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?
This post is an automated archive from a submission made on /r/books, powered by Fediverser software running on alien.top. Responses to this submission will not be seen by the original author until they claim ownership of their alien.top account. Please consider reaching out to them let them know about this post and help them migrate to Lemmy.
Lemmy users: you are still very much encouraged to participate in the discussion. There are still many other subscribers on !books@metacritics.zone that can benefit from your contribution and join in the conversation.
Reddit users: you can also join the fediverse right away by getting by visiting https://portal.alien.top. If you are looking for a Reddit alternative made for and by an independent community, check out Fediverser.
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.
I loved Jude the Obscure! :(
“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.
I just read Jude. I like it. Hardy, as always, embraces tragedy and his characters failure to break from societal norms and find happiness
Tender is the Flesh. It’s not a “bad” novel but I opposed it greatly on principle