Worst Book Ever!

[Liz]

what is the completely worst book you have ever had the displeasure to read in your whole entire life?

share with us the horrors of bad fiction, and the reasons why it's horrible

[Le Communard]

I was no fan of "Important Piece of Classical Literature X" because Mean Old Hag "Mrs. Y" forced me to read it when I was in the "nth" grade, and I was too small minded to comprehend, so I dismissed it out of hand in what most people will recognize as an act of Childish Hubris but was really me knowing better than everybody else and being the only one to recognize it for the dreck it really is.

OR

I took a look at the back cover once of a "Novel Popular in My Age Group" and it sounded really stupid, so I dismissed it out of hand. Then I read a ill-conceived parody on the interwebz that confirmed my beliefs, and it is now my life's mission to tear it down at every possible chance. Never mind that what I read (or don't) is really no better--their stuff is just stuuupid.

Thread closed.

Edited April 19, 2010 by Le Communard

[cheezperson]

Oh my gosh, "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne for sure. It was so boring!! Almost nothing happens in it, it's mostly the main character's feelings and whatnot. However, I really didn't care about the main character at all since there was no real reason for connecting with her (unless having a kid with someone else when you're married is your kinda thing).

I could go on, but I won't.

[Le Communard]

Oh my gosh, "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne for sure. It was so boring!! Almost nothing happens in it, it's mostly the main character's feelings and whatnot. However, I really didn't care about the main character at all since there was no real reason for connecting with her (unless having a kid with someone else when you're married is your kinda thing).

I could go on, but I won't.

Score one for Le Communard. Although, too be fair, it's probably more often than not the teachers fault for being totally unable to engage students in the literature.

[Inactive Account]

I could derail this by going on about how I would have loved The Great Gatsby if my school's English department hadn't been dead set on ruining it, but I won't.

Nay, I will instead denounce this thing I found on the "reading program reward" shelf when I was volunteering at the library: a little monstrosity called Gamer Girl. I forget the name of the author; she does not need remembering.

I would first defend this by saying that it was an "advance library proof": a not-quite-finished copy sent out to gain interest-- but this does not excuse it. Advance reading copies excuse typographical errors, not terrible writing.

The story goes thus: Maddy is a high-school girl whose life has just been uprooted; her parents have just divorced, and she, her mother, and her sister are moving out of the city to her grandmother's house in the middle of suburbia. Naturally she is unhappy about this. Well, so far so tolerable. Many a decent story has begun thusly.

So Maddy is shoved into a school where she knows nobody. All right. Now, Maddy apparently has some sort of fashion sense involving healthy amounts of black clothing, so she is dismayed to find that this school is apparently populated entirely by "Aberzombies," who have never heard of anything interesting, ever. (Only good thing that ever came from this book: the term "Aberzombie," which is good for tormenting my sister.) Because she has dress sense, Maddy is immediately ostracized by everyone. Not helping is the fact that her grandmother, by virtue of being old, is opposed to any clothing that doesn't look horrible, and is determined to send her granddaughter to school in embarrassing sweatshirts and "mom jeans" on the first day. Naturally, Maddy also falls desperately for one of the lead jocks, despite obvious displays of jerkassery.

Because of the dread curse of the Mary Sue keeping such a nice girl from having friends (though her general lack of personality and feelings of superiority about fashion sense might have something to do with that too), Maddy is even more unhappy. This changes when her ever-immature father shows up to give her a birthday present in the form of an MMORPG. Apparently, you can buy them in boxes as a one-time thing, and subscriptions/downloads do not exist. Well then. Maddy sets up an account and creates an avatar that sounds suspiciously like Barbie. Due to her utter inability to RTFM she finds herself repeatedly dying at the teeth of some overpowered monsters placed directly outside the starter town. She keeps respawning with her throat in the jaws of some hideous beast. Along comes another player, Sir Leo, a knight in shining armor who fights the monsters off and begins to teach her the basics of the game while keeping up a terribly-thought-out roleplay.

