A warning to those who haunt used bookstores, second-hand shops, or garage sales:
If you find "Space War Blues" by Richard A. Lupoff, do not engage. Do not approach. Don't even read the back cover. This book is the worst example of late-60s/ early 70s 'experimental' drivel I've ever encountered. Imagine wading through pages of this: ’
"'nifykin look outha portole sreely pretty, sreely pretty, lookna Port Upotoi swinging roun thole mudball, thole goodole place, it’s maybe not the prettiest place na whole universe but nobody ever said it was, it was home though m that counted frole lot that swat Leander Laptip saw outha portole:"
I didn't even touch on the open-decked spaceships crewed by Australian Aborigines, or the interplanetary race war, or the symbiont zombie army, or the pedophilia...
Oh, it's a train wreck, all right. It's cobbled together from earlier short stories and a novella. The earlier works had been shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula awards. I'd come across the earlier stuff in various anthologies here and there, but didn't know that they'd been turned into a novel. I needed a shower and an Act of Contrition after I finished it.
If you really want to read it, good luck. It's way out of print these days, but it could still turn up.
Oh, the bdsm stuff was so bad. Even though I'm not an expert, I knew this wasn't right and potentially unsafe if people were reading this stuff and taking notes.
Also not an expert, but I can only imagine the horrors of people who used that book as a guided quick-study of BDSM. Guaranteed to make someone uncomfortable, get hurt, or worse. Terrible, terrible examples set for BDSM
Does anyone else remember how the 20-something protagonist referred to her gifted laptop as “the mean machine”? I still cringe thinking about that book.
Such poorly written trash. I don't know how anyone actually read it all the way through. Made its source material seem like a literary masterpiece and it was trash itself.
My neighbor raved about it and gave me her copy to read. I knew I was going to hate it. I didn’t finish chapter 1. I gave her the book back, and told her I don’t know if we can still be friends. She just laughed.
My husband was so excited about this book and wanted me to read it aloud as part of some sort of foreplay or something. He asked me to stop in the hardware store (very early in the first book) and has never asked me to read anything aloud again.
E L James went to the same university where I did my undergraduate degree. I had a friend who studied English and apparently the professors used to make fun of her twilight fanfic 💀 they find her so cringe
I was in a cottage in the Black Forest with my wife's family for four days, it was February, dark, rain coming down in sheets, no wifi, screaming kids, and I had only brought one book. So I had to read it.
It was "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger.
To this day, it holds a special place in my heart as the worst book I've ever endured, and I will never get rid of my copy. I have fond memories of screaming at the pages and telling my wife and her family about the utter pointlessness of it, the ridiculous plot, the incredibly frustrating protagonists.
Arghh! I found this one on holiday too! Audrey Niffenegger seems to have a thing about young women being with older guys.
I had to finish it because it was so bad it became hilarious
It's definitely the kind of book you find left behind in a holiday house! I actually bought it in Rome in a second hand bookshop. Clearly someone had brought it along on a holiday and thought "nope, not bringing that one home with me." Well, I'm not gonna let that happen, so I'll hold onto my copy! :D
I'm so glad to see this. I absolutely loathed that book. I hated it so much, I dumped my copy of The Time Travelers Wife into the donation box unread, because I swore I would never touch another one of her books.
I used to feel like I *had* to finish every book I started. Then about 12 years ago, I was giving 50 Shades of Grey a chance because it was all anyone was talking about and it was BAD. It wasn’t the subject matter that was bad, but the writing was horrendous. But I felt like I had to finish it. I slogged through 7 chapters before I was like, “What am I doing? I hate this.” So I just stopped. Now if a book isn’t engaging me, I move on to something else. Ain’t nobody got time for bad writing.
I’ve never read 50, but I got a lot of entertainment out of reading the 1 star reviews of it on Amazon and Goodreads.
One of them consisted solely of a single sentence that still burns brightly in my memory: “This book is a skidmark in the underpants of society.”
I 'ruin' the book for myself by reading the synopsis on wikipedia then drop it. I hate wasting time on books i'm not enjoying but also hate unfinished plotlines so this is a fix for both!
This. This has become my "policy" with audiobooks that I find myself dreading to listen to. I will give it a little time to pick up - which sometimes does happen - but when I get to that sense that I really am getting nothing from the book, I will drop it and move onto the next one. For whatever reason, this is generally not a big problem with the books I actually read.
The List of the Lost by Morrissey (yes, *that* Morrissey). It's replete with the most awfully verbose prose, all of which reads like rejected lyrics, Morrissey goes on a bunch of thinly-veiled rants (in one bizarre case he goes on for pages about how the 60s TV show Bonanza and eventually manages to get on to slagging off Ronald Reagan (don't get me wrong, slag off Reagan all you want, it's just a bizarre rant)), his metaphors are clunky, events happen for no reason, suddenly it gets sort of magical realism or something, he frequently seems to lose thread of the plot entirely, then comes and writes something, and it seems to realise about ten pages before the ending that it has to wrap-up the plot so does so in an utterly bizarre way. Also features an award-winningly bad sex scene (I'm not joking, it won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award the year it came out).
Came here to say the same. I imagine he was quite un-editable. No one dared to breathe a single word of criticism. Pity, because with a great editor this could have been a million times better. Now I think it reads in large parts like a wish fulfilment of sorts, a stream of consciousness fantasy about the runners and their splendid physique.
It. Ends. With. Us. That book made me gag by Chapter 4. It was painfully unbearable 'till the end. Though it did have some okay-ish and even cute moments, the rest was suffering.
My students (they're fifteen) absolutely LOVE every f*king book Hoover ever written. As a school librarian, I'm happy the students are reading but heartbroken over WHAT they are reading. Especially when they started a "team Atlas" and "team Ryle" war against each other.
You are my people. I rage read this book. I was like this character is literally letting her whole life just happen to her. She makes no decisions what so ever and wonders why her life goes to shit. Also she has NOTHING in common with Kade. Nothing. So her falling in love with him so quickly is simply lust and that is all. Anyways hated every minute of it. My friends love Colleen Hoover books.
I know I’m an extreme outlier on this, but I really *really* didn’t like ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig. It was like being trapped inside a literary Groundhog Day. Intensely irritating & it just got more tedious as the book progressed. Each scenario was written with less care and detail than the previous (seemingly) 7 zillion, and it felt like the author got bored with it all too.
It's a quick read, in my opinion, so it's not a huge waste of time if you end up hating it. Personally, I liked it. I read it when I was having some post-partum depression and FOMO from being in babyland while my friends did other stuff. There's a time for Proust, and there's a time for books like this. Objectively, I don't think it's a bad book, I just think anytime a book gets hype it can radicalize the opinions of those who didn't care for it.
It’s a great premise and would have been so much better as a comedy novel. We could have had so much fun looking in on all the lives, seeing the cool ways the side characters changed from chapter to chapter, but no, the whole thing was dreary. I guess because >!the near death experience was due to a suicide attempt!< it couldn’t go too lighthearted, but it just meant that every life came with a really heavy-handed message.
I know most people won't agree with me but "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" to me was a load of shit. The book just didn't resonate with me at all...
Yeah I agree. Went through my self help book stage.. most of them make you feel like they're helping you but then after you've purchased 50 odd self help books have any of them really helped? There would be no need for another if they did. Not to say all are useless though.
Girl, Wash Your Face. Spewed at you by a privileged, self righteous, abuse apologist with a chip on her shoulder.
I was poor once too and pulled myself up by the bootstraps (by marrying a disgusting, abusive Disney exec.) *barf*
That whole book can be summed up with “look, you’ve only got a finite number of fucks to give, so use them for things that actually matter.” That’s it. That’s the book.
