Pajiba

Portnoy's complaint. I know it is supposed to "important" and interesting...but it was boring and I just wanted to kill Portnoy to shut him up. I'm sure there are other books I hated as well, but I generally try to put them out of my mind and just never even think of them again.

Before people start hating on me, I do NOT hate this book, however, every time I start to read it I get a gigantic headache and I don't like that very much. This has happened to me ever since the first time I had to read it for 8th grade english class. The book? The Great Gatsby.

Wutherfucking Heights. I've expressed my hatred for this shitstorm of a book before on this site, and I'll continue to do so. I hate every character, I hate how no one changes or develops in any way, and it is so fitting that the "heroine" of those dumbass Twilight books loves it so much, as the "heroine" in Wuthering Heights is a selfish, bratty, miserable excuse for a woman. Fuck you Emily, leave the writing up to your sisters.

The Remains of the Day and Washington Square are just about tied for the honour with me. WS is the only book I have ever thrown across a room in disgust. I just don't like the kind of literature where nothing really seems to happen or no one changes, or characters are completely responsible for their own misery. Sometimes that can work, but with these...argh.

I know this is going to be kind of a DUH pick, but...Twilght. Fuck, I hate that book!!! First of all, it's incredibly poorly written, nothing more than populist pap to appease the idiotic masses. Not ot mention a platform for Stephanie Myer's Mormon belief system. No sex 'till marriage? Puke!

Then, then, there's Bella. A more wretched example of a weak and clinging girl who can't be complete without a guy - it's SO sexist. Edward treats her with paternalistic contempt, and she still can't get enough of him after their very first encounter, augh!! How a woman could live with herself after writing that character is beyond me. I..I'm gibbering with rage as I write this. Bottom line? The writing is half assed, the characters are stereotyped and one dimentional, and the message is crap.

In fact, this book made me so mad that I had to read all of them just to prove to myself how horrible a series it was. I guess I'm into self flagellation. I HATE this series.

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Newsflash-it's no fucking secret Rhonda.

Rabbits for Dummies. I still don't know shit about those fuzzy bastards.

Also, Eat, Pray, Love. Choke on linguine, Gilbert.

Oooooooh, I got one: The Shack. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck you!!!!!!!!!!

A "matronly" African-American woman, a swarthy handyman of few words, and an ethereal Asian girl: the Holy Trinity or a really bad "[]walks in to a bar... " joke?

That book is a piece of shit. I read it when I was about 14 back in the mid 90s. Now, I understood that the character was not like the movie character but damn. It got around the part where he became an astronaut and was going up into space with a chimp or an orangutan or something when I attempted to flush it down the toilet.

Well, I apparently deleted the title of the book I called a piece of shit. The book would be "Forrest Gump".
My apologies.

Oh, Godtopus, I third Smothering Heights.

Also, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I still don't understand why it was popular.

It's trite, and redundant, but yeah... New Moon. It really was the book that felt most like a chore and was the book where I most actively despised the characters and the writing involved, and on top of it all, the protagonist is a flat-out idiot.

The other book isn't really a bad book, per se, but one that I couldn't continue reading: Vernon God Little. There's so much nihilism in that book that I couldn't put up with it past page 70 or so. The same goes for Revolutionary Road, a book whose writing I adore, but which is so effective at showing how desperately unhappy its characters are that I had to stop reading it.

Grrrr.... The f-ing Shack. Good call. My mother-in-law gave it to me, and asked me to read it. Best book she's ever read, she says. I think she thought it was a true story. I was forced to cut a bitch.

Def the Twilight series. I only read it cuz I needed to see how bad it was. And OMG, it was BAD. I read a lot of books (usually average 125 a year) and these books are the first books I've ever wanted to physically harm. I gave them away to my friend.
Another book that I didn't like is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. You'd think it would be awesome cuz of the zombies but it's just so fucking BORING. Same with Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, all that shit. Boooooooooooring.

Oh em gee, Mr. Teatime, Great Gatsby annoyed the ever loving piss out of me at the time that I read it, too. It had more to do with the fact that I felt like the story carried into a place that the characters wouldn't have gone into on their own, but no matter. It annoys me less now that I can look back at it.

And, Dorothy Snarker Wuthering Heights can suck a fucking tire iron. Everyone was a whiny little bitch in that book. Wahwahwahwah. That's all that shit was.

Also, most Christian Fiction leaves me all kinds of stabby.

And to be honest, even though I love me the guilty pleasureness of True Blood and the Sookie Stackhouse novels, the current book is a little underwhelming (like, a lot), but I haven't finished it, so the jury's still out.

BUT CAN I JUST SAY ONE THING!