Meanwhile at school, Maddy has finally found some like-minded sorts, and corralled this ragtag bunch of misfits into a brand-new anime club. Titles are dropped without any understanding of content. The name of Fullmetal Alchemist is taken in vain. And Maddy finds out about a contest-- draw your own manga for a chance to win (an amount of money conveniently equal to the tuition of Maddy's old private school, which she desperately wants to return to)! Of course she sets about working on an entry, with the approval of her new mindless drones.

Maddy pulls some informed artistic abilities apparently out of thin air and sets to work. The story? She takes a self-insert and has her sucked into an MMORPG, where she takes on the exact appearance of Maddy's barbie-elf. As Maddy begins to fall for her roleplaying friend Sir Leo, so, too, does her manga protagonist fall for a character of the same name and appearance. (Never mind that Sir Leo could and probably is some 40-year-old unemployed college dropout in a basement somewhere). As the school year passes, Maddy continues work, and her self-insert finally finds her way out of the game world back into the high school narrative, but takes her powers with her, and uses them to beat up her tormentors.

Maddy also nearly gets her feelings across to the pretty jock she's crushing on, who now is also apparently a comics and manga fan. Nearly.

But then tragedy strikes! The week before the competition is judged, Maddy forgets her manuscript at school! (Apparently, scanners and the like do not exist, so she does not have any copies.) She finds the pages of her work pasted to the walls and scribbled on, covered in childish insults: the king jock and queen cheerleader's doing. But as Maddy reaches her darkest hour (still not considering that maybe this foolishly-pursued rough draft wasn't even that good) her drone army pulls even more informed artistic skills out of thin air, and recreates pages for her. She submits the patchworky manuscript to the competition, disregarding the possibility that fifteen authors to a work might not be allowed.

But of course, she wins. Her Mary Sue is praised, her wish-fulfillment plot hailed as original art by some name-dropped American comic artist. She gets the money she wanted-- but chooses to stay where she is, because her new drone army is better than the friends she had before. Oh, and it turns out that Sir Leo, her online buddy, was actually her pretty jock crush, and he denounces his jerk friends so that they can live happily ever after.

Gamer Girl: Guaranteed to make anyone who is actually female and enjoys video games attempt to throw the book through the wall!

(It couldn't really be that bad, you say; I say if you really want to find out, go read a chapter and then I'll prescribe you some intelligently written books as detox.)

[Le Communard]

Nay, I will instead denounce this thing I found on the "reading program reward" shelf when I was volunteering at the library: a little monstrosity called Gamer Girl. I forget the name of the author; she does not need remembering.

I would first defend this by saying that it was an "advance library proof": a not-quite-finished copy sent out to gain interest-- but this does not excuse it. Advance reading copies excuse typographical errors, not terrible writing.

The story goes thus: Maddy is a high-school girl whose life has just been uprooted; her parents have just divorced, and she, her mother, and her sister are moving out of the city to her grandmother's house in the middle of suburbia. Naturally she is unhappy about this. Well, so far so tolerable. Many a decent story has begun thusly.

So Maddy is shoved into a school where she knows nobody. All right. Now, Maddy apparently has some sort of fashion sense involving healthy amounts of black clothing, so she is dismayed to find that this school is apparently populated entirely by "Aberzombies," who have never heard of anything interesting, ever. (Only good thing that ever came from this book: the term "Aberzombie," which is good for tormenting my sister.) Because she has dress sense, Maddy is immediately ostracized by everyone. Not helping is the fact that her grandmother, by virtue of being old, is opposed to any clothing that doesn't look horrible, and is determined to send her granddaughter to school in embarrassing sweatshirts and "mom jeans" on the first day. Naturally, Maddy also falls desperately for one of the lead jocks, despite obvious displays of jerkassery.

Because of the dread curse of the Mary Sue keeping such a nice girl from having friends (though her general lack of personality and feelings of superiority about fashion sense might have something to do with that too), Maddy is even more unhappy. This changes when her ever-immature father shows up to give her a birthday present in the form of an MMORPG. Apparently, you can buy them in boxes as a one-time thing, and subscriptions/downloads do not exist. Well then. Maddy sets up an account and creates an avatar that sounds suspiciously like Barbie. Due to her utter inability to RTFM she finds herself repeatedly dying at the teeth of some overpowered monsters placed directly outside the starter town. She keeps respawning with her throat in the jaws of some hideous beast. Along comes another player, Sir Leo, a knight in shining armor who fights the monsters off and begins to teach her the basics of the game while keeping up a terribly-thought-out roleplay.

