What's the worst novel you've ever read? >inb4 IJ >inb4 meme shit you had no business reading anyway

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Anonymous Mon Jun 13 21:56:17 2016 No.8159686 [Reply] [Original]

What's the worst novel you've ever read?

>inb4 IJ
>inb4 meme shit you had no business reading anyway

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 21:58:15 2016 No.8159693 >>8159686 book of disquiet

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 21:58:58 2016 No.8159699 >>8159686 maybe Huxley's The Island

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 21:59:33 2016 No.8159702 Probably asoiaf desu. Or maybe the first half of ride the tiger where he pretends he understands philosophy. He should have just said feels>reals and saved 140/240 pages Or Fahrenheit 451 fuck that turd

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 21:59:48 2016 No.8159703 >>8159699 Dude yes

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:00:10 2016 No.8159706 >>8159686f Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:00:48 2016 No.8159709 >>8159686 Sabbath's Theater

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:03:04 2016 No.8159717 >>8159686 Taipei by Towelin

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:03:57 2016 No.8159718 >>8159686 Anatomy lesson - Philip Roth

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:06:10 2016 No.8159724 >>8159718 The circle Dave eggers

Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:07:22 2016 No.8159729

A Separate Peace

Who else remembers that novel, from high school? What a loathsome melancholy mess. The main character, whose name I think was Gene, was a fucking sociopath, but nobody would acknowledge it. His gay fucktoy friend was named Phineas, and he was an asshole. He gets crippled twice and then he dies.

Gene (I think that's his name) is one of the most loathsome and contemptible characters in all of literature. He has nothing to recommend him, nothing to make him interesting, nothing in his life worth reading about. He is a vile, petty, small-minded sort of person, and he does a small but powerful cruelty out of nothing but trifling spite.

Actually, Gene (I think that's his name) is probably a pretty realistic portrayal of the average American. However, I did not enjoy reading about him.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:08:24 2016 No.8159733 >>8159686 Hard Times by Charles Dickens Put me off Dickens forever

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:11:35 2016 No.8159743 >>8159729 Lol I vaguely remember the first half of that book from reading it in school

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:23:31 2016 No.8159776 I remember really despising a Room with A View by EM Forster. It was pretentious bourgeois horseshit but I can't remember what about it specifically pissed me off so much.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:32:10 2016 No.8159796 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:43:25 2016 No.8159821 File: 21 KB, 236x368, shit.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Zorba the greek

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:48:42 2016 No.8159833 >>8159699 How? I actually liked it, despite the hamfisted message and pedophilia.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:49:21 2016 No.8159834 I dont know about worst but here are some books I didn't care much for. Madame Bovary Life of Pi Infinite Jester Great Expectations

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:49:24 2016 No.8159835 >>8159686 lord of the rings... bored me to tears

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 22:51:43 2016 No.8159844 The Corrections

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 23:37:38 2016 No.8159970 >>8159729 same here. I have pretty much a black hole in my memory about that book except for a feeling of disgust in the pit of my stomach.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 23:41:13 2016 No.8159976 >>8159686 the alchemist

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 23:49:35 2016 No.8159995 Under the Volcano

>>	The Sound and the Fury !!KlYr/MIPjaz Mon Jun 13 23:54:05 2016 No.8160008 Finnegans Wake

Anonymous Mon Jun 13 23:57:10 2016 No.8160012

The Lovely Bones.

My eleventh grade teacher made the class read it as the summer reading assignment. Damn, public school fucking sucked, man. I used to hate literature, and did not care for it at all until somebody recommended me Faulkner during college.

>>	Anonymous Mon Jun 13 23:59:31 2016 No.8160019 >>8159686 Take of two cities Horrible plot, horrible prose, horrible characters, horrible history. Literally nothing worthwhile

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 00:04:00 2016 No.8160037 Myal by Erna Brodber Caribbean literature in general is pretty meh. Except for Derek Walcott I guess.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 00:04:02 2016 No.8160038 Probably Twilight.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 00:07:16 2016 No.8160052 File: 1.64 MB, 1080x1920, tmp_9759-Screenshot_20160503-170856-977498989.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>8159686 Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King Self-insert MC, insanely stupid plot and every character is abominable

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 00:11:13 2016 No.8160059 The Scarlet Letter Yes, I know its high-school tier

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 00:13:10 2016 No.8160065 Couldn't finish Walden desu. I like the lad but he can't write for shit.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 00:17:10 2016 No.8160073 Stephen King or GRRM.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 00:19:23 2016 No.8160074 >>8160019 the prose in toftc is pretty good agree otherwise, a very overassigned book

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 00:19:46 2016 No.8160076 >>8160008 Never going to make it

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 00:24:27 2016 No.8160087 My Brother George is Dead

