Worst Reads of the Year

Someone has already set up a thread for Best Reads of the Year, so I though I would take the other tack and set up a thread for books you would not recommend to your worst enemy!

ETA: My personal worst book of the year was an ER book I abandoned, The Bad Book Affair by Ian Sansom. I made it 85 pages in and gave up on it at that point.

Tales from Shakespeare by Charles Lamb. *shudder*

Mmmm-the worst book this year-my ER book-The Petting Zoo followed by another ER book The Bells.

Oh, this should be fun!

Among books I actually finished, the one I liked least was American Gods. This is largely a reflection of its length; most of the other bad books I read at least had the advantage of being relatively short.

I also quite disliked How I Live Now.

Other mediocre books that I read:
When You Reach Me (this one was a case of hugely inflated expectations, since everyone else in the world seems to love it)
Puppet Master (an interesting idea that just fell flat)
Folly (an ER book that tells without showing)

And I think that's it for my 2.5-star and lower completed books; it was a pretty good reading year overall.

I did abandon a couple of books:
Rewired (an ER book with an interesting premise but very badly-developed arguments)
Ash (a Cinderella retelling whose protagonist I just couldn't bring myself to care about)

Writing as someone with an LT collection entitled, "hated", I am delighted to see this thread.

My absolute worst read of the year was Pillars of Fire by Ken Follett. See my review for a detailed explanation.

Second, was The Dragon's Tail by Adam Williams, a missed opportunity to do something great.

The third disappointment was Let the Great World Spin. Again, see my review for more detail.

My worst were:
You Slay Me by,Katie MacAlister-I am not a big fan of dumb, babbling heroines so this book was a little hard for me to get through. It also was not as funny as I expected it to be. Yes, there were some funny moments but those mostly came from the demon dog and not from Aisling. I didn’t like Aisling that much, yes, I know she didn’t know she was a Guardian and has a lot to learn but does she have to start out dumb as a box of rocks? Ok maybe I’m being too hard on her but she just annoyed me.
There were some things I enjoyed about this book and the biggest one being Jim the demon dog he was the best part of this book. Wait maybe he is the only thing I liked about this book.
Anyway, I won’t be running out to get the second book in this series, this book was just meh.

Pompeii by, Robert HarrisThis book was not at all what I was expecting .I expected a story about the people of Pompeii leading up to the eruption but that’s not what this book was. This was more about the Augustus Aqueducts, which honestly bored me. There was a bit of a mystery surrounding the disappearance of the former “Aquarius” but didn’t really care. I guess this book was not my cup of tea.

The Ice Queen by, Alice Hoffman
I liked how this book started out but it seemed to fall apart in the middle with all the sex ,yes I know its supposed be a metaphor for her coming alive again. Her whole relationship with Lazarus was ok but I didn’t care about either of them and for it to work for me I have to care about the characters. You can only listen to her talk about the ice in her veins for so long before you scream Shut Up and Get Over it! Yes, your evil, your wishes come true blah blah.

Deep Dish by, Mary Kay Andrews
This was way more chick lit than southern humor.I didn't like this one near as much as I liked Savannah Breeze.

My 2 Did Not Finish..**No haters** IMHO
Freedom by, Jonathan Franzen pretty much same reason as below but so very boring!
The Elegance of a Hedgehog by, Muriel Barbery-This book is just awful, it’s pretentious over the top philosophical hogwash.

Read a number of bad books this year:

Planet of the Apes, Pierre Boulle. Terrible. Watch the movie.
Intervention, Julian May. An entire cast of mary sues. Ugh.
Little Birds, Anaïs Nin. Dodgy 1940s erotica.
Empress of Eternity, LE Modesitt Jr. Like AE van Vogt but without the skill.
Necromancer, Gordon R Dickson. Tosh.

Plus a bunch of Fleming's 007 novels, which have not aged very well at all.

My two worst: The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen, and Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge. I really didn't want to finish these, but kept thinking they'd improve. They didn't.

My two that were tiresome but too boring to really hate: A Good Land by Nada Awar Jarrar, and Brief Lives: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by Andrew Piper, which was an ER copy.

I love the range of opinions that comes out on these threads - I am sure there are lots of Elizabeth Bowen fans out there who will be amazed at my choice, and I am one of the people who adored The Elegance of the Hedgehog!