To all of you aspiring authors out there... If you're looking to write a strong female character and you start her off as someone that is pretty, but most men avoid, please DO NOT write it so that every male she encounters from that point on wants to bone her. I don't care if she's got candy flavored nips, not everyone wants to ravish her within an inch of her fucking life.

If you want every man to want to bang you your main character, go write fan fiction.

I read Dean Koontz "The Watchers" on a flight to school. I don't like flying and I fucking hated that book. I actually fantasized about the plane crashing into the Atlantic and that I was the only survivor. In my press conference I was able to pin the blame of the horrific death of innocent men,women and children soley on Dean "FUCKING" Kuuntz. It was a damn good press conference to.

Oh oh! I've got another. The Memory Keeper's Daughter. That book had so much schmaltz it makes Lifetime movies look like Schindler's List.

A friend of mine had to give an oral book report on a novel in our AP English class in high school. He went to the front of the class, gave his presentation, returned to his seat (which was very close to mine, luckily)and promptly RIPPED THE FUCKING BOOK IN HALF. I wish I could remember which 'classic' it was, because he hated that sonofabitch.

One time, many years ago, I thought I'd pick up a light, easy read for the summer so I got a Nicholas Sparks novel. I think it was A Walk To Remember. I didn't make it past the first chapter because the writing was so horrendous so I guess I technically haven't read it, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say anything he's written would make me want to gouge my eyeballs out with a melon baller.

Drood, for reasons that Mike B. can surely articulate better than I can. LOATHE.

Also, I hated Rabbit Run. I know it's John Goddamn Updike, but I hated stupid Rabbit and his stupid misogyny.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon. It was just so... meh. And probably I hated it so much because I LOVE Kavalier and Clay so hard. I should have known.
Also, last year during CBR I read this book called What A Girl Wants. It was AWFUL. I gave it an F.

Oh, Even Stevens, darling, I know! When I discovered the books last year through Cannonball Read, I read 1-8 in about five days, then waited in tense anticipation for about a month for the 9th to come out.

When I got mine, I waited a few days because of work, thinking I wouldn't be able to put it down. I've been browsing through it on my lunch breaks. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's lost some of it's campy funness? Maybe the Eric/Sookie relationship annoys me? Maybe I think Bill is a complicated character who needs to be explored more? I also feel like there are so many story lines and Harris just keeps picking them up every so often to remind you that "Oh, oh, oh, hey, remember these characters? Yea, I'm not doing anything with them in this book, but I just wasted five pages describing them to you! LOL!"

Hopefully it gets better, I mean, I'm more than half way through and the plot is finally starting to pull me in, so we'll see. If I see you in a diversion thread after I finish, I'll keep you updated!

Old Man and the Sea. Longest 127 page book in. the. world.

Pillars of the Earth. Oh my god, what a pretentious crapfest.

Oh god, this is gonna be a tough call.

Well, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was the most disappointing book I've ever read. It's just frustrating that such a funny premise can be so thoroughly undercut by such shoddy writing. I mean, I thought the original was bad, but holy sh*t.

Also, Deception Point by Dan Brown. Even when I went through my "Dan Brown books are the best mysteries ever" phase (which was mighty but brief), I couldn't get through that book. The premise just wasn't compelling. Come on, an ALIEN mystery? I call bullshit.

Lord of the Flies probably made me more angry than any other book, other than possibly Huck Finn, though in both cases I don't think the books are bad, per se, just frustrating and not at all enjoyable to read.

In the last few years, I've been studying literature for my major so I've been shoveling "classics" into my own gullet in the hopes that one or two might land with me. All I've managed to do is shrink my already minute attention span to nothing. I haven't finished a book in weeks, and that was when I re-read Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live, which is one of my favorite books already and is hardly considered classic literature. I keep starting and stopping the likes of Gravity's Rainbow, On the Road, Tropic of Cancer, The Lovely Bones, and The Satanic Verses. And the thing is, I like all of these books, but I can't convince myself to finish any of them because I have so many other books I could (and maybe should) be reading. I just started The Corrections by Johnathon Franzen last night. Maybe I'll get through it, maybe I won't.

If Michael Chabon or Jeffrey Eugenides come out with a new book before I'm done, I'll drop whatever I'm reading and literally run to the bookstore.

Logar nailed it. Dan mutherfucking Brown should be shot and pissed upon. He does not deserve to have his drivel made into movies. It's another case of good idea plus bad story telling equals instant fame and riches. It pains me.

Oh oh! I've got another. The Memory Keeper's Daughter. That book had so much schmaltz it makes Lifetime movies look like Schindler's List.

Yes! That book was utter shit.

