Worst Book.

[JollyRoger]

I haven't read Atlas Shrugged but Peikoff's book on Objectivism is the worst work of attempted philosophy I've ever read.

Well, I'm giving it bonus points for negative influence. I will admit to being unfortunately influenced by The Sun Also Rises as a young, unthinking moron looking for a way to live life. It at least has the merit of being a better written book than anything I have read by Rand, while likely not leading as many of the young, unthinking moron set down the wrong path or as regrettable of a path for that matter.

 

[mangxema]

I'd have to go will The Old Man and the Sea. I heard a radio commercial for the GA Lottery many years ago, shortly after I had read it, and regretted reading the book because the 30-second radio spot really didn't leave anything out.

Close second would have to go to Tess of the d'Urbervilles for the agonizingly slow midsection.

 

[Verge]

Oh, Madame Bovary is another awful book. The whole thing is just unmitigated mediocrity, from its characters to the story. Worst yet, that's pretty much the point of the book.

 

[Harbringer]

I haven't read Atlas Shrugged but Peikoff's book on Objectivism is the worst work of attempted philosophy I've ever read.

I have yet to read any good books on objectivism, but that could just be my bias getting in the way.

 

[Tabasco Sauce]

Parts of any late Harry Turtledove book. I mean, he has so much filler mixed in with nuggets of excellence. But, the filler can make some of his books non readable.

 

[TopDog]

The Mill on the Floss. My god it was boring.

 

[mitsho]

I actually liked Toni Morrissons Beloved a lot. Probably you either love it or you hate it...

There was actually just one book I tried to read and just couldn't... :The name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. I know it's thought of as a masterpiece and everything, but it just didn't take me in. After all, the whole thing lasts 1 or 2 days or so and has 500 frickin' pages... (not literally...)

m

 

[zjl56]

Parts of any late Harry Turtledove book. I mean, he has so much filler mixed in with nuggets of excellence. But, the filler can make some of his books non readable.

I'm currently reading Down to Earth and his style is tedious beyond comparison. While I enjoy the technique of telling a story like Foundation does it, Turtledove went way too far to develop each and every single character whether they were relevant or not.

 

[Arwon]

Parts of any late Harry Turtledove book. I mean, he has so much filler mixed in with nuggets of excellence. But, the filler can make some of his books non readable.

Rule of thumb: His standalones are excellent, his series are basically garbage made from good ideas.

 

[Verbose]

Oh, Madame Bovary is another awful book. The whole thing is just unmitigated mediocrity, from its characters to the story. Worst yet, that's pretty much the point of the book.

Yeah, it sucks to be the first purveyor of realist literature, when 150 years later every Tom, Dick and Harry with a writer's itch has robbed you blind.

 

[Fifty]

I have yet to read any good books on objectivism, but that could just be my bias getting in the way.

Only if your bias is a bias against crappy excuses for philosophy!

 

[superisis]

James Joyce's Ulysses, for starting a 20th century literature fashion of pedantic writers.

not sure if I even want to touch that one. It's in my fathers bookcase and something about just seems so revolting

Oh, Madame Bovary is another awful book. The whole thing is just unmitigated mediocrity, from its characters to the story. Worst yet, that's pretty much the point of the book.

same goes for this one, though to a slightly lesser extent (perhaps cause I haven't seen it in my fathers library).

I actually liked Toni Morrissons Beloved a lot. Probably you either love it or you hate it...

what sex are you?

 

[Harbringer]

Only if your bias is a bias against crappy excuses for philosophy!

Yes, that describes my bias quite well, although I'm not religious though, I can still say there are some religious books that are written well, which I cannot say for any of the books on objectivism I have read.

 

[rhawn]

Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce. Almost unreadable and boring and hard to cut through all of the Irish colloquialisms.
Lies Inc. by Philip K. Dick was also terrible. A horribly disjointed novel released only to cash in PKD fans. I read the last 5 chapters 3 times and I still can't make any sense of it.

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Sunset Song (and the rest of the Scots Quair trilogy), which was an exceptionally dull book about a young woman growing up on a farm. I was to read it in my fifth year of secondary school, and probably would have liked it better had it not seemed that we were reading it for the sake of my home city being a part of the story, rather than it being an actual important piece of Scottish literature.

After that, I told my English tutor at university that I hated the book, only to find that not only did he love it, but had created a play based on the novel. He didn't really seem to like me from then on...

 

[Tabasco Sauce]

Rule of thumb: His standalones are excellent, his series are basically garbage made from good ideas.

Ehh, the Worldwar series was pretty descent. So was the Southern Victory series. Sure, their was a lot of fluff, but the good outweighed the bad in those books. The Colonization series and Homeward bound on the other hand... anyway, Guns of the South was his masterpiece.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Lord of the Flies by Sir William Golding

It's not the worst book I've read; it's quite good philosophically, but I find the story drowns in its own symbolism. That, and there are some socio-environmental variables I think he deliberately excluded.

 

[Tabasco Sauce]

I'm currently reading Down to Earth and his style is tedious beyond comparison. While I enjoy the technique of telling a story like Foundation does it, Turtledove went way too far to develop each and every single character whether they were relevant or not.

That, and he uses some phrases way to much. For instance, he says "The chill he or she wasn't because of the weather". If I had a woman for every time he said that, I would be Wilt Chamberlain.

 

[GinandTonic]

The whatnot and the Dragon by Tom Clancy. Given that people on the forums bang on about what a tip-top thriller writer he is I thought I would have a pop at the only book of his in the house. Seven hundred and something pages of chest-thumping. No charecter development (in fact no 2D charecters at all), no tenson, no point of any kind other than getting a hard-on over people shouting acronyms. Just astonishingly worthless.

David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding deserves a special mention. There is no call to have a sentence longer than a page. Ever. Under any circs. If you run out of punctuation to denate subordinate clauses, you shouldn't have any more. Really, if you go through colon, semicolon, bracket, hyphen and square bracket you just have to quit with the subordenate clauses. Dont start with wiggly brackets and odd mathmatical symbols. You may be able to compress a lot of meaning into one page/ sentence with these techneques but the rest of us have to decompress that information, and it means we have to read the bugger ten times just to get the subordinate clauses - and thats assuming we get the gist of every de-subordinate-claused sentence the first time. It's some kind of wird technical achievement but...

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I am impressed the Bible hasn't been mentioned yet.

Anyways, I feel Clancy jumped the shark with Without Remorse - after Sum of all Fears, his best in my opinion, they all got progressively worse.