can't understand anybody without a PHD in philospohy bothering with. (My friend and I have had several more differences in opion since- she hated The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, a book I thoroughly enjoyed and even laughed out loud at.)

Greyfox

theCzar wrote: »

I really hate this thread (but keep coming back) because reading preferences is such a personal thing. Further, while there are lots and lots of very bad books out there, the ones mentioned here are often critically acclaimed classics and/or extremely popular books that someone else didn't like/were disappointed by.

Just looking up the page as I write, we have Joyce, Tolkein, Dickens, Behan, Kerouac and Hardy to name a few. I'll fight to the death for anybody's right to not like a book, regardless of popular acclaim and indeed I don't like to read Joyce myself but I would never have the arrogance to dismiss their works, to call them bad books because I personally don't like them.

*sigh* I'm sensitive, indulge me.

In a way your right that this thread should be dominated by books that are'nt popular or Critically acclaimed as their should be some "ah well I didn't like it but it was something that other people rated very highly so perhaps the book just wasn't for me"..for example I didn't like the Catcher in the Rye as I though Holden was a moaner but I can see why many other poeple liked it. The problem is when you pick up something that's very popular and you don't enjoy it you feel the need to tell people about it as you were expecting more...wheres if you pick up something that's not got any hype about it and it doesn't deliver you tend not to feel the need to slate the book as much.

It's not Arrogance to dismiss their works, it's just expressing your opinion which your entitled to do but only if you've made at least decent effort to get into the book!

Dr. Worm

Harry Potter. Any of them. Just... Eurgh... I read one, the fourth or fifth; it was possibly the dullest thing I've ever read.
What Rowling does is take a reasonably okay idea -wizard school- and beats it over the head. Maybe, just maybe, someone else could have made the idea into an acceptable book, but geez.
It takes skill to make wizards boring, but she does. The dialog is wooden, the plot is just plain black-and-white good versus evil stuff. There's no doubt that Voldemort will be killed, justice will prevail, and so on.
Harry himself has got to be the most irritating protagonist I've ever read about. For God's sake, simply dropping your glasses won't make you instantly blind.

And that owl... And the elf... Must you mourn them, Harry?

Yes, the plot twist was quite clever... But y'know, I think it would've been greatly improved if all the good little wizards just randomly exploded at the end.
Or something like that.

Greyfox

Dr. Worm wrote: »

Harry Potter. Any of them. Just... Eurgh... I read one, the fourth or fifth; it was possibly the dullest thing I've ever read.
What Rowling does is take a reasonably okay idea -wizard school- and beats it over the head. Maybe, just maybe, someone else could have made the idea into an acceptable book, but geez.
It takes skill to make wizards boring, but she does. The dialog is wooden, the plot is just plain black-and-white good versus evil stuff. There's no doubt that Voldemort will be killed, justice will prevail, and so on.
Harry himself has got to be the most irritating protagonist I've ever read about. For God's sake, simply dropping your glasses won't make you instantly blind.

And that owl... And the elf... Must you mourn them, Harry?

Yes, the plot twist was quite clever... But y'know, I think it would've been greatly improved if all the good little wizards just randomly exploded at the end.
Or something like that.

Firstly you have to start reading the books from book one, you can't just jump in at the middle of the series as you won't have a clue whats going on and without reading the first book you crucially wont feel sorry for Harry...now that the greatest book series ever written has been slated it reminds you that no matter what the film, book, tv show or game their will always be someone that doesn't like it!

Secondly it's pacifically her creation of the wizard school Hogwarts that makes her books the kind that will be read by my children and my childrens children as everyone who went to school or is in school can relate to it...Rowling seems to capture what it's really like to be a kid better than any other writer and everything about Hogwarts gives a dazzeling sense of mystery and adventure...

In fairness in fantasy good pretty much always preveils over evil..but Rowling does at least let some of the goodies die!

orangecake

American Psycho is just a horrible book. It will leave the disturbing images in your head that you will never erase!

Atonement is one of the most overhyped books ever written. It is predictable and utterly unoriginal. Big disappointment.

damselnat

Kerouac's Lonesome Traveller just not for me
Likewise Burrough's Naked Lunch
Personally cannot stand anything by John Grisham
Don't get the hype about Dickens, though enjoyed Great Expectations
And can someone please explain the fuss about those Twilight books??