I'll also throw Wuthering Heights in the ring as probably the worst ever. Close second? Windward Heights, a po-co Caribbean retelling by Maryse Conde. I had forgotten how much I hated Wuthering Heights when I chose it for a presentation in university and couldn't figure out why I hated every character so much.

Runners up:

- Gertrude and Claudius (John Updike)
- Enchantment (Orson Scott Card)

My first instinct was to say [x] by Stephen King.

But then I remembered a King-like novel written by a British woman, set in America, with the most nonsensical, irrational, un-fulfilling sequences of supernatural events I've ever encountered.

I'm writing of The Manse by Lisa Cantrell, the inexplicable winner of the 1987 Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel. Described by many as "the female Stephen King," Cantrell stormed the late 1980s horror paperback field by storm with her vision of a community-run Halloween haunted house gaining sentience. There I go with my talent of making shit stories sound good again. A house absorbs all the evil displayed in it and goes on a Halloween killing spree.

Filled with every haunted house cliche that can be smashed into a paperback without exploding into trade size, The Manse is the single most inane horror novel I've ever read. Character? What's that? I almost forgot when I was done with this book. Suspense? Is that when an author takes the most bullish, clumsy, direct line possible and stays on it no matter what? Cause if so, Cantrell's novel was genius.

My strongest evidence: One part of the climax involves young children in a room filled with funhouse mirrors. They start screaming. The main "character" looks back and discovers that all of the children have transformed to match the reflections and are dying horrible, painful deaths. And...the kids are never mentioned again. They just disappear from the narrative. Even though they were surrounded by adults, only the children are mutilated. Even though there are adults in every room in the house watching the haunt, no one does anything to help. The novel also featured a child being run down by a semi-truck with no consequences, either. So, she hates children and good writing. Excellent.

Lisa Cantrell was the female Stephen King in the way that Lady Sovereign was the female Eminem: same genre, same skin color, exponentially worse than the original. Most egregiously of all? She beat Clive Barker for that award, an author that understands how to sell the supernatural with style and grace. Blech.

I'm sure I confessed here my loathing of Ignatius J. (motherfucking) Reilly a while back--was there a comment diversion on most hated literary characters? Couldn't bring myself to make it more than a quarter of the way through A Confederacy of Dunces. So, I'll third that one.

As for worst book I ever finished, well, the aforementioned Memory Keeper's Daughter and Old Man and the Sea would have to be right at the top of the list.

Chasing Harry Winston. By the same person who wrote The Devil Wears Prada. Whoever that is, I am far to lazy to look it up.
Now, it was a fluffy light entertaining read, that wasn't why I hated it. What I HATED was that the entire plot of the book revolved around a bet between 3 vapid bitches that they would have Harry Winston engagement rings by the end of the year, or some such nonsense. LOOK ASSHOLES, Buy your OWN fucking diamonds. Do NOT go man hunting for a rock. JESUS CHRIST shit like this drives me nuts. Learn to take care of YOURSELF, you moronic twits. One was a beautiful rich socialite leeching off of mommy and daddy, one was a whiny milquetoast who got (horrors!) dumped by an asshole BF, and one was an angst ridden emo bitch who just wasn't happy with her devoted HOT fiancee, but was gonna marry him anyway. Until she met someone she liked better.
I wanted to slap the shit out of ALL of them.
And steal their shoes, because it seems like they has really nice shoes.

Lindsay, I applaud your conviction, but disagree with every single thing you wrote. Especially Ulysses. I've read it thrice in two years and it's grown better every time.

We're only counting books that we've read all the way through, right? Because I tried to read Going Rogue but didn't make it past the first chapter.

The first book I remember hating was The Old Man and the Sea. It just goes on and on and ON and then *spoiler alert* the old guy loses the fish. I felt like Charlie Brown after slogging through the whole thing - AUGHHH!

The Twilight series is a given.

Recently, I read the Dark Tower series. I absolutely hated The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower. King ran out of gas after Wolves of the Calla, I guess.

I don't loathe this book, but it is pretentious, overrated crap: Mark Twain's Huck Finn. I couldn't get through a chapter without going back and trying to decipher to the poorly spoken Southern dialect. I wasn't the only one; no one in my class made it through the book.

Pryce, I'm reading Pillars of the Earth and I'm enjoying it. But it's foreshadowing a direction that I really don't like because it's so predictable. And the TV miniseries looks sucky.

Maceo, just curious, which Grisham book was it? The man can write legal prose beautifully, but his books are such a letdown for me. All buildup and no fireworks. The last one I read was The Broker, and that was nothing more than a male-centric, legalese version of Under the Tuscan Sun.

Ohhh, I forgot how much I hated Wicked. I was expecting greatness, as so many people seemed to love the musical, but now I understand that the book and musical really aren't that closely related.