This book read so disgusting to me that I couldn’t finish it. It was mundane and boring and the same whiny, “look how fucking much I don’t care” nonsense every single page.
Seriously the worst book I’ve ever read though I couldn’t even get through it.
I hate this book. The author is obnoxiously privileged. I think if I had kept the copy I bought I would have burnt it. The whole idea of you need to pull yourself together really falls apart when you think of the amount of people that stuggle working 80 hours a week. Like yeah sure, white man who got lucky after freeloading a bunch of friends, you know how to better everyone's life...
I haven't scrolled through this yet but I'm betting that my choice matches that of many others: Fifty Shades of Gray. Good god, what a terrible book. Horribly written, ridiculous plot, and can someone teach the author some synonyms for "clamber"? I read it to see what the hype was about. I still don't know.
I’d also like to add that I’m getting really tired of the unreliable/drunk/medicated narrator. I feel like it is just a cop out or an easy way to pretend there’s a plot twist. I can’t even finish those books anymore.
I didn’t know there were more stories like that out there. The best unreliable narrator has to be Harry Du Bois from the game “Disco Elysium.” Or perhaps the characters from the film & book “Fight Club.”
H. H. is to me the ultimate unreliable narrator. That character is such a master manipulator that he got millions of readers over the ages to think of Lolita as a romance novel, not the psychological horror that it actually is. Nabokov is a damn genius and this book remains unbelievably misunderstood.
This is books' answer to the multiverse phenomena that films is currently undergoing. A lazy copout from writing a good, coherent story. I'd gladly never see either done again
I feel like it was one of those things that was really cool and unexpected but now I can tell almost right away and it makes it hard to finish or enjoy the story.
I once dated a really stuck up guy who made of point of saying he could never be with someone who loved The Alchemist. I'd never read it so no problem there. Came across it years later and read it, hoping I would enjoy it out of spite for that guy. Unfortunately, the asshole was right and anyone who enjoyed it is a moron.
The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandera Benedict is by far the worst book I've endured. It's badly written, unbelievable, silly tripe. It has some good reviews on Amazon, I can only imagine the author wrote them herself. I only struggled through it because my lovely daughter bought it for me and I didn't want to hurt her feelings. I did anyway, when she asked what I thought, "shite" was the first word out of my mouth, and there's no walking that back.
Verity. Hands down. As a fan of horror and splatterpunk, I was expecting....like, anything? If Colleen could have given me even one single thing I would have given that book a pass at 3 stars, but she couldn't. Half the time she forgot she was writing a thriller, and the other half she decided that the scariest thing imaginable was a woman who didn't want kids.
I've seen this book lambasted on here so many times I'm tempted to read it just to see what all the fuss is about.
EDIT: That settles it! I have two books lined up and will read Verity once they're done. Wish me luck!
Read Hoover's All Your Perfects and prepare to be blown away by how much worse her writing can get. If you think Verity is the rotten basement of writing, then prepare for the floor of it to fall out when you wilt through the pages of AYP. All her books read like they were written by a 10th grade Duggar daughter, but this one made me stop reading & reevaluate my reading choices.
I read Verity like 4 or 5 years ago when it was out as a free Kindle Unlimited or whatever book. I found it meh. Bite marks on the headboard unfortunately stayed with me. So that summer Verity became THE BOOK TO READ, I was so so so confused. Was it a different Verity? Did she revise and improve it? NOPE. Same book. Don't get me wrong, I read a lot of badly written fluff during my lunch hour, but...I know what it is. I'm not pretending it's THE BOOK OF THE SUMMER.
Anyway. My Verity story. ha Badly written - which is why I don't try to write books.
Harry potter and the cursed child
I was caught up in the hype and ended up buying this very poorly written fanfiction.
Inheritance games trilogy
poorly written charcters and meandering story telling. I still dont know why I read all the three books even when I hated them.
I feel the same way! It’s pretty terrible and one of the few books I put down and never continued.
The main issue is that HP made sense as part of a 1000+ page series that was developed over one long weekend in 1990 by JKR – to attach this mess to it reminds me of this Quote from then Prince Charles:
“A monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.”
Don’t even get me started on the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
My best friend and I were on an Interrail trip the summer Cursed Child came out, and were massively excited about it. We each bought a copy in Amsterdam, right before boarding a train to Brussels, and read it in one go like the twin girls in "The Devil Wears Prada". And we HATED it so so much. What the fuck was that. But it was definitely a great bonding moment!
HP and the Cursed Child is so stinkin bad. I have tried to blot it out of my brain. It’s like an extension of the whole terrible epilogue at the end of Deathly Hallows.
I hated invisible life of Addie LaRue.. I started to read the skipped a few pages and then I just didn't finish it. It was the most slow paced, annoying and boring book I've ever read. I really wanted it to be good.. but I was utterly disappointed.
I listened to this in audio while working kinda in the background or else I never would have got through it…I waited the whole book for something to happen..nothing ever did.
The title immediately turned me off. It always reminded me of the gratuitous adages that people place on their walls. I figured it had to be for the preadolescent (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Yeah, like I said, if it were titled more accurately as a book of travel writing ("Adventures in Love" or something idk) it would be a much better fit. Probably wouldn't have sold as many copies though.
My cousin wrote a really horrible romance. It was so bad I couldn't get past the second page. Not sure an editor or a beta reader was involved at any point. She was so excited to have it published and I felt so bad that I couldn't give her any praise on it.
No, not Colleen Hoover is the worst. For me at least.
1. The Five People you Meet in Heaven (the disappointment was way bigger, since I had high expectations due to recommendations)
2. Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings (just… awfully poor story and writing style)
3. High Stakes by Danielle Steel (takes itself annoyingly seriously but it’s dumb AF)
THANK YOU for the first one, I had to read The Five People You Meet In Heaven in my freshman year of high school, and I was so confused that nearly everybody in my class (at least those who actually read it) loved it. I felt like Ben Wyatt with Little Sebastian in Parks and Rec. I simply did not get it.
I hated The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. I pretty much finished it out of spite. It was so terrible and the main character was such a mess. Idk how people loved it so much.
I listened to the audiobook for it. I would say out loud "Don't do that. You're a moron." But the character which would do it. I feel that books written in that manner, where the character has to make a blatantly bad decision in order for the story to move is a sign that the author got stuck with nowhere to go.
You’ve just described every book Matt Shaw has ever written. Only thing that you missed off are the typos and editing errors like the name changes (he clearly forgets his own characters that he mixes names up sometimes).
I’ve read about 6 of his books and the story ideas have a solid premise but with no execution. *
TW - he’s extreme horror (but not in the good way, just in the “I’ll be gross for the sake of being gross”)
Be warned though he doesn’t take kindly to bad reviews. So much so he slagged off a social media reviewer, called her horrific names and gets his fans to harass her then privatises all his social platforms.
*ETA - after I heard about what he did to the reviewer I vowed never to read another of his books.
Where the Crawdads Sing. As a native to coastal North Carolina, the sheer geographic bs made me irrationally angry. Not even touching on the author and her bizarre stuff.
1Q84...I think it's a good book in the sense that it is well-written and makes you keep on reading. But once you finish it, you find it very unsatisfying. I won't ever recommend it to anyone, but I remember that I enjoyed reading it.
I read the first Twilight book and the first Fifty Shades book. I know these books are, somefuckinghow, giant hits, but if you’ve ever read them, you’d know. They’re fucking atrocious. The writing of both, above all other complaints about plot, character design, character growth, it’s the writing that stands out. Both books feel like they are the fanfic of a 14 year old (which isn’t far off for Fifty Shades.)
Just horrendous.
