So what is the worst book you've ever read? I pondered this question after coming across a blog entry this morning referring to a site where you could review books, films, albums etc that you particularly hated.
This got me thinking what books did I particularly dislike.
Now then I am not one of these people who struggle on manfully for 500 pages just to finish something. If I suspect a book is a pile of poo I'll ditch it and start something more interesting. So here in no order are some books I reckon you should avoid at all costs.
L Ron Hubbard - Battlefield Earth. I actually finished this! Ok so your lead character is called Jonny Good Boy Tyler and he takes on the whole of the psychlo empire single handed. I'm sorry but single handedly ? This is the type of stuff they turned out in the 30's for pulp magazines, think EE Doc Smith and Jack Williamson but nowhere near as good. I must have been very undemanding back in my early 20's.
L Ron Hubbard -- Mission Earth - l0 volumes. Look I didn't read all 10 never finished book 1. Given that Battlefield Earth is bad why oh why did I buy Book 1 The Invaders Plan? and shouldn't it be The Invader's Plan? I gave up after 50 pages or so. The story continued even after Hubbard's death.
annoyingly I've never read any of Hubbard's 1940's stuff before he got into scientology.
Robert A Heinlein - The Number of the Beast. Now Heinlein is often voted the best SF author of all time, not by me he's not, and he has produced some very good books. The Door into Summer, Starship Trooper, Starman Jones etc but come the seventies he produced some total drivel and boy is this drivel. The premise sounded really good and involved trips into parallel universes like EE Doc Smith Lensman universe. After 10 or so pages Ziggy's teets had gone spang, or whatever his phrase was, so many times I gave up and threw it in the bin. When Heinlein published Friday some years later Harlan Ellison called it the best thing he had done for years. Ellison was quite right since the last three he had written were rubbish (Time Enough for Love, I will Fear No Evil, and The Number of the Beast).
William Gibson - Neuromancer. This will offend some people but I tried very hard to read this book. I got to page 9 or so 3 times!! Its the first Cyberpunk novel. Very influential apparently. zzzzzzzz
Clive Cussler - Atlantis Refound. Obsidian Black Skulls Made 10 millennia ago, secret organizations. This book looked to have it all, a rip roaring beach/airport best seller - and everyone needs a bit of R&R. I had never read Cussler before and never will again. I finished it but whereas this could have been a gripping page turner it ended up being plain silly. The hero is super man ( we all have frailities don't we!), the science inaccurate and the bad guys totally incompetent.
Wilbur Smith - River God. Now like Cussler he's a writer I had never read before. I had had him recommended a few times so when this was in Tesco for £3.99 I thought I'd give him a go." Set in ancient Egypt, the story of a gifted eunuch slave and his proteges, the beautiful young daughter of a lord and a proud young army officer, who plan to seize the throne from the king and restore the kingdom to its former glory. ". Doesn't sound all that promising to me but ...... off I go. The gifted slave is so gifted he makes Leonardo seem a bit backward. I could forgive the stereotyping as there is a good tale here trying to get out. What lets it down is the writing. 500 pages? seemed more like 1500. It was slow it was turgid. I really would like to give him another go because I think this might have been me. Anyone want to recommend something.
I read a few books on my recent travels
Karin Fossum - Calling Out For You - ***
"Gunder Jomann, a quiet, middle-aged man from a peaceful Norwegian community, thinks his life has been made complete when he returns from a trip to India, a married man. But on the day his Indian bride is due to join him, he is called to the hospital to his sister's bedside. The local taxi driver sent instead to meet the bride at the airport returns without her. Then the town is shocked by the news of an Indian woman found bludgeoned to death in a nearby meadow. Inspector Sejer, and his colleague Skarre head the murder inquiry, cross-examining the townsfolk and planting seeds of suspicion in a community which has always believed itself to be simple, safe and trusting. For what can only have been an unpremeditated and motiveless act of violence, everyone is guilty until proven innocent."
I'm really not sure about this one. It was entertaining and well written as ever but I just didn't feel quite as engaged by it as I did earlier books. The ending is ambiguous and thought provoking and certainly the book has plenty of emotional impact.
