Dorothy Parker, the famous wit, once wrote, “This is not a novel to be thrown aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” Today’s question, without naming the author or title (unless you simply cannot restrain yourself), what is a book you’ve read that you hated? Did you force yourself to finish it? What was it about the book that made you want to throw it with “great force”?
Killzoneblog.com
A few years back while I was doing a long drive up the east coast, I rented an audiobook by an uber bestselling author. I was trapped in the experience of listening to it for hours. In addition to the fact that the main character was a supreme idiot, the writer kept inserting the same exclamatory interjection–Blink!–into the scenes. Whether he did that as a weak device to infuse the story with tension, or simply to meet his contract’s word count, I’ll never know. It was horrible. Blink!
I read a suspense by an author who seems to show up on the best-seller list every week. I finished and said, “You’ve got to be kidding.” The plot was same old same old. Every character drank scotch before dinner, fine wine with dinner, and slept together after dinner. The killer was revealed to us with a quarter of the book remaining. Unnecessary, as it would have increased the suspense if we had not known so early. And I could not believe some editor accepted the fact that a serial killer is going to confess to a cop (he knows she’s a cop) just because they’re engaged in heavy petting. If it weren’t an audio book on my iPhone, I would have thrown it. Hard.
Maybe I’m forgetting an obvious example but I don’t remember this happening to me. I’m very selective about the books I read and usually if I’m turned off, the book starts out boring but I usually end up glad that I stuck with it because I came away with something by pursuing and finishing it.
The closest I can come to books that made me mad (though I finished) was I always DESPISED being forced to read certain books in school. School always had a knack for choosing the most boring fiction imaginable and I very much resented being TOLD what I was going to read rather than selecting what I was going to read. Still makes me mad just thinking about it. UGH!
Probably why I’m so picky to this day.
I won’t name the author, because otherwise I love him. I forced myself to finish the book, pretty much out of respect. The characters were drab, the story had the potential to be interesting but fell short, the language was repetitive, and the book could have been chopped by about 200 pages. Overall, it was the worst book I ever read, from an author who wrote the best books I ever read. Go figure.
I can’t remember a book I actually hated. If a book doesn’t catch my interest within the first few pages, I just drop it.
Once while I was visiting my daughter in Florida, she was raving about a current fad book that had been turned into a movie. Just to show her how easy ordering books was on my Kindle, I downloaded the book sight unseen. Later when I started to read it, I found to my dismay that it was written in first person, I just deleted it after the first page.
Life’s way too short.
I was trying to get a taste for the big name fantasy authors, so I yanked one randomly off the library shelf. Oh my. It was nasty. Every character was bisexual, and the villain was a man-cat thing who didn’t care if he raped male, female or animal. It was fantasy all right–a really sick one. I dropped it and avoid that author now.
I spent a few weeks as a coach at a lacrosse clinic one summer, so I had lots of down time at night. I had just finished reading THE TWELFTH CARD, by Jeffery Deaver, and was enthralled, but there were no more Deaver books at the grocer. So I picked up a spy thriller by a bestselling name I’d never read, despite the fact the guy has maybe two books less than James Patterson’s Bajillion titles out there.
There were like 6 characters, total. I mean no motel owner that only shows up for a page, or bum the main characters pass on the street. Literally like five or six human beings in the whole book, and every location they visited across the globe was completely deserted. And if that didn’t break immersion, the plot was so hackneyed it made me laugh openly while reading. I forced myself to finish it (it’s just my way) and put it down and said, “Shit, even I can do better than that!”
So I started writing again, after about a 10-year layoff (due mostly to a beastly little creative writing teacher I had in HS), and I’ve had 4 shorts published and am about to finish my second manuscript.
Stephen King, “The Regulators”. I don’t mind mentioning author and title because with Stephen, for every book of his I dislike, there are three I love.
I have tried to finish this book a number of times. I keep thinking I’m missing the point. I’m not. It’s totally pointless. Characters are lifeless, there isn’t any plot that I can see, and the ending is…well…I don’t know. Can’t finish the bleeping thing.
“The Regulators” was a strange one. It was a “mirror” novel of “Desperation,” which I found to be much more compelling. I listened to both audiobooks and listened to “The Regulators” just because it was a “mirror” novel and I wanted to see what that was all about. Try reading “Desperation.” If you like that one, you might be curious to finish “The Regulators” just to find the similarities.
All right, I’ll give it a try. I like a challenge. But I have Lee Child’s latest book, Nelson DeMille’s latest book, and short stories by Jeffery Archer. Might be a while…
Great question. Oh yeah, I have. Several times. The two most memorable books were by authors who wrote books late in their respective careers. One was a highly regarded — and deservedly so — science-fiction author who wrote this long novel that was…ridiculous. It had a lousy premise and he kept repeating himself. I did finish that. The other memorable book was by the author of a classic historical fiction novel which was made into a classic movie. The last book he wrote was terrible. There was no discernible plot, just a bunch of characters bumping into each other. I was old enough to feel my mortality ticking away and did not finish it.
Joe, I had a similar experience with a writer of some renown, late in his career, trying to show the young whippersnappers that he could do gratuitous sex and violence even better than they! What an embarrassment, and waste of trees. I did, literally, throw that book across the room. I think I’ve done that only two or three times in my entire life. This one I threw with great force.
Due to time restrictions, I do most of my reading through audiobooks. My mind often wanders with a poorly written book, and I’ve listened to several. But I have kept listening because I find them educational. With a great book, I have a hard time studying the craft because I’m so caught up in the story. Not so with a poorly written book.
