Worst Book Ever

Middlemarch and anything by george eliot and possibly Howards End by e m forster

"Shop!" by Jasper Carrot Picked it up for 10p in a charity shop recently to see if his writing was better than his tv. It wasnt. The book is quite possibly the most insular, self congratulatory piece of non-comedy I've ever not bothered to read more than 10 pages of. Every single piece of 'comedy' is dated 100% at the time it was written - early/mid eighties I seem to remember - and you'd need a time machine to even get the 'jokes' let alone laugh at them. Pathetic. Awful. And he got paid for it!

I once read a book by Mr Carrot called 'A little zit on the side'. It was supposed by an autobiography of sorts. I think there was a chapter on the moles in his garden. I actually quite enjoyed it, although I was a funny child.

That the one about him sitting on a swivel chair with a torch tied to the end of a shotgun? Once saw him live (it seemed like a good idea at the time) and this 'joke' was shown in cartoon stylie during the intermission. Anyone read any of Alan Titmarsh's books ? I'm sure thay must be classics.

I don't know if I could name my most hated, but I thought Iain Banks' The Crow Road was a contrived and soulless crock of toss.

Toby Litt's Exhibitionism ;o)

Dragons Egg, I can't remember the author. A Sci-Fi thingy that was just too much, the book went on forever and in too much depth.

Lost Souls _ Poppy Brite. New Boy - William Sutcliffe

..hmmm...well, DeLillo, who wrote Underworld and Libra, both of which quite good I think, also wrote something called either Names or Faces....I forget. I read about the first 50 pages and literally threw it across the room, banking it off the wall and onto the floor underneath a big chair where I sincerely hope it still resides in that old flat in London from 4 years ago. What a pile of s***...the book AND the flat.

Daniel Deronda. I am one of those who think "Middlemarch" is the greatest novel, and so I forced myself to plough through this (what was the term?) crock of toss. d.beswetherick.

North and South by Elisabeth Gaskell Starts with an apology and ends with a wimper.

Dragon's Egg was written by Robert L Forward, Simon :) I wouldn't calle it the worst book I've ever read, but it was a good idea spoiled by an over-attention to plausibility (if life on a neutron star can be considered plausible..lol), which meant that the story got lost in the science, unfortunately... p.s. I think the worst book I've ever read was Steven Spielberg's novelization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He should stick to directing... :)

Zadie Smith's White Teeth isn't the worst book I ever read, but one of the most over-rated.

I liked it.. funny, clever.. all the things they said in the blurb. Which is good.. but it wasn't absolutely astounding.. waiting for the autograph man in paperback for that.

JG Ballard's Cocaine Nights, because nothing happens from beginning to end. Highly rated by some though. Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory. A disfunctional protagonist killing kids (if I remember correctly) makes for an instant cult book, but doesn't mean it's any good. (A friend, who agreed with me on this, read Crow Road and thought it was great.) Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse. Will the toffs get to the lighthouse? Do I care?

'Will the toffs get to the lighthouse?' Best. Synopsis. Ever.

The Corrections - Michael Franzen (is that right?) so hyped and yet couldn't get throught it. Couldn't care less about any of the characters. Drew, I loved Lost Souls - would count it among my favourite books. How odd.

Lorne Greene..Best. Death Scene. Ever. Simpsons allusion noted, Rokkit! Catcher in the Rye, which was a load of toss even in my teenage years, christ knows how many ignorant american kids get sucked in by it every year. steinbeck, too (any of them) the brain cells, George, the brain cells!

About five books in my top thirty have been posted, ouch! I too loved Lost Souls, Rachel - I think Poppy Z. Brite is ace. I also love the Banks man, as Rokkit knows... ;-) Definitely agree with D. Besweth on the Daniel Deronda thing though. I can't think of any books that I've stopped reading half way through cos they were so crap, or anything like that. The Sweet Valley University books are pretty awful, started buying them again recently from Oxfam in a nostalgic phase. The last one I read contained the phrase 'The plane. The plane of doom.' without a trace of irony...and they're all 19 and married to Counts... Oh yeah, Jane Eyre I guess - that was one that I stopped reading halfway through (I swear, she's in that bloody library for like 300 years). But that was when I was about 13 so I might try again at some point...

Yay! I knew 'Beefy' would eventually object to my dissing the Banks-meister. Richard, I think Catcher in the Rye is a fantastic, superbly written novel. I usually say my favourite Salinger novel is Franny and Zooey, just to sound different, but Catcher man. I can understand why people take a massive disliking to books dubbed 'worthy' by the masses. It's like there's this big joke that you're not in on. Everyone's going 'it's amazing, it's amazing', and you read it and you're like 'hmm... it's average, it's average', and in the face of all that gushing praise the antipathy starts to, ahem... burgeon.