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 00:57:54 2016 No.8160156 >>8160008 I tried reading it and couldn't go past page three. The fuck was he smoking? >lol universal language >lol I have a big literary dick Fucking waste of time.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 01:02:37 2016 No.8160176 >>8160019 Sydney's death is one of the best things in literature

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 01:06:28 2016 No.8160190 >>8159686 the most shockingly bad novel i've read was dune. the fact that it's lauded, let alone tolerated, was really shocking to me. >i have reasons if anyone wants them

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 01:07:29 2016 No.8160195 >>8159706 you probably just didn't read it in a well enough lit cáfé

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 01:09:25 2016 No.8160197 >>8160038 eh, at least twilight has not a single shred of pretentiousness in it i put it down after the first seven chapters when i read it in the seventh grade, but i totally got i just wasnt the audience.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 01:10:42 2016 No.8160204 >>8160190 Seriously, I tried three times and couldnt get past page 3

Anonymous Tue Jun 14 01:48:09 2016 No.8160280
File: 38 KB, 334x499, The Quest for Better Writing.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>8159686
Fucking last time I go to an airport without a book I tell you what.
>The author cannot wait until the second chapter is finished to have his pair of tits he calls a female lead naked and bathing.
>Everyone else is naked and bathing in the same "ancient bath" with "mysteriously fresh water"
>Our hero, in full view of the other characters, in the middle of the water everyone is bathing in, stares at the girl swimming and jerks himself off
>the girl is passed from character to character like a football
>every time he writes himself into a corner everything magically works out fine for no reason loosely justified by the pair of tits or the non-main lead says "IT MUST HAVE BEEN GOD."
I always thought I knew how bad the average thriller was but this was outright shocking.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 01:50:39 2016 No.8160285 >>8159699 Seriously? Of all the garbage you could possibly have read you think Island is the worst? Sure his characters are simply mouthpieces for Huxley but the whole story is allegorical in the first place. It honestly enjoyed it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 02:24:02 2016 No.8160371 fucking Jane Eyre, what a piece of shit

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 04:21:36 2016 No.8160582 >>8159686 Anthem by Ayn Rand (only Rand I have read)

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 12:39:03 2016 No.8161546 >>8160582 Shoplifting from American apparel

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 13:14:03 2016 No.8161627 The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 14:07:42 2016 No.8161788 God help the Child by Toni Morris. Glad I stole it.

Anonymous Tue Jun 14 14:21:34 2016 No.8161824

>>8160008
>>8160156
This.

Finnegan's Wake is a formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book. Conventional and drab, redeemed from utter insipidity only by infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations. Detest it. A cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue hardly redeems the dreadful joviality of the folklore and the easy, too easy, allegory. Indifferent to it, as to all regional literature written in dialect. A tragic failure and a frightful bore.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 15:06:14 2016 No.8161942 >>8159686 Vernon God Little. What a godawful book. At least it was short

Anonymous Tue Jun 14 17:23:49 2016 No.8162373

>>8159686
1984

Literally young adult fiction tier characters and a really simplistic message that was so fucking obviously explained that he literally breaks away from the story to just write you a manifesto. It's a truly garbage book that's pushed by English lit teachers so that their students can find the "subtext" easily.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 17:31:22 2016 No.8162399 Master and Margarita. My translation could have just been bad but that book was a chore. Read Eat Pray Love for a book club. Probably the worst book I've ever completed but OP said no books I had no business reading in the first place.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 17:53:13 2016 No.8162451 >>8160059 >that preemption don't be so insecure anon elitism is the cancer of /lit/

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 18:31:11 2016 No.8162573 >>8161824 t. nabokov

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 18:40:22 2016 No.8162597 >>8159686 Their Eyes Were Watching God Hated the characters, the nonsensical feminist plot and the conclusion. I'm against book burnings, but I'd make an exception for that trash

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 18:43:19 2016 No.8162604 >>8160012 I read these sorts of things in my spare time because I love how heavily inserted the author is in their story, and in a way it's fun. This goes for twilight too. I know they're bad books. It's kind of like a MST3k situation.

Anonymous Tue Jun 14 19:38:08 2016 No.8162748

>>8159833
It was boring, it actually made psychedelic drugs a sleep inducing topic. It wasn't pedo if I remember correctly, one of the tenants of the island was that the sexual experimentation of children amongst themselves wasn't frowned upon. That part didn't bother me. it's an almost entirely plotless hippie handbook, not a novel.

Anonymous Tue Jun 14 19:47:33 2016 No.8162765

Stendhal's Charterhouse of Parma.

