People so love the Lord of the Rings and I've tried a couple of times and really hate it. Same with Dune, Watership Down, etc. Obviously just not my thing.

I usually like a lot of crime dramas, murder mysteries, and even psychological thrillers (the latter to an extent), but The Last House on Needless Street was so disturbing to me, it was a while before I could shake it. I was probably already about half way through it before I began to 'get it' and realize just how disturbing it was, so, regrettably, I finished it (it's a rare book I don't finish, even if it takes forever). I can't remember a time when I've disliked a book more.

Any book/story I've read about life in India. But specifically; A Fine Balance. Years ago it was one of the Oprah book of the month choices so I gave it a try. What a horrid, awful, terrible place to live. I think it is hell on earth. It's a great study on why Americans are different. Our Judeo-Christian values that permeate our society have formed our culture to a mindset like no other. PTL for life in the USA!!!

Mine would be Verity, by Colleen Hoover......it was being shared and discussed a lot at work, so I read it, and I'm sorry I wasted that much time. I hated it. Usually I don't finish books that I am really not enjoying, but everyone at work loved it and were talking about it, I wanted to see if there was some redemption there. Nope. Still hated it.

I also did not like The Great Gatsby, but I'm not sure I hated it.

It is rare for our book group to unanimously dislike a book, but we managed with Luster: A Novel by Raven Leilani. No one liked the main character and a number DNF.

I have come to hate what I call 'Holocaust kitsch' books, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas being a prime example. Historically inaccurate, completely implausible, and does a disservice to the lives and memories of those who lived through the horror.

I once tried a Scott Turow book - not my usual genre, but it was on a shelf in a vacation house and I had run out of other reading material. It was Presumed Innocent, and I figured out who did it at the bottom of page 1. Plus the writing was all plot, no style. So I now avoid that kind of book.

Oh, and I love Gatsby. :-)

I liked most of John Boyne's other books, particularly The Heart's Invisible Furies, but I am with you, Bookwoman. Ditto on the "sequel" All the Broken Places.

Good topic, and just as I can't quite call out the best books, I can't call out the worst. However, when I saw mention of Verity I was compelled to chime in. I am totally fine with reading fluff at times but I read Verity and felt like it was the worst waste of time with no redeeming value.

People rave about the book and the author ( Co Ho or Colleen Hoover). I was thankful that I can say "one and DONE". What trash.

I do find that many award winners have me scratching my head asking what did I miss when I read them.

Here are a few of the Pulitzer winners that I thought were awful.

The Orphan Master's Son ( this one I could not finish)

Beloved

Less

The Netanyahus

The Shipping News.

There are many Pulitzer winners I loved, but as I glanced at the list these jumped out as terrible.

The phonebook! I couldn’t even get through the list of characters.

LOL, sorry! My dad used to tell us that.

As stated on "best" I enjoyed Elton John's "ME". Cant say the same for Prince Harry's "Spare". I found it dull, and barely got through it.

Ah, that's what makes horse racing. I loved All the Broken Places, we read it for book group and it was loved by all as well. And while I recognized the unrealistic nature of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, I liked that too.

While we're goring each other's oxen, may I say that I don't like Pride and Prejudice. I find the language so stilted, and the plot was not to my liking at all. We recently saw it as a play, and I had the same feeling there too. The actors made the language more palatable, but it still wasn't fun for me. My apologies.

Annie, I can’t read Jane Austen. Just can’t. I can’t keep track of who’s talking, and so. much. talking. And the social mores of the time just go over my head.

Bad books, There are soooo many. I just quit a book the other day because it made no sense. And I used to read The Cat Who... mysteries. The last one was so bad, and later I learned that the author died shortly after writing it, and I figured yeah, she was coaching an assistant to write it and she just couldn’t get the flow.

I love Jane Austen but P and P is my least favorite. You need to read them in the correct mind set. They are not romances. I suppose most people enjoy them while ignoring or missing that fact. It helps to have read her letters.

My least favorite book on earth is War and Peace which someone on the other thread listed as their favorite. I read it the first time between 7th and 8th grade and hated it. I thought I must be too young to understand it's greatness so would try again every few years and I still hated it. I used to have a rule that if I started a book I had to finish it. That rule ended on my fifth attempt at War and Peace. Half of Moby Dick is pretty terrible, the half where he describes sailing a ship. Paint dries more interestingly. I have several very fancy books of the novels of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, he of the dark and story night fame. Dreck at its finest. I also have a complete set of the other Winston Churchill-an American writer who was seriously popular in his day and a lot of people think it was the other Churchill. So terrible even I couldn't read them.

patriciae

I loved The Orphan Master's Son, but I listened to it as an audiobook, which no doubt helped.

The Edible Woman

Waiting for Godot

Both of the above books were required for English 100 and I have never hated two books more. I had to finish them, no choice.