Meanwhile at school, Maddy has finally found some like-minded sorts, and corralled this ragtag bunch of misfits into a brand-new anime club. Titles are dropped without any understanding of content. The name of Fullmetal Alchemist is taken in vain. And Maddy finds out about a contest-- draw your own manga for a chance to win (an amount of money conveniently equal to the tuition of Maddy's old private school, which she desperately wants to return to)! Of course she sets about working on an entry, with the approval of her new mindless drones.

Maddy pulls some informed artistic abilities apparently out of thin air and sets to work. The story? She takes a self-insert and has her sucked into an MMORPG, where she takes on the exact appearance of Maddy's barbie-elf. As Maddy begins to fall for her roleplaying friend Sir Leo, so, too, does her manga protagonist fall for a character of the same name and appearance. (Never mind that Sir Leo could and probably is some 40-year-old unemployed college dropout in a basement somewhere). As the school year passes, Maddy continues work, and her self-insert finally finds her way out of the game world back into the high school narrative, but takes her powers with her, and uses them to beat up her tormentors.

Maddy also nearly gets her feelings across to the pretty jock she's crushing on, who now is also apparently a comics and manga fan. Nearly.

But then tragedy strikes! The week before the competition is judged, Maddy forgets her manuscript at school! (Apparently, scanners and the like do not exist, so she does not have any copies.) She finds the pages of her work pasted to the walls and scribbled on, covered in childish insults: the king jock and queen cheerleader's doing. But as Maddy reaches her darkest hour (still not considering that maybe this foolishly-pursued rough draft wasn't even that good) her drone army pulls even more informed artistic skills out of thin air, and recreates pages for her. She submits the patchworky manuscript to the competition, disregarding the possibility that fifteen authors to a work might not be allowed.

But of course, she wins. Her Mary Sue is praised, her wish-fulfillment plot hailed as original art by some name-dropped American comic artist. She gets the money she wanted-- but chooses to stay where she is, because her new drone army is better than the friends she had before. Oh, and it turns out that Sir Leo, her online buddy, was actually her pretty jock crush, and he denounces his jerk friends so that they can live happily ever after.

Gamer Girl: Guaranteed to make anyone who is actually female and enjoys video games attempt to throw the book through the wall!

(It couldn't really be that bad, you say; I say if you really want to find out, go read a chapter and then I'll prescribe you some intelligently written books as detox.)

Wow, a legitimately bad book, I'm impressed. If we're setting the bar so high I guess I have to share mine, then: Lord of Snow and Shadow by Sarah Ash. I don't even like thinking about this book (I had to look up the title). Such a genius story... ruined by terrible, terrible, terrible, writing. I can't bring myself to recount the plot, but to give you an idea of how bad it was, suffice I ready the book and about half of the sequel in a two-day frenzy, literally just devouring it, hoping against hope the potential would pull through, even ready to see it out to the end... but I had to stop because even the sentences were unreadable, painful, messes. It was that bad.

Edited April 19, 2010 by Le Communard

[Life]

Wow, I'm stumped. I've read a lot of bad books in my time.

I'd probably have to go with 1984 by George Orwell. I liked Animal Farm but this book was just weird. Not to mention that it got shoved down my throat as part of the Grade 11 curriculum.

EDIT: I remember reading The Great Gatsby. Surprisingly (for a book that my high school liked to push on us), it was actually rather good. Same with A Separate Peace by John Knowles. 1984 was the only one that I legitimately hated (along with Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice).

Edited April 19, 2010 by King Russell

[Balcerzak]

I can't honestly recall what might be the worst book I've ever read.