I liked A Clockwork Orange, but your description is priceless, Lindsay.

I hated "Lolita" with a white hot fury. I wanted the book to be over one paragraph in with the police arresting his pedophile ass.

Dangerous Dave, it was TOTALLY Order of the Phoenix. I hated that one, too. I will stand by my assertion that J.K. Rowling has an amazing imagination, but her writing skills are crap. You don't have to write crappy dialogue to make it "children's lit" (See Lewis, C.S. and Cleary, Beverly for examples of excellently written children's literature). That said, I still enjoyed the series. I just object to the implication that it's well-written because IT'S NOT.

And I was overjoyed to see The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre (I hate you, Brontës), and the Twilight saga on this thread. I'm feelin' you, Pajibans!!

My contribution: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Black-and-white symbolism. On every page. Overkill, IMO. I had to read it three times over the course of three years, and I hate it more every time I read it.

Oh and The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho made me want to vomit.

I completely forgot about Michael Chrichton's Andromeda Strain.

I had to read a book from a list for a science class my freshman year of high school and the title showed up on the list and I was like, "Ooooh, that guy's books turn into movies. It'll be so interesting."

There were 300 plus pages in that book and only about 10 pages of them held anything even close to being riviting. It made me so mad. And what made it even worse was that I had waited to read it (because I'm a procrastinator), thinking that I'd zoom through it. It was so tedious and mind-numbing. And I was so mad afterwards that when I wrote my review of it for class I wanted to spit on the paper.

Shortly after that I watched a movie about time travel or some shit where Paul Walker (I think) or someone else equally pretty but also terribly untalented went to the middle ages and that movie was also terrible. At the end of the movie when the credits rolled it said, "Based on a Novel by Michael Crichton" and I jumped off my couch and yelled at my TV "YOU RUIN EVERYTHING! I THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE AWESOME."

And then my dad laughed at me for being an over-dramatic teenager.

Oh memories.

MM : A vomitorioum isn't at all what it sounds like, but I'll let you keep thinking so simply because it's more interesting than the reality.

As for books that I hated, I recently found a book called "The Red Oak" and read it because it was a "horror" novel written by a southern author and I thought it would be interesting. It was not at all interesting or good or even horror. I wanted to stab my eyes out the whole time, but I waded through it because I paid for the damn thing.

The main character happened to be a lesbian and if it wasn't enough just to know she was a lesbian, it had random bits of explicit, unnecessary sexual content that added absolutely nothing to the story except for explicit, unnecessary sexual content. It was as if the writer was afraid you might forget the main character was a lesbian and just kept sneaking it in there. I mean, I'm all for some hot girl on girl stuff when it adds to the story, but c'mon!

Also, it just ended out of nowhere. I thought there would be closure, but there was none! NONE! I hate books that don't end with at least a little bit of explanation.

Che: the first one was just out of curiosity, the second one was because I was running out of books to read in my dad's library and was desperate for material. Never again!

Dr. Pisaster, I forgot about LWFC. Man what a boring book. I think I have a problem with Spanish literature. I think it's a cultural thing that I can't seem to get past, because I also hated The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. I don't know what it is, but those books are so damned dull. You'd think the magical realist tradition would create some interest, but honestly no, it really doesn't.

OK, so this might be blasphemous to you hardcore classic lit fans but I can't STAND anything by Thomas Hardy, particularly Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Return of the Native. I felt they were horribly unpleasant stories and I couldn't identify or sympathize with any of the characters. They were all kind of asshole-ish, really. Granted, I was forced to read this in high school and I may have a different interpretation of them now but I have no desire to reread them. EVER. Jeez.

Dear Charlotte Bronte,
Hi! How's the afterlife going? Good? Well, I'll get straight to the point, then. Jane Eyre sucked. Really, I consider it to be my least favorite book. Now, I'm a fairly voracious reader. As a kid, when my parents forced me to go to bed at 8:30, I used to pretend to be scared of the dark so they'd leave the hall light on and I could read (then I read the second Harry Potter book and I really did get scared). I also think of myself as being a fairly intelligent person. I didn't have any trouble with Jane Eyre (nor with more convoluted books like Anna Karenina, which figgy is craaaazy for not loving. It is utterly excellent).
No, the issue was not my interest level in books nor my ability to read well. It was, to put it simply, your storytelling skills (which are nonexistent). Jane is a simpering fool with no common sense, Rochester is a douche, and the entire plot makes little sense. Really? She hears his voice at the window? What is this, Twilight? If I were stuck in that story, I would definitely pull a Bertha and try to kill everyone.
Really, the only reason I can find why Jane Eyre should exist as a novel is that it lays the groundwork for Jasper Fforde's fabulous The Eyre Affair, which is the best kind of fluff. So I ask you: WHY? Was it your desperation at being alone and somewhat mousy (the Stephanie Meyer effect)? Was it your desire to inflict massive amounts of pain upon schoolchildren for all of eternity? Were your life just that dull? I think a mark of how much society has improved is that today Jane Eyre would be placed in the realm of "low art" where it belongs, instead of "high art" where it sticks out like that one Black Rockette.

