For me, it’s Jude the Obscure. That book is easily the worst book I have ever read, without a single redeeming quality, other than that it finally ends. I only finished it because Far from the Madding Crowd was so damn good.

But really, Jude is the gold standard of awful books, in my opinion.

What’s your so-awful-it-deserves-shelf-space book, if you have one?

Or am I just weird?

  • fediverserEnglish
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    10 months ago

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  • ireeeeneeBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Twilight.

    When I went through my Twilight phase those were the first “serious” books I read (before I used to read kids’ books or not even read at all) and thanks to them I got to know about Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Emily Brontë and eventually I got to read MUCH better books than those written by Stephenie Meyer.

  • Big_Mama_80BEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    “The Swarm” by Frank Schätzing.

    The plot:

    The world begins to suffer an escalating and sensational series of natural disasters, and two marine biologists begin to develop a theory that the cause lies in the oceans, where an entity know as the Yrr has developed a massive network of single-cell organisms. It is wreaking havoc in order to prevent humankind from destroying the earth’s ecological balance forever.

    The Americans, under the ruthless General Judith Lee, take a more pragmatic approach than the scientists, seeking to wipe out the being of the deep.

    The scene is set for a massive confrontation…

    Sounds pretty exciting, right? It’s even a bestseller! Well, I’ll be brutally honest…I’ve never hated a book like I hate this one.

    I found it to be sooooo boring that I’d rather clean public toilets instead of reading this again. It had so many different complicated characters that I couldn’t even remember who was who without rifling back through the book to refresh myself.

    Also, the scientific jargon used could only be understood if you were a huge science buff or worked in that field. I’m not one who complains about a little bit of science, I do really like “Jurassic Park” or “Congo”, but the lay person would struggle to follow “The Swarm.”

    I don’t know if it just got translated poorly over from German, but it wasn’t my cup of tea at all.

  • The-literary-jukesBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I just read Jude. I like it. Hardy, as always, embraces tragedy and his characters failure to break from societal norms and find happiness

  • Libro_ArtisBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Tender is the Flesh. It’s not a “bad” novel but I opposed it greatly on principle