#6 & #8

The Elegance fo the Hedgehog is one of those books one either loves or hates. As it happened I enjoyed it, but I could see how one would hate it; even picking it up with a different frame of mind changed my attitude towards it, but on the whole I did enjoy it.

Here are mine
The Whole World by Emily Winslow. An ARC with a promising premise but was not quite good enough. I wouldn't rule out a future read of something by this writer.

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley
Bitter and cold. Hard-hearted and cruel. Not my bag I don't care how well-written.

I had a couple of other 2.5 star reads that I expected to be fluffy or less than stellar. These two actually disappointed me.

I liked The Elegance of the Hedgehog and I like Grace Paley's stories.

I was disappointed by the Emily Winslow book too.

True Things About Me by Deborah Kay Davies was an ER book - very well written but totally repellent - about an abusive relationship. I also really disliked my first ER book, The Bird Room by Chris Killen. I have had some good books from Canongate for review, either ER or Bookbag, though.

No-One Loves a Policeman was just very dull. I think those are the only 3 I've rated less than 3* though.

> 7:
Funny Ian, I am reading Intervention now and like it ;-)
It is the in between book between the 4 books of the Saga of the Exiles and the 3 books of the Galactic Milieu, thus not her best book, but still enjoyable in my opinion.

My worst read was Inkspell by Cornelia Funke, I abandoned it.
I was not very impressed with Inkheart, but curious enough to read the second book, but was very disapponted...

#1 Like Stasia, I abandoned The Bad Book Affair, which was my only abandoned book of the year.

However, my nomination for worst book of the year, quite possibly the worst book I ever finished is Chicago Sports: A Fifty Year Love Affair. It sounded like it was written by a third grader.

I really wanted to like this book about the past 50 years in Chicago sports history because his memories are my memories, for the most part.

However, sloppiness runs rampant. Errors, typos, and other writing problems appear in virtually every paragraph, totally ruining my reading experience. From wrongly spelled players' names, such as Johnnie Bench and Randy Hundly (and both parts of former Blackhawks announcer's name as Loyd Petite, and not the correct spelling, Lloyd Pettit), to misplaced phrasings, such as a team doing well "right out of the shoot" to unintelligible phrasings, such as a playoff opponent who was "young and formable" (I'm thinking "formidable"), the list of problems is endless.

Mine were:

My Formerly Hot Life by Stephanie Dolgoff- attractive woman whines about getting older

The Four Seasons by Mary Alice Monroe- totally predictable, weak writing

Chosen by Chandra Hoffman- absolutely hateful characters (and not in a good way)

Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann- the worst sort of navel-gazing

I tend not to finish books that I really don't like, so the books listed below fall more into the category of disappointments -- they didn't live up to my hopes, which were based either on recommendations or hearing about the book some other way.

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson I found the characters unappealing, the Jewish issues presented in a stereotypical and sometimes offensive way, and the "humor" not funny.

Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford Joking about Hitler still isn't funny, and they should have known better, even then.

9643006::The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer -- fun idea, didn't work (for me)

70985::Memoirs of Hecate County by edmundwilson::Edmund Wilson -- Wilson should have stuck to criticism.

2017 by Olga Slavnikova Despite some parts that I really enjoyed, the plot was hard to follow, the mixture of reality, myth, and science fiction not to my taste, the writing dense and often overloaded with adjectives and analogies, and the characterizations not psychologically believable.

The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State by Shane Harris Despite the intriguing title, this book was not a serious history and analysis but a journalistic look at some of the key creators of surveillance technology and its "hero" was John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame.

