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.

There are so many books that would be boring in TV form. Television is a very boredom-friendly medium.

I have never finished a Miéville book. Dreadful trash.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table),

I read you too fast and thought you'd written "Melville" and you were about to fp'ed.

Yellow Dog by Martin Amis gets a few mentions upthread & it would be my choice. Ponderous untrue observations, no characters, no fun and mechanically incompetent.

"There are so many books that would be boring in TV form. Television is a very boredom-friendly medium."

but television is also plot and character-friendly and that show was a snooze. it wasn't like it was a difficult show to film or comprehend. it should have at least looked good. television also visual-friendly. it stiffed on all counts. but maybe young boring people loved it. they need t.v. too!

thanks to Nabozo for reminding me that I also finished and hated Oryx and Crake (can't stand Atwood, she can fuck off with her "I'm not a science fiction writer" nonsense). I also hated the 25 pages I read of Perdido Street Station, never gave Mieville another chance.

However, I also hated the Sorokin novel I read (Ice) and found its crypto-fascist white supremacist nihilism extremely nauseating. If that was satire it was bad satire.

Good call on Sally Rooney. Fuck, Normal People is insufferable

The adaptation of Normal People was a lot more ponderous than the book - more melodrama, less humour. IMO Rooney's books are funny. They are mostly about misunderstandings.

she co-wrote half the episodes. and produced it. maybe she wasn't feeling funny anymore.

However, I also hated the Sorokin novel I read (Ice) and found its crypto-fascist white supremacist nihilism extremely nauseating. If that was satire it was bad satire.

― famous instagram dog (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, November 5, 2024 4:47 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

True, I actually left that book in a hotel 10'000 km away. But I liked Telluria, Sorokin rhymes with Volodine and it made me appear well-read.

Television v much not inner life friendly and as such a lot of books relying on that come out dull.

Also not particularly visual friendly because everything looks like shif now, but that's neither here nor there.

i think i watched the first three episodes - which she wrote - and then i gave up. but whatevah, i have plenty of books to read and t.v. to watch. maybe i would like the books. who knows? i have looked in them and they never grab me.

I've not read Rooney myself, but my wife was suckered by the hype into buying a couple of her novels. She made it to the end of the first one with gritted teeth, and gave up on on the second after the opening chapters made it clear that it would be more of the same. For her, the problem was that she found most of the characters to be really dislikeable, while having the impression that Rooney didn't intend that to be the case.

I have liked some Murakami but 1Q84 was just brutal to finish, the third part was one of the dullest things I’ve ever read.

I just enjoyed a show on Netflix based on a best-seller. Murder Mindfully. Lots of internal monologues. About a mob lawyer who uses his mindfulness training to navigate his world of mobsters and family. It had a nice balance of action and inner life. When stressed, the main character drifts off in his head to his mindfulness teacher telling him how to get through a certain situation and I actually learned some handy tips from it! Kinda like an old episode of Kung Fu. It looked good too.

I read the two famous Rooney novels in 2019 and...they were fine? Vaporous things. Harmless. Maybe her persona's bigger in the UK. The miniseries sucked.

Alfred, I love Melville fwiw

I liked The City & The City but Perdido Street Station got two chapters and deleted. Still might read his Russian Revolution book at some point.

The one Sally Rooney I've read was pretty boring, but then halfway through they began coupling up, and after that every chapter would end with several pages very detailed descriptions of apparently very enjoyable sex. That wasn't boring at all. Then in the final part they all met up and talked and it was really boring again.

Worst book I've read is probably Mao II or Falling Man or Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close or A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. Clever American fiction that wasn't clever at all.

Dead Air by Iain Banks, airport buy, dutifully scoured during a 10-hour delayed layover in Amsterdam.

A loose framework for Banks' post 9-11 political thoughts/rants telegraphed by a mithering radio dj, completely unlikable.

I know lots of people love Banks. I've tried a couple times (Consider Phlebas and Excession) and I dunno they weren't the worst thing I've ever read and some parts were good but that kind of super-convoluted space opera stuff is just not for me

Banks’ non-sci fi works are great

Banks’ sci fi works are great

The only Sally Rooney I've read was The New Yorker excerpt from her latest. I was intrigued by the male character who's a chess prodigy, making a living by playing provincial chess tournaments. Not enough to read the rest off the novel, but I liked that glimpse into a specialized world. This review of Rooney in Bookforum generated a lot of chatter on X, the critic (whose novels I haven't read either) seems to be an attention seeker. He reviewed Rachel Kushner's latest and basically called her an idiot. Anyway he gushes all over Rooney, assigns her a nickname, and then slams her for not having an MFA and offers some nit-picking advice about verb tenses that is exactly what I imagine happens in creative writing classes. I guess Creation Lake would be his worst novel I finished reading. Though he got paid for it!

http://www.bookforum.com/print/3102/a-roon-with-a-view-61275

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n17/brandon-taylor/use-your-human-mind

MFA-core literature is a genuine thing

Not sure really, my experience of an MFA was not the same as what people seem to think it is, but then neither are most other people's experiences of their MFAs. The discussions of MFAs which share similarities seem to me mostly to come from people who haven't done them?

The dominant stuff in my MA and MFA was creative non-fiction.

