[nasalberry]

The all-time winner for Most Hated was The Amityville Horror. I'm sure a record was set for a book using the most exclamation points!

Recent Disappointment category (for me) was The Panther. I SO loved Night Fall, and the other John Corey books, I was really looking forward to the release of this one.

[WildBlue]

Jane Austen is a drag. Henry James is worse.

I picked up an awful bit of fluff at the library last year. It was a "mystery" written by a wanna-be-D-lister from So Cal and set in the area where I grew up. OMG. Imagine a small midwestern town (home of GOP, God, and Wal-mart) portrayed like trendy, yuppy-town So Cal--complete with cute little boutique shops whose owners don't actually work and gorgeous, rugged 'ranchers' with gobs of money and troubled pasts. She didn't get anything right, even by accident, so it would have been hysterically funny mystery/soft porn if it wasn't also so poorly written.

[Marshfield]

Hands down, Billy Budd by Melville. Atrocious.

[caradino]

Moby Dick and Twilight top my list. Had to force myself through both of them. Also another not-a-fan of Jane Austen! I find her plots petty and the books generally boring. Ugh.

[Calvincrowe]

The Bridge of San Luis Rey--HS Literature class hell. In second place for me was Old Man and the Sea. Ugh.

Breaking Dawn (Twilight #4) was the worst piece of writing I've encountered since the last set of essays my 8th graders produced...

[Adamantane]

Anything by Robert Ludlum, the most overrated and poorly-edited best selling author I've ever encountered.

War and Peace. Took a Russian novel reading course in college as part of my English major and devoured all the other Russian novelists with joy -- well, sometimes there's little joy in Russian novels :-) -- but W&P I could never get past p. 40 with. Far too many characters for any novelist successfully to introduce and manage, especially in the first forty pages!

[sk_pacer]

Any of the assorted pap that had to be read aloud in English Lit and that covered a whole realm of stuff from Austin to Shakespeare; at the end, I preferred Shakespeare over the rest but only by a slim margin. There are two specific books I never could force myself past the first couple of pages because of the soporific writing: To Kill a Mockingbird and Gone with the Wind. For the record, I couldn't get past the first few minutes of either movie either....I'm probably the only living person in North America that hasn't seen and gushed over Gone With the Wind.

[Dr. Doolittle]

I was an English major, and remember having to trudge through the interminable and mind-numbing Middlemarch. I think I even had to write a PAPER on it! This was back when we wrote papers on typewriters, and used White Out to correct mistakes. (I remember thinking "the punishment never stops, the punishment never stops...")

The horrid memory remains, one of the few left from my earlier years! I despise that book to this very day. I HATE YOU, George Elliot! Even if you *were* a woman...

As for REALLY bad lit?

ANY Harlequin Romance Novel. Who enjoys this drivel, dreck, crap, garbage?? I shudder to think of what must (or must not be!) in the head of the readers of such stuff.

[Calvincrowe]

Ah...geez Dr. Doolittle...I've read some Harlequin romances and I'm a pretty decent person, with lots of good, productive thoughts.

I think bad writing is pretty much in the eye of the beholder, when it's all said and done. I couldn't read the Hobbit, no matter how many times I tried. Clearly I am not a 14 year old boy!

[glfprncs]

I was an English major, and remember having to trudge through the interminable and mind-numbing Middlemarch. I think I even had to write a PAPER on it! This was back when we wrote papers on typewriters, and used White Out to correct mistakes. (I remember thinking "the punishment never stops, the punishment never stops...")

The horrid memory remains, one of the few left from my earlier years! I despise that book to this very day. I HATE YOU, George Elliot! Even if you *were* a woman...

Oh, Doolittle...when I skimmed and saw Middlemarch, I was happy to know I wasn't alone! I actually sort of expected to love Middlemarch...and was so disappointed that by page 700, I had to literally force myself to read.

By page 750, I gave up and bought the Cliff's Notes. I was fortunate to just have an essay exam and did pay enough attention in class to pass.

