Books you think are shite

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Hannibal, by Thomas Harris, is the worst book I've ever read.

If we're going for overrated - Catcher in the Rye.

 

[goldenecitrone]

Hannibal, by Thomas Harris, is the worst book I've ever read.

I can imagine, having seen the film, a vile piece of filth wrongly described as cinema.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I can imagine, having seen the film, a vile piece of filth wrongly described as cinema.

Never really wanted to see the film. One of the reasons the book is so shit though is how obviously it's just been knocked out as something to base a film on.

 

[Disaster]

Anything by Richard Laymon or Dean Koontz.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Less than Zero - utter shite. A bunch of utterly unsympathetic LA rich kids being twats.

 

[goldenecitrone]

Anything by Richard Laymon or Dean Koontz.

I'd forgotten about Dean Koontz. Read a couple of his books when I was a teenager. Garbage. James Herbert was no great shakes either.

 

[Dillinger4]

One Thousand Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Intensely boring.

 

[Dillinger4]

Less than Zero - utter shite. A bunch of utterly unsympathetic LA rich kids being twats.

I second that. I feel that way about pretty much everything Brett Easton Ellis has written.

Oh also - Neuromancer - I can see why its good but it just bored me.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Gormenghast

 

[Orang Utan]

Jesus, you lot need to get some taste. Austen, Heller, Marquez, Kerouac, Kennedy Toole, DuMaurier and Eliot all wrote masterpieces

 

[mk12]

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World

 

[quimcunx]

'On the road' by Kerouac anyone? What a bag of shit that is, .

Absolutely. read all but the last 10 pages. I'll never get that time back.

 

[chooch]

If we're going for overrated - Catcher in the Rye.

It is, however, marginally less annoying than his other shite.

 

[scifisam]

Hannibal, by Thomas Harris, is the worst book I've ever read.

If we're going for overrated - Catcher in the Rye.

I also hated Hannibal - and disliked CitR - whiney teenage woe-is-me bullshit. I had to read both for uni courses.

I'm with you on that. He comes across well in interviews; I like him and his ideas. But his book was dreadful. Fantasy shit with silly words. And guardian angels that turned from butterflies into badgers then into porcupines before a sentence was over. Infuriating. And so much like the Narnia books he claims to despise.

Just FTR, they weren't guardian angels, they were souls.

 

[Wolveryeti]

Ulysses by James Joyce. So boring I nearly flatlined.

Those massive tomes by Dostoyevsky (War and Peace, et al.) Having too many characters is just really confusing.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves - Being anal about grammar is teh lame

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Jesus, you lot need to get some taste. Austen, Heller, Marquez, Kerouac, Kennedy Toole, DuMaurier and Eliot all wrote masterpieces

For sure. That doesn't mean everyone *has* to like any particular one does it?

It's precisely the "You MUST like it" attitude to Catch 22 that put me off it.

 

[May Kasahara]

Hannibal, by Thomas Harris, is the worst book I've ever read.

Urgh, Hannibal is so bad. And even worse because Red Dragon is so good; Thomas Harris should be going straight to hell for being such a sell-out.

 

[Cloo]

I sort of know what I'm not going to like, so I avoid reading it. One of the worst I've read was Michael Crichton's 'Timeline', which someone left a copy of at my house. It was so ridiculously transparent... you know that a bunch of people are going to travel back in time and, oh, here's a guy who knows about Medeival European languages, and here's an expert archeologist, and here's a woman who's a superb rock climber (it does come into it) and here's an expert in historical combat and swordfighting, how convenient. And the descriptions of these beautiful, muscly people might as well be followed by 'and he will be played in the film by...'

Also read a few books that come free as beach reads with magazines and I'm amazed how they get published - facile 'coincidences' (oh, she was hiding behin a curtain when she heard their cunning plan), apparently important characters that just drop out of the story suddenly and are never heard of again, etc - really simple stuff you'd think would mark a story out as wildly simplistic, but there you go.

ETA: Catch 22 - didn't hate it, but never got the appeal myself.

 

[jæd]

I sort of know what I'm not going to like, so I avoid reading it. One of the worst I've read was Michael Crichton's 'Timeline', which someone left a copy of at my house. It was so ridiculously transparent...

Thats every Michael Crichton book. Why do you think so many have been turned into movies. Someone gave me "Next" at Xmas.

 

[Pavlik]

Celestine Prophecy.
never have i heard so many people big up a book that i found so incredibly dull

 

[Chairman Meow]

Celestine Prophecy.
never have i heard so many people big up a book that i found so incredibly dull

Oh yes, that one is utter shite.

 

[Blagsta]

Jonathan Livingstone Seagull

 

[Belushi]

Jesus, you lot need to get some taste. Austen, Heller, Marquez, Kerouac, Kennedy Toole, DuMaurier and Eliot all wrote masterpieces

Heh, and I haven't even mentioned how much I dislike Dickens and his stupidly named characters yet

 

[rutabowa]

Ulysses by James Joyce. So boring I nearly flatlined.

so you read it all? even though you were finding it boring all the way through?

 

[ringo]

Jonathan Livingstone Seagull

Good call, that is mystic shitebox.

 

[Pavlik]

Jonathan Livingstone Seagull

I liked that.
But I was about 18 when I read it....

 

[zoltan]

I agree with most of the shite already listed on here.

But J.L. Seagull makes me seethe and shout abuse at lazy hippies - which is probably the opposite of its intention

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Ulysses by James Joyce. So boring I nearly flatlined.

Those massive tomes by Dostoyevsky (War and Peace, et al.) Having too many characters is just really confusing.

Tolstoy wrote War and Peace.

Have you spent most of your adult life reading the longest books you can find just to see how crap they are?

 

[Pavlik]

Ulysses by James Joyce. So boring I nearly flatlined.

made me chuckle out loud that did

 

[El Jefe]

Those massive tomes by Dostoyevsky (War and Peace, et al.) Having too many characters is just really confusing.

This tells us more about your limitations than it does about Dostoevsky (or Tolstoy, who wrote War & Peace).