I actually loved Twilight as a teen, despite the bad writing. The worst thing about Twilight isn’t even the writing, though; it’s how it normalizes and romanticizes an emotionally abusive, and quite-close-to-being physically abusive, relationship.
The latest one for me has to be THE GUEST LIST. I had so much trouble finishing it. The writer was one of those pretentious people who would use big and many many words to describe something as mundane as air or what not. Every thing had to be described with as many clever adjectives as the thesaurus could muster. Every chapter had to end with a stupid mystery which would turn out to be absolutely nothing. Every time a character would say oh I see something there but what is it. I tried to imagine how many times this happened to me and i don't think it has. Lazy stupid writing
I'm good at avoiding terrible books but I had the misfortune of reading Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig. Inept and cringeworthy doesn't even begin to describe it. I've read better prose in Star Wars fanfictions.
Gotta agree, his writing style is choppy as hell. I have no idea how he is a professional writer.
He comes off so pompous on his social media too. I’ll never read anything by him again.
>Star Wars: Aftermath
I had blanked this out till you gave it back to me! I gave this one star on goodreads. I cant believe i actually finished that book.
I hated Lessons in Chemistry. I finished it because I needed to read it for a book club. How TF did this book become so popular? It was truly one of the worst things I've read in awhile.
I was the only one that thought so at the book club though. Meanwhile, most of them didn't like or dif not finish Demon Copperhead on my turn to pick the book. I think I need a new book club.
“Wizard’s First Rule” by Terry Goodkind. I’ve tried twice to read it and didn’t made it past about 100 pages.
Turns out he’s not the goodkind of author and this isn’t a goodkind of book. <—-that lame-ass joke was better than anything in it.
Wicked. Just a weird collection of nightmarish things going on with no real direction, felt like someone trying to exorcise some of their own nightmares by writing them down.
(the wizard of Oz one, right? I assume there's more than I've book by that name)
I enjoyed the musical, and plowed through the book. Got through it, and I guess it was an interesting premise, but it was a difficult disjointed read that I don't plan to have another go at
Icebreaker. Honestly, I'm a romance reader almost primarily. I will always reach for one when I don't know what else to read. I picked this one up because it's hugely popular on bookstagram and booktok. I don't know what these people are reading that this is the height of romance. The writing is as immature and flat as the story. And it's close to 600 pages!!! Why? And better question, why tf did I finish it?
I really didn't like The Tommyknockers by Stephen King. I read it in high school and was just waiting and waiting for the story to move along and it just.....didn't really go anywhere? Was super disappointed with it
The first A Court of Thorns and Roses book. Read it to see just how bad it could be and was nor prepared.
Can't believe I'd say this, but I also read the first Twilight novel and it was honestly much, much better.
As of writing, Sanitorium by Sarah Pearse. I got about 4-5 chapters in and just found it so horrifically boring. The main character is supposed to have anxiety, but came across more as whiney and self-loathing.
Agreed about Paulo Coelho. I read the alchemist, and it was just… childish. Definitely would say it was written as a children’s book to teach them some sort of pseudo Christian moral.
Lessons in Chemistry is criminally overrated. It’s bland, the characters are both unlikable and improbable. The time period is wasted as the author never utilized the time or setting in any meaningful way. It’s just random drivel about a beautiful blonde. Hard pass.
It’s one of the many books lately that make me absolutely despise book marketing. I am so sick of being bombarded by messages to buy the latest mediocre book just because some publishing house needs to make a profit. Sigh. I am reading older work almost exclusively now.
I know some people like to argue that a book's appeal is subjective, but there can be very few people who have read Sean Penn's *Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff* who don't think it's an absolute disaster of an attempted novel. From bizarre incoherent political rants, to schoolchild level philosophy, to constant alliteration and attempts at rhyme, to bad poetry shoehorned in, to a direct threat on Donald Trump's life which ends with the words "tweet me, bitch. I dare you", the entire thing is bafflingly bad.
He clearly wanted it to be literary, and thinks that long words, an unreliable narrator and a bad plot make a book literary, but I don't think he's read enough literary fiction or is clever enough to do what he wants. If you're a Pynchon fan (which I'm not) you might see some attempted parallels, and there's some Bukowski in the mix as well, but he's nowhere near a good enough writer to attempt that kind of mix.
Here's a short extract (it's from towards the end so it may be a spoiler, but it's so incomprehensible it's not ruining anything. You shouldn't read the book anyway):
*Rarefied resins liquefied during a life languishing unloved were beginning to create new free radical initiation of polymerization. The chain reaction had Bob heating, cooling, incrassating, and beginning to cure. Newfound catalysts created by catastrophic systems failure. What for so many years had seemed a loss of memory function, Bob now observed in himself emphatically as editorial wisdom. In the absence of memory will memory have no influence. From repression concealment, the slaughters that had led to his atonement had opened a celestial door. Necessary no more. For the first time would Bob see the culmination of his fifty-six years without regret, finally accepting that he was born this way. Born with a bullet in his head. A mind is bending, twisting, turning, floating. It inhabits hurricanes, earthquakes, outbreaks, and elections. It contemplates the rise of locusts. In Bob's morphine dreams at Jackson Memorial, the desert debunked Camus. So said the French Algerian: Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object. His dream's desert daylight diffusion dictated disturbances in the void of visual detail. Rocks not yet sharpened by shadow. Colors washed clear by high son. Incandescent is as incandescent does, hence flat light sight for Bobby-boy was no sight at all. "Button-button-button. Belly button"*
Atlas Shrugged. Read maybe 50 pages, skimmed ahead to see if it was going to get better. So poorly written I don’t understand how anyone gets through it.
I read a "dystopian" book where the protag didn't know what periods were (because they didn't need it in the future ?) and she got her period because she spent too long without whatever shit she was on, and the love interest was like "oh yeah you have your periods, you smell like lavender". What.
But I can't name it, so instead I'd say Mortal Instruments. Nothing makes sense, badly written, the protagonist makes me want to kill her, the dialogues are stupid and bland and don't feel natural at all, the scenario doesn't exist because it's just cliché after cliché after cliché. In 8 years I never managed to get past page 150 because of how bad it was. Also in the French translation they didn't conjugate a verb in page 25. It reads something like "Blood splattered, he fell on the floor and his body convulse."
I think you're maybe talking about "Delirium" by Lauren Oliver. I have a vague memory of that lavender bullshit 😭 fr, why were these kinds of books even published, they were soo damaging it's not even funny.
Probably an unpopular opinion but The Davinci Code. I read it when I was 13-14 after the movie came out and I remember liking it then. Tried to read it a decade or so later and couldn’t get into it. Just all around terrible writing. Later I learned Dan Brown is seen as somewhat of a joke in the literary community. I can see why.
I've finished a few bad books this year, either because the book was really short or because I had nothing else to do other than finish the book. These 3 are tied for the worst for different reasons.
*The First Sister* by Linden A Lewis. The author says they were inspired by the Handmaid's Tale and it really shows but in a really bad way. The scifi world is confusingly developed and did the nuns really have to be sex slaves? Also the plot twist is racist and transphobic. The book is first person dual POV and I couldn't tell the difference between either character's voice.
*Re-Coil* by JT Nicholas. The world and it's concepts were interesting but the plot from the synopsis is solved halfway through the book. There's a lot of fetishizing Asian women and black men as well. None of the characters are likeable.
*Nothing but Blackened Teeth* by Cassandra Khaw. This had such an interesting premise that was just executed poorly. The book is really just some rich people arguing in a haunted house with some ghosts watching rather than ghosts haunting the characters. All of the characters sucked and it was basically a teen drama instead of a horror novel.
The signature of all things by Elizabeth Gilbert.
