Bramblethorn
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I'm missing something - what's the problem with that spelling?
Worst Book Ever?
- Thread starter Wifetheif
- Start date
I'm missing something - what's the problem with that spelling?
shakna
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Whoops. Nothing. My autocorrect fixed it. The title has it spelled, "Stroker".
BiscuitHammer
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Literal worst I ever read?
My cousin wrote a story called 'Bloodgun'. It was about a 'hero' named Bloodgun who killed endless numbers of people using bloodbombs. The spelling was horrible, the plot incoherent, and the title character had no interesting or redeeming qualities.
Granted, my cousin was seven when he wrote it, along with a friend who had more issues than the Farmer's Almanac, but it was still worse than Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence.
Worst story by an adult? Oh, Lordy, probably a little piece of tripe called 'Rini's Special Moment With Serena', a fanfic by someone calling themselves Darren Schivo. Like my li'l cousin's story, the plot was wildly inchoherent, the spelling and the grammar were seizure-inducing. To boot, the sex was a total libidoectomy.
The author clearly had no first-hand knowledge of the workings of female anatomy (and not JUST the location of the clitoris, but nipples or where a woman urinates from), and the characters were all the same age as they were when they were in that Sailor Moon anime.
So Rini was little more than a toddler engaging in poorly-executed lesbian sex, and the other girls were young teens. Granted, this was written back in the late 90's when the anime fanfiction community didn't much care about minors having sex, but the cringe factor was off the charts even then.
At some point in the story, one of the girls mentions when they all spent a weekend in the jacuzzi at Clark Kent's condo in Metropolis. The absurd crossover aside, the worrying thing here was that this story was part of a series that was floating around on the intartubez somewhere.
My friend and I read this horror, killed ourselves laughing, and gave it the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, which became a smash way back in the day. Hopefully it didn't give Herr Schivo any more tread, tho.
In terms of actual published novels? Probably 'Anthem' by Ayn Rand. Just... gyah.
My cousin wrote a story called 'Bloodgun'. It was about a 'hero' named Bloodgun who killed endless numbers of people using bloodbombs. The spelling was horrible, the plot incoherent, and the title character had no interesting or redeeming qualities.
Granted, my cousin was seven when he wrote it, along with a friend who had more issues than the Farmer's Almanac, but it was still worse than Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence.
Worst story by an adult? Oh, Lordy, probably a little piece of tripe called 'Rini's Special Moment With Serena', a fanfic by someone calling themselves Darren Schivo. Like my li'l cousin's story, the plot was wildly inchoherent, the spelling and the grammar were seizure-inducing. To boot, the sex was a total libidoectomy.
The author clearly had no first-hand knowledge of the workings of female anatomy (and not JUST the location of the clitoris, but nipples or where a woman urinates from), and the characters were all the same age as they were when they were in that Sailor Moon anime.
So Rini was little more than a toddler engaging in poorly-executed lesbian sex, and the other girls were young teens. Granted, this was written back in the late 90's when the anime fanfiction community didn't much care about minors having sex, but the cringe factor was off the charts even then.
At some point in the story, one of the girls mentions when they all spent a weekend in the jacuzzi at Clark Kent's condo in Metropolis. The absurd crossover aside, the worrying thing here was that this story was part of a series that was floating around on the intartubez somewhere.
My friend and I read this horror, killed ourselves laughing, and gave it the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, which became a smash way back in the day. Hopefully it didn't give Herr Schivo any more tread, tho.
In terms of actual published novels? Probably 'Anthem' by Ayn Rand. Just... gyah.
TadOverdon
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I remembered a thin, pulp paperback science fiction novel that I read in middle school, titled I Speak For Earth. I wasn't at all sophisticated but I still recognized that the big twist was being telegraphed and the entire climax was, uhm, anticlimactic. I thought it was the worst thing I'd ever read.
I just looked it up. Turns out it was written by one of the leading lights of the genre in those days, John Brunner.
Huh.