Goat Mouth

damselnat wrote: »

And can someone please explain the fuss about those Twilight books??

Emo fap material... nuff said.

EmoMatt15

Twilight is one of the most hyped books I've ever read and it was a huge letdown, the characters are obvious, no plot twists, nothing, just a revamped version of the already copied a million times Romeo and Juliet..

Having said that the last book I read before that was Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell so maybe I was expecting greatness from all books

REPSOC1916

Jane Austen's work is painful and pointless. It's 18th century chick-lit.

Avoid Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence. Not the worst of all time but it's really boring. I enjoyed the Satanic Verses and Fury though.

The worst of all time goes to the Da Vinci Code.

turgon

EmoMatt15 wrote: »

Having said that the last book I read before that was Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell so maybe I was expecting greatness from all books

Im still partly suffering from that syndrome!

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

tubedude

The book adaptation of 'The Matrix'......really not the same as watchin' the movie.....

elpresdentde

Emperor series, written by Conn Iggulden

the first book is not so bad. but it goes downhill quick after that. historical fiction about Julius ceasear trying to justify why he slaughtered half of gaul while still trying to be the hero. The same lad did another series about Genghis Khan try to justify him.

questioner

The unabridged Count of Monte Cristo, whilst in itself a great novel. I found it to be unnecessarily lengthy. 900 odd pages of very very small type.

galactus

questioner wrote: »

The unabridged Count of Monte Cristo, whilst in itself a great novel. I found it to be unnecessarily lengthy. 900 odd pages of very very small type.

I nearly bought this in Eason's today having listened to the unabridged audio book last year which is absolutely outstanding.

questioner

galactus wrote: »

I nearly bought this in Eason's today having listened to the unabridged audio book last year which is absolutely outstanding.

You'll get it much cheaper in Connolly's second hand bookstore, its just round the corner from the Bank of Ireland on Patrick street, beside the Tesco . Great bookshop actually, one of my favorite. Old guy in there is quite knowledgeable and fond of a chat.

galactus

questioner wrote: »

You'll get it much cheaper in Connolly's second hand bookstore, its just round the corner from the Bank of Ireland on Patrick street, beside the Tesco . Great bookshop actually, one of my favorite. Old guy in there is quite knowledgeable and fond of a chat.

Its a classic bookshop - one of my favourite places. Time flies when you are there and the staff are excellent.

Lainabaina

WindSock wrote: »

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I don't see what all the hoo ha is about.

Seconded. I read most of it when I was in San Francisco, wanting to get into the feel of it and all, and couldn't make it through. Not for the first time either - it's one of those long-term unfinishables.

dr.bollocko

Lainabaina wrote: »

Seconded. I read most of it when I was in San Francisco, wanting to get into the feel of it and all, and couldn't make it through. Not for the first time either - it's one of those long-term unfinishables.

In my honest and humble opinion that book is an incredible piece of writing. I must have read it 20 times.
I could not tell you enough how much that book has influenced my young and even recent life. Even now I have a copy of it within ten feet with something underlined on every other page. Please file it under must-read-before-I-die.

Lainabaina

dr.bollocko wrote: »

In my honest and humble opinion that book is an incredible piece of writing. I must have read it 20 times.
I could not tell you enough how much that book has influenced my young and even recent life. Even now I have a copy of it within ten feet with something underlined on every other page. Please file it under must-read-before-I-die.

I just don't know if I could make it through it again! Maybe I'm not in the right frame of mind for it right now, but it just had no resonance for me

MonicaBing

oooh, have just found this thread and having worked in a bookshop, best job ever imho, but got let go due to fcuking recession, my sweaty fingers are busting to type,

Mills & Boon
The Secret, regurgitated tripe in a fancy cover and if i could say most of it is plageurised from Eckhart Tolle's excellent The Power Of Now,

The Duchess, WTF?

ANYTHING BY DAN CONSPIRACY THEORY BROWN, AAAH!

Amanda fecking Brunker, seriously stick to the weight loss phenomena.

The Twilight Series, i wanted to physically abuse, teenage girls with a hot curling tongs, the hassle i got about this crap...tried pointing them in Malorie Blackman's direction, but the horny wenches only wanted Edward..

Cecilia Ahearne, nepotism much girl????