I read a number of duds this year, unfortunately... I think I'll just list the ones that I remember disliking the most clearly, or else I'll be here typing for ages:

Snakecharm - Amelia Atwater-Rhodes -- I hated every character and the story didn't seem to go anywhere
Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman -- Drops the reader into a pre-established world & situation, makes you feel like you're missing something but it's the first book of a series... well, you are missing something, a good story.
Stash - David Klein -- The characters learn nothing from their mistakes by the end of the book. Waste of time.
The False Friend - Myra Goldberg -- There's no resolution, despite a huge buildup. Major letdown and, once again, a waste of time.
Once Wicked, Always Dead - T. Marie Benchley -- Perhaps the worst book I have read in my entire life. I haven't reviewed it properly here on LT yet because I haven't had the time: My copy is full of sticky notes and angry scribbles, as I intended to write the publisher and give them a piece of my mind. One of these days...
The Constantine Conspiracy - Gary E. Parker -- Crap. Just crap.
Running Around (and Such) - Linda Byler -- No romance where promised, and awful writing. Should have been a MG book at best, but packaged like adult fic.
The Debutante Divorcee - Plum Sykes -- Are you kidding me? Horrible, overwrought tripe with unlikable characters. Everyone is terrible and self-absorbed, no one worth rooting for.
The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff -- I know some people love this, but it was vapid, illogical philosophy for me. I have lots to say about it (and I said some in my review), but it made me more angry than anything else.

...yes, there are plenty more duds where these came from... I didn't have a great reading year, due to the INSANE amount of ARCs I accepted and read (over 50...). This changes in 2011, that's for darn sure.

Apparently, for me, this was not a good year for a really bad book and I suppose that I ought to be grateful about that. However there were a few that were less than stellar. Among them were:

Marianne by Juliette Benzoni - A disappointment.
Wolves of the Crescent Moon by Yousef Al-Mohaimeed - I'd hoped for good literary fiction and I instead I got meh, wanna-be-literary fiction
The Big Four by Agatha Christie - Just a silly spy story that was not very suspenseful.
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary by Xiaolu Guo - My highest rated of the bad books at 3 stars, it makes it onto the list because it was such a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT.
Mum's The Word by Dorothy Cannell - so bad, I've sworn off this author forever.
Letters of a Portuguese Nun by Myriam Cyr - The author was trying to write a book about a potentially interesting subject with too little material, I thought.

I thought it unfair to list the books I did not finish because of their essential not-goodness, but I am making one exception and list The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl - which I thought so highly pukesome that I could - not - go - on. If I ever start jettisoning books for reasons of space this one will be among the first to get tossed.

Three books come to mind. There were ones that I reacted to strongly.

Moon River & Me by Andy Williams. This is a love feast written by Andy who is very much in love with himself. This is a wouldn't you love to be me in your face story of how very great he thinks he is and how very impressed we should all be with him...

Away by Amy Bloom. A few sentences short of pornography, I disliked this book because the author had a great story line and chose to smut it up with foul language and unnecessary sexual content.

Kitchen by Banana Yohimoto. When I attend a movie and leave the theater shaking my head wondering what the heck I just watched, I know it was a waste of time. The same applies to this book. I didn't get it! I had no idea what in the world she was trying to say.

In balance, I've read 158 books thus far in 2010, three of them were clunkers, and of the remaining, many were 3,4 and 5 stars.

You know what I just couldn't stand? This is from a fan of Ray Bradbury but Something Wicked This Way Comes was just a chore to read. There were some nice metaphors (or similies, whichever) like 'He heard clocks ticking to different times' but the whole thing was just loaded with them beyond saturation.

Another that was more disappointing than bad was William Golding's The Inheritors. Things were hard to keep track of because it was written from the perspective of a small band of Neanderthals. The impression I had going in was that the point was primitive man made up the ageless bogeyman tales about trolls and ogres as reminders of the days of coexistence with those crazy Neanderthals. Never did I even detect that theme, although I read that in Tom Shippey's Road to Middle-Earth in a chapter about great writers who used their stories as outlets of WWI emotional baggage. The Shippey books are very interesting if you are even remotely interested in Tolkien. Road to Middle Earth and Author of the Century cover much of the same ground, just for clarity.

There was another which was a sequel to a book I've had since the early 1990s but it was actually read last September. I'll just say that the first book was hilarious and a fun fantasy story which ended with 'The End, or at least a shameless cliffhanger...' Twenty years later I find the second book and it ends with no resolution and 'The, um, Intermezzo'. Nothing further since 1995.

#10 & 11: I also was very disappointed in The Whole World by Emily Winslow. It was my first ER book. I think it had promise but I wish she had a better editor. I'll check out the next book she writes from the library.