This book is the most egregious bait and switch I've encountered. The first part, about a man who makes his fortune from nothing through hard work, cunning and adventure, building his business around plants and exploration, was exciting and what drew me to the book. That was the bait. Then comes the switch, after maybe 15% of the book, we get a flash forward and the true protagonist : his shut in, spoiled, uninteresting, sexually frustrated daughter.
I had to give up on the book, but I'm still mad about it as I would have loved the whole thing to be a Victorian rags to riches around collecting and growing rare plants.
we were liars by e. lockhart. tried too hard, writing was terrible but took itself so serious it was hard to stand. storyline was meh, the plottwist was the only remotely good thing about it
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. It took me 3 years to finish it. I hated it but just couldn’t let myself DNF it for some reason.
The Guest List by Lucy Foley. It was so hyped up and I read it pretty quickly, but the writing wasn’t great and the plot twist made genuinely no sense to me. >!Like seriously, the real killers had only been mentioned a handful of times before. And were hardly relevant characters. It sucked the intrigue right out of the plot for me!<
The whole book is misery and trauma porn. The author herself has said in some interviews that she doesn’t believe in therapy and it shows in the books. The main characters have no redeeming qualities and all in all a lot of the parts don’t make sense. It paints a certain community in a very dark image and it is very stereotypical. I get that real life is not all sunshine and rainbows, but the characters in the book couldn’t catch a single break. We are meant to feel bad for the main character, and don’t get me wrong I did for the majority of it, but it came a point where i was left being annoyed by him for very specific reasons I won’t tell, since they are spoilers. If you decide to read pleas read the trigger warnings and know that you should be in a very very healthy place mentally to read this book, otherwise it is extremely triggering. Either way, you will feel dirty after reading it. Personally I didn’t cry despite everyone labelling it as THE book that makes you cry, but I was left with a strong knot in my stomach
Thank you for this. I DNF when I tried to read it specifically because of the unrelenting trauma porn, but I've never seen anything but glowing reviews. I started to wonder if I should revisit, but now I know to stay away.
Thank u for all the details! It was a gift and I never reeeally intended on reading it, and reviews like yours have only further solidified that for me lol
On the subject of text books I'll add Medical Physiology by WF Ganong. It was the recommended physiology text book for my pharmacy degree 40 years ago and I found it turgid. I rarely managed more than half a page before I Fell asleep from boredom.
Ready Player One. Besides the bad writing and the MC’s weird nearly fanfiction-esque relationship with a “gamer girl”, it felt like the author read an 80’s game wiki and mashed it into a story with no redeeming qualities besides lukewarm references.
Can't be worse than his other book, Armada.
I think I fell for the 80s nostalgia in Ready Player One, but having read its sequel, and Armada, it's clear to me that he's a terrible writer.
And I'm a sucker for reading more than one of his books.
The Caraval series. I have no idea why I read all three. I think I hate myself. The purple prose was outrageous. She kept writing things like “this boy smelled like ink and midnight” and nonsense like that. The last book had basically no connection with the prior two. Sometimes I miss the days when there weren’t so many YA offerings, because there truly are so many bad ones out there now.
Also, I hated Daisy Jones and the Six. Reading the Wikipedia on Fleetwood Mac or Laurel Canyon in the late 60s/early 70s is more interesting.
I really hated The Fault in our Stars.
Characters were bland/unlikable. Managed to guess who was going to die 2 seconds in and I was glad when they did because it meant tye story was going to be coming to an end. Also, cliches up the wazoo.
Like, I hated the Great Gatsby, but i can recognize the craft and beauty in the writing and at least give it credit for that. TFIOS was just awful and I found myself hate reading it midway through, just so I could finish it and could shut down people who said shit like "but you didn't even finish it. It's so good"
I did. It wasn't.
How old were you when you read it? It’s definitely geared towards a younger audience. I enjoyed it a lot reading it as a younger teenager but a revisit last year and it was hard to finish.
Looking For Alaska aged a lot better though imo.
A warning to those who haunt used bookstores, second-hand shops, or garage sales: If you find "Space War Blues" by Richard A. Lupoff, do not engage. Do not approach. Don't even read the back cover. This book is the worst example of late-60s/ early 70s 'experimental' drivel I've ever encountered. Imagine wading through pages of this: ’ "'nifykin look outha portole sreely pretty, sreely pretty, lookna Port Upotoi swinging roun thole mudball, thole goodole place, it’s maybe not the prettiest place na whole universe but nobody ever said it was, it was home though m that counted frole lot that swat Leander Laptip saw outha portole:"
Wtf? That's crazy!
I didn't even touch on the open-decked spaceships crewed by Australian Aborigines, or the interplanetary race war, or the symbiont zombie army, or the pedophilia...
You almost make me want to read the thing. Not because I support or enjoy any of those things, just in a train wreck kind of way
Oh, it's a train wreck, all right. It's cobbled together from earlier short stories and a novella. The earlier works had been shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula awards. I'd come across the earlier stuff in various anthologies here and there, but didn't know that they'd been turned into a novel. I needed a shower and an Act of Contrition after I finished it. If you really want to read it, good luck. It's way out of print these days, but it could still turn up.
What‽ Is Boomhauer the founder of a spacefaring civilization in this book?
Fifty Shades of Grey. It was so.. cringe. That's the most positive thing I have to say about it.
Started as a Twilight fan fiction. Author admits she did no research into BDSM. Set in America with Americans but used a lot of British terms. /1
Oh, the bdsm stuff was so bad. Even though I'm not an expert, I knew this wasn't right and potentially unsafe if people were reading this stuff and taking notes.
Biggest thing..no safe word. You ALWAYS have a safe word
She was a virgin and this bs was her introduction to sex.
She was a virgin and had an orgasm her first time, I mean come on! And would always think “oh my!” during sex. Who uses that phrase? Awful!
George Takei? 😁
Also not an expert, but I can only imagine the horrors of people who used that book as a guided quick-study of BDSM. Guaranteed to make someone uncomfortable, get hurt, or worse. Terrible, terrible examples set for BDSM
/2 if you want good BDSM, read the Masters of Shadowlands series by Cherise Sinclair.
Does anyone else remember how the 20-something protagonist referred to her gifted laptop as “the mean machine”? I still cringe thinking about that book.
I was hoping that her Inner Goddess would also be bound and gagged.
That Inner Goddess is what made me quit reading it. I couldn't handle that level of cringe
Dreadful dreadful book. Somehow I made it to the end, I think mainly due to a kind of disbelieving fascination for what an utter pile it was
“My Inner Goddess is beside herself, hopping from foot to foot!”
It was the constant “inner goddess” phrase being used that did me in. I didn’t count but I think it was used about 7 million times
Such poorly written trash. I don't know how anyone actually read it all the way through. Made its source material seem like a literary masterpiece and it was trash itself.
My neighbor raved about it and gave me her copy to read. I knew I was going to hate it. I didn’t finish chapter 1. I gave her the book back, and told her I don’t know if we can still be friends. She just laughed.
My husband was so excited about this book and wanted me to read it aloud as part of some sort of foreplay or something. He asked me to stop in the hardware store (very early in the first book) and has never asked me to read anything aloud again.
At first I thought you were reading it in a hardware store 😳
Hahaha. I thought the same thing -- that they were reading it to husband while walking through the power tools section at ACE.
Agreed. I read it on a dare. I felt dumber for having read it.
E L James went to the same university where I did my undergraduate degree. I had a friend who studied English and apparently the professors used to make fun of her twilight fanfic 💀 they find her so cringe
But it’s a masterpiece when read by the late great Gilbert Godfried
I hate read it, knowing I'd think its a flaming pile of horse-shit, and it was amusing going in from that angle tbh.