Stephen Booth - Black Dog - ***
"When smart, sexy teenager Laura Vernon goes missing one long, hot summer in the Peak District, local police mount a full-scale search operation. But it's retired lead miner Harry Dickinson who finally discovers Laura's body, and he seems bent on obstructing their investigation. Even her parents are holding something back. But what could be more important than finding Laura's murderer? Ben Cooper, a young DC living with tragedy, has known the villagers all his life, but his instinctive feelings about the case are called into question by the arrival of Diane Fry, a ruthlessly ambitious DC from another division. As the investigation twists and turns, Ben and Diane discover that to understand the present, they must also understand the past - and in a world where no one is entirely innocent, pain and suffering can be the only outcome."
Your typical police procedural. This is a first novel an I think this shows. The characters aren't particularly three dimensional. That said the plot zips along and the interplay between the female copper, new to the area, who has been promoted to a DS over her male colleague promises for the future. I'll be seeking out the next volume.
Stephen King - The Drawing of the Three - *****
"The second book in Stephen King's fantasy tale, "The Dark Tower". The gunslinger comes alone to the endless shore of the Western Sea to find, amid the mindless menace of the flesh-eating lobstrosities, the doorways between void and void through which he must draw The Three."
It sounds daft but King's writing is so good I just got engrossed in it. What really sells this is the characterisation. Roland, Eddie and Odetta/Detta feel like real people. The characters have to make tough decisions and life isn't just black and white but myriad shades of Grey. Book 3 is on my book shelf ready to go.
9 comments:
Hmmm... Bad books... interesting.
I'm like you Pete, I don't trudge on if I'm getting nothing out of a book.
But I can add one enormously disappointing tome.
I'm not well-read, but about 15 to 20 years ago, I read Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, and I thought it was superb.
That's why, when I was looking for something to interest me a couple of years back, I remembered this and purchased The Golden Apples of the Sun.
Actually 22 short stories, end with the one of the volume title.
I don't know if I should be surprised, but having expected sci-fi, this was very thin on the ground, and of the 22 tales, I recall maybe 2 or 3 were passsable and the rest were (IMO!) rubbish.
One to avoid perhaps.
PS. How come you get so many visitors?
Bradbury isn't really an SF writer more a fantasy writer. It just so happens his most famous books are The Martian Chronicles (which I loved) and Fahrenheit 451 borrow many of the tropes of SF.
Visitors ? Do I ? Don't know really. Logged it with a view blogging things like brit blogs. Also on the settings (basic and publishing) I have answered yes to add your blog to our listing and to publish on weblogs.
So why aren't you a gasbag? Join in and get trumpeting, it's fun and you'd be very welcome.
Currently skipping occasional chapters of 'The Swans Fly Over' by Alison Uttley. I like some of it (especially the first chapter about ghosts) but now and then I come across a section that doesn't engage me. I would definitely not describe it as a bad book, however.
You mention Ray Bradbury and Robert A Heinlein. Very recently I read a book of short stories by Ray Bradbury (I Sing the Body Electric!) - yes, that was a bit of a disappointment, but I liked at least one story (to the extent I wished I had written it), and two or three more were bearable. I read two books by Robert A Heinlein - liked the first but have forgotten the name. Then read 'Time Enough for Love' which was very strange.
I've got a whole set of L Ron Hubbards waiting for me to tuck in! Aaargh. And I was hoping they would be good.
So what's the worst book I ever read? That needs some thought, but I can tell you now the worst reaction I ever had was to a fiction book about whaling. I must have been about 15 and by the time Mum came home I had torn the book to a thousand pieces. I told her there was no way I was even returning it to the charity shop to be bought and read by some other unsuspecting customer. Individual censorship in action! What was it called and who wrote it? I can't remember.
rubbish at reviewing. i'm a i like it or don't. the nora roberts one was hilarious and sssooo well written.
I feel pretty confident that I shall never read any of those.
I read Wilbur Smith as a kid, mainly his African great white hunter books with handsome tanned lead males.
I rarely ditch a book, optimistic to the end that it will pick up, even The Little Friend by Donna Tartt which I had waited 10 years for but didn't live up to the sheer brilliance of her debut novel.
Now there are plenty of blogs that I've given up on almost immediately
diddums - as a general rule of thumb if Heinlein wrote it pre 1960 it'll be ok, post 60 it gets sketchy and in the 70's don't bother.
hubbard - well you may like it but......
Sorry chaps but I can't get on with Thomas Hardy (I know, I'm a pleb) Tess of the D'Urbervilles I just about managed, but Far From The Madding Crowd lasted two or three chapters and The Mayor of Casterbridge not even that far. Now Wilbur Smith - I can cope with him.
never read any dawny. i'm a pleb too
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