Blood and Guts in High School by some American woman is dire...Couldn't finish V by Thomas Pynchon... And find James Joyce by and large impenetrable. Love Iain Banks, Love Catcher in the Rye (how could you?) But the worst, the very worst, the most over-rated has to be - DH Lawrence. Flowery sentences, useless metaphors, faux-naif working class jargon, stupid plots, stupider characters. Just the pits.

Seamus Heaney's poetry (I'm sure if he wrote a novel I would hate it just as much) - Mud, mud, mud, mud, sods, frogs, mud, mud, shite, shite, shite. Note - not the worst thing ever but, like others on this list, totally over-rated. Iain Banks... haven't read crow road but 'Wasp Factory' was cool in a 'shocking' first novel sort of way. I haven't read 'catcher in the rye'... HAHAHA. I bet you all hate me now... Also agree that 'Cocaine Nights' sucked. I couldn't finish it - I'll take cocoa and countdown nights instead, thanks...

Reading Catcher at 17, I got depressed - here was this book that was supposed to be so great, and it did nothing for me. North and South also brings back some bad teenage memories - if it wasn't tough enough to read, then to analyse the bloody thing was sheer torture!

I love a good many of the books listed above. I don't love Gaskell, and I've only read Ruth, but it really wasn't that bad, and I love To the Lighthouse, and The Catcher too! The worst book ever is Irvine Welsh's Acid House. That's not opinion. It's fact.

Anything written by Josephine Cox or Patricia Scanlan. Cringe-inducing trash

Anything written by Josephine Cox or Patricia Scanlan. Cringe-inducing trash

Trash is trash - we know that Jeffrey Archer is trash but it has a place. What really grates is a book that is supposed to be 'good' and is unreadable/execrable or just plain boring.

ok well they are supposed to be amazing best-selling authors and their novels 'amazing'. At least that's what it says on the blurb.

I must slightly stick up for D.H.Lawrence, Tony. "The Virgin and the Gypsy" is one of the most exquisite novels in the language, in my opinion. And the opening chapter and the "Snow" chapter in "Women in Love" are pretty good too. But I'm speaking as someone who, like Tara, disliked "Catcher in the Rye" (despite enjoying the first few pages). d.beswetherick.

I don't have a worst but the biggest disappointment was The Bell by Iris Murdoch. Here was a book that was meant to represent the best work by one of Britain's finest authors and it was just ... ... well, it was trying to be clever, knowing and worldly and yet the whole set-up was dull, the characters were simply not believable and the smugness of the authorial voice just cheesed me off. I think it had a nice cover. At least I read it to the end - a lot of potential worst ever books get thrown to one side the moment they lose their way. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh being the latest to be dropped and not picked up - it was going so well and then the wheels fell off the plot. The Wasp Factory is great though. Catcher was great when I first read it, much less great the second time.

I rejected DH when I was young. Tried him again about 15 years ago and found that I was right first time around. maybe I should give him one more chance! Ho Hum.

Disappointment. El Bankserino is probably my favourite author (or at least one of...). On my UCAS form I stated that I'd "read all the works of Iain Banks" then realised that there were rather a lot...so I read them all. And they were great! New Boy - William Sutcliffe? I thought only people who went to my old school read that. The author went there and it's all pretty much based on that school. I interviewed Sutcliffe for the school magazine and it was refreshing to find out that he was nothing like the protagonist i.e. a twat. Cocaine Nights was shockingly poor - as if someone had put a load of random endings in a hat, then kept pulling them out until they found one that fitted the least. And I don't like to say it, but having just read Amis' The Rachel Papers I had to throw it against a wall as soon as I finished it because it annoyed me so much.

I'd have to say the Bible, not that I've read much of it but the amount of wars it's engendered makes it the most dangerous book vere written. Glad to hear you couldn't penetrate James Joyce, Tony, because apart from the fact that he's dead, he was more James than Joyce!

sorry just a test.

I loved "Catcher in the Rye"! "The Celestine Prophecy" I found to be appalling as a novel, but it was, nonetheless, an interesting and worthwhile summary of a certain philosophical/spiritual approach to life.

Would have to say that I didn't find Camus' "The Outsider" terribly impressive...bored the hell out of me and made me really depressed. But then my g/f read it in 3 1/2 hours and thought it was inspired! Reckon Banks is very hit and miss. "The Wasp Factory" I thought was brilliant, and more than a book about a psycho kid, but "Crow Road" was, as Rokkit says, pretty contrived, and I think Banks even knows it too. "The Business" was utter drivel. Have to stick up for James Joyce - haven't read all of "Finnegans Wake" but it's fantastic. Totally impenetrable, yes, but that's part of the point! :)