Worst Book.

[Verge]

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

I think it's because, as a book, the Bible is actually quite solid. There are some very compelling and/or well-written passages, and if I bothered to read the whole thing, I'd imagine I would hold the whole thing in high regard.

Really, it's how belief systems interpret and act on the Bible that seem to get the most criticism, not the Bible itself.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I don't know, what you say makes a lot of sense but plenty of people don't feel that way. Of course, the fact that a book espouses a philosophy or way of thinking different from yours shouldn't mean that you call it a bad book . . .

 

[Snowball]

Easily A Scanner Darkly. Just plain horrible. Didn't make sense, and so much of the dialogue was just ********. And the worst part was that I read it for fun .

 

[Shylock]

Fiction: A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

I actually liked that book despite my very low tolerance for Victorian (English rich people talking to each other and doing ultimately nothing but trying to marry one another) literature and love stories. Although I only finished it for the sake of finishing it,not because I liked it.

Middlemarch by George Eliot. Following the "Rich people in England talking to each other and doing nothing but trying to marry one another" pattern this one manages to bore me throughly. I read two pages and promptly returned it to the library.
Sometimes dense information is a good thing...when the information is actually important and has some kind of point or meaning. The lives of wealthy English people do not interest me. Their love lives are absurd because I believe it to be a broken ideal.

 

[Harbringer]

I think it's because, as a book, the Bible is actually quite solid. There are some very compelling and/or well-written passages, and if I bothered to read the whole thing, I'd imagine I would hold the whole thing in high regard.

Really, it's how belief systems interpret and act on the Bible that seem to get the most criticism, not the Bible itself.

Its really bland and boring, none of the books have any "style" its written like a list or a catalougue not a good book.

 

[Fifty]

I think it's silly to evaluate "the bible" as one document. Some books of the bible bore me to tears, but some have high literary merit, IMO.

 

[warpus]

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

I'd rather read the Bible than many other books out there.

It's not the best book, or even a great book.. but it's hardly the worst!

 

[cubsfan6506]

A house on mango street no question.

 

[cubsfan6506]

A house on mango street no question.

 

[Trajan12]

Definitely Great Expectations. It reads like a dictionary.

Old Man and the Sea is a quick runner up.


I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Raisin in the Sun, and Rosa Lee. But this is partly because I very much resent that all throughout high school I'm forced to read books about racism and class struggle. That .. .. .. .. is depressing enough.

 

[grandad1982]

War and Peace. Tried to read it three times now. Last time I made about page 200 or something. If I want to read an endless list of names that mean nothing to me then I'll read the telephone directory.

 

[Princeps]

I read mostly articles and such, books only occasionally, so I can't really tell. The worst book I've read is probably the butlerian Jihad ... that one really didn't deserve bear the name Dune.

 

[Phlegmak]

You want to know what book really sucks? The Koran! I've only read about 1/4 of it, because it's so boring. Maybe it loses something in translation, but the English translation of it reads like it was written by a 14 year old. Seriously. The Koran is not written like the Bible, as a collection of stories, but more like a vast collection of short rules for life.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I think it's silly to evaluate "the bible" as one document. Some books of the bible bore me to tears, but some have high literary merit, IMO.

You're right. I like Ecclesiastes, and parts of Isaiah (also, of course, Song of Solomon, with a modern translation); Numbers has no value for literary purposes.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

It's regarded as one of Nietzsche's most overwrought and atypical works. I hope you didn't stop reading Nietzsche based on that one work!

Don't worry, I didn't. But I did get off to a slow start since TSZ was the first actual writing by Nietzsche I read, instead of just extracts and summaries.

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.

Quoted for great funny, and because I'm guilty of using quintuple-nested parentheses in sentences myself.

 

[brennan]

IOther books that I heard good things about that I thought sucked are:

The hitchhikers guide

Your heresy has been noted...

 

[gee]

I'd definitely have to go with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, just for the horrible horrible writing. It was torture.

 

[Julian Delphiki]

So, you've managed to avoid Deception Point by him so far..

 

[shmily_dana]

There was a book I read years ago called "Million Mile High Dancer" or something like that. I have no idea who the author was. And I've blocked most of my memories about the book in my mind.

 

[gee]

I made a definite promise to myself not to read any more books by him. (Even The Da Vinci Code was just for school, the only reason I finished it!)