"he learns the blade by sitting at home watching a bunch of samurai movies, from which he also learns about japanese culture but no actual japanese language"

That's Bob Lee "The Nailer" Swagger to his friends. It would have been an interesting twist if he was then pitted against Japanese gangsters who had learned to shoot guns from watching John Wick, e.g. if they were both equally bad. But perhaps that would have been too self-aware.

The worst novel I ever finished was The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell, which was published in 1996, when Harry Harrison was only 71 but quite clearly wasn't interested in the series any more. I'm surprised that he wrote two more Rat novels. I'm also surprised that the series was never turned into a film. I have fond memories of the 2000AD adaptations, which were drawn by Carlos Ezquerra. Apparently he modelled Jim on James Coburn, and I can see that.

Carlos Ezquerra really understood chins. He knew how to draw a fantastic chin. Sometimes I doubt the existence of God, but then I remember that in all of this vast universe it so happened that Carlos Ezquerra was asked to come up with a comics character who was 100% chin - Judge Dredd - and that can't be a coincidence. It's mathematically impossible.

Something something James Kelman.

Shooter was interesting because Stephen Hunter seemed like a post-Watergate liberal writing conservative action fantasy.

The Well of Loneliness. I blame McCarthy.

"MFA-core literature is a genuine thing"

I was just reading an interview with Daniel Woodrell at the back of one of his books that I am reading and this cracked me up:

"The first time I ever had a story up at the Iowa workshop this girl says, "Don't you think it's sorta cheap to have an opening sentence that makes the reader want to keep reading?" That was my first class at Iowa and I'm thinking, Oh, shit, what have I wandered into here?"

That's hilarious, because my model for opening sentences is the Parker novels.

"When the bandages came off, Parker looked in the mirror at a stranger."

"Running toward the light, Parker fired twice over his left shoulder, not caring whether he hit anything or not."

"Hearing the click behind him, Parker threw his glass straight back over his right shoulder, and dove off his chair to the left."

"When the car stopped rolling, Parker kicked out the rest of the windshield and crawled through onto the wrinkled hood, Glock first."

"The first time I ever had a story up at the Iowa workshop this girl says, "Don't you think it's sorta cheap to have an opening sentence that makes the reader want to keep reading?" That was my first class at Iowa and I'm thinking, Oh, shit, what have I wandered into here?"

I once wrote a story that was set at Xmas and a classmate said 'I felt like... sad or sentimental and then I wondered, is it okay to do that, like to set a story at Christmas, because that will automatically make it land a bit harder if it's sad'

My lecturer said 'yes'.

Bret Easton Ellis’ The Informers is pretty dire. A short story collection, and not a novel, though

Yeah, The Informers is terrible, terrible shit.

Re Parker opening lines:

"When the telephone rang, Parker was out in the garage killing a man."

The very last story, about the two guys at the zoo, and one casually mentions that he’s an alien, made my jaw drop in disbelief that anyone thought this was worth publishing.

At least Ellis makes fun of the book’s shittiness in Lunar Park

More horrid books, please

I don’t like Rick Moody

Donna Tartt is very silly, and THE GOLDFINCH is a whole pile of crap.

I love the early chapters of The Goldfinch. Her second novel is terrible.

Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man is one of the all-time sophomore slump books

Yeah, a truly awful book; real what-was-she-thinking? territory.

The Time Traveler's Wife - I had to read it for work because the movie had a sponsor deal on the website I was managing. It's not only bad, but it gets worse as it goes along, and lasts literally forever - it's been fifteen years but I feel like I'm still reading it today

Re Miéville, the Russian Revolution book isn’t any good either. it’s so dry that it practically bursts out in flame if a breeze hits it.

Had a search for Sally Rooney to see if she was worth checking out and this was the thread that came up, so think I've got my answer, thanks.

First three are enjoyable; haven’t read the fourth.

best to pick them up now before they are banned

Not Rooney, but I finished Captain Corelli's Mandolin at the urging of an old friend, I don't know how I made it through

I don’t tend to finish books i can’t stand so i have very limited options, and school was long enough ago that i don’t fully trust my teenage judgments on things i had tk read. So my answer might be that last David Mitchell novel, i don’t think massive critical acclaim was good for him at all.

My answer is probably Erica Spindler - Bone Cold - I read it because the 6ft English bisexual skinhead Kiss superfan who worked at The Station Guesthouse in Budapest gave it to me and said it was good, though later he admitted he didn't like it either. Just a terrible predictable thriller set in New Orleans with the most clumsily telegraphed twist I've ever read. On investigation today I find that it has 4.12/5 on Goodreads, and Spindler has written 98 other novels.

Writing for The Guardian, author Sarah Perry praised Mitchell's "consciously easeful and frictionless" prose.[7]

^ this gave me a good chuckle

xp

Spindler has written 98 other novels

to quote Capote (on Kerouac): 'That's not writing, that's typewriting.'

Definitely Taipei by Tao Lin. It reads like something made to irritate and bore people for the sole purpose of feeling contempt for people who are irritated and bored by it. But at least it’s short.

Lowest quality-to-page ratio is City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg, which is about 7 times too long for something so hackneyed, but it was recommended by someone I trust.

Difficult question, as I also tend to not finish novels I dislike.