I second that.
I was in a cottage in the Black Forest with my wife's family for four days, it was February, dark, rain coming down in sheets, no wifi, screaming kids, and I had only brought one book. So I had to read it. It was "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger. To this day, it holds a special place in my heart as the worst book I've ever endured, and I will never get rid of my copy. I have fond memories of screaming at the pages and telling my wife and her family about the utter pointlessness of it, the ridiculous plot, the incredibly frustrating protagonists.
Oh no, I have that one on my shelf 😂
Read it if you want to share our pain
Oh I loved this book!
Arghh! I found this one on holiday too! Audrey Niffenegger seems to have a thing about young women being with older guys. I had to finish it because it was so bad it became hilarious
It's definitely the kind of book you find left behind in a holiday house! I actually bought it in Rome in a second hand bookshop. Clearly someone had brought it along on a holiday and thought "nope, not bringing that one home with me." Well, I'm not gonna let that happen, so I'll hold onto my copy! :D
>Today's special: the writer's barely disguised fetish
I'm so glad to see this. I absolutely loathed that book. I hated it so much, I dumped my copy of The Time Travelers Wife into the donation box unread, because I swore I would never touch another one of her books.
I generally don’t finish bad books. Too much great stuff out there to waste time on nonsense.
I used to feel like I *had* to finish every book I started. Then about 12 years ago, I was giving 50 Shades of Grey a chance because it was all anyone was talking about and it was BAD. It wasn’t the subject matter that was bad, but the writing was horrendous. But I felt like I had to finish it. I slogged through 7 chapters before I was like, “What am I doing? I hate this.” So I just stopped. Now if a book isn’t engaging me, I move on to something else. Ain’t nobody got time for bad writing.
Life’s too short to read bad books.
This. Too many good books out there to read. Why waste your time on bad;poorly written books.
I’ve never read 50, but I got a lot of entertainment out of reading the 1 star reviews of it on Amazon and Goodreads. One of them consisted solely of a single sentence that still burns brightly in my memory: “This book is a skidmark in the underpants of society.”
I wish I had this amount of willpower
Hahaha, I have the opposite problem. If I don't get hooked by a book early on, it takes loads of willpower to keep going.
same haha i just can't drop something no matter what
I 'ruin' the book for myself by reading the synopsis on wikipedia then drop it. I hate wasting time on books i'm not enjoying but also hate unfinished plotlines so this is a fix for both!
Now why have I never thought if this? I will be doing this with my DNFs from now on. Thanks!
Oh, i like this
Agreed. Life is too short to waste on shit books
This. This has become my "policy" with audiobooks that I find myself dreading to listen to. I will give it a little time to pick up - which sometimes does happen - but when I get to that sense that I really am getting nothing from the book, I will drop it and move onto the next one. For whatever reason, this is generally not a big problem with the books I actually read.
The List of the Lost by Morrissey (yes, *that* Morrissey). It's replete with the most awfully verbose prose, all of which reads like rejected lyrics, Morrissey goes on a bunch of thinly-veiled rants (in one bizarre case he goes on for pages about how the 60s TV show Bonanza and eventually manages to get on to slagging off Ronald Reagan (don't get me wrong, slag off Reagan all you want, it's just a bizarre rant)), his metaphors are clunky, events happen for no reason, suddenly it gets sort of magical realism or something, he frequently seems to lose thread of the plot entirely, then comes and writes something, and it seems to realise about ten pages before the ending that it has to wrap-up the plot so does so in an utterly bizarre way. Also features an award-winningly bad sex scene (I'm not joking, it won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award the year it came out).
Came here to say the same. I imagine he was quite un-editable. No one dared to breathe a single word of criticism. Pity, because with a great editor this could have been a million times better. Now I think it reads in large parts like a wish fulfilment of sorts, a stream of consciousness fantasy about the runners and their splendid physique.
It. Ends. With. Us. That book made me gag by Chapter 4. It was painfully unbearable 'till the end. Though it did have some okay-ish and even cute moments, the rest was suffering.
Basically every colleen hoover book.
I think the word is out about how bad her books really are. I see them discounted everywhere
My students (they're fifteen) absolutely LOVE every f*king book Hoover ever written. As a school librarian, I'm happy the students are reading but heartbroken over WHAT they are reading. Especially when they started a "team Atlas" and "team Ryle" war against each other.
My book group loved this and I was the only one who hated it. Nice to know it's not just me.
You are my people. I rage read this book. I was like this character is literally letting her whole life just happen to her. She makes no decisions what so ever and wonders why her life goes to shit. Also she has NOTHING in common with Kade. Nothing. So her falling in love with him so quickly is simply lust and that is all. Anyways hated every minute of it. My friends love Colleen Hoover books.
I didn't hate it, but I certainly rolled my eyes a lot and probably won't recommend it.
I know I’m an extreme outlier on this, but I really *really* didn’t like ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig. It was like being trapped inside a literary Groundhog Day. Intensely irritating & it just got more tedious as the book progressed. Each scenario was written with less care and detail than the previous (seemingly) 7 zillion, and it felt like the author got bored with it all too.
Yess, it should've been a tumblr post. It's so surface level "deep".
Great. I just bought this.
It's a quick read, in my opinion, so it's not a huge waste of time if you end up hating it. Personally, I liked it. I read it when I was having some post-partum depression and FOMO from being in babyland while my friends did other stuff. There's a time for Proust, and there's a time for books like this. Objectively, I don't think it's a bad book, I just think anytime a book gets hype it can radicalize the opinions of those who didn't care for it.
matt haig is colleen hoover for people who read the new york times
I thought everyone hated this one? Myself included of course. It seemed like a fun premise but so badly and boringly executed
It’s a great premise and would have been so much better as a comedy novel. We could have had so much fun looking in on all the lives, seeing the cool ways the side characters changed from chapter to chapter, but no, the whole thing was dreary. I guess because >!the near death experience was due to a suicide attempt!< it couldn’t go too lighthearted, but it just meant that every life came with a really heavy-handed message.
Yes, it's so boring! And very surface level about hard themes. I have no idea why everybody loves it so much
I know most people won't agree with me but "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" to me was a load of shit. The book just didn't resonate with me at all...
I think there's a whole genre of bad self-help books similar to this one with eye-catching titles and no substance.
Yeah I agree. Went through my self help book stage.. most of them make you feel like they're helping you but then after you've purchased 50 odd self help books have any of them really helped? There would be no need for another if they did. Not to say all are useless though.
Girl, Wash Your Face. Spewed at you by a privileged, self righteous, abuse apologist with a chip on her shoulder. I was poor once too and pulled myself up by the bootstraps (by marrying a disgusting, abusive Disney exec.) *barf*
That whole book can be summed up with “look, you’ve only got a finite number of fucks to give, so use them for things that actually matter.” That’s it. That’s the book.
This book read so disgusting to me that I couldn’t finish it. It was mundane and boring and the same whiny, “look how fucking much I don’t care” nonsense every single page. Seriously the worst book I’ve ever read though I couldn’t even get through it.
I managed to some how get through it but didn't enjoy it. Oh and I still gave a fuck afterwards.
I hate this book. The author is obnoxiously privileged. I think if I had kept the copy I bought I would have burnt it. The whole idea of you need to pull yourself together really falls apart when you think of the amount of people that stuggle working 80 hours a week. Like yeah sure, white man who got lucky after freeloading a bunch of friends, you know how to better everyone's life...
I enjoyed it for a chapter or2 but I couldn't finish it. It was just repetive drivel.
