the worst novels you have ever finished

yes, finished. or at least read 3/4 of. there are zillions, probably, that i gave up on after a few pages.

like drinking bad wine life is too short! once you get out of school, anyway.

withoutu question, Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go."

around the same time (and not a novel but...) Alexander Masters' "Stuart: A Life Backwards" i loathed, although not as much as the Ishiguro.

without!

Warner, These Demented Lands
Barnes, Nightwood
Barker, Five Miles From Outer Hope
Ellis, Less Than Zero
Carter, Wise Children
Lawrence, Women In Love
Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Amis, Yellow Dog
Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
Rushdie, The Moor’s Last Sigh
Amis, London Fields
Banville, The Book of Evidence
Banville, Ghosts
Banville, Athena
Smith, White Teeth

what about Tracer Hand's nominations? that's what the world needs now !!

American Psycho

A Confederacy of Dunces

Banville, The Book of Evidence
Banville, Ghosts
Banville, Athena

you could've given up after two. one and a half, even.

The Alchemist aaaaaahh hahahahaha

"closer" by dennis cooper has crowded out all my other contenders for the moment.

anthem

Oh, I know - THE LORD OF THE RINGS !!

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 24 June 2009 12:29 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

"anthem" is a novella but it certainly deserves whatever scorn it gets

Patrick Suskind - Perfume

what's the defn of novella?

i might use google

thomas covenant shite. 6 of them, more fool me.

HA

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel.

n e thing by rushdie

i am suspicious at the distinction between a novelette and a novella frankly

Also, can't believe I finished more than two Keroauc novels. lol teenagers.

"Shutter Island" by Dennis Lehane

i liked shutter island -- but definitely in camp, qualified, mass-market kind of way.

Da Vinci Code

There are some awesome books on this thread, makes me sad. Confederacy of Dunces, Gravity's Rainbow, and Perfume are all amazing. Just reread CoD for the third or fourth time a couple of weeks ago.

Should you find yourself stranded in Iowa for a day or so, with access to only one paperback with which to idle away the hours, I hope for your sake that it is not a copy of James Patterson's Kiss the Girls. I have nothing against genre fiction & can get into a good pulp thriller but yikes what a turgid shitheap (600+ pages if I recall correctly).

ugh, couldn't stand CoD, that awful character, whole thing devoid of charm or wit or even sense.

but it was 'clever'

The Iron Tower Trilogy by Dennis McKiernan. The most egregious Tolkien rip-off ever.

I couldn't finish Confederacy of Dunces but love Neon Bible.

Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

can we take these as nominations for a worst novel ever poll?

I hated V. so much it wasn't even funny; we're talking close to The Jungle levels of out-and-out loathing.

I used to have the bookworm's compunction of feeling compelled to finish every book I started. Not anymore.

I second A Confederacy of Dunces and will add Pride & Prejudice and Everything is Illuminated.

muriel spark, the ballad of peckham rye. superior (in attitude not quality) and pointless.

Middlemarch
Independent People

Middlemarch at least has the decency to be worthless from start to finish. Independent People started to pick up in the middle just as i was beginning to give up and then punished me for my optimism by being even more terrible and miserable in the second half.

The Lovely Bones, maybe?

If books you had to read for coursework etc count, then Hard Times is a terrible, terrible introduction to Dickens.

YOU WANNA FUCK WITH MY MAN GEORGE ELIOT YOU SPEAK TO ME, SPIRALLI

I got no idea what the answer is to this, btw. Something genre that I read as a kid, some fantasy shit prolly. Shaun Hutson is too unbelievably awesome to count as really bad I think.

Middlemarch is a tedious gossip column dragged out to preposterous lengths and Eliot is the Candace Bushnell of the 19th century.

thatssexist.gif

Some awesome wtf posts here.

Everything is Illuminated is the worst i've finished recently. starts ok but just jaw-droppingly bad by the end.

i have very few nominations because i just tend to stop reading. (i do not have this compulsion about needing to finish any book i start. no way. the book's obligations are to me, not the other way round.) anthem is bad, for sure. i guess of school-mandated reading, i pretty much hated 1984 -- thought it was way too long and bludgeoned its perfectly sensible and obvious points into the ground. but i like animal farm -- orwell should have stuck with talking pigs. (to be fair, i like orwell's essays too.)

I will add to the Confederacy of Dunces hatred.

Also really ended up hating The Bonfire of the Vanities.

If books you had to read for coursework etc count, then Hard Times is a terrible, terrible introduction to Dickens.