Funny thing...it's been 20+ years since that undergraduate class and this past summer I found my tattered copy of Middlemarch in a box in my garage. How it survived 5+ moves in 20 years is beyond me, but I figured it was a sign. I was finally 'grown up' enough to 'get' George Eliot.

I was wrong...I didn't even make it to page 50 this time before I threw the blasted thing back into the box and picked up one of Terry Pratchett's mindless books instead.

[sk_pacer]

Ah...geez Dr. Doolittle...I've read some Harlequin romances and I'm a pretty decent person, with lots of good, productive thoughts.

I think bad writing is pretty much in the eye of the beholder, when it's all said and done. I couldn't read the Hobbit, no matter how many times I tried. Clearly I am not a 14 year old boy!

I had forgotten about The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings - never manged to wade through those either. The huge fuss made over the movies was enough to get me to try watching the first Lord of the Rings, only to find it was just as tedious as the books

[Lin]

The Horse Whisperer . A stupid book with a really stupid ending. JMO

[clint]

Another English major here. I hated everything ever written by Henry James.

[Frizzle]

Add me to the list of Hated Heart of Darkness. Absolutely loathed it and only finished it because it was required reading. Also can not stand Rabbit Redux, The Mermaid Chair (which was such a huge letdown after The Secret Life of Bees), and pretty much anything by Hemingway (the violence against animals totally turns me off). And no matter how many times I have tried to read "the greatest book of all time" Ulysses by James Joyce, I never get very far--guess I'm just not smart enough!

[MsM]

As a teenager hated Moby Dick.

More recently despised Life of Pi.

I dont count the "beach books" - I know they are just brain popcorn. But I really object to a "good" book gone bad - especially preachy and pretentiously bad!

[kookicat]

Just thought of another!

The Red Pony by John Steinbeck. I really didn't like it.

Oh, and Ash, by James Herbert. Terrible book.

[Dr. Doolittle]

Oh, Doolittle...when I skimmed and saw Middlemarch, I was happy to know I wasn't alone! I actually sort of expected to love Middlemarch...and was so disappointed that by page 700, I had to literally force myself to read.

By page 750, I gave up and bought the Cliff's Notes. I was fortunate to just have an essay exam and did pay enough attention in class to pass.

Funny thing...it's been 20+ years since that undergraduate class and this past summer I found my tattered copy of Middlemarch in a box in my garage. How it survived 5+ moves in 20 years is beyond me, but I figured it was a sign. I was finally 'grown up' enough to 'get' George Eliot.

I was wrong...I didn't even make it to page 50 this time before I threw the blasted thing back into the box and picked up one of Terry Pratchett's mindless books instead.

Reassuring to hear that it "holds up" (in a bad way )

Calvincrow--I must agree about the Hobbit, couldn't get through it, and this was as a teenager (girl, though), I suspect I would feel the same way about it today.

Sorry, but those Romance Novels are just. I don't get it.

At least the long-winded, creaky, wheezy, excruciating "Classics" do have some redeeming features in that they are "art", of a sort, and written by people who have put some thought into the plot (usually), and who have a decent grasp of the English language and how to use it. This doesn't make them any easier to read, unfortunately!

[maxiford812]

The Horse Whisperer . A stupid book with a really stupid ending. JMO

I couldn't even make it through the beginning, with children and horses being mowed down by a tractor-trailer truck.

[Teacup]

Heart of Darkness had such potential, but I hated it. 50 Shades, Grapes of Wrath, the Blithedale Romance, and Twilight are all pretty terrible. I also disliked Sarah Gruen's books Riding Lessons and Flying Changes, mostly because I hated the main character.

I enjoyed S. King's The Mist, but I actually liked the movie better.

[red mares]

Black Beauty. Early animal rights garbage.

Great Expectations was pretty bad too. I can't imagine having to listen to it in class. Jane Austen put me to sleep

Some of the other classics I really like - Frankenstein, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, Phantom of the Opera. I'm seeing a trend here...


ETA: Man, apparently everyone loffs BB. I did as a kid, as I got older, and re-read, it just annoys the crap out of me. No number of thumbs down will change my opinion of it. The ironic thing is that I have a collection of about 25, mostly antique, copies of a book I don't like.