h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Icy's rather fine Post quiz (A82677874 this week) has moved a couple of Researchers to invite nominations for the accolade of Worst Book Ever.

In order to be appropriately disrespectful to Giants of Literature, we should point out that the books proposed should be well-known ones. Of course there are zillions of contemptible pulpy airport bookshop titles, but this isn't about that kind of stuff. This is about dissing stonking mega-classics that should quite frankly never have been written.

There's also a second category that's even more dubious. We also invite nominations for the title of Worst Book Ever That I've Never Actually Read. (If you're a purist, you'll probably only consider tomes where you got to the end of the first chapter, but it's quite OK even if you've haven't read a single word, as long as you give some sort of reason: eg naff cover, stupid title, recommendation by someone you consider an idiot, too many pages etc)

Go on. You know you want to.

Pin and Bel

I don't think it fits in the "mega-classic" division, but The Silmarillion is utter drivel.

Also, definitely a mega-classic, and I wouldn't go as far as 'should never have been written', but I found Don Quixote seriously underwhelming.

Well I'm not going to take issue with either of those!

OK, I'll start off with a GIANT! Probably start some controversy.

Realising I couldn't remember anything about The Catcher In The Rye
from when I read it at age 15 (1960) I borrowed a hardcover copy
from a friend recently and have been going at it a chapter at a time.

I really didn't remember any of it, the booze, the prostitutes, the taxi-rides.
In my mind Holden was younger, more innocent, more righteous and less
'emotionally disturbed'. I remember identifying with his animosity toward
adults in general and the state of the whirled. But the only specific I could
recall was his disgust for graffiti involving the infamous F word with which
I had agreed at the time (and still do).

It is a period piece and it does not hold up. The casual conversational
style seems forced, an artifice that may have been a startling break
with literary tradition back then but gets 'old' very quickly today.

As for the rest of Salinger's works I never did like them.
Too many crazy people, not enough substance.


~jwf~

Rushdie's The Satanic Verses...why so many people felt driven to not let it sink without trace is beyond me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_O'Flanagan

Anything by this woman. She sells books by the shed-load. I forced my way through one and at the end threw it against the wall. The most awful writing I've ever endured.

The Satanic Verses I certainly agree about. It's hard to understand why it became notorious, because it really doesn't seem to say very much, and without it's notoriety it would surely have sunk without trace.

Salinger I've had a parallel experience with. I read it as a teenager and found it compelling. I've never re-read it, but would have done so except for more than one friend's counsel to the effect that it's a lot better as a fondly-remembered myth than it is as a book.

<>

Really? I've not read it but I know what *the* Satanic verses are and why they were deeply troublesome for Islam.

When I have failed to get through a classic book (it hasn't happened too often), I usually tend to think that it's my fault for lack of effort but - I'm about to upset France here - Les Miserables. I've tried a few times. Never got past the battle of Waterloo. Everyone's so bloody miserable. Yes, I know. But it just seems so relentlessly one-note. Even Tolstoy does jokes.

And while I've got my running shoes on, I didn't think much of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul either.

Yep, Hugo sucks for sure. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is notably short on laughs too. In fact, if anyone feels inclined to dismiss the entire of French literature, then I'm not sure I could be bothered to argue.

And I guess many would agree that (by DNA's own standards at least) the LDT-TotS is a disappointment. If we need to proclaim an Adams-stinker, then that one is probably the best candidate. I think Pratchett's "Small Gods" makes a far better story out of essentially the same premise, though admittedly DNA worked it over first.

Back with Rushdie, I still stick with the inexplicable-notoriety opinion. I confess that I'm not religious enough to comprehend the notion of sacrilege, but in any case you'd have to be hyper-sensitive to be insulted by an author who hasn't managed to write anything real-seeming yet as far as I can tell. Who can take a book seriously when the laws of nature are flagrantly rewritten every few pages in order to relieve the plot?

That woman you found certainly sounds dire, Beatrice.

I tried to read a Charles Dickens novel once. I think it was oliver Twist. It was unreadable (OK, I think I was 11 or something at the time).

Since then I've never bothered with Dickens. If the entire oeuvre disappeared, I wouldn't cry. Of course the BBC would be upset as they wouldn't be able to make all those period dramas, but - guess what? - I don't watch those either.

RF

Once again I have to agree. Dickens is intolerable. I read somewhere that he inspired Jeffrey Archer to write. For that alone, he ought to be swept from the nation's bookshelves.

Oh Lordy lord I seem to be committed to exposing myself as the biggest heathen in the room. I'm with Reddyfreddy; Dickens uses far too many words. A Christmas Carol is a thing of beauty, because it's short. His other stuff is lovely story telling weighed down by unnecessarily florid verbiage and an addictive sesquipedalianism that's like well wrong.

In defense of the Dickens I recommend his earliest work
under the pseudonym Boz when he wrote short articles
for underground rags about London Life, the Universe
and everything.

~jwf~

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_Charles_Dickens_use_the_pseudonym_Boz

I'm a huge fan of Dickens. My favourite is Bleak House..a great great novel. What really sticks for me though about all his books are the variety of fantastical characters. I think he's genius. And despite the awful poverty and suffering he portrays of the Victorian era, there's a wonderful optimism purveying the stories. I always feel cheered when I read him.

http://dickens.wpi.edu/

And I sent off some money last year to save the original manuscript of Tale of two cities for the nation. The V&A are restoring it. My money paid for a few sentences

(I found out about the appeal from a Canadian arts site).

Chiming in here: I read 'Catcher in the rye' when I was about 15 (we *had* to read it). I hated it.
I didn't understand it at all (I led a very sheltered life).

French authors: Balzac: Le Père Goriot (read that at uni): it made me tear out my hair in despair.
Salammbô by Flaubert is the worst book I read that I can remember having read.

It would be closely followed by Wilhelm Tell (Schiller) if I had read it. As it is, I only read parts of it because my son was tortured with it in school and didn't understand what he read. I have to admit that I didn't understand it, either. I haven't read a single piece by Schiller which I enjoyed.

Oh, and I nearly forgot: I started reading 'Sophie's World' years ago. If the bookmark left in it is anything to go by, I made it to page 23.
If you are interested in philosophy this may be the book for you, but don't bother reading it if you are not into philosophy.