Some of the worst I’ve listened to are books written by little-known authors that are either continuations of a series or from an idea by a great author (such as Ludlum). Painful to listen to, but very educational.
I was recently sent a novel to review, which turns out to be a modern romance with all the rancid low-context dialogue and brand-name dropping and vapid beautiful people. I made it all the way to page 4, where I found the spandex-clad, 19-year-old exotic dance instructor described as a “brainless beauty.” Her name was – I’m not kidding – Mandy Amore.
I really did throw the book across the room. Then I went over, picked it up and threw it again. Really.
The initials of the book title are: GG. We’ve already beaten this one into the ground, but it keeps coming back.
Here’s another one:
Author’s initials: JP (Hmmm?) On a night flight the guy across the aisle was reading the book. {{Suddenly!!}} he throws the book into the aisle and exclaims, “That’s the worst book I’ve ever read!” And I say, “Oh, was it J—- P——–?” And he’s, “Oh, how’d you know?”
Not making this up.
Whew. For a second I read that as P…J and broke out into a sweat. 🙂
Kris, you crack me up!
I recently purchased an e-book because a well-known writing craft teacher said the author was one of his students. The plot look promising, so I bought it. Worst $2.99 I ever spent. The protagonist was shallow and immature, the victim was so hateful I was glad she died in the first chapter, and the investigation of her death was so illogical it made no sense. I managed to finish the book, but it was a major waste of my time. I doubt I’ll ever read another book by that author.
sonjahutchinson.com
This is easy:
“Bridges of Madison County.” ACK ACK…{{{COUGH!}}} = hairball.
And then there was Scott Smith’s “The Ruins.” I was really looking forward to it because his first book “A Simple Plan” was great. “Ruins” was one of the worst books I have ever read. An incredibly stupid clumsily plotted hot mess. And deeply cynical, too, because you could just hear the author thinking, “man, this is going to make a great movie.” (which also sucked).
I recently read a best seller by a hugely successful writer. It was the first book of his I’d looked at. The devices being used to manipulate me were apparent from page one–and consequently they failed from page one: kinky sex and brutal murder, a cookie-cutter sadistic and crooked cop, perverted rich people you love to hate, matched up against plain, working-class folk you can’t help rooting for (make them Irish, of course, everyone wants to be Irish).
But I read to the end–to see what it is that succeeds so well with so many readers. And now I know. To give the author his due, he has a talent for pacing,and for packaging his story in chapters of three or four pages, the easier to be consumed on trains, planes and ships.
But what’s most interesting to me is this: the book’s sole purpose is to provide the writer with the wherewithal to live the life of the rich and famous. And it’s just this life that he treats in his story with such heavy-handed but apparently sincere hatred and contempt.
It is rare that I continue reading a book to the bitter end which I hate. However, recently I gave in to curiosity and now I can never retrieve those 50 hrs I wasted. Seemed that long anyway.
A couple of years ago, I remember reading the first entry in the Trojan Horse saga from Spanish author J.J. Benitez.
It was January, as I recall…finished it up in a couple of weeks. I hated it so much that I complained to every body who’d listen to me.
This attitude continued until my wife–bless her heart–pointed out that it had been six months.
“Are you sure you didn’t like it?” she said. “It sure left quite an impression.”
I have trouble abandoning books, but here’s my post on the topic: http://mthupp.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/what-books-dont-or-wont-you-read/
My biggest pet peeve is typos in a book. And there are more of them now in the era of self-publishing.
I will also chuck books with vampires and werewolves. I just don’t like the genre, and try very hard to stay away from them.
As a reviewer, I’m willing to forgive a few typos–I find them even in traditionally published books. I tend to agree on the vampires and werewolves, but I have written a short story about a zombie and another about ghosts. I look first for plot, characterization, and good dialogue in my reading and reviewing.
In general, I can find real clunkers in traditionally published books and fine prose in self-published ones–it’s a readers’ market nowadays!
Okay, three times I typed up an entry here today. All three times it got wiped out by various technical issues. Therefore I surrender to the fact the weavers do not wish me to dis the writer of the book I consider the worst written book I’ve ever completed. So… will leave it alone other than to say:
If you are writing a book based on a movie (instead of the more common other way around) DO NOT simply take the script and add scene information between dialogue lines. If you do it will sound like reading a script, and not a book, and the end product will suck big fat rotten goose eggs laid by a buzzard who just ate a three day old roadkill skunk.
Just don’t do it!
Because no one mentioned the so-called classics here, I will. I generally have problems with 19th century books…maybe because I was told in school that I was not a renaissance person until I read them? Jane Austen is enjoying her own renaissance–I’ll never know why because I avoided her like the plague. Giants in the Earth seemed as boring as watching grass grow…on that prairie! (Technically, 20th century, but stylistically, 19th.) Moby Dick seemed no more than a verbose description of how to render whale blubber into lamp oil. You get the idea.
I won’t comment on live authors until James Scott Bell guarantees I won’t be sued! 😉
BTW, I’m not referring to James’ books, just in case he’s reaching for his cell to call his lawyer.
I say this with what I know is the possibility of offending some, but I couldn’t stand the Elsie Dinsmore books. More than any other book, I could have pitched them with vehemence. The irksome quality they possess is that the mc is always gently overflowing with tears because she’s such a martyr and is being asked to do something she considers terribly wrong, like playing the piano on Sunday. It would appear she believes that life consists entirely of a long list of do’s and don’t’s. Those books are the best cure for optimism I’ve ever found, and if Elsie was a food, she’d be a quivering mass of weeping gelatin with no flavoring.)