Only novel I started and never finished. Main dude was an empty asshole. Nothing happens, nothing happens, something is about to happen, but doesn't. It isn't even the "fun" kind of nothing happening like in Beckett's novels.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 20:22:41 2016 No.8162851 >>8159702 Fuck farenheit 451. Fuck it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 20:23:45 2016 No.8162856 >>8159686 Far from the madding crowd.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 20:24:38 2016 No.8162862 File: 338 KB, 1050x1574, the_sun_also_rises_hemingway.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 20:53:09 2016 No.8162925 >>8162862 Lul

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 20:59:44 2016 No.8162940 >>8162451 No. Elitism is one of the things that keeps this place in a healthier state than other literature boards on the net.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:00:40 2016 No.8162945 >>8159686 2666 its just racist bullshit. he had some ideas going on, but in the end its just pedestrian babble

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:01:13 2016 No.8162947 >>8159686 Walden, Thoreau was a cunt and a poor mans Tolstoy.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:08:11 2016 No.8162957 File: 33 KB, 224x216, image.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>8162945 Triggered Try actually reading the book

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:09:13 2016 No.8162960 >>8159686 Thirteen Reasons Why. Had to read it in High School but holy fuck do I wish I hadn't

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:18:46 2016 No.8162972 >>8162862 So is any Hemingway good or is it all trash?

Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:22:53 2016 No.8162984

>>8159833
>>8160285
>Of all the garbage you could possibly have read you think Island is the worst?
well I don't purposefully read garbage so it's not like I've got a wide selection of pedestrian bullshit to select from, and when I do dislike something I remember almost nothing about it. I just picked the Island because it was the first thing that came to mind, I'm sure I've read worse.

But the island was pretty terrible, man. Truthfully I didn't get far before falling asleep, but what I did read i found nauseatingly ideological. It felt like Huxley was confidently portraying a worldview and personal philosophy that he felt should be adopted by all, and it was his views that put me off, but it's not like you can debate a book. I just dropped it.

It felt like when you argue against a radical feminist who's trying to tell you how men behave and you want to say "not all men are like that" but you know she'll hit you with #notallmen and a flurry of buzzwords.

Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:25:17 2016 No.8162988

But it is IJ
I got it as a gift from someone who praised it highly and so I read it. This was before I ever came here. He was older and at the time I thought he was a smart guy, then I grew up to become an English lit major and I no longer speak to him.

Just to be clear, I thought the book was absolute shit.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:30:23 2016 No.8162998 >>8162988 OP here. To be clear, I excluded IJ from the options because I thought its shittiness was a forgone conclusion.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:32:00 2016 No.8163001 >>8159776 +1

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:32:21 2016 No.8163005 >>8159729 That's a great book

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:39:03 2016 No.8163021 >>8160190 I absolutely loved it, so I'm interested to hear why you didn't. Only other person I've met who tried reading it and didn't like it had a mental breakdown around when he started it, so it always brought up bad memories for him.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 21:40:15 2016 No.8163025 >>8162972 Read The Old Man and the Sea, that one's great

Anonymous Tue Jun 14 22:13:25 2016 No.8163156
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the bell jar LEL

absolute garbage and whenever you criticize it people just say 'well she was more of a poet than a novelist so when you consider that it was actually pretty good'

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 22:15:34 2016 No.8163167 >>8162972 lots of hemingway is good, that guy was probably trolling because the sun also rises is one of the best books ever written >b-b-but nothing happens!!! shut up dickhead his short stories are great too

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 22:17:55 2016 No.8163178 >>8163021 Sounds like your friend made up an excuse so your feelings weren't hurt that he hated your favorite book. True friend or an idiot triggered by association lol.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 22:20:13 2016 No.8163183 >>8163167 It's a terrible book, you should read it

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 22:22:16 2016 No.8163187 >>8163183 you should read my asshole fagget

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 22:23:27 2016 No.8163188 File: 38 KB, 347x530, the-age-of-innocence.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Anonymous Tue Jun 14 22:52:37 2016 No.8163316

>>8162940

depends on how you define elitism

elitism as in choosing only the most renowned and demanding literature to consume is good. That's what your idol Harold Bloom is championing.

Elitism as in being unable to form your own opinions about literature and adopting the general consensus is bad. Your typical /lit/core faggot (aka (You))

Anonymous Tue Jun 14 23:03:21 2016 No.8163360

>>8159729
this is probably the most sad book I've come across.

I remember feeling the same sense of pointlessness and melancholy you felt while reading it.

