Worst novels

[KurtColville 0]

Gotta agree on Tom Robbins. I did someone a favor and agreed to start reading "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues", which was still very popular when I "read" it in the mid-80's. Oy! I only made it through a couple pages before I couldn't go on. "Stream of consciousness" hits the nail on the head, and what a consciousness!

I've read a lot of bad books, but I don't like to think about them, preferring to focus on good work. But when I do think about my least favorite novel, I reflexively register William Golding's Lord of the Flies. It's hard to find a more disgusting, malevolent view of man's nature. I was living outside Zurich when he died in '93, and I remember being so happy when the news announced that this horrible man was gone, that I did a little dance right there in the living room. The family I was living with thought I was nuts.

[The Gattacan 0]

Gotta agree on Tom Robbins. I did someone a favor and agreed to start reading "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues", which was still very popular when I "read" it in the mid-80's. Oy! I only made it through a couple pages before I couldn't go on. "Stream of consciousness" hits the nail on the head, and what a consciousness!

I've read a lot of bad books, but I don't like to think about them, preferring to focus on good work. But when I do think about my least favorite novel, I reflexively register William Golding's Lord of the Flies. It's hard to find a more disgusting, malevolent view of man's nature. I was living outside Zurich when he died in '93, and I remember being so happy when the news announced that this horrible man was gone, that I did a little dance right there in the living room. The family I was living with thought I was nuts.

You danced when he died? Whatever kind of writer he was, he was also a war hero. He lived his life and didn't force anything on anybody. He was an accomplished, although overrated, writer. I empathize with the family you were living with.

[KurtColville 0]

Gotta agree on Tom Robbins. I did someone a favor and agreed to start reading "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues", which was still very popular when I "read" it in the mid-80's. Oy! I only made it through a couple pages before I couldn't go on. "Stream of consciousness" hits the nail on the head, and what a consciousness!

I've read a lot of bad books, but I don't like to think about them, preferring to focus on good work. But when I do think about my least favorite novel, I reflexively register William Golding's Lord of the Flies. It's hard to find a more disgusting, malevolent view of man's nature. I was living outside Zurich when he died in '93, and I remember being so happy when the news announced that this horrible man was gone, that I did a little dance right there in the living room. The family I was living with thought I was nuts.

You danced when he died? Whatever kind of writer he was, he was also a war hero. He lived his life and didn't force anything on anybody. He was an accomplished, although overrated, writer. I empathize with the family you were living with.

You're not going to get anywhere with people on here with snide comments like that. You know zip about me or my Swiss family.

I know nothing about Golding, aside from the one novel. But the book for which he is renowned is godawful in its philosophy. To Golding, man is a savage, held back from an instinct of warring tribalism by nothing more than ephemeral, blindly-accepted social convention. Great. That's more than enough for someone who sees life and man for what they are and can be to break into dance fever at the death of such a misanthrope. So the fact that he didn't force his awful ideas on anyone makes him okay? Is evil to you evil only if it is forced on someone? William Golding was "accomplished" by dint of status, not by actual writing ability, which presupposes a rational view of life.

[jordanz 0]

Duh! I just remembered the worst book ever written: The Holy Bible!!!

* wink *

[The Gattacan 0]

You're not going to get anywhere with people on here with snide comments like that. You know zip about me or my Swiss family.

I know nothing about Golding, aside from the one novel. But the book for which he is renowned is godawful in its philosophy. To Golding, man is a savage, held back from an instinct of warring tribalism by nothing more than ephemeral, blindly-accepted social convention. Great. That's more than enough for someone who sees life and man for what they are and can be to break into dance fever at the death of such a misanthrope. So the fact that he didn't force his awful ideas on anyone makes him okay? Is evil to you evil only if it is forced on someone? William Golding was "accomplished" by dint of status, not by actual writing ability, which presupposes a rational view of life.

1. I am not trying to "get anywhere" with anyone.

2. You know nothing of Golding, aside from one novel. I know zip about your Swiss family - except that they had to witness you dancing.

3. I know zip about you - except that you admit to dancing when someone you know little about dies.

4. No, it doesn't make him okay, it makes his death NOT worth dancing over.

5. Writing ability does NOT presuppose a rational view of life. No more than cooking ability, mechanical ability, musical ability, or any ability.

[Jim A. 0]

WARNING: Contains spoilers for two of the awful novels mentioned.