Bumwee McGee just tell her you loved it and mumble something about it reaffirming your love of life or something. I can't really remember what happened, it was so dreadful forgetting seemed best.

Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein - if only they'd been together on that island and fought to death, to the entertainment of one and the redemption of the other. No one need ever have heard about them, ever.
The Five People You Meet in Heaven and The Celestine Prophecy. What shitturds those were.
The Effects of Light: if you're going to write a trite and generally very bad romance novel, you should really own up to it, it'll sell anyway! But don't pretend you're anything but a hack, 'cause that's really annoying.

@Kayanne

I jumped off my couch and yelled at my TV "YOU RUIN EVERYTHING! I THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE AWESOME."

That made me laugh, hard. It's been longer since I was an over-dramatic teenager than it's been for you, but oh, the nostalgia for the melodrama. {wistful sigh}

Random question which I hope is not a) the stupidest question ever or b) somehow offensive: is your name pronounced simply "Kay Anne"? Because I hear it in my head as "K-EYE-Anne" (like a long "i" sound), and sort of similar to cayenne (as in pepper). Which makes me think of you as spicy.

The Road started off well enough, and I actually initially liked the first 90% or so of it. But then came the ending. And ending sssooo very bad that it made me retro-actively hate the entire book. *Spoiler* - All you need to do to survive an apocalyptic catastrophe, roving bands of cannibals, and the virtual extinction of all food? Be Christian. I cannot describe how much the ending of that book enrages me.

It's probably been explained a thousand times by now, but a vomitorium has nothing to do with the contents of one's stomach. People often jump to that conclusion because of practice of having a servant use a feather to gag the eater, whereupon he promptly pukes.

The ancient Romans had the word 'vomit' long before we ever did, so they got to set the mean. Vomiting, in and of itself, has nothing to do with food, it really just means that something that is inside ends up taking the channel possible to end up outside.

You've just a great time at the theatre watching people get hacked or torn to death, and sadly, the show has to end. So, the audience would leave the theatre via any one of a system of corridors--a vomitorium. Effectively, the viewers are vomited out of the theatre and out into the open air. Pretty benign stuff. I'm not sure what Thackeray's enthusiasm is supposed to mean, but then, I've always been an aqueduct fetishist.

***

Typically, I don't believe in organized literature, maybe it's because Canadian Literature can be so fucking dire sometimes. Spare me your rumination on despair in the wheatfields. Oh, Farley Mowat, come dine with me so I can breathless apologize for having been born. Hey, Margaret Atwood, have you ever considered that not every negative thing that happens a woman is due to the ongoing hegemony of white patriarchal society? Don't you think that a lot of your female protagonists are shallow, self-righteous and complicit h-bags? I like both of them sometimes, but when I don't...ugh.

I'm sounding like I hate Can Lit as a rule, I don't. But, The Double Hook by Sheila Watson? Lame. And though there's anything empirically wrong with Complicity by Ian Banks, I just couldn't handle it. That was the same class I nearly had to drop because I just couldn't with 120 Days of Sodom. I, oh. Never again. Gave up early, never revisited. Can't.

Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist is, at once, the worst book ever written, the worst book I've ever read, and the worst book that was ever recommended to me--which caused me to seriously reconsider a friendship.

Oh, Farley Mowat, come dine with me so I can breathless apologize for having been born.

Ha! Brilliant, Jo"Mama"!

I can't say with certainty the worst book, because I couldn't finish it. Chuck Palahniuk's Pygmy might be a masterpiece of social satire to those who can be bothered to decode it, but the narrative approach he employed was so fucking frustrating that it rendered it unreadable. Writing a character in pidgen english is one thing, but the entire book?

Oh, I forgot about my deep, burning hatred for Dickens!!

Word, dr. pisaster

A Wrinkle in Time.

That stupid piece of tweeny-bopper nonsense-with-a-side-of-wacktard put me off of reading from grades 7 through sophomore year of high school.

Special shout out to Othello, if only for the line "Goats and Monkeys!", and the New Testament. Keep it old school when God would bend you over and just kill massive amounts of hoopleheads to prove a point.

LadyHazard: I couldn't get past the third page of The Alchemist. His writing was just too ridiculous, and I didn't care how many people had recommended it to me. I've since learned to not trust most people when it comes to books...because most people know fuckall about good books.