I had quite a few bad reads this year. At the top of the list are A Fire in My Hands, Chato's Kitchen, Lesser Evils, The Effects of Knut Hamsun on a Fresno Boy, The Tale of Sunlight, and Partly Cloudy all by Gary Soto. His writing is trite and ridiculously sentimental and I have no idea how his work ever got published.

Bible Camp Bloodbath, a stinker that I got from Member Giveaway, and The Brontes Went to Woolworths round out the list.

When I look back at my clunkers, I'm not at all surprised -- I shake my head and say to myself, I should have known. (For the most part...)

Some standout bad reads:
Midnight Angels by Lorenzo Carcaterra; I like art world mysteries, but this is dreadful
The Art Thief by Noah Charney -- and this was worse!
Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie -- Christie does paranoid fantasy; badly.
The Scarpetta Factor by Patricia Cornwell -- Giving up on this author
The Golden Prince by Rebecca Dean -- Historical Fiction done Harlequin style
The Queen's Pawn by Christy English -- Big yuck. Eleanor of Aquitaine as pimp to her husband? Borderline kiddy porn? Just yuck.
Ford Country by John Grisham -- read this after Playing for Pizza turned out to be a "thumping good read". This was a giant disappointment.
The Sheen on the Silk by Anne Perry -- another author I won't be reading again, after many years...
The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansom -- I'm stunned the author has published sequels.
Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez -- some people should not be allowed to write memoirs.
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin -- how can a book about happiness be dull and predictable? Well, I suppose Tolstoy had a point...

Disappointments/Underwhelming (i.e. could have been fascinating, but...; not really bad/dreadful/unreadable, but just not up to expectations or potential)

A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church -- wow, a mystery series set in N. Korea -- but it was laborious.
White Noise by Don DeLillo -- never engaged me; the author seemed to be intent on proving how inventive he was rather than on capturing my attention.
Pearl of China by Anchee Min -- Liked the author's other novels; this was clunky. Pity...
Chef by Jaspreet Singh -- fascinating premise, dull execution.
The Woman Who Fell from The Sky by Jennifer Steill -- she goes to Yemen and THIS is all she can find to say???
The Masque of Africa by VS Naipaul -- Yes, a great writer -- but he turns this into a meandering self-important narrative. Sigh.
Lost to the West by Lars Brownworth -- The chance to write an engaging book about the Byzantines was lost here...
Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridasson -- I hope his mysteries are better than this really pedestrian "thriller".

Suz

I love your witty comments about the clunkers.

I found the YA book, Witch and Wizard by James Patterson to be the worst waste of paper I have ever read. I'm in the minority, however, since they are turning into a movie and there is a sequel. Sometimes, I think, the name is everything.

There were several disappointments, and many "not my cups of tea" but only two were truly awful:

The shack by William P. Young, and like, Tweak by, like, uh, Nick Nick Nick Sheff and stuff.

I agree regarding The Shack. What a disappointment that book was. It was hyped to the hilt. I found it trite and annoying.

I was adamant that I would not touch The Shack, and I had no trouble staying away from it.
My worst two - and I'm not sure which was the bottom - were The Mighty and Their Fall by Ivy Compton-Burnett and Four Frightened People by E. Arnot Robertson. Bad! Bad! Bad! I finished them both but only because I had a monetary investment in them. For Love Alone by Christina Stead was not good, but it did not nearly match the awfulness of the other two.

Some duds for me:

The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith.... I don't like the books or the TV series.

Fallen by Lauren Kate... could of been good but I think the book was rushed to jump on the vampire wagon.

False Colours by Georgette Heyer... in general I like Heyer's books but not this one!

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark... so many people like this book and/or Muriel Spark. It set my teeth on edge!

The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory... I used to be a massive fan of Gregory so I HAVE to read her books even though I now find them so disapointing and a waste of time.

Security by Stephen Amidon was underwhelming.
My Bird by Fariba Vafi was pointless, a real stinker.
Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell had some merit but I became fed up with the cold and the snow.

Worst reads...Here's the top (bottom?) 3, all these I gave a 1 star rating and there are full reviews for each! :)

Lab 257 by Michael C. Carroll (The author is a fool...see my review.)