Aww, Hard Times is my favourite Chuck D. I think. Focussed and scathing.

a prayer for owen meany is not very good, but don't tell my wife i said that. it's the only irving i've read, and is likely to stay that way.

(i love confederacy of dunces -- or did in college. i don't know if it would hold up now, don't want to spoil my affection for it by rereading.)

oh, tom wolfe: a man in full is a very, very silly book. first 70-80 pages have some good stuff, and then it goes completely off the rails.

he pulled a malick basically. they BOTH should have collaborated on a 90 minute zombie movie and gotten all that swaying wheat mumblecore out of their systems.

Underworld was one of the last oh-I-should-read-this-it's-good-for-me books I slogged through.

I read Libra recently and thought it was one of the best books I've ever read. Couldn't get into any of the others I've tried tho.

Libra is awesome, Falling Man is very much not, that's all I've read, squares with the fell-off narrative

If you love Oliver Stone's JFK and Mailer's Harlot's Ghost (the only novel of his I wouldn't toss in the fire), then Libra complements them -- and it came first.

I've never understood why anyone would spend their time reading Don DeLillo when they could be reading Robert Stone or Jim Harrison instead. No, you don't get the ponderous meditations on Our American Century, but you do get something closer to accurate observations of human males.

Libra doesn't do that, though: it's high-toned pulp with ooga-booga subtexts.

it might seem a bit 'cerebral' or whatever as a point of praise but libra has so much amazing meta thematic stuff about 'the plot' or 'creating a plot' as regards jfk and the writer creating a plot. it's total genius but not in a sterile way that you observe, it's like a living and breathing part of the novel and a perfect way of interpreting the story of the assassination.

xpost yeah agreed. it's quite a page-turner imo.

Haruki Murakami has basically become a joke. His non-fiction book on writing is self-serving bullshit that his Wikipedia article summarizes more succinctly.

His former translator Alfred Birnbaum has said that even if he was approached about working with him again, his recent output is so bad that he wouldn’t do it

Haruki is one of my least-favourite authors, and my friends keep recommending "oh yes but you should read [x] before you write him off" and as such I've almost-finished three of his books. I was twenty pages away from the end of A Wild Sheep Chase before I just stuffed it into a recycling bin instead of enduring it any longer. I can't hate too hard though, he inspired one of my favourite David Mitchell novels (number9dream) so it's fine. I'm still being told to read Kafka On The Shore, maybe I will, maybe I won't, idk

Robert Stone can be WAY ponderous. I only made it through one of this books and it was not great. I never wanted to read Jim Harrison for whatever reason. Or Andre Dubus. Hemingway fanboys.

fgti, i have studiously avoided Murakami based solely on the number of people who aren’t writers who love him.

Thought a lot of Murakami is rubbish also. I did read that Men Without Women a few years ago as a friend really recommended it in a certain context and I was curious based on their specific description. It had a few genuinely brilliant and really moving bits but then on the next three pages the same character would talk about the size of their penis or whatever.

His non-fiction book about the gassing of the Tokyo underground is really good tho imo.

xpost there was defo a time where he seemed to be everyone's favourite writer, like idk on a dating website or whatever.

Don Delillo at his best could be really light on his feet and fun to read but also super-smart. he was not hemingway. his 70s stuff is almost all worth reading. though his rock novel was not a fave of mine because rock novels are never a fave of mine. if he wrote a novel about a zombie jfk starting a rock band i would read it though. it could be a late career triumph!

my original answer for this thread was the wind-up bird chronicle actually. wasnt worth finishing but i did it

re: later delillo, i can't help but enjoy the body artist and cosmopolis but i get why ppl would bail post-underworld generally

yeah the rock novel just felt entirely dumb and inauthentic, like when some writers try and fail to understand sport or whatever.

xpost

was the main dude in the rock novel called... bucky wonderlick? i think that was it. jesus christ. like a children's comic.

The only Murakami I've ever read was A Wild Sheep Chase, which taught me that if I see the word "sheep" too many times in a row on a single page I will start laughing uncontrollably.

I didn't exactly dislike Underworld but the only part that stuck with me is that opening section about the baseball game, which I found totally thrilling & miles better than the rest of the book. I think it was even republished as a standalone novella iirc?

i've heard a few people say the same about that opening bit.

i liked the baseball bit but then peaced out when it moves to some jerk's life in phoenix. the only delillo novel i've attempted.