That's a pretty weak contribution to the "worst" list, I guess, but it's all I got. I can't remember ever thinking that a book was a real waste of my time to have finished. There are some good books that I've left off in the middle and will get back to. Someday.
I just looked it up. Turns out it was written by one of the leading lights of the genre in those days, John Brunner.
Huh.
That's a pretty weak contribution to the "worst" list, I guess, but it's all I got. I can't remember ever thinking that a book was a real waste of my time to have finished. There are some good books that I've left off in the middle and will get back to. Someday.
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oggbashan
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Juvenile nonsense.
The Young Visiters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Visiters
This book was published 0n 1919 and was very popular at the time. It is dreadful
The Young Visiters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Visiters
This book was published 0n 1919 and was very popular at the time. It is dreadful
Bramblethorn
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SimonDoom
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That Site me laugh, at least. Did you check out Bearmaggedon? "Every damn bear on this Earth has declared war against every Damn Human."
Bramblethorn
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I'm mostly with you there, but I've occasionally had reason to slog through some bad books:
- boredom and no alternatives
- morbid curiosity: how bad is this going to get?
- the book is popular and I want to be able to understand what people are going on about
- money
I can only recommend the last of those four reasons.
Zeb_Carter
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Any book written by Anonymous back in the 70s. I read them all to the end but some of them were really out there. Most of them would have been rejected here a lit. Yes they were erotic novels and some of the sickest shit I have ever read. 
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Blind_Justice
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"Thanksgiving Delight" by a fellow called "Rich Rubin". A story of a married guy messing around with his wife's sister over a Thanksgiving weekend, ending with a threesome. Dreadfully written, barely edited and about as erotic as sorting filthy laundry. The author couldn't get the names of his characters straight but that doesn't matter in the end because everyone acts like a lobotomized robot anyway.
Close behind are the last few Drizzt novels by R.A. Salvatore, which is a huge shame. That guy was my gateway drug to the realm of Fantasy literature. But ever since the "Hunter's Blades" trilogy, he has the irritating habit of brute-forcing plot points - for example, the hero witnesses a tower collapse his friends are inspecting. Instead of rushing to their side and check if they can be saved, he runs away because "he couldn't bear seeing them dead". He THEN spends the rest of the books agonizing if they could have survived and if he'd done the right thing, all the while being an insufferable pain in the ass to all who want to ease his troubles. I could forgive that if it leads to a satisfying payoff, but it doesn't. And Salvatore keeps doing that over and over again, coveniently forgetting the characters' traits he had so well written before only to make shit happen. His stories are basically sword porn at this point and no longer fun to read.
Close behind are the last few Drizzt novels by R.A. Salvatore, which is a huge shame. That guy was my gateway drug to the realm of Fantasy literature. But ever since the "Hunter's Blades" trilogy, he has the irritating habit of brute-forcing plot points - for example, the hero witnesses a tower collapse his friends are inspecting. Instead of rushing to their side and check if they can be saved, he runs away because "he couldn't bear seeing them dead". He THEN spends the rest of the books agonizing if they could have survived and if he'd done the right thing, all the while being an insufferable pain in the ass to all who want to ease his troubles. I could forgive that if it leads to a satisfying payoff, but it doesn't. And Salvatore keeps doing that over and over again, coveniently forgetting the characters' traits he had so well written before only to make shit happen. His stories are basically sword porn at this point and no longer fun to read.
Kumquatqueen
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It's meant to be dreadful! It works quite well as a play - you're laughing at it rather than with the author.
oggbashan
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I couldn't do that. My list would be endless and my wife couldn't compete with me. She reads about a dozen a year; I read about a dozen a DAY.
KeithD
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I always laugh at how many those who don't keep list say they've read in a year. I read 53 last year and I know what a chore that was to get done (of course I wrote half a million published words last year too).
oggbashan
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Almost all my life I have been a speed reader. I have slowed down with age and eyesight problems. When I used to commute to London (an hour and a half by train) I would take three average length paperbacks to read AFTER I had read The Times, and four or five for the return journey.