Little Things by Jeffrey Brown (Poorly drawn and uninteresting)

They Hunger by Scott Nicholson (Juvenile...)

My least favorites from 2010 were:

The Song of the Whales by Uri Orlev -- an odd, dream-like, and ultimately mean-spirited children's book.

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy -- a re-telling of the Hansel and Gretel story set in the dense forests of Poland in WWII. I usually find WWII literature to be compelling, but this one was absolutely too brutal and traumatic for me.

By far the worst book was an Italian crime novel: Niente di Vero tranne gli occhi by Giorgio Faletti, which as far as I know has never been translated for the English speaking readership.

From the 1001 list there are two books which are widely beloved here on LT but I couldn't help it, I quite hated them: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino and Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne.

And another letdown (much praised and on the shortlist for the Booker 2008): Me, Cheeta by James Lever.

Terrible but short: A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain and Half a Lifetime Ago by Elizabeth Gaskell.

I’ve read 75 books this year. Some good, some okay. But a handful of these were insufferably bad and made me wonder why I ever wasted my time with them.

Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman and The Black Mask by E. W. Hornung - A. J. Raffles is a gentleman thief, à la Arsène Lupin, operating in late Victorian London. The character of Raffles lacks charisma and Raffles’ sidekick, Harry "Bunny" Manders, has got to be the stupidest sidekick ever. And that is saying a lot considering the history of literary sidekicks. I was never sure about what I was reading. It’s not funny, it does not quite fit in the crime/mystery genre and the sentimental ending to Raffles’ character just left me extremely annoyed.

Miss Pym Disposes and To Love and Be Wise by Josephine Tey - I found Tey’s writing uncomfortable to read. Her plots seemed rather contrived. It all feels kind of forced.

Shirley by Charlotte Brontë - The ever wandering narrative grated on my nerves. It was dull and unnecessarily detailed. I nearly stopped reading the book at least half a dozen times.

The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope - The whole atmosphere The Prisoner of Zenda is so dated. Though barely 200 pages long, finishing the book was an uphill battle for me. True classics remain timeless. Something The Prisoner of Zenda is, definitely, not.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - David Copperfield is by far my least favourite of Dickens’s books. Dora Spenlow has got to be one of the most annoying literary characters ever to exist! Every time she opens her mouth I felt like hitting myself!

#29
I'm with you on The Red Queen, I think it was a disappointment because I did enjoy The White Queen so much.

I was also disappointed with A Reliable Wife.

The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. I thought it very poorly written; he repeated himself until I was ready to throw the book out the window, lousy tie-ins with the characters.
Just all in all a _iss poor read.
Out of 8 in my R/L B/C only one lady liked the book and by the end of the discussion she had totally done a turn around. I have seen this happen at B/C several times but always going from a dislike to a like. Very interesting.
I do have to say that this was my poorest read of the year.
belva

>#35:
BaileysAndBooks;
I came and posted straight-a-way when I saw this thread. So I hadn't even read you post when I posted my worst read for the year. After posting, I went back to the top and read down and had to laugh when I came to yours sitting right atop mine. LOL!~!
BTW, love, love, love your user name.
belva

I had a really good reading year and have only a handful of truly bad reads. The majority of these were ER books and other books to review.

Timoleon Vieta Come Home by Dan Rhodes - the writing in this one was actually not bad but the book is just horrible (IMO). It got very good reviews in the press but I think it is one of those books that critics applaud as full of literary merit that are not actually enjoyable to read.

Once in a Blue Moon by Leanna Ellis - just didn't work for me.

Juggler in the Wind by Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin - the writing was poor and the story dragged.

The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons - I couldn't finish this. I have no patience with long drawn out romances.

And a handful of Asterix comics that were fairly poor:
How Obelix Fell into the Magic Potion When He Was a Little Boy
Asterix and Son
Asterix and the Actress
I think all written by Uderzo after Goscinny's death.

#34 Dora Spenlow is very annoying. So helpless, I always wanted to give her a good shake.

Might a worse read also be on the best list....yes I think so..

WISH I JUST HADN'T
1. The Elegance Of The Hedgehog
2. Here's The Deal: Don't Touch Me
(and I was such a Howie fan)
3. The Morning Show Murders
(I'm still a Al Roker fan)