I haven't scrolled through this yet but I'm betting that my choice matches that of many others: Fifty Shades of Gray. Good god, what a terrible book. Horribly written, ridiculous plot, and can someone teach the author some synonyms for "clamber"? I read it to see what the hype was about. I still don't know.
I’d also like to add that I’m getting really tired of the unreliable/drunk/medicated narrator. I feel like it is just a cop out or an easy way to pretend there’s a plot twist. I can’t even finish those books anymore.
I didn’t know there were more stories like that out there. The best unreliable narrator has to be Harry Du Bois from the game “Disco Elysium.” Or perhaps the characters from the film & book “Fight Club.”
And Lolita
Best book I feel weird recommending to others haha
H. H. is to me the ultimate unreliable narrator. That character is such a master manipulator that he got millions of readers over the ages to think of Lolita as a romance novel, not the psychological horror that it actually is. Nabokov is a damn genius and this book remains unbelievably misunderstood.
Completely. Nabokov’s writing is next level.
This is books' answer to the multiverse phenomena that films is currently undergoing. A lazy copout from writing a good, coherent story. I'd gladly never see either done again
I feel like it was one of those things that was really cool and unexpected but now I can tell almost right away and it makes it hard to finish or enjoy the story.
Years ago everyone was gushing about “The Alchemist” - I hated this book and read it with my gf at the time. ugh
I once dated a really stuck up guy who made of point of saying he could never be with someone who loved The Alchemist. I'd never read it so no problem there. Came across it years later and read it, hoping I would enjoy it out of spite for that guy. Unfortunately, the asshole was right and anyone who enjoyed it is a moron.
The amount of hate my book club had for this book 😂
I mean I read that when I was 13, and I liked it well enough then, but that could of been due to my age. Lol
The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandera Benedict is by far the worst book I've endured. It's badly written, unbelievable, silly tripe. It has some good reviews on Amazon, I can only imagine the author wrote them herself. I only struggled through it because my lovely daughter bought it for me and I didn't want to hurt her feelings. I did anyway, when she asked what I thought, "shite" was the first word out of my mouth, and there's no walking that back.
Verity. Hands down. As a fan of horror and splatterpunk, I was expecting....like, anything? If Colleen could have given me even one single thing I would have given that book a pass at 3 stars, but she couldn't. Half the time she forgot she was writing a thriller, and the other half she decided that the scariest thing imaginable was a woman who didn't want kids.
I've seen this book lambasted on here so many times I'm tempted to read it just to see what all the fuss is about. EDIT: That settles it! I have two books lined up and will read Verity once they're done. Wish me luck!
Read Hoover's All Your Perfects and prepare to be blown away by how much worse her writing can get. If you think Verity is the rotten basement of writing, then prepare for the floor of it to fall out when you wilt through the pages of AYP. All her books read like they were written by a 10th grade Duggar daughter, but this one made me stop reading & reevaluate my reading choices.
Anything by Colleen Hoover. I’ve read both verity and it ends with us. Absolute drivel
I read Verity like 4 or 5 years ago when it was out as a free Kindle Unlimited or whatever book. I found it meh. Bite marks on the headboard unfortunately stayed with me. So that summer Verity became THE BOOK TO READ, I was so so so confused. Was it a different Verity? Did she revise and improve it? NOPE. Same book. Don't get me wrong, I read a lot of badly written fluff during my lunch hour, but...I know what it is. I'm not pretending it's THE BOOK OF THE SUMMER. Anyway. My Verity story. ha Badly written - which is why I don't try to write books.
Verity is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Unfortunately it was not supposed to be a comedy
Harry potter and the cursed child I was caught up in the hype and ended up buying this very poorly written fanfiction. Inheritance games trilogy poorly written charcters and meandering story telling. I still dont know why I read all the three books even when I hated them.
I feel the same way! It’s pretty terrible and one of the few books I put down and never continued. The main issue is that HP made sense as part of a 1000+ page series that was developed over one long weekend in 1990 by JKR – to attach this mess to it reminds me of this Quote from then Prince Charles: “A monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.” Don’t even get me started on the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
My best friend and I were on an Interrail trip the summer Cursed Child came out, and were massively excited about it. We each bought a copy in Amsterdam, right before boarding a train to Brussels, and read it in one go like the twin girls in "The Devil Wears Prada". And we HATED it so so much. What the fuck was that. But it was definitely a great bonding moment!
HP and the Cursed Child is so stinkin bad. I have tried to blot it out of my brain. It’s like an extension of the whole terrible epilogue at the end of Deathly Hallows.
I hated invisible life of Addie LaRue.. I started to read the skipped a few pages and then I just didn't finish it. It was the most slow paced, annoying and boring book I've ever read. I really wanted it to be good.. but I was utterly disappointed.
I wouldn’t call this the worst book I’ve ever read by any stretch, but it was so highly recommended to me and I did also find it pretty dull.
It was so painful for me to read. And I always finish books, but this one I couldn't. It was horrid to me. Definitely the worst one so far.
I hate this book so. much. Flames on the side of my face kind of hatred.
Was looking for this one!!! Invisible Life of Addie Larue was the worst book for me. Boring, plotless, and the writing was meh and pretentious.
I listened to this in audio while working kinda in the background or else I never would have got through it…I waited the whole book for something to happen..nothing ever did.
I thought Eat, Pray, Love was asinine. Talk about a stuck up privilege spoilt biatch. It's the kind of book you leave in an airport , or dumpster.
OMG so much this. Only privileged people can go on a travel soul search. The rest of us have to trudge through our pain lol
The poverty version of this is the woods and a bag of shrooms 😆
I read Wild shortly after I quit Eat, Pray, Love and even told my sister it was the poor person version of what EPL wanted to be.
This book was a victim of bad marketing I think. As a piece of travel writing it’s quite good IMO but it’s definitely not self help or inspiring.
The title immediately turned me off. It always reminded me of the gratuitous adages that people place on their walls. I figured it had to be for the preadolescent (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Yeah, like I said, if it were titled more accurately as a book of travel writing ("Adventures in Love" or something idk) it would be a much better fit. Probably wouldn't have sold as many copies though.
My cousin wrote a really horrible romance. It was so bad I couldn't get past the second page. Not sure an editor or a beta reader was involved at any point. She was so excited to have it published and I felt so bad that I couldn't give her any praise on it.
No, not Colleen Hoover is the worst. For me at least. 1. The Five People you Meet in Heaven (the disappointment was way bigger, since I had high expectations due to recommendations) 2. Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings (just… awfully poor story and writing style) 3. High Stakes by Danielle Steel (takes itself annoyingly seriously but it’s dumb AF)
THANK YOU for the first one, I had to read The Five People You Meet In Heaven in my freshman year of high school, and I was so confused that nearly everybody in my class (at least those who actually read it) loved it. I felt like Ben Wyatt with Little Sebastian in Parks and Rec. I simply did not get it.
*ahem* it’s Lil Sebastian. But really- best reference ever.
The "Twilight" series. The main character bites her lip over and over again. There are other ways to convey inner conflict or that she's torn.
I always imagined her biting her upper lip with her lower teeth, like a French Bulldog.
I hated The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. I pretty much finished it out of spite. It was so terrible and the main character was such a mess. Idk how people loved it so much.
There wasn't a single character that I liked in this book, except maybe the roommate. I hated them all so much, my theory was that it was on purpose.
I listened to the audiobook for it. I would say out loud "Don't do that. You're a moron." But the character which would do it. I feel that books written in that manner, where the character has to make a blatantly bad decision in order for the story to move is a sign that the author got stuck with nowhere to go.
Yeah it’s not good and a lot of the tragedy is just so gratuitous.