Locamon

MonicaBing wrote: »

oooh, have just found this thread and having worked in a bookshop, best job ever imho, but got let go due to fcuking recession, my sweaty fingers are busting to type,

Mills & Boon
The Secret, regurgitated tripe in a fancy cover and if i could say most of it is plageurised from Eckhart Tolle's excellent The Power Of Now,

The Duchess, WTF?

ANYTHING BY DAN CONSPIRACY THEORY BROWN, AAAH!

Amanda fecking Brunker, seriously stick to the weight loss phenomena.

The Twilight Series, i wanted to physically abuse, teenage girls with a hot curling tongs, the hassle i got about this crap...tried pointing them in Malorie Blackman's direction, but the horny wenches only wanted Edward..

Cecilia Ahearne, nepotism much girl????

wow a lot of anger here...but have to agree all of these books are to avoided.
Add to this anything by Jeffrey Archer, anything with angel in the title or subject and last but not least 'I can make myself rich' Paul McKenna.

MonicaBing

Locamon wrote: »

wow a lot of anger here...but have to agree all of these books are to avoided.
Add to this anything by Jeffrey Archer, anything with angel in the title or subject and last but not least 'I can make myself rich' Paul McKenna.

Amon little pink pills for the affliction but seriously anger is more aimed at Ex boss, was a damn fine employee...! Bitter me...Maahahhahaahha, Yeah..

Locamon

MonicaBing wrote: »

Amon little pink pills for the affliction but seriously anger is more aimed at Ex boss, was a damn fine employee...! Bitter me...Maahahhahaahha, Yeah..

Fair enough...time to get out that copy of 'the power of now.'

MonicaBing

Touche....I doff my cap at ya!:D

Locamon

MonicaBing wrote: »

Touche....I doff my cap at ya!:D

Glad you took this in the humour in which it was intended :-)

MonicaBing

Locamon wrote: »

Glad you took this in the humour in which it was intended :-)

Ah here, i may be pished about unemployment but im not losing me sense of humour over it, Karma has a long memory!!

Lainabaina

The Secret! Now why didn't I think of that one...I got 40 pages in (it was a Christmas present from a well-meaning aunt who clearly recognised my lack of direction) and returned it to Easons, where I got The Gathering and Then We Came to the End for the same price. Much better deal.

cecilwinthorpe

MonicaBing wrote: »

Cecilia Ahearne, nepotism much girl????

Yeah I havent been impressed by Cecilia Ahearne and I really don't get what the fuss is with her at all!

Also avoid Doris Lessing - The Grass Is Singing. An absolutely awful book that I wouldnt have touched except I had to study it for school.

Karlusss

I thought The Grass Is Singing was alright. Bit slow-paced, bit psychological, but alright.

Hermy

Hermy wrote: »

'The Castle' by Iain Banks - one of the most mind-numbingly frustrating books I have ever read!

Don't know how I got this wrong - it should read A Song Of Stone.:o:confused:
Anyhow, the point still stands - I think it's rubbish!

BurnsCarpenter

Hermy wrote: »

Don't know how I got this wrong - it should read A Song Of Stone.:o:confused:
Anyhow, the point still stands - I think it's rubbish!

With you there. Utter rubbish.
It put me off trying any other non-SF Banks.

Hermy

BurnsCarpenter wrote: »

With you there. Utter rubbish.
It put me off trying any other non-SF Banks.

It's a strange one. I think Banks is a great story teller and have really enjoyed all other books of his that I have so far read.
I haven't read any of his SF material yet.
Is there one you'd recommend?

BurnsCarpenter

Hermy wrote: »

It's a strange one. I think Banks is a great story teller and have really enjoyed all other books of his that I have so far read.
I haven't read any of his SF material yet.
Is there one you'd recommend?

I had read Dead Air as well, which was decent enough. I'll have to make a stab at The Wasp Factory at some stage I suppose.
I'd say The Algebraist might be the most enjoyable of the SF ones, but they're all good IMO.
Although, with Excession I had no idea what was going on until the last hundred pages or so.

ChickenScratch

I'm embarrassed to say Moby Dick and Oliver Twist...

I know they're classics and all but, just...so...DULL

Toots

I read 'The Fog' by James Herbert recently. Utter tripe, might as well have set fire to my money. It got loads of great reviews on Amazon, so thought it might be worth a read. Never again.