I was reading Naked Lunch on the subway and got to the umpteenth disgusting situation/description and when I got to my stop, I just tossed the book into the trash and walked up the stairs feeling refreshed. It's the first time I have ever thrown out a book. I think Burroughs can be wonderful with language but his subject matter sucks. No thank you.

I also hated Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff was such a dolt and I never got what he saw in that selfish beyotch Cathy.

I pretty much can't stand reading Hemingway, but the Old Man and the Sea I agree was the worst. And I barely got through Heart of Darkness. Modern classics I had to read in school, but they just never clicked with me. Add Ulysses to that list. Snore.

@meaux: It's nice that everyone here forgives my myriad typos. I don't have the funds for an editor and I don't know why no one will do something about how lazy I am.

***

It's funny how those fixtures of your childhood (chosen or not), just disappear from your memory and pop up ex nihilo. I've had that Grapes of Wrath song 'You May Be Right' stuck in my head for two days. Does anyone remember them? I've been made to read, or have had Owls in the Family read to me more than once, and I can't remember a thing about it. So many of primary school reading assignments were spattered with Jean Little or Gordon Korman, but the only thing I remember of any of it is that when Jean Little spoke at my school, I was almost sent out to the hall.

For anyone who isn't familiar with Jean Little, she writes (or did write, I don't know if she's still living, but I assume that if she had passed, it would be big news here for a while) I guess pre-teen or young adult fictional novels. Anyway, she's a Canadian fiction author who is also blind. When I was six or seven, I was one of the kids who got to hear her speak at some special engagement at my school. Well, after she finished the lecture proper, she asked if anyone had any questions. So, the kids all raise their hands simultaneously, rather than catch the attention of one of the teachers there. Normally, I was really, really good about well-behaved in public (I think that was my 'Get out of Jail Free' card), because I come from a Caribbean family, and if you piss of a Caribbean parent-duce--ESPECIALLY about school--God Himself would be quaking in his clouds over the imminent storm. But this was too much. And shamefully, my little brat self exclaimed, 'Oh, right, because the blind lady can see you raise your hands. Where do you think you are?'

For anyone who has seen A Christmas Story, you'll know what I mean by the slow-motion 'Oh, FUDGE' moment. I thought that I would surely be dead before double digits, but praise God she had a sense of humour about my assiness. She said it happens all of the time and makes her laugh, and not to get mad at me, because I was observant and smart.

It had to be TERROR SWEAT! She must have smelt it wafting off of my body, as if a terrified miasma. Anyway, since it was a first offense, I was let off (I think they probably secretly agreed with me, inappropriate though I may have been), and my mother, who was in the prime of her batshit-fucking-crazy-I'm-never-starting-a-family-because-of-you-years who have to find something less terrible to freak out over. Those were crazy years. Like sharing an apartment with Torquemada. But now she's a grandmother and I'm stuck with some chronic illnesses, so she's softened to an acceptable degree.

I can't believe the hate for The Great Gatsby on here. In all fairness, I will admit that I am an English teacher, so I might be a little biased, but that book is so dear to me. After teaching it for several years, it has become one of my favorites. The characters are so realistic; they can sense that they are careening to an unhappy ending, but they just can't stop themselves.

I will say that Nathaniel Hawthorne can suck it. God, that man had a huge stick up his ass, and I'm tired of reading his moralizing drivel.

As far as Twilight and The Da Vinci Code go, I can't hate on them too much for being pieces of shit. What were you expecting when you went into these things? I don't go to Burger King and then complain that they don't serve organic, grain-fed beef. You know what you were doing when you opened those books.

So...look. I love classic literature. Tolstoy, the Brontës, Dostoyevsky, Austen, Wharton, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald...love them. I am in full on gasping, pearl-clutching shock mode right now at the ire leveled toward so many authors that I adore. HOWEVER, as much as I appreciate what he was trying to say and the innovative way he wrote for his time, Dickens characters make me INSANE.

Tale of Two Cities in particluar earned my ire because of stupid, stupid Lucie Manette and how retarded she was with the helplessness and fainting and wide-eyed innocence. You knit that shroud Madame Defarge! You knit it good then smother that insufferable idiot, toss her in a hole, and get drunk with sexy Sydney Carton before he goes on his stupid redemption arc because of his love for stupid Lucy Manette.

Are there length parameters for those prizes, or is kind of a 'you work must be x number of pages and cover x to be profound enough' kind of nebulousness? Seriously, I'm not being facetious.