I mean, there are books that I've enjoyed but were clearly bad writing, e.g. It and The Tommyknockers. Both of which start out good and engaging, and then Stephen King fucks things up close to the end. In one case it's by arranging a series of elaborate coincidences to allow a character to do something (only to turn out to be completely ineffectual after all) in a manner that utterly breaks suspension of disbelief. The main character's sister's completely fillings-filled mouth in The Tommyknockers allowing her to enter the town, only to immediately be captured, anyone? Or he takes a perfectly viable villain, rewrites it so that it's part of some giant cosmic scheme, and destroys all sense of respect or fear you have. It boiling down to an "epic" struggle between the Evil Clown (which is actually a Giant Space Spider) vs a Sleeping Cosmic Tortoise, anyone?

And then there were books that I didn't enjoy, but are most likely excellent (cf. my response to Le Communard).

So until I remember a genuinely bad book that I didn't enjoy, I'll probably refrain from making a formal contribution to the thread.

I was no fan of "Important Piece of Classical Literature X" because Mean Old Hag "Mrs. Y" forced me to read it when I was in the "nth" grade, and I was too small minded to comprehend, so I dismissed it out of hand in what most people will recognize as an act of Childish Hubris but was really me knowing better than everybody else and being the only one to recognize it for the dreck it really is.

This is exactly the reason why I'm not going to claim Moby Dick as the worst book ever. Though actually, it wasn't forced on me per se, I was just over ambitious and it was worth a lot of points on the Accelerated Reader list or whatever. This really isn't the sort of novel you should be attempting to read in 5th/6th grade, and I clearly was worse off for it. I had to slog through entire chapters which were probably way over my head. Needless to say it was not a particularly enjoyable experience.

(It couldn't really be that bad, you say; I say if you really want to find out, go read a chapter and then I'll prescribe you some intelligently written books as detox.)

It can't be as bad as you're describing... Publishers have standards, right? Please?

Edited April 19, 2010 by Balcerzak

[Hatari]

Anything by Shakespeare...

[Shuuda]

Anything by Shakespeare...

Shakespeare writes plays, not books. There is a huge difference.

That said, I really did not like the Color Purple. The message felt so forced.

[Inactive Account]

It can't be as bad as you're describing... Publishers have standards, right? Please?

You'd think that, but when it comes to books targeted at teenage girls, many publishers apparently don't. We apparently can't handle complex plots or plots that don't involve getting a guy as the main or one of the main goals, and definitely can't recognize a bad literary message when we see one (yes, abusive relationships are fine if he's pretty! but I digress)... and we certainly aren't smart enough to tell decent writing style from bad.

...One of these days my library is going to work out that someone is actively hiding volumes of certain series under the teen room couch whenever she sees them on the shelf, and ban me from going in there... all motions to create separate "Teen literature" and "Teen trashy novel" sections have failed.

Speaking of bad, a certain series that I've alluded to in this post. Yes, Twilight. I read it to make my fangirl cousins shut up. ...All of it. I may have lost brain cells. The bad writing was painful, the bad messages more so. "Stalking means he loves you! Being dependent to the point that when he leaves, you BSOD is just fine! Even if you get badass powers, you should feel guilty and crushed if they take away your ability to spawn!" I had to read Dracula as detox. ...Actually, if I get that job I wanted at the bookstore, I think I'll have to carry around a copy of Dracula to keep the fangirls at bay... because if crosses work on vampires, vampires work on things that sparkle, right?

[Life]

I gave up 1/4 of the way through the first book. The writing is atrocious. I'm pretty sure that the author has wet dreams about Mr. Emo because the way that she describes him is... God, it's horrible.

[Inactive Account]

Actually, Meyer has stated that she got the idea from a dream she had... so yeah.

[Ansem]

I read twilight way before the movie came out

It was disgusting

Its funny how vamps cant come out in the morning and mr emo does

When i was in 4th grade i read this book called goosebumps.

That was the most worse book i ever read

[Loki Laufeyson]

I cant remember the absolute worst book i ever read, but i remember the worst one i read recently. It was Breaking Dawn, the fourth Twilight book. Those books are all pretty badly written and the third one was just so boring. However Breaking Dawn took the taco. Badly written and a horribly half-baked plot. Its the worst out of the series and yeah, thats saying something. *shudders*