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

Bram Stoker's Dracula is DREADFUL. You may wonder if I loathe it so much why I picked my name from one of his characters. Someone wrote a couple of 'sequels' which I did like. Not great literature to be sure, but nothing like the unreadable drivel Stoker came up with.

I'll add my vote for Les Miserables. I read it last year and it took me months to finish. It's the closest I've ever come to not finishing a book. I've read War and Peace more than once, and it's a lightweight novel compared to Les Mis. Tolstoy gets philosophical and goes off at a tangent for a page or two. Hugo digresses for chapter after chapter. How anybody had the idea of turning Les Mis into a musical is beyond me. The only reason it was successful is they were able to cut out all the dross.

Not really a bad book - ? War and Peace.

1957, last weekend on RN basic training and still bound in uniform, on a train journey almost the height of England. I finally, after 3 or 4 difficult chapters, got into War and Peace - and of course soon started drifting off...

Fellow passenger: "I bet he can sleep anywhere ... and gracious! Just look what he's reading!"

Woke up in Newcastle, in a hurry for my connection, left it behind and never did have the heart to start again.

Bel, I'll agree with you on Sophie's World and I am into philosophy - just awful.

Houranni's a History of the Arab Peoples is now being used to as a stand for one of my lamps. It's prose is Tolkein-esque but without the fun. First time I've not finished a book in my life.

Mein Kampf, quite apart from the subject matter, is really, really badly written. Anyone who's read it and says they enjoyed clearly has no idea what good writing is.

Dracula was a crime,as was Les Miserables but the worst for me was War and Peace.Still never finished it and I guess I never will.

It's main problem is far too many characters to keep in ones mind and they all sound and look the same.

I'd also add all the subsequent Dune books.The first was the best and there was no need for any sequel of any kind especially the ones we got.

However I will defend to the death every single book of Dickens.They are all masterpieces of characterisation and their descriptive prose brings the scenes to life.Lay off Dickens.

However what I would like to do is kill all educators who force young people to read books that are unsuitable for their age and ability.I can't think of a quicker way of destroying a child.teens potential liking for an author.

My bette noir as a teen was Hardy..I was forced to study the Mayor of Casterbridge.I hated it.I hated all the characters and subsequently I hated Hardy.

That is until I made myself read Far from the Madding Crowd(having seen the film).I discovered a Hardy I could love.

Not read Rushdie's book on the recommendation of my sister who took the hit for the family..she said it wasn't worth the effort.

If I may summarise recent developments...

OK. With Balzac and Flaubert now added we are getting close to our legitimate secondary objective of degrading French literature as a corollary to our duty to protect citizens. It goes without saying that Germany has historically similar literary tendencies. We already saw off Mein Kampf a few years back, and I see no reason why Schiller shouldn’t go the same way.

Sophie’s world is a despicable example of an overlong and poorly-written text book being passed off as reading leisure. Let’s just stamp this kind of thing out wherever we find it. In the meantime Norway too goes on notice about its future literary conduct.

Dracula, yep. Quite a good plotline one would have to say, but it all goes horribly downhill from there. Let’s put Bram Stoker in a provisional place as the Second Worst Irish Writer of All Time (leaving room for someone who oddly hasn’t been mentioned yet, and discounting Beckett as to all intents and purpose French and therefore bombed flat already).

Thank you for bringing up Tolstoy’s crime against humanity. It’s about time that we unreservedly condemned it. It’s possibly the only book ever written that’s too long by a factor of a hundred. If you read it carefully (warning: consult medical advice before attempting this) you will discern that Leo clearly forgot which character several times throughout the whole sorry discourse.

Houranni's History of the Arab People? Now why would anyone (a) write and (b) read that? Particularly because it’s now completely inaccurate.

Dune – oh you are so right. After finishing the first one, Herbert should just have crawled into the sand like some sort of giant slug and gradually curdled into a kind of sweet unguent gunk.

Hardy is likewise utterly dreadful. Quite apart from anything else, he’s single-handedly responsible for giving the people of Dorset the delusion of a regional identity, when clearly they don’t merit one. I rather like that idea of ‘taking the hit for the family’ too. Literary exposure as some kind of scarifying rite of passage. That’s about it really. That’s what we do to our kids.

I quite enjoyed Sophie's World...not sure if I'd read it a second time though.

But then, I'm moderately interested in philosophy.

RF

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Massively popular, I gave up after two chapters... bad Japanophile zombie fiction with no knowledge of contemporary weapons or society shoehorned into Pride and Prejudice. Ugh.

I got two pages into The Hobbit when I was 12 and gave up.

Tried again ten years later and managed four pages.

Pompous bilge-water.

B

And I quite like Dracula.

B

Anything by CS Lewis. Serious pile of stinking drongoes kidneys. Couldn't read 'em when I was 12, still can't.

Oh, and Harry Potter.

Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying, the only thing that I can equate that particular reading experience to is a long slow snog (with tongues) with a dementor, it sucked the life out of me.

Caused some hilarity last night when I googled it, my spelling is shameful and google came up with do you mean 'keep the aphrodisiac flying'

I agree with you on this one. Much as I love Orwell, 'Keep the Aspidistra' flying is similar to 'Le Père Goriot': unbearable.

Glad somebody has mentioned Tolkien ...'Lord of the Rings' No thank you. The films were tedious as well.

I don't think I've ever ploughed through a dull book to the bitter end just to say I'd finished it. Probably the worst I was forced to complete at school was The Black Arrow by Walter Scott.

The worst I've read as an adult was something by Tom Clancy (I forget which). I've also found Frederick Forsyth's plots difficult to cope with. I forgive Dan Brown, though. The Da Vinci Code is a hilarious spoof, isn't it?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – I think we can probably list that one as execrable without troubling to read it. Of more interest would be a proposal to plough Ms Austen herself into the Hampshire loam. Perhaps we could fertilise West Yorkshire with the odd Bronte while we’re at it.

The assault on Lewis and Tolkien makes me feel slightly queasy, but hey, why not? They did both flog their respective worlds to death after all, and so for that matter did that Rowling woman. Come to think of it, anybody whose hero is still acting like a prat by Book Seven is a pretty dubious candidate for veneration. So we must acknowledge that h2g2 has spoken, and if you’re a fan of JR, or for that matter JRR, sorry but they’re now officially rubbish.

Orwell is an altogether easier target. Along with nearly everything else that was written in the 1930s, ‘Aspidistra’ is grim and depressing in every way imaginable. If you relish gloom, remind yourself that English Lit’s direst misanthropist hadn’t even sampled the North of England by that time.

And now Scott joins the procession too. The poor guy obviously never had a chance, being labelled as that Ultimate Oxymoron, the ‘Scottish Cultural Icon’, but he really didn’t help himself by regurgitating all that Waverley drek. On a slight technicality, The Black Arrow was actually written by RL Stevenson, but I think we can all agree that Icy’s perfectly justified in blaming Sir Walter for it.

And yes, Dan Brown is obviously a spoof, and for that matter Tom Clancy is surely another.

AH, that's why I failed that exam

I just noticed that I omitted to slag off Frederick Forsyth. It's quite a tricky ticket, since he can actually write a bit and so you can't really flush him down the same tubes as Brown and Clancy.

We could always codemn him on grounds of alarming political opinions, I guess. Even then, I bet his cut on Mein Kampf would have been a hoot compared with Adolf’s.

I think the problem with Lord of the Rings is that Tolkien himself got bored of writing it about halfway through the Two Towers and it shows.

Isaac Asimov's 'Foundation' books.

Totally unreadable!!!



GT