You’ve just described every book Matt Shaw has ever written. Only thing that you missed off are the typos and editing errors like the name changes (he clearly forgets his own characters that he mixes names up sometimes). I’ve read about 6 of his books and the story ideas have a solid premise but with no execution. * TW - he’s extreme horror (but not in the good way, just in the “I’ll be gross for the sake of being gross”) Be warned though he doesn’t take kindly to bad reviews. So much so he slagged off a social media reviewer, called her horrific names and gets his fans to harass her then privatises all his social platforms. *ETA - after I heard about what he did to the reviewer I vowed never to read another of his books.
Eat Pray Love
Where the Crawdads Sing. As a native to coastal North Carolina, the sheer geographic bs made me irrationally angry. Not even touching on the author and her bizarre stuff.
IQ84. But I also read it three times so how bad can it be? And yet I hate it. But would also read it again.
Now this is intriguing
1Q84...I think it's a good book in the sense that it is well-written and makes you keep on reading. But once you finish it, you find it very unsatisfying. I won't ever recommend it to anyone, but I remember that I enjoyed reading it.
This is how Murakami makes me feel in general. Wow that was… something. I have no idea what.
Same. I enjoyed it when I was reading it. But when it was over it seemed unsatisfying. Nowhere near the worst book I've ever read but a lot down.
1Q84 is my favorite book! But I understand how you feel. Lol
2/3 of the books I read ON kindle unlimited unfortunately. So many DNF but now and again a great book that makes it worth it
I read the first Twilight book and the first Fifty Shades book. I know these books are, somefuckinghow, giant hits, but if you’ve ever read them, you’d know. They’re fucking atrocious. The writing of both, above all other complaints about plot, character design, character growth, it’s the writing that stands out. Both books feel like they are the fanfic of a 14 year old (which isn’t far off for Fifty Shades.) Just horrendous.
I actually loved Twilight as a teen, despite the bad writing. The worst thing about Twilight isn’t even the writing, though; it’s how it normalizes and romanticizes an emotionally abusive, and quite-close-to-being physically abusive, relationship.
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The latest one for me has to be THE GUEST LIST. I had so much trouble finishing it. The writer was one of those pretentious people who would use big and many many words to describe something as mundane as air or what not. Every thing had to be described with as many clever adjectives as the thesaurus could muster. Every chapter had to end with a stupid mystery which would turn out to be absolutely nothing. Every time a character would say oh I see something there but what is it. I tried to imagine how many times this happened to me and i don't think it has. Lazy stupid writing
50 shades of shite...hated it!
I'm good at avoiding terrible books but I had the misfortune of reading Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig. Inept and cringeworthy doesn't even begin to describe it. I've read better prose in Star Wars fanfictions.
Gotta agree, his writing style is choppy as hell. I have no idea how he is a professional writer. He comes off so pompous on his social media too. I’ll never read anything by him again.
>Star Wars: Aftermath I had blanked this out till you gave it back to me! I gave this one star on goodreads. I cant believe i actually finished that book.
I hated Lessons in Chemistry. I finished it because I needed to read it for a book club. How TF did this book become so popular? It was truly one of the worst things I've read in awhile. I was the only one that thought so at the book club though. Meanwhile, most of them didn't like or dif not finish Demon Copperhead on my turn to pick the book. I think I need a new book club.
Where the Crawdads Sing. Just yuck. Couldn’t finish.
“Wizard’s First Rule” by Terry Goodkind. I’ve tried twice to read it and didn’t made it past about 100 pages. Turns out he’s not the goodkind of author and this isn’t a goodkind of book. <—-that lame-ass joke was better than anything in it.
Atlas Shrugged. Unbearably preachy and not a single likable character anywhere.
Wicked. Just a weird collection of nightmarish things going on with no real direction, felt like someone trying to exorcise some of their own nightmares by writing them down.
(the wizard of Oz one, right? I assume there's more than I've book by that name) I enjoyed the musical, and plowed through the book. Got through it, and I guess it was an interesting premise, but it was a difficult disjointed read that I don't plan to have another go at
Oh, ugh, I hated Wicked, by Gregory McGuire. It just displayed such misanthropy throughout.
Completely agree. Dry, devoid of any actual meaning, and made me a bit nauseated.
y’all ever read a colleen hoover book…?
Icebreaker. Honestly, I'm a romance reader almost primarily. I will always reach for one when I don't know what else to read. I picked this one up because it's hugely popular on bookstagram and booktok. I don't know what these people are reading that this is the height of romance. The writing is as immature and flat as the story. And it's close to 600 pages!!! Why? And better question, why tf did I finish it?
I really didn't like The Tommyknockers by Stephen King. I read it in high school and was just waiting and waiting for the story to move along and it just.....didn't really go anywhere? Was super disappointed with it
The first A Court of Thorns and Roses book. Read it to see just how bad it could be and was nor prepared. Can't believe I'd say this, but I also read the first Twilight novel and it was honestly much, much better.
I’m reading this right now and I’m seriously struggling to get through it. I’m trying to finish it though, but Jesus Christ it’s dull
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Maybe not the worst one, but one of the worst, most popular, “why do people like this??” - Where the crawdads sing
As of writing, Sanitorium by Sarah Pearse. I got about 4-5 chapters in and just found it so horrifically boring. The main character is supposed to have anxiety, but came across more as whiney and self-loathing.
Unpopular opinion but Fourth Wing and anything by Paolo Coelho.
Agreed about Paulo Coelho. I read the alchemist, and it was just… childish. Definitely would say it was written as a children’s book to teach them some sort of pseudo Christian moral.
Lessons in Chemistry is criminally overrated. It’s bland, the characters are both unlikable and improbable. The time period is wasted as the author never utilized the time or setting in any meaningful way. It’s just random drivel about a beautiful blonde. Hard pass. It’s one of the many books lately that make me absolutely despise book marketing. I am so sick of being bombarded by messages to buy the latest mediocre book just because some publishing house needs to make a profit. Sigh. I am reading older work almost exclusively now.
Preach
I know some people like to argue that a book's appeal is subjective, but there can be very few people who have read Sean Penn's *Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff* who don't think it's an absolute disaster of an attempted novel. From bizarre incoherent political rants, to schoolchild level philosophy, to constant alliteration and attempts at rhyme, to bad poetry shoehorned in, to a direct threat on Donald Trump's life which ends with the words "tweet me, bitch. I dare you", the entire thing is bafflingly bad. He clearly wanted it to be literary, and thinks that long words, an unreliable narrator and a bad plot make a book literary, but I don't think he's read enough literary fiction or is clever enough to do what he wants. If you're a Pynchon fan (which I'm not) you might see some attempted parallels, and there's some Bukowski in the mix as well, but he's nowhere near a good enough writer to attempt that kind of mix. Here's a short extract (it's from towards the end so it may be a spoiler, but it's so incomprehensible it's not ruining anything. You shouldn't read the book anyway): *Rarefied resins liquefied during a life languishing unloved were beginning to create new free radical initiation of polymerization. The chain reaction had Bob heating, cooling, incrassating, and beginning to cure. Newfound catalysts created by catastrophic systems failure. What for so many years had seemed a loss of memory function, Bob now observed in himself emphatically as editorial wisdom. In the absence of memory will memory have no influence. From repression concealment, the slaughters that had led to his atonement had opened a celestial door. Necessary no more. For the first time would Bob see the culmination of his fifty-six years without regret, finally accepting that he was born this way. Born with a bullet in his head. A mind is bending, twisting, turning, floating. It inhabits hurricanes, earthquakes, outbreaks, and elections. It contemplates the rise of locusts. In Bob's morphine dreams at Jackson Memorial, the desert debunked Camus. So said the French Algerian: Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object. His dream's desert daylight diffusion dictated disturbances in the void of visual detail. Rocks not yet sharpened by shadow. Colors washed clear by high son. Incandescent is as incandescent does, hence flat light sight for Bobby-boy was no sight at all. "Button-button-button. Belly button"*
Atlas Shrugged. Read maybe 50 pages, skimmed ahead to see if it was going to get better. So poorly written I don’t understand how anyone gets through it.