Silas Marner...had to read that one for a high school literature class..hated that boring piece of shit so much I didn't finish and copied Cliff Notes pretty heavily to write the follow up essay. Got caught by the teacher (of course) who gave me a zero on the assignment, which dropped my overall grade in the class from a "B" to a "D." I think there was a lesson to be learned here, but I'll be damned if I know what it is.

Another vote from me for Wuthering Heights as worst book ever.

I'm also somewhat offended by the above comment that those of us who don't like the book must be from "the younger set", as if someone in their mid twenties just isn't smart enough or mature enough to appreciate literature. Opinions are opinions, they are by nature subjective.

I, for one, do not find miserable people being miserable to each other in a miserable way to be enjoyable in the slightest. I have read Wuthering Heights multiple times and that is all I could ever get out of it.

The Fountainhead is by the worst book I've ever read all the way through. I had to read it for english class and then, joy joy, I had to submit an essay into a contest. First place wins $10,000, but even that could not make me put this book in a favorable light in my essay. I hate you Ayn Rand. I hate your inhuman characters, I hate your smug and self congratulatory reflections on the proletariat masses, and most of all I hate your justification for the destruction of the natural world. And in spite of your oft-praised open-mindedness, you hate gays and lesbians. How could I hate you any more you fart sniffing prick?

I actually kind of hated 'Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters'. Well, I can't really say that because I never finished it. I like random stupidity normally, but it just seemed like it was ridiculous for the point of being ridiculous, and I couldn't get past it.

It's not because of some loyalty to Jane Austen. I really wanted it to be hilarious and enjoyable. And I laughed while I read as much as I read of it. But the shtick got old fast.

This entire discussion gives new life to my weakening belief that print will never die. There are few things more satisfying than throwing a book across the room because the ending sucks, or you realize it's all crap, or calculus is the worst.

Of course...slamming the phone down was way more satisfying than angrily pressing "end," once upon a time *chin nods to the older set*, but I don't really miss the old cord phone.

kinda late.. and total sin but skipping to the bottom to share. "Something Borrowed" is such a terrible piece of novel that I literally threw that shit across the room while attempting to wade through it.

it made me feel better.

Kayanne and Even Stevens,

I'm a nerd and read the entire series in one month. Since I'm bored on my bus commute, I have re-read them again. I'm back on book 9 and felt my fervor for the text slow as you are experiencing.

It lulls until page 139-ish (in the hardcover edition). But I say stick with it cos the action and sex finally ramps up.

The beginning is her whining too much about killing people in self-defense and her situation. Once people start coming after her (like in every book) and passions start burning, it's good. AND the violence is totally more bloody than in previous books.

But in the end, it's a paranormal romance and luckily never too long. Hopefully when book 10 comes out in June, Ms. Harris will redeem the slow pace of 'Dead and Gone'.

I don't care if she's got candy flavored nips, not everyone wants to ravish her within an inch of her fucking life.

Actually the candy flavored nips are guaranteed to make every man want a-ravishing!

Late to the party but let me throw in: As I Lay Dying. Fuck you William Faulkner! Fuck your tiring style of writing that manages to stretch out a whole motherfucking sentence into one long-winded, impossible-to-read paragraph! Eat shit and die!

/consults Wikipedia
//oh he was dead already?

'Emma' and 'Letters to Alice'

One is a clusterfuck of ''OHMYGIDDYGODTOPUS...I THINK I LOOOOVE MR KNIGHTLEY! YES I DO! NO I DON'T!

NOW I'M GOING TO GO TREAT MY BEST FRIEND LIKE ABSOLUTE SHIT BECAUSE IT MAKES ME FEEL ALTRUISTIC!!! HERE COMES JANE, I HATE THAT SCUMFUCK!!''

The other is "Poor Jane Austen had it so tough Alice! Seriously, they didn't have condoms or nothing so if you had sex, you got chlamydia... and died! And forget love... you had sex, you had babies... and YOU GODDAMN LIKED IT!"

The horror *the horror*

Any of the new books in the Dune series. For SF in particular I'm very willing to overlook substandard writing in favor of an interesting plot. But these books made that impossible. I think I got to the second or third before giving up, actually quitting a third of the way through. Now, I won't even check one out from the library.

Beloved, by Toni Morrison. Had to read it for two different lit courses. Neither professor understood it, just spent the time highlighting this or that "poetic" passage. I hated (HATED!) it...until one day I discoved that Ms. Morrison herself didn't really understand it. It's a grim fucked up book that no one understands and then fucking Oprah made a fucked up movie about it that sucked. Now I hate it with the heat of a 1000 suns. Wuthering Heights was just a big potboiler of bullshit, too. OH! And I got no love for Steinbeck or Wicked. None. And I hate Anne Rice more than Toni Morrison. No one has ruined vampires the way she did - I could barely scrape thru Interview. You can thank her for Twilight, much as y'all hate it.