See, that was the part that turned me off to the whole thing. You're gonna make me read a hundred pages (or whatever) about a fucking baseball game (dullest of all sports)? Who the fuck are you, Nicholson Baker?

so funny. i reread Underworld, The Names, tried to read Libra, and White Noise in the past year and the only one I loved was Underworld. Didn't finish Libra it just did not click with me, and seemed incredibly boring and slow paced. White Noise did not hold up at all, seriously not good. lovely sentences but his characters are cartoon cut outs

Robert Stone’s books are incredibly overwritten at times, particularly Dog Soldiers, which I remember being very hard to follow

Yes, Murakami’s Underground is incredibly powerful. I remember reading it in maybe 2 sittings

it's more than twenty years since i read it but it prob permanently changed how i think about violent events of that nature.

Jim Harrison’s novella-length work is excellent. I love Revenge and Tony Scott’s film adaptation (the original 1990 cut)

I’m a Murakami fan but I wouldn’t recommend his books to very many people.

There is definitely a cut-off with Murakami. I loved Wild Sheep Chase, Dance Dance Dance, and the Birnbaum translations of Hear the Wind Sing/Pinball 1973

Jim Harrison’s novella-length work is excellent.

A Good Day To Die is one of my favorite books by anyone.

"I didn't exactly dislike Underworld but the only part that stuck with me is that opening section about the baseball game, which I found totally thrilling & miles better than the rest of the book. I think it was even republished as a standalone novella iirc?"

this is the part that i mentioned above that kept me from reading the book! it was in harpers or the atlantic before underworld came out. it was so tedious to me. the jackie gleason stuff....ehhhh...yeah, not my thing. i never would have finished that book.

Aimless nailed a lot of what I didn't like/couldn't articulate about Stoner. The fact that it got mentioned at all is heartening, in fact this entire thread is heartening. Nice to have our outsider opinions validated. For instance Stoner is so widely beloved - worshipped - that it's hard not to feel a little what's wrong with me? if you don't agree. Hey even for a self-confident opinion-dispenser like me.

I just read a novel by Michel Houellebecq - Whatever, his first - and kinda liked it. So there might be something wrong with me! Reading wise.

xxp Thats so funny Scott bc in my memory it definitely felt like your definition of Delillo at his best. I wonder if reading it as the table-setting intro to a long novel colored how I received it versus reading it as a standalone story in a magazine. Curious to revisit.

i will admit that ye olde baseball americana nostalgia makes my eyes glaze over (don't tell george will or bob costas on me) AND i have very little time for actual historical people in novels (don't tell e.l. doctorow on me).

but it was a LONG time ago that i read it obviously. maybe i have changed. and hearing people big up Libra almost makes me want to revisit that book a little. i think i just saw that book everywhere for so long (libra) - every sale table/remainder bin/thrift store - that i just got sick of seeing it. like seeing bonfire of the vanities everywhere. or the corrections.

having said that, i am a big ring lardner fan! go figure.

Recent posts about pulp appeal *and* meta interest (reminding me of jacket flap promise and textual fulfillment ov Colson Whitehead's tasty pulp art Zone One) has me wanting to read Libra at last, thanks yall. Will also finally check JIm Harrison.
Main thing I remember about Robert Stone's Hall of Mirrors, other than credibly creepy New Orleans old-ass-vibe-of-its-own, which has always seemed too Southern for Southern-ass me (not the music, but the Louisiana sociopolitical aspects---well, see also The Earl of Louisiana and The Lost German Slavegirl and other nonfiction) is the well-funded right-wing Texas radio superstation with the curated news (Paul Newman's film version was named for the station, WUSA.)
Read that and Dog Soldiers in the 70s, when "low-rent" succeeded Greene-derived "seedy" for such protagonists, very relatable at the time, and good character-appropriate melodrama too.
A Flag For Sunrise got to be totally inadequate (and much more, even insultingly, sub-Greene) vehicle re Reagan era wars in Central America, so I stopped reading Stone.

I'm still being told to read Kafka On The Shore, maybe I will, maybe I won't, idk

― Patti The Pone (flamboyant goon tie included)[

(spoilers ahead, but that's not the warning I meant: this is almost some Ray[ level shit, but it does have a few good bits--well, Ray had those xp little old man tidbits, so maybe about the same?)