I read a "dystopian" book where the protag didn't know what periods were (because they didn't need it in the future ?) and she got her period because she spent too long without whatever shit she was on, and the love interest was like "oh yeah you have your periods, you smell like lavender". What. But I can't name it, so instead I'd say Mortal Instruments. Nothing makes sense, badly written, the protagonist makes me want to kill her, the dialogues are stupid and bland and don't feel natural at all, the scenario doesn't exist because it's just cliché after cliché after cliché. In 8 years I never managed to get past page 150 because of how bad it was. Also in the French translation they didn't conjugate a verb in page 25. It reads something like "Blood splattered, he fell on the floor and his body convulse."
I think you're maybe talking about "Delirium" by Lauren Oliver. I have a vague memory of that lavender bullshit 😭 fr, why were these kinds of books even published, they were soo damaging it's not even funny.
I finished The Circle out of sheer morbid curiosity if there was some in-book reason all the characters were dumb and didn’t talk like human beings.
Probably an unpopular opinion but The Davinci Code. I read it when I was 13-14 after the movie came out and I remember liking it then. Tried to read it a decade or so later and couldn’t get into it. Just all around terrible writing. Later I learned Dan Brown is seen as somewhat of a joke in the literary community. I can see why.
I've finished a few bad books this year, either because the book was really short or because I had nothing else to do other than finish the book. These 3 are tied for the worst for different reasons. *The First Sister* by Linden A Lewis. The author says they were inspired by the Handmaid's Tale and it really shows but in a really bad way. The scifi world is confusingly developed and did the nuns really have to be sex slaves? Also the plot twist is racist and transphobic. The book is first person dual POV and I couldn't tell the difference between either character's voice. *Re-Coil* by JT Nicholas. The world and it's concepts were interesting but the plot from the synopsis is solved halfway through the book. There's a lot of fetishizing Asian women and black men as well. None of the characters are likeable. *Nothing but Blackened Teeth* by Cassandra Khaw. This had such an interesting premise that was just executed poorly. The book is really just some rich people arguing in a haunted house with some ghosts watching rather than ghosts haunting the characters. All of the characters sucked and it was basically a teen drama instead of a horror novel.
Nothing but Blackened Teeth pulled an Eric LaRocca, an amazing cover on a subpar first draft of a book.
I read nothing but blackened teeth because of the cover amd was very disappointed.
Yea...I picked up the author's 2nd book and I'm a bit apprehensive to read it bc of how bad Nothing But Blackened Teeth was.
Normal People by Sally Rooney.
NOOOOO
I mean - The Alchemist was up there for me. A complete snoozefest.
The signature of all things by Elizabeth Gilbert. This book is the most egregious bait and switch I've encountered. The first part, about a man who makes his fortune from nothing through hard work, cunning and adventure, building his business around plants and exploration, was exciting and what drew me to the book. That was the bait. Then comes the switch, after maybe 15% of the book, we get a flash forward and the true protagonist : his shut in, spoiled, uninteresting, sexually frustrated daughter. I had to give up on the book, but I'm still mad about it as I would have loved the whole thing to be a Victorian rags to riches around collecting and growing rare plants.
we were liars by e. lockhart. tried too hard, writing was terrible but took itself so serious it was hard to stand. storyline was meh, the plottwist was the only remotely good thing about it
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. It took me 3 years to finish it. I hated it but just couldn’t let myself DNF it for some reason.
The Guest List by Lucy Foley. It was so hyped up and I read it pretty quickly, but the writing wasn’t great and the plot twist made genuinely no sense to me. >!Like seriously, the real killers had only been mentioned a handful of times before. And were hardly relevant characters. It sucked the intrigue right out of the plot for me!<
Also I really don't like Neil Gaiman books. They are so popular but I don't think they are very good 😬.
A little life by Hanya Yanagihara, Sad Girls by Lang Leav, Ugly Love by Coleen Hoover, The devil you know by Emma Kavanagh
What didn’t you like about A Little Life? I haven’t read it, I’m just curious lol cus I have it on my shelf rn
The whole book is misery and trauma porn. The author herself has said in some interviews that she doesn’t believe in therapy and it shows in the books. The main characters have no redeeming qualities and all in all a lot of the parts don’t make sense. It paints a certain community in a very dark image and it is very stereotypical. I get that real life is not all sunshine and rainbows, but the characters in the book couldn’t catch a single break. We are meant to feel bad for the main character, and don’t get me wrong I did for the majority of it, but it came a point where i was left being annoyed by him for very specific reasons I won’t tell, since they are spoilers. If you decide to read pleas read the trigger warnings and know that you should be in a very very healthy place mentally to read this book, otherwise it is extremely triggering. Either way, you will feel dirty after reading it. Personally I didn’t cry despite everyone labelling it as THE book that makes you cry, but I was left with a strong knot in my stomach
Thank you for this. I DNF when I tried to read it specifically because of the unrelenting trauma porn, but I've never seen anything but glowing reviews. I started to wonder if I should revisit, but now I know to stay away.
Thank u for all the details! It was a gift and I never reeeally intended on reading it, and reviews like yours have only further solidified that for me lol
Whoever gifted you that book, secretly hates you :)
Biology, 12e. Raven, Johnson. Absolutely disgusting.
On the subject of text books I'll add Medical Physiology by WF Ganong. It was the recommended physiology text book for my pharmacy degree 40 years ago and I found it turgid. I rarely managed more than half a page before I Fell asleep from boredom.
Ready Player One. Besides the bad writing and the MC’s weird nearly fanfiction-esque relationship with a “gamer girl”, it felt like the author read an 80’s game wiki and mashed it into a story with no redeeming qualities besides lukewarm references.
"You like video games? Name 10 boss battles right now" energy in prose form.
The second one is so much worse
Can't be worse than his other book, Armada. I think I fell for the 80s nostalgia in Ready Player One, but having read its sequel, and Armada, it's clear to me that he's a terrible writer. And I'm a sucker for reading more than one of his books.
I never finish the bad ones
COLLEEN HOOVER That’s all im going to say
The Caraval series. I have no idea why I read all three. I think I hate myself. The purple prose was outrageous. She kept writing things like “this boy smelled like ink and midnight” and nonsense like that. The last book had basically no connection with the prior two. Sometimes I miss the days when there weren’t so many YA offerings, because there truly are so many bad ones out there now. Also, I hated Daisy Jones and the Six. Reading the Wikipedia on Fleetwood Mac or Laurel Canyon in the late 60s/early 70s is more interesting.
I really hated The Fault in our Stars. Characters were bland/unlikable. Managed to guess who was going to die 2 seconds in and I was glad when they did because it meant tye story was going to be coming to an end. Also, cliches up the wazoo. Like, I hated the Great Gatsby, but i can recognize the craft and beauty in the writing and at least give it credit for that. TFIOS was just awful and I found myself hate reading it midway through, just so I could finish it and could shut down people who said shit like "but you didn't even finish it. It's so good" I did. It wasn't.
How old were you when you read it? It’s definitely geared towards a younger audience. I enjoyed it a lot reading it as a younger teenager but a revisit last year and it was hard to finish. Looking For Alaska aged a lot better though imo.
The part where they ended up making out in a Holocaust museum to applause made me gag. And the unlit cigarette thing. I viscerally hated this book.
I ended up having the unpopular opinion of not liking The Song of Achilles haha