But I did like The Scarlet Letter, Emma, GWTW, and Vanity Fair.

I guess my initial comment on Wuthering Heights wasn't highbrow enough for some people. (Was it because I told Emily Bronte to fuck herself?)

I honestly respect differing opinions, but all I'm saying is, Lucy Snow could whoop Catherine Earnshaw's ass with merely a clever verbal spar. And now if you'll excuse me, I have to get to my Dorkaholics Anonymous meeting.

Oh and The Brothers Karamazov, after 500 pages of FUCKING NOTHING...well, I decided I have better things to do with my life. Like slit my wrists.

Don't tell me that, I just started it!

Yeah I'm super late on this thread but oh well.

First off 'The Scarlet Letter'. That book was trash and it made me violently angry to read. by the end I didn't care what happened to anyone. I wanted to summon rabid wolves to devour every last member of that village.

But even worse than that... I despise 'War and Peace'. Yes Yes I know it's the quintessential novel. It's also 1600 pages of drivel about overly wealthy douchebag russians. I made it 800 pages into that piece of bullshit, and I just wanted Napolean to win. I wanted to see him raize mother Russia to ash. (Keep in mind I like Tolstoy.) But war and peace is probably the only book I've ever just stopped reading. I'm going to go be shake a baby levels of angry now.

Kayanne It's actually not the queen thing, I've just never really liked Bill. I think it especially took a turn of for the worse when

SPOILER FOR ANYONE WHO HASN'T READ THESE BOOKS

he basically raped her in the trunk of a car after she rescued him in book 3. I really really did not enjoy that. I've always just like Eric better, plus when I read them, I see Alexander Skaarsgard in my head and that man is fiiiiine.

I agree, I miss bad ass Eric too. The whole series is getting pretty soapy but I keep coming back for more! Seriously, do you think there's a supernatural being NOT living in Bon Temp, Louisiana?

Ha, ha!

I wish I could be all your English teacher, just to assign Absalom, Absalom, Endgame and Finnegan's Wake. And from behind some well-reinforced storm windowns, I'd watch the whilwind come rolling in.

Still, something to think about: Best-selling poet of the 20th century? Jewel.

I do think this is turning into a 'Fictional characters I hate' list. That'd be interesting to see, especially if they come from books you liked.

haha! that is priceless. I've seen that every-single-attractive-male-is-attracted-to-her-because-she's-just-so-aweeeeesome device way too much recently and it needs to stop.

I'm late, but I've been multi-tasking the last few days.

I just have to say that Last Night In Twisted River, by John Irving which I just finished for Cannonball Read was... well, just check my review when I write it. It's gonna take a few days to get all the hate just right, but GAH!

A Raisin in the Sun is the worst I've read, although if possible the movie with Danny Glover may have been even worse.

Jemima J. Horrible plot, unlikeable characters, and unapologetically superficial. Basically the message is, you won't get the man of your dreaaaaams unless you whittle yourself down to a size 0 and dye your hair blonde. Baaaarf.

Catcher in the Rye is horribly overrated and whiny.

Lunar Park and American Psycho. I promptly threw away AP immediately after reading it. Bret Easton Ellis is a pretentious, misogynistic ass.

Other books I have tried to read and threw across the room in disgust/boredom:

The Autograph Man
Women In Love
Pride and Prejudice
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Okay, I'm all alone here, days later. But I agree about Geek Love. It disturbed me and it was just pointless garbage.

I have to read the Catcher in the Rye for Honors American Lit summer reading, and I hate it so much, I can barely even finish it. Holden & his friends' constant swearing, talk of sex (but pathetically), and Holden's lack of drive and inspiration with what to do with his life (the quintessential half-assed high school dropout/failure) makes the novel seem longer than it is. I know everyone's supposed to feel some sort of sympathy for Holden, but I feel he's just a failure at life, a quack, and a horny, pathetic teen- who wants to read about that? Overall, the writing is good (props to Salinger for being able to put himself in Holden's place of insanity and lack of grammatical knowledge (I mean, I & Allie, what is this?)- really a very impressive feat for such a distinguished and obviously fairly well-educated man), but the story makes me want to throw the book at a wall.

Darius Jones by Mary B. Morrison is hard to keep up with. The books starts off with a car accident and then it goes backwards after you already know the results. I try to finish it and find better things to do.

The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks is one of the worst books I have ever read, and they picked the best actress to star in the movie that I have yet to see--Mylie Cyrus. A crappy actress to play the character in a crappy work of trash with little plot. The "tough gang" charcters were so rediculous--like a blast back to the eighties.

Rubbish.