At work, I was expected to read the reports of yesterday's debates in the House of Commons and House of Lords for anything that might affect my employer. If there was anything - usually not - I had to give a report to the Director's Secretary by 10 am. Those reports were about the length of a full Bible (Old and New Testaments) every day. But I could skip topics that were obviously not relevant.
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ElectricBlue
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I'll often read two or three books at the same time, usually one fiction, and some history or non-fiction. Last week I re-read the Gormenghast Trilogy (a thousand pages), watched the four hour BBC dramatization, and finished a history of the Soviet atom bomb project. I'd easily read a hundred or so books a year, but then, I don't consider reading a chore.
MellowJoe
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I'm going to limit my answer to authors that should have known better.
The one that came to mind was Stephen King's "Needful Things".
It was just... terrible. I haven't bought another of his books since that one. I have a friend who kept going with him. He made the comment that "King wrote out all his demons and now he has nothing left to write about."
The sad part is that anything he writes is going to make a mint, so he'll keep getting published no matter what.
The one that came to mind was Stephen King's "Needful Things".
It was just... terrible. I haven't bought another of his books since that one. I have a friend who kept going with him. He made the comment that "King wrote out all his demons and now he has nothing left to write about."
The sad part is that anything he writes is going to make a mint, so he'll keep getting published no matter what.
Rustyoznail
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Yes - add 11/22/1963 to your list of what to avoid.
A reasonable premise let down by a ridiculous ending, although the writing is ok.
I didn't have it as the worst book because it was so forgettable.
AlexBailey
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Jean M Auel - The Land of Painted Caves
It’s the final book of the series that begins with Clan of the Cave Bear.
I think the author lost it before she finished. She was known for doing exhaustive research on paleo-technology and had toured ancient artifact sites for years. Her last book was written as if each chapter was a standalone, with extensive repetition and painfully detailed anthropology. To make matters worse she had the MC needlessly throw away her integrity after tens of thousands of pages after her being an inspirational fictional icon. Ever meet any kids named Ayla? It’s probably inspired by that character.
It left a worse aftertaste than the last season of Game of Thrones.
It’s the final book of the series that begins with Clan of the Cave Bear.
I think the author lost it before she finished. She was known for doing exhaustive research on paleo-technology and had toured ancient artifact sites for years. Her last book was written as if each chapter was a standalone, with extensive repetition and painfully detailed anthropology. To make matters worse she had the MC needlessly throw away her integrity after tens of thousands of pages after her being an inspirational fictional icon. Ever meet any kids named Ayla? It’s probably inspired by that character.
It left a worse aftertaste than the last season of Game of Thrones.
pink_silk_glove
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I have read a couple of Harlequins. Check that, I read one and thought it was so awful that I picked up another thinking that I must have drawn a bad sample, but I got about halfway through the second one and realized that it was exactly the same, so I said to myself "fuck it, I'm not wasting any more time on this mindless rubbish".
So, my nomination for worst book ever would still top the list even if cheap paperbacks were included. It was somehow a best seller in the late 70s, supposedly a racy romp romance in the fashion industry called "Scruples" by Judith Krantz, an unforgettably and unforgivably bad novel. The opening scene was actually okay. Then we meet the cast of characters and each character gets their own chapter to fill in their extensively tedious and contrived backstory. The first gets like 40 pages of this crap, a litany of bad luck and the unfortunate scheming of others to induce the character's predicament through absolutely no fault of their own whatsoever. The characters themselves are complete one-dimensional contrived cardboard. Our lead character, the powerful female retail magnate, had aristocratic blood yet was poor (yawn) and was overweight as a teen but lost 100 pounds by ... wait for it ... forcing herself to eat tiny meals - therefore became tall and sexy. Her main clothing designer character took up about 80 pages. She was a redhead, French, but obligingly had an Irish father so that she could indeed be a redhead (are there no redheads in France?) and could have an exoticly mixed name, was 25 (if I recall) and was still a virgin of course! What was the reason for her virginity? She was just so wrapped up in her work designing clothes that ... wait for it ... romance never really occurred to her - a sexless sexpot. Poor thing! So what about the plot? Never got that far. Once I finally finished the redhead's backstory chapter, I was roughly halfway through the book and seeing that the next chapter was the (dashingly handsome player) photographer's backstory, I said "fuck it, I'm not wasting any more time on this mindless rubbish". 200 pages in and NO PLOT, just backstories! My IQ had already dropped 20 points. I couldn't afford to lose any more.