It's the ultimate downer book, and even years after have been forced to read it, I still sometimes think about it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 23:29:47 2016 No.8163431 >>8163021 Naw, he wasn't afraid to tell me something else. He just didn't have a healthy life where he grew up.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 14 23:38:00 2016 No.8163445 >>8163316 >>Elitism as in being unable to form your own opinions about literature and adopting the general consensus is bad That isn't elitism, you fuck, I bet you misuse "pretentious" too.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 00:27:35 2016 No.8163588 File: 36 KB, 295x475, 310224.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 00:31:17 2016 No.8163595 gravity's rainbow

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 00:31:55 2016 No.8163597 >>8162972 >>8162972 >I'm a man. >So there I was being a man. >I held my dick in my hand. >My asshole was hairy. >"Say, did you notice I am a man?" I asked. If you enjoyed that go ahead and read any Hemingway book.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 00:53:24 2016 No.8163637 >>8159835 I tried reading the two towers. I've never read something so dry. So very... very dry. It was like crossing a not so great adventure book with a history textbook.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 00:53:28 2016 No.8163638 The Time Traveler's Wife

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 00:58:20 2016 No.8163648 >>8159693 first post best post

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 01:00:23 2016 No.8163652 >people took the IJ is shit meme seriously holy shit, you people shouldn't be allowed to read, to be honest.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 02:39:23 2016 No.8163810 My diary desu senpai

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 02:46:11 2016 No.8163827 >>8159693 >>8163648 not a novel

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 02:50:09 2016 No.8163832 If you really thought a book was terrible why would you keep reading it? Would you seriously keep on through Fifty Shades of Gray to see if it "maybe gets better?"

Anonymous Wed Jun 15 02:55:14 2016 No.8163844

The kite runner.

Retarded high school teacher had us read it. Absolute trash. It's like the author sat there and thought of all the awful things he could do to a character and tried to fit them all into one story. Then he forgot to make you care about any of the characters.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 03:21:17 2016 No.8163884 >>8159686 Worst books I've ever read (that are taken somewhat seriously): >Catch 22 >Their Eyes Were Watching God

Anonymous Wed Jun 15 03:28:24 2016 No.8163889

I found Walden pretty dry and tedious

also Death Comes for The Archbishop

though I haven't re-read them at all and when I did read them I was a freshman and sophomore year in high school.

I ended up reading and enjoying a lot of dry philosophical works in college.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 03:33:11 2016 No.8163899 >>8163832 I hate not finishing novels. The only time I thought I really couldn't get it over with, I just skipped to the last couple pages. (I was 3/4 through)

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 03:33:12 2016 No.8163900 >>8163156 I always think people are taking about The Bell Curve and get confused for a second.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 03:34:41 2016 No.8163904 >>8163884 I second Catch-22. His ideas aren't original, he's not good as a novelist, and he's got such a shitty unlikable fedora worldview.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 03:44:53 2016 No.8163926 Cien años de soledad. Pinche prosa pretensiosa.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 03:45:39 2016 No.8163929 My diary, t b h f a m

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 03:47:23 2016 No.8163931 >>8159686 Demian - Herman esse

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 04:14:17 2016 No.8163995 >>8163445 >he tries to attack diction out of the blue >he doesn't understand contextual language begone, pseud. You have the comprehension of an ESL student

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 06:19:39 2016 No.8164132 >>8159834 Why did you find Madame Bovary so bad?

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 06:29:54 2016 No.8164149 File: 157 KB, 992x880, 1446965102503.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>8163995 >uses elitism the way public newspapers and tween twitters use it >gets called out on it >butthurt ensues Stay mad, fag.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 06:31:23 2016 No.8164152 1Q84 was damn awful. Not even Maxwell Perkins could have saved that book. Murakami writing an entertaining novel ever again doesn't seem likely.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 07:26:46 2016 No.8164219 >>8159976 This.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 07:37:34 2016 No.8164235 Moravagine, although I'm not sure if it counts as meme shit since it's relatively unknown trash.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 08:02:04 2016 No.8164261 Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 08:05:41 2016 No.8164265 >>8159796 shite fucking book ay

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 08:06:43 2016 No.8164266 >>8162573 sudden exhalation of air from nostrils

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 08:55:00 2016 No.8164362 Atlas Shrugged.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 09:56:00 2016 No.8164492 File: 29 KB, 295x475, 73968.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Read this in English class at school.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 09:57:04 2016 No.8164494 File: 25 KB, 303x499, 41D4LCnmq%2BL._SX301_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>8164492 This is also a competitor though, read this for French class.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 10:18:08 2016 No.8164546 >>8159686 How To Be Good by Nick Hornby. Meant to have a female narrator, but he fails at it miserably. It's horrific.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 11:54:21 2016 No.8164715 >>8164494 Reading The Princesse de Clèves right now for a French lit course... It reads like high school aged girls gossiping about crushes.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 12:03:33 2016 No.8164740 We The Living

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 12:34:04 2016 No.8164826 >>8164546 Oh god, High Fidelity is the one book I've never finished

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 12:43:37 2016 No.8164859 Bukowski's Factotum and really anything by that faggot

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 13:04:42 2016 No.8164920 Flowers for fucking Algernon.

>>	Anonymous Wed Jun 15 16:51:01 2016 No.8165763 >>8164362 Yyyyeah

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