Another three novels have come to mind:

The Giver by Lois Lowry; winner of a children's literature award, and had the potential to be a children's literature kind of Anthem. But the author has no concept of individualism. As to Anthem, it was no surprise to me when I found out that she'd never read it. In this book, the villain, supposedly, is the "Community". But at the end of the story, the main character finds a way to rejoin her family and the community (they are practically one in this book) and lives happily ever after. Also, mental telepathy (thought transferrence?) is taken as a given in this novel. That's always great for kids.

Veronika Decides to Die by Paolo Coelho; this one was recommended to me by someone who enjoyed The Fountainhead, but I don't know why. About a woman to decides to commit suicide, and the vague, rather undefined things she realizes while in a mental hospital that make her change her mind--I think; I've forgotten alot about this book, and I only read it about two years ago. It's a bad novel because the lessons Veronika--and, supposedly, the reader--learn are not clear at all. And, just as with The Giver, there is mysticism; in one scene, the out-of-body experience of another patient at the hospital is taken as a given. The woman's "spirit" even travels to the farthest corners of the hospital. Right--it happens every day.

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem; a supposedly "serious" novel that happens to be science fiction. There is a story in it, but the book is pretentious as hell, as if Thomas Mann were trying to write a Robert Heinlein story; that would be a contradiction! I couldn't finish it, I got half-way through. I remember a friend of mine who is an Objectivist and science fiction fan once say that he thought Stanislaw Lem should have been a plumber. (The two films of Solaris are very pretentious also.)

[JJPierce 0]

I don't want to spend much time on this, but nevertheless I'm curious as to what people on this forum would consider their "worst reads" in the field of literature, especially novels. I think some of the "nominees" could be funny. But it can also be instructive: "Don't write a novel like this!"

My nominees are:

1--Left Behind by LaHaye and Jenkins. I made a deal with an ex-girl friend; she would read my favorite novel if I would read hers. I did. It was absolute garbage. Left Behind is nothing but metaphysical absurdity and a religious tract and--supposedly--a "thriller". If you're ever poisoned and need to induce vomiting, read this book.

2--The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. When I read it I asked myself, "What's the point of this?" Vonnegut was a man-hater, an America-hater and a values-hater. His satire in this novel seems to attack alot of things, but the novel doesn't support or exalt anything. (Incidentally, I know a cousin of Kurt Vonnegut's, and he himself says that Vonnegut hated America.)

P.S. My ex-girl-friend starting reading my favorite novel, The Fountainhead, and was bored by it. That was a first. I've met people who loved The Fountainhead and people who hated it, but never before someone who was bored by it!

Well, it's easy to tell why she's your ex-girlfriend.

As for novels, some are obviously bad and some (to me) just uninteresting. I've nodded off every time I've tried to read anything by Henry James.

[JJPierce 0]

I agree with the posters here that said they don't finish or get very far in a bad novel. Having only a limited time alive, I don't usually finish bad books, or even bad articles or essays. It's a question of values. I value my time too much. I will add that I have never seen a case where a book started out badly and then became worthwhile. I have seen several that start well and finish poorly or even lose my interest by the middle. An example of that is The Testament by John Grisham. The first 100 pages are among the best in popular fiction. I did not finish the book. Contrast this with a great writer like Ayn Rand, whose stories always get better as they go. As an example of great finishing, I would put the final 100-150 pages or so of We the Living against any writing in world literature.

I read THE PELICAN BRIEF when the movie version came out. Wasn't impressed. Philip Margolin isn't anywhere near as well known as Grisham, but he's a better writer IMHO. His THE BURNING MAN is the best legal novel I've come across.

[Henrik Unné 0]

When I was in a prep school in Massachusetts, during the years 1967-1969, my English teachers forced me to read the novels The Trial, A Separate Peace and The Catcher in the Rye. I would say that those 3 novels were the worst 3 that I have ever read. I detested the sense of life of those stories. Unfortunately, I took those novels seriously, since they were supposedly "generally respected" great works of literature. Why else would I be ordered to read them at a toprate prep school? Since I took those stories seriously, and believed that they portrayed life as it "really is", I became still more depressed than I already was, and when I was 15 I made 2 suicide attempts.

That is the power of bad literature. The power of good literature is illustrated by the fact that reading The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged some 10 years later helped me to recover.

[Cadence 0]

Hands down, "The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead," by William S. Burroughs. I only read about 10 pages.