The Corrections. Why did this stupid book become popular?
Moby Dick
Had to read it for 10th grade lit. Like bamboo shoots under my fingernails.
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham (sp?) 11th grade? Ugh, hideous.
I’d say 80% of the stuff published is barely readable. That said, the worst so-called “good” book I’ve ever read was Snow Falling on Cedars. Drivel. Pure drivel. Took me months to slog through it.
“Print is Dead”…egon
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The DaVinci Code was right up there, as well as his other book Angels and Demons.
Damn, Devil Dog, I really liked both of those books.
Killer Angels was the most boring book I have ever tried to read. Why that thing was on the Commandant’s Reading list is beyond me.
Hated a Hemingway book I read for my book club… A Farewell to Arms? About a bunch of rich Americans drunks in Europe post WWII. I found it very annoying and boring.
Let me also add to my earlier list…
… anything written by Nicholas Sparks! Horrible!
I second Catcher in the Rye, just awful.
Also, Libra, by Don DeLillo, I don’t know how he keeps putting books in the NYT bestseller lists.
O here here how hoth sprowled met the duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of soft advertisement!
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Our lady of the Forest… Couldnt get through the first few chapters.
Peace
You must have not been paying attention during the relegion wars here on Slowtwitch. I love the Bible. I think it’s fantastic. The passion play breaks my heart every time because I think it shows how we really are as humans. I just don’t think it has an ounce of fact in it. People misread this and chart their whole lives to it and then try everything they can to get me to do it. Revelations proves that.
Running with Scissors.
I am so not into this whole genre of exploiting one’s fucked up childhood (and in many cases, embellishing it) to sell books. Add to the list “The Glass Castle.” People like David Sedaris - who are genuinely funny and did not set out to make themselves famous through their writing - own the genre of the silly memoir and it’s best left to the professionals.
Atlas Shrugged. Why say something in 10 words when you can say it in 1050 words? Why say it once when you can say it 100 times?
I just gave up on reading “French Revolutions”. An English gent decides to bike the route for the Tour De France of that year (he has very little cycling experience). The premise was promising, and perhaps it gets better, but I had to put it down after a few chapters… it just wasn’t getting me anywhere.
wow.
interesting. i guess it just shows how different people;s tastes are. i found ‘french revolutions’ incredibly funny, and the author’s observations on the patent idiocy of some typical french behaviors downright hilarious.
to each his own, i guess.
Moby Dick
I’d agree except I can’t even get past “They call me Ishmael”
I nominate “the Incredible Boredom of Reading” I mean “The Incredible Lightness of Being”
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sorry dude… while the historical basis of the book(s) was facinating, the character development and story line sucked.
This opinion and signing on the dotted line will get you all the MRE tuna cassarole you want. 
Moby Dick
I’d agree except I can’t even get past “They call me Ishmael”
Apparently, you didn’t even get to that part. (There’s no “They.”)
I don’t think anyone’s high school experience with a book should count. There are books that I thought were useless when read in high school but enjoyed immensely when I later gave them a second chance. Billy Budd and Moby Dick are two of them. Catcher in the Rye was one I loved in high school but was disappointed when I reread it a couple of years ago. Still, it wouldn’t come close to the worst book ever.
I’d nominate Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code.
Finnegan’s Wake.
Ha! You want tough sledding, try Jude the Obscure.
The one that really gets me is 100 Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. That book made me actively angry.
I don’t know about 100 Years of Solitude, but Cien Anos de Soledad is a masterpiece. (There’s supposed to be a tilda over the n, as otherwise I suspect it’s pornography.)
I bought Racing the Sunset becaise ot was written by a triathlon legend.
I made it to the end but it was a very tough slog, it just never grabbed me.
I remember reading Tale of Two Cities when I was 17. I think I got one page in, threw it done, and bought the Cliff notes.