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a novelization of one of my favorite video games
I suffered through it because I love the franchise so much and it wasn't that long but holy shit, I was the writing quality of a grade schooler but with added unnecessary and gross romance between two children.
Worst book I've quit is Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. What a horrible book!
Worst I've finished is Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, immediately followed by Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I'll throw in a special mention for The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby. All terrible books that I finished only because they were required reading in school.
Huh. I loved Seveneves.
Same. Loved the world building over millenia. I was hoping to see another book each on the miner people, the Navy men, and the spacefarers who went out into the wilds after water.
My older sister hated it, she wants stories about characters and not the world-building. She compares the pages on moving through 3D space with small jet thrusts to the pages of whale info in Moby Dick.
It's a book I recommend with caveats. Not everyone is going to like it. Lesson learned, as much as I liked Snow Crash and Anathem too, I won't recommend them to her. And moving beyond Stephenson, I'm confident she would immolate Canticle for Leibowitz halfway through.
Canonical answer is The Homecoming Saga by Orson Scott Card, since it turns out that if the good guys have a mind controlling god computer that's always right on their side it gets really hard to have meaningful conflict.
You're saying that the book couldve been an essay?
I don't think it would've made a very good essay either
I tend to quit books if I don't find them very good. One I did finish that I fucking hated was The Girl on the Train. All of the characters were fucking insufferable.
The bible. Inconsistent, unethical, and immoral.
Stephen King's It
Great story, but the writing was exceedingly dull, apart from the first chapter. I even tried getting through it via audiobook and still only made it halfway through. It's just a chore.
I don't get Stephen King. I've never read a thing by him that I thought warranted the accolades.
I like some of the films based on his books, but those are all punched up quite a bit.
I enjoyed it...until the insanely problematic ending.
A collection of short stories by Harlan Ellison.
It was an absolutely insufferable read. Specifically, his foreword between each story.
I don't know if this counts, but when I was about 13I was very excited to find an enormous book in my favorite genre at the time, Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.
It was the first book I ever put down in disgust without finishing. In the almost half-century since then, there are under a dozen that I haven't finished. Shows you just how bad it is.
I read all of Mission Earth. All 12(?) volumes. I couldn't possibly say why - I hated it.
The worst book I've ever read has to be 1984. The book is excellent, but did not do good things for me so it goes down as the worst
Did you ever contrast it with Brave New World? In many ways the latter is more disturbing since the masses are kept busy with frivolity to question their world.
Oh, interesting. I always see Huxley's later Island as the counter to his Brave New World. Interesting to place all three side by side.
Probably not the worst I ever read, but whenever a question such as this comes up my mind immediately goes to one of the Tarot books by Piers Anthony. I don't remember which one, it was just in a pile of books people left in a dorm one time and I had nothing to read. I finished it, but I can't tell you anything about it other than the vague recollection that I hated it.
Game of thrones, for me. Made for a good basis for a show. Fucking terribly dull to read.
Yeah I finished the first book and put it down and said fuck this shit.
I enjoyed the suspense of wanting to see what would happen but then I realized that the author is a sadist who only wants the readers to suffer and that was enough to end the entire series for me. I got roped into watching the first episode of the first season and I was like oh it's the entire first book in one hour fuck this shit and I've not watched anymore of it.
Mine is "the catcher in the rye".
The main character is insufferable and not enough bad things happened to him to make it worth reading the book.
I gave up on Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close after one chapter. No wonder neurotypicals think autistics are just insufferable nobs.
Worst book I've finished?
Probably Fellowship of the Ring.
Return of the King was great, though.
There are worse books I started and put down.
What was wrong with fellowship for you? I know its a slow book but haven't heard someone actively hate it
Left Behind. I'm probably a huge idiot for not realizing for the entire thing without knowing before hand what the context was, but I read it with the idea that it was some kind of apocalyptic sci-fi, and then only in the very last few pages of the book did it finally hit me in the face that it was religious doomsday bullshit. I do have to compliment it for the storytelling and world setting, but holy shit was I disappointed with the end direction π€¦
You should see the movie. It stars nic cage and he did it as a favor to a friend. It's fucking awful. funny thing though, my story is identical to yours. Had no idea until it was too late lol.
Profiles in Courage - John F. Kennedy
Should have stuck to being a presidentβ¦ maybe itβd land differently now, but in like 9th grade, it was a total slog.
Silas Marner has to be the most boring book I've ever attempted to read.
Didn't help that it was an assignment for school, but it also didn't help that it's literally one of the most boringly written books ever.