Worst Book.

[mitsho]

what sex are you?

I'm male, but I got the book (beloved by toni morrison) handed to me by a female friend who somehow "forced" me to read it. It probably has something to do with wether you are forced to read it or not... It has a nice storyline, a nice set up of characters and there is something going on. But it probably tackles too much "feminine" subjects like emotions and stuff...

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...

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

If you say that you have never seen von Kleist so far... that gives you headaches...

m

 

[Fifty]

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...

Even with the poor literary aesthetics of it, though, I can hardly imagine how one of the greatest works of philosophy ever written can be deemed so bad as to be the worst thing you've ever read!

 

[Red Door]

If you don't like the military stuff and action, Tom Clancy books absolutely suck.

I hated the Basil and Josephine Stories. Add The Human Fly.

 

[Cu Chulainn]

The Scarlet Letter is total crap. No redeeming value whatsoever.

 

[Swedishguy]

"The History of Customs" or something like that (I don't know the English title). It was written by some jew who escaped from Germany. The book is about the German culture in regards to the English and is extremely boring. 20% of the book is author's biography, how he made the book, special thanks to certain people blah blah blah. And it happens to be my father's favourite book.

 

[Babbler]

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...

From what I heard, Hume is children's lit compared to Kant ...

 

[GinandTonic]

Even with the poor literary aesthetics of it, though, I can hardly imagine how one of the greatest works of philosophy ever written can be deemed so bad as to be the worst thing you've ever read!

Thats why it only got a special mention. It isnt exactly badly written, to an extent it is a technical achievement. It just could really have used a ruthless sub-editor.

 

[twansalem]

The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne

I'm sure there are worse books out there, but this is definitely the worst book that I've ever finished. There was a time that I used to finish every book I started, no matter how awful, and I read this book during that time.

This book is horrible because nothing ever happens. It's dark and dreary, and exceedingly boring. At one point it takes over 20 pages for Hawthorne to describe how the main character decided to move a piece of furniture from one side of her room to the other. Hawthorne goes into extreme detail describing every little aspect of the most boring events possible. This book basically has no storyline, relying instead on describing every inane detail about the most boring characters a writer could possibly invent.

 

[LLXerxes]

I cant remember which one I read, white fang or call of the wild, but either one was absolutely horrible, so damn boring. That and "to kill a mocking bird" sucked to, and we had to read it in hi school, there was some other forced reading book to, I think it was called "night" and that one also sucked bad.

I've had to read all of those in High School except for Night, but I'll start reading it in a couple weeks.

I have two books I strongly dislike:
Richard Adams' Watership Down is just poorly written. Lame dialogue, a predictable plot, and just nothing interesting. It's like this guy just said "I feel like writing a novel," when he had absolutely no experience in it and bsed it all.
I also hated The Shroud of the Thwacker by Chris Elliot. I read 100 pages and had to put it down. This is another guy who had absolutely no experience writing. Too many damn bathroom jokes! And sex jokes, and jokes about anachronism. not only that, but the writing is terrible. Listen, Mr. Elliot, I understand if you want to try to write a book, but why would you butcher one of the most prestigious genres in literature: mystery? Your book has no subtlety and a lame plot.

 

[superisis]

From what I heard, Hume is children's lit compared to Kant ...

which in turn is kiddielit compared to Hegel who's work is childsplay compare to God who coincidently has not written anything yet (though he did publish titles in his name, but they were crafted by ghostwriters).

 

[Fifty]

From what I heard, Hume is children's lit compared to Kant ...

It's all relative to what sort of reader you are. Kant has a knack for making complex phrases for all sorts of stuff (e.g. the "transcendental unity of aperception") and using them constantly throughout his work. It also depends on what Kant work you are talking about. Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals is a much easier work than A Critique of Pure Reason. Hegel is another famously difficult philosopher. Out of any single major philosophical work, though, Russell and Whiteheads Principia Mathematica is perhaps the most difficult, though that is primarily due to its content rather than writing style.

Of course, coherence and "difficulty" are difficult thing to quantify. For instance, compare Kant to Derrida. While Kant is very difficult, it is difficult because it is systematic, careful, nuanced, complex, and profound. Derrida "reads" easier, but it is incoherent drivel (French philosophy in general went through this horrid period of crappy philosophy in the 20th century that really betrayed its grand philosophical tradition)..

 

[superisis]

Out of any single major philosophical work, though, Russell and Whiteheads Principia Mathematica is perhaps the most difficult, though that is primarily due to its content rather than writing style.

I thought it was Newton's Principia Mathematica that was the inaccessible one.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Worst book ever: "What men know about women".

 

[Fifty]

I thought it was Newton's Principia Mathematica that was the inaccessible one.

That's a work of science, not philosophy, so I didn't consider it. I don't know anything about it really anyways.

 

[Harbringer]

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.

Bah don't get me wrong, I think Ecclesiastes is one of the greatest literary works of all time, I read it time and time again, my user name here even used to be Ecclesiastes. But the rest of the bible is what we in the ghetto call "ultra suck", not so much becuase it sucks really, but it just has no charector, even though it was written by so and so many guys its hard to tell them apart. Theres hardly any description in the thing, and little introspection. Its all just, he went here, he did this, it was grand, then it sucked, he was stoned to death after begating her and so on and so forth.

 

[LightFang]

I hated The Stranger. Existentialists disgust me.

 

[Trajan12]

Worst book ever: "What men know about women".

At least it's a short read. *Badum tish!*

 

[Verge]

At least it's a short read. *Badum tish!*

 

[Martacus]

I can only narrow it down to two, but I cant' decide between them. It's either the Scarlet Letter or A Farewell to Arms. They're both equally unbearable, but for different reasons.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

Also, Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. If he ripped out everything having to do with computers, it would have been just a bad thriller/spy/thingy novel, but with them, it's like PoMo applied to technology instead of philosophy.