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The English Patient. Hated hated hated hated hated it. It was one meaningless scene after another.
Oh yeah, I hated the movie, too.
(As a side note, he's Sri Lankan, but living in Canada, and I know his relatives. They ones I've met are all a bunch of self-centred vain egotists.)
Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Corwin, IMO the House trilogy was MUCH MUCH better than the Jihad trilogy. It's teh 30-50 years immediately before Dune, explains why each of the major houses hate each other so vehemently in the current generations, etc.
Posts: 4515 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Tommyknockers by Stephen King Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
I have to second those two and add that any long long LONG work by SK other than The Stand has been a terrible letdown. It is so sad considering most of his short fiction is wonderful.
I like other works by Dickens too but that one was forced upon me and I just never got into it.
I liked Sphere by Michael Crichton until the very end (pure drivel) so it goes on my bad list.
My number one has to be Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck. And the sad thing is that The Pearl is one of my favorites. Maybe if Grapes had been the SIZE of The Pearl it would have been better.
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Oh, bothThe Grapes of Wrath and The Pearl are awful. Although The Grapes of Wrath was much, much harder to get through.
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I'd list Grapes of Wrath, if I had actually finished it. I was forced to read it in school.
Still made an "A" on the paper. I made a list of themes we discussed in class, flipped through the book at random and made a case for something I found fit with one theme or another. I was so good at that BS, I almost went into Lit Crit. Decided I couldn't stand to do something so pointless and empty, even if my proffs (whom I really respected) thought I was 'brilliant'. I felt dishonest and dirty when I was praised for that crap. Couldn't do it.
On the other hand, I usually LIKE many books that people hate, or that people claim the only people who like them like them because they think they should.
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For really, really classic literature that was bad: I hated The Illiad. Incredibly repetitious writing style. Lengthy descriptions of battles between minor characters with the full geneaologies of each one given. I'm pretty sure there were parts where I dozed off multiple times per page.
At first I just thought that was how stories were written back then. But then I had to read The Odyssey and I liked it.
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"""""""""KarlEd, King just falls apart at the end sometimes.""""""""
That's because King--in his fantasy books--improvises his plots. In fact, the longer his work, the more it probably lacks the tight structure of his earlier works (carrie, the shining, Salem's Lot, etc). I first noticed this when I finished "The Stand." Simply put, the journey, the characters, and the overall situation are very intriguing but it felt at like at some point King decided, okay, now I'll have something big happen and end the book.
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quote:Originally posted by Sister Annie: I'll see you and raise you. I read the first SIX BOOKS of the stupid series, all because this boy I loved thought they were the best thing ever created and I needed an excuse to keep having to borrow his books and talk to him about them.
I think I was going to the library to get the fourth when it struck me that I could not read the rest of the series and be perfectly happy. It was like a great weight lifted off my shoulders.
I'll see that and raise you again! I read the first 3 and a half Work and the Glory books for precisely the reasons Annie mentioned above and I'll never have that time back again! It's gone!!
And, like Jon Boy said, it was a great relief when I finally gave up. (And it was an even greater relief when I gave up on that boy!)
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I'm so sorry that a couple of you didn't like Great Expectations. I thought it was delightfully hilarious...but now that I think of it, it's my least favorite Dickens book.
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Oh, thanks for mentioning Michael Crichton! Andromeda Strain was one of my top five worst books, and The Lost World was pretty darn bad, too. I felt like I was reading Jurassic Park all over again, but with slightly different characters and situations.
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No, wait - that was the best one I ever finished. I guess the worst would be Quirky Tales by Paul Jennings - too much superstition. It's OK, but a bit bland - and the jokes are a bit too childish for a 10 y.o.; it is a children's book, though, and I haven't read bad books recently.
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I'm wondering--why do we bother finishing bad books? If I progress into a book long enough and I'm not hooked and generally unmoved, I put it down.
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quote:I'll see that and raise you again! I read the first 3 and a half Work and the Glory books for precisely the reasons Annie mentioned above and I'll never have that time back again! It's gone!!
Ok, ok, you win.
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I would have to say Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Leguin.
And I actually sort of liked battlefield earth. It was one of the few books that took me longer than three days to finish.
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Olivet, I *heart* you. I'm the exact same way in English classes: I turn out papers that mean almost nothing to me, and my professors think they're awesome. It feels so... intellectually dishonest.
And it makes trouble between my English Lit. boyfriend and me.
But at least I know now there are other people who feel the same way. Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Remember, though, that I've read some appalling books in Hebrew... But I don't count them here.
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Wizard of Earthsea, I can't stand that book. Another book that drove me nuts was the giver. Of course my hatred for that book is probably due to the fact that I was required to read it, and that it was just a less intense version of Brave New World, which I had already read.
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We generally finish bad books because we are being forced to read them. By classes, lack of other reading material, and such.
Posts: 250 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Olivet: I'd list Grapes of Wrath, if I had actually finished it. I was forced to read it in school.
I never finished The Grapes of Wrath either. I was supposed to read it for a lit class in high school, but I just gave up and threw it across the room when it took something like three pages to describe a turtle crossing the road. Ridiculous. I say, if you've got to read Steinbeck, read "Travels with Charley" or "Story of a Novel". His nonfiction is much better than his fiction.
But, without a doubt the worst book I ever actually finished was Catcher in the Rye. And what makes it worse is that I've had to read it three different times for different classes. The first time was in 8th grade. I should have learned then. The second time was in a community college English class - I dropped that class rather than read the wretched thing again. The third time was for an upper division class in popular fiction, and I figured I'd go ahead and read it again, that maybe I had just been stupid in 8th grade. Nah. I was absolutely right. It was a horrible book.
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I thought it was delightfully hilarious...but now that I think of it, it's my least favorite Dickens book.
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Ok, ok, you win.
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