Only one here I have read is Kafka On The Shore: also the title of a song that became legendary, the sole single (backed w instrumental version) of a girl who then disappeared. Fun w the 00s Uncut/Mojo-type idolatry, then a 15-year-old boy flees something with a Dad-like penumbra, deep into the boondocks, finds a big sister figure, whom he fucks in a moonlight flight, not settling for her handjobs, finds the Kafka chick, who turns out to be his mom, so he fucks her too. By this point, I'm rooting for the Dad-like penumbra to squash him. I won't spoil the ending though. Is Murukami always like this?

― dow, Tuesday, October 19, 2021 10:47 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Cats, jazz, spaghetti, characters who art writers or editors, weird sex shit

Yep, that’s him

― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Wednesday, October 20, 2021 12:14 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Are, not art

― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Robert Stone’s books are incredibly overwritten at times, particularly Dog Soldiers, which I remember being very hard to follow

Dog Soldiers is one of the rare times where I far preferred the watered-down Hollywood version *because* it was watered down. Too much of the novel felt like it was trying and failing to shock (the protagonist’s wife and daughter have disappeared and are in mortal danger but he’s still putting the moves on the babysitter! the two henchmen are actually jailhouse homosexuals and have sex while the protagonist is handcuffed to them!). And yes, the action sequences were hard to follow*, while the film's were great, and climax with one of the best shoot-outs of the decade that also doubles as a psychedelic light show.

*But then, I struggle to follow action scenes in books. I was disappointed by Red Harvest because most of the time I could never spatially figure out where each character was located in any given action scene and who was doing what to whom.

"Flowers In The Attic"

haha! classic!

that book freaked me out. but the covers freaked me out even more.

VC ANDREWS - Classic, Dud, Or Criminally Insane?

goon1's description of Dog Soldiers, incl. a lot of detail I don't remember, reminding me of koogs' link on Novelists No One Reads Anymore:

East Lynne is an 1861 English sensation novel by Ellen Wood, writing as Mrs. Henry Wood. A Victorian-era bestseller, it is remembered chiefly for its elaborate and implausible plot centering on infidelity and double identities

The sensation novel, also sensation fiction, was a literary genre of fiction that achieved peak popularity in Great Britain in between the early 1860s and mid to late 1890s,[1] centering taboo material shocking to its readers as a means of musing on contemporary social anxieties.

Its literary forebears included the melodramatic novels and the Newgate novels, which focused on tales woven around criminal biographies; it also drew on the Gothic, romance, as well as mass market genres...the sensation novelists commonly wrote stories that were allegorical and abstract; the abstract nature of the stories gave the authors room to explore scenarios that wrestled with the social anxieties[3] of the Victorian era. The loss of identity is seen in many sensation fiction stories because this was a common social anxiety; in Britain, there was an increased use in record keeping[4] and therefore people questioned the meaning and permanence of identity. The social anxiety regarding identity is reflected in novels such as The Woman in White and Lady Audley's Secret.[5]...Sensation novels were the precursor of pulp fiction, which were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 until around 1955.[8][9]

I just read a novel by Michel Houellebecq - Whatever, his first - and kinda liked it. So there might be something wrong with me! Reading wise.

Whatever is good! So is the Lovecraft book. Really do not read any further, though, he is a gifted author and writes beautifully but his books are toxic brainrot bullshit

I read The Elementary Particles (Atomised in the UK) and Platform but haven't even glanced at either one in over 20 years and have never been even slightly tempted to read more of his work.

Haha, DeLillo's The Body Artist came to mind when I opened this thread, then ctrl+f-ed his name...

Paul Auster's another one whose peak moments gripped me (love The Invention of Solitude), but then there was The Book of Illusions...

Robert Stone's CHILDREN OF LIGHT is the one of his I love, about a completely disastrous (fictional) attempt to make a movie of Kate Chopin's THE AWAKENING. Bleakly deadpan and funny.

Of Murakami I’ve only read Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and while they were both somewhat cute and affected, I really loved reading them

I completely forgot that I read A Flag For Sunrise! I remember nothing about it other than the nun. I did not like it. But it was not the worst thing that I have ever read.

I just finished listening to the audiobook of Twain’s Tom Sawyer (narrated by Nick Offerman! which made it better), and am now listening to Huckleberry Finn, considered to be one of the great books of all time. The audiobook is very effective in putting me to sleep, which I need right now

I read them both as a child and remember thinking they were kind of weird at the time. I know I should view them in knowledge of the era, but I still think they are just both very simplistic and retrograde, even for the time in which they were written. I’m looking forward to reading Percival Everett’s James, an update