In reply to Zombie Jon Snow

Zombie Jon Snow said:

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Last of the Mohicans is terribly dry - good movie though.

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I haven't read that one, but opened this to post about The Deerslayer. Horrible. It got to where I was looking at all the ridiculousness like multiple sentences having over 100 words of rambling nonsense. Then, I looked online to find out more critiques and ran across on of Mark Twain's letters about it. Here is one of his hilarious letters about the Cooper books:

http://twain.lib.virginia.edu/projects/rissetto/offense.html

I'm surprised at how many of these books are being read in the 9th grade. I read Romeo and Juliet, but dont recall anything else that year. I don't see the point in a 14-15 year old reading Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities or The Scarlett Letter.

Jane Eyre

In reply to Sazerac

cclearman said:

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For popular books - and probably because I was really looking forward to it - Confederacy of Dunces.

But that was disappointing because of expectations. I've read terrible stuff I clearly don't even remember.

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Completely agree. Book was worthless. A friend said it just won awards because its pushing an agenda. Not sure about any of the book award motives, but I dont know how it got any popularity or even published.

I read a James Patterson book once and that was enough. The writing was terrible and the dialogue was worse.

The one that I hated the most is the Scarlet Letter. I could find a way to enjoy just about anything we read in high school as a class but this was terrible. So bad that I completely shut down any sort of intellectual comprehension and just "read" the pages without actually reading it. What a waste of class time.

In reply to Bruce Almighty

Bruce Almighty said:

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I'm surprised at how many of these books are being read in the 9th grade. I read Romeo and Juliet, but dont recall anything else that year. I don't see the point in a 14-15 year old reading Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities or The Scarlett Letter.

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Yeah those were all 9th/10th grade required reading for me.

I was on a kick of reading just "classics" for a while. There's plenty of dry, overwritten, dated stuff out there (Billy Budd I'm looking your way...)

Still the one that I look back on and really think WTF was A Separate Peace. 25 years later and I still hate that stupid book.

Beloved.

The Wind Up Girl - I didn't get very far, really ****ing weird.
It started off taking about sex slave robots being raped in Thailand and I was too weirded out to continue.

In terms of classics, add another vote for "The Scarlet Letter" here.

In terms of contemporary fiction, my vote is for "Armada" by Ernest Cline. I enjoyed "Ready Player One" eventhough I know there is a lot of people who hated it as well. I could barely finish "Armada".

slaughterhouse 5

Heart of Darkness
The Davinci Code comes in second.


Now I love The Scarlet Letter

In reply to Tanya 93 Oh that reminds me. The Lost Symbol was terrible and I stopped reading Dan Brown after that.

LOLZ at anyone saying anything by Cormac McCarthy is the "worst". You might not dig his style, which is fine, but he's an incredible writer. It's like saying Rachmaninoff sucks because you don't like classical music.


Real answer: Rise of the Governor (Walking Dead). "Written" when the show was at its high point in what couldn't have been more than 5 minutes. Numerous factual errors, gaping plot holes, unnecessary tangents, and the most obvious "twist" ending ever. Utter trash and I'm embarrassed for having read it.

(The wife +1s Wicked)

In reply to Bruce Almighty

Bruce Almighty said:

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Neil Gaiman books suck. I've tried American Gods and 2-3 others and have given up on all of them. I just do not like his writing style.

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I agree. I do not like his books.

In reply to schmendeler

schmendeler said:

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Tanya 93 said:

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Heart of Darkness
The Davinci Code comes in second.


Now I love The Scarlet Letter

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the teacher's pet in my English classes did also.

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My love of lit had nothing to do with being a teacher's pet.

I was just odd and they either loved me for it or were scared I would do something else stupid, like setting my chemistry lab on fire. So they were nice.

I thought Blood Meridian was amazing.

In reply to G Martin 87

G Martin 87 said:

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Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett. The first two books in his Century series were great, but the third is utter garbage.

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Is this the 'Fall of Giants' series? Or 'Pillars of the Earth'?

The first book I could think of was "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. I know that book has some historical relevance, but man was a slog to get through.

In reply to schmendeler

schmendeler said:

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The one that I hated the most is the Scarlet Letter. I could find a way to enjoy just about anything we read in high school as a class but this was terrible. So bad that I completely shut down any sort of intellectual comprehension and just "read" the pages without actually reading it. What a waste of class time.

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I did this, too. I remember the class discussions and when the teacher pointed out that (Spoiler Alert) Dimmsdale was the one who the affair with Hester, I was like "How the heck did you make that jump?", but again, it was just such a dry slog, that I wasn't even comprehending what i was reading.


But Catcher in the Rye is up there for me for one of the worst books ever. What a complete piece of crap this book is.

In reply to MaroonStain

MaroonStain said:

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G Martin 87 said:

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Edge of Eternity by Ken Follett. The first two books in his Century series were great, but the third is utter garbage.

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Is this the 'Fall of Giants' series? Or 'Pillars of the Earth'?

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The Fall of Giants series.

I'll have to agree American Gods is bad. I read it with a book club. It was anticlimactic and a lot of work to get through. It was the only book I finished and immediately said WTF did I just read. It is supposed to be one of Gaiman's best, and if so, that is a pretty low bar.

In reply to Ol Jock 99

Ol Jock 99 said:

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LOLZ at anyone saying anything by Cormac McCarthy is the "worst". You might not dig his style, which is fine, but he's an incredible writer. It's like saying Rachmaninoff sucks because you don't like classical music.


Real answer: Rise of the Governor (Walking Dead). "Written" when the show was at its high point in what couldn't have been more than 5 minutes. Numerous factual errors, gaping plot holes, unnecessary tangents, and the most obvious "twist" ending ever. Utter trash and I'm embarrassed for having read it.

(The wife +1s Wicked)

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The World is Flat by Friedman. I quit reading around halfway through the book.

If you haven't read it, I'll summmarize the first half of it for you: you are apparently screwed if you are not an artist or a coder or already rich.

In reply to Remember The Astrodome

AgOrb said:

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I'll have to agree American Gods is bad. I read it with a book club. It was anticlimactic and a lot of work to get through. It was the only book I finished and immediately said WTF did I just read. It is supposed to be one of Gaiman's best, and if so, that is a pretty low bar.

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I didn't dislike it but it definitely reads like a comic book author wrote it.

I wouldn't say it's the worst by any means, but I remember thinking All Quiet on the Western Front was overrated when reading it in high school. So I reread it this year and had the same opinion, maybe even more so after comparing it to some of the other war novels I've read.

The worst one that I actually finished was "The House of Sand and Fog."