The Harry Potter Series.

I have read other books that I just didn't enjoy or were just a waste of my time and I didn't feel guilty about not finishing them.

The Perfect Marriage. I just finished and asked myself why I didn't stop at the first chapter.

Another Harry Potter vote here - I quit reading midway through the first book, it was so poorly written.

Lily - Apparently these is a sequel and movie adaptation in the works for The Perfect Marriage. I don't know why because the reviews really trashed it.

The worst books I've read are too heavy on pointless character development, psychological analysis, and boring allegory. And lack engaging plots.

We all read books of different types and for different reasons.

I was disappointed to read that Cheever admired Fitzgerald.

One best-seller I disliked is The Girl on the Train.

I only recently tried On The Road. Oh gag me. (Too late to stop him.)

Some novels are prized because they provided a new 'voice'.

*The Great Gatsby* was such a horrid read but I slogged through it then threw it across the room. It was so so bad.

Also, *The Hobbit.*

When I was young and in school, I hated some of the textbooks I was forced to use. I think subjects like science and history and so on are so interesting, but the texts were often dry and lifeless, and did not show how the facts which were being taught related to the real, interesting world.

The political editing of such books is disturbing to me.

Wicked by Gregory Maguire.

Oh lord, anything by Ayn Rand.

I hated 100 Years of Solitude. Felt like it took 100 years to slog through the first 50 pages and then I gave up. Life's too short to finish boring books.

Ha - Ayn Rand was a revelation when I was a teen - I think her books appeal to immature, self-absorbed minds.

The Talmud was pretty bad, but not much worse than The Bible (OT). Both have ridiculous laws and rules, but especially The Talmud, which treats women like second or third class citizens. Reading these books can be very traumatic for some children and should be traumatic for women.

OTOH, I found reading The Upanishads to be very uplifting and optimistic.

I wasn't a fan of Wicked either. Love Jane Austen, I have a reasonable handle on social mores of the time so I find her very insightful and witty.

I tried reading All Quiet on the Western Front and Moby Dick, but didn't finish either. Moby Dick was just so boring with all the interminable wittering on about the habits of whales, most of which is also inaccurate. I just wanted Melville to get on with telling the freaking story.

I can't recall the title of a book I found amongst my mother's stuff when I cleaned out her house after she died. I read it because it was a locally-set non-fiction book. Big mistake. The author continually referred to her boyfriend as her "paramour", and it got old really quickly. Same with a local farmer's autobiography, every.damn.page had something along the lines of "so it goes" on it.

Another DNF was one I borrowed from the library. The synopsis sounded like it would be right up my alley, but after three pages I had had enough. The male protagonist was a complete jerk who treated his wife poorly (not a domestic violence thing but an "I know best and you'll do what I say because I'm smarter than you and I don't care if you're scared to be left alone in this creepy house in the middle of nowhere in the dark with no electricity" thing) and the author managed to work in a reference to Jesus on every page at least once if not more often.

I tried reading Pride and Predudice but couldn't get past first chapter

The book my husband gave me for Christmas ”A Big Little Life” by Dean Koontz. I hated it so much I couldn’t believe it had been reviewed well and I wasn’t familiar with the author who is apparently popular.

I like slowing down to read Austin ( wish conversation nowadays was as clever), kind of liked Orphan Master, loved Shipping News, laughed out loud at Godot.

I enjoy reading very old writing too - I do appreciate the differentness of the language and it really does stretch my brain.

It's hard to list books I hated because when I hate a book I rarely finish it. I read for pleasure so can't see reading something I don't like. Of course stuff I had to read back when I was in school I managed to get through but its hard to remember them.

I forgot I keep a record of books I've read (to know which have already been read, which to re-read or when done.

Notes from the record:

I find David Baldacci's books flat and too formulaic

Alan Furst novels in WW2 +/- time frame, in historical settings - uninteresting

John Sanford - every book the same as every other. He's as engaged in what he's doing as a bored organ grinder turning a crank, which is how it seems he produces new books.

Robert B Parker books - I find boring.

I love a complex sentence and that is the main reason I love older literature although you can like Bulwer-Lytton get carried away. Dickens wrote equally astonishing outrageous run on stuff but his were seriously funny and they parsed as well. Austen's stuff is spare in the extreme and her stories were sometimes deemed to true to life to be interesting. They preferred the stuff where no one could take a sea voyage without being attacked by pirates several times I suppose.

I dont read much modern literature because it is all too often choppy. Too much influence from Hemingway who I dislike I suppose.

patriciae

^^^ Hemingway leaves me cold too, but I can see how he appeared 'new'.

I volunteer as a shelver in my local library, and while I have never read anything by Stephen King, John Sandford or James Patterson , I hate them all because shelving them ruins my day. So, unread worst books?