It did do one thing. I got me to start writing again, or at least writing seriously, as it taught me that I could write 100 times better than a best seller.
So, my nomination for worst book ever would still top the list even if cheap paperbacks were included. It was somehow a best seller in the late 70s, supposedly a racy romp romance in the fashion industry called "Scruples" by Judith Krantz, an unforgettably and unforgivably bad novel. The opening scene was actually okay. Then we meet the cast of characters and each character gets their own chapter to fill in their extensively tedious and contrived backstory. The first gets like 40 pages of this crap, a litany of bad luck and the unfortunate scheming of others to induce the character's predicament through absolutely no fault of their own whatsoever. The characters themselves are complete one-dimensional contrived cardboard. Our lead character, the powerful female retail magnate, had aristocratic blood yet was poor (yawn) and was overweight as a teen but lost 100 pounds by ... wait for it ... forcing herself to eat tiny meals - therefore became tall and sexy. Her main clothing designer character took up about 80 pages. She was a redhead, French, but obligingly had an Irish father so that she could indeed be a redhead (are there no redheads in France?) and could have an exoticly mixed name, was 25 (if I recall) and was still a virgin of course! What was the reason for her virginity? She was just so wrapped up in her work designing clothes that ... wait for it ... romance never really occurred to her - a sexless sexpot. Poor thing! So what about the plot? Never got that far. Once I finally finished the redhead's backstory chapter, I was roughly halfway through the book and seeing that the next chapter was the (dashingly handsome player) photographer's backstory, I said "fuck it, I'm not wasting any more time on this mindless rubbish". 200 pages in and NO PLOT, just backstories! My IQ had already dropped 20 points. I couldn't afford to lose any more.
It did do one thing. I got me to start writing again, or at least writing seriously, as it taught me that I could write 100 times better than a best seller.
oggbashan
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Some of the books written to claim a place in the Guinness Book of records:
A French author decided to write a whole novel without using the letter 'e'. Try saying anything in French without an 'e'.
Another author decided to write all his sentences starting with the consecutive letters of the alphabet a - z.
The last book inspired me to write this:
Basic ABC
A blank: can’t do every former goal.
Help. I’ll juxtapose kind little metrical norms
Or produce quaint really sterile triolets:
Unusual voices warning
Xenophobic youthful zeros.
A French author decided to write a whole novel without using the letter 'e'. Try saying anything in French without an 'e'.
Another author decided to write all his sentences starting with the consecutive letters of the alphabet a - z.
The last book inspired me to write this:
Basic ABC
A blank: can’t do every former goal.
Help. I’ll juxtapose kind little metrical norms
Or produce quaint really sterile triolets:
Unusual voices warning
Xenophobic youthful zeros.
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PennameWombat
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I’m well late on this, but I read a couple of interviews Theis did in the decades after the story. He apparently didn’t keep writing but he owned the story, freely admitted it was terrible but was also at times seemed upset about the level of mocking that it received but at other times seemed to shrug it off.
But if you troll around self-published SF&F, it’s not at all difficult to find plenty just as bad. But as you say, this one has heart.
Whether any of it contributed to him dying at age 48, I don’t know.
PennameWombat
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Taking this as a relative ranking for ‘worst book ever,’ and avoiding self-published and free stuff, I was amazed at how bad I found Mira Grant’s[1] Parasite. I worked out the Big Reveal somewhere around the first twenty pages and I hoped a nuclear bomb would wipe out every character involved, so that maybe some decent characters would appear. Her Big Evil CEO of a biomedical firm was the finest cardboard… but even more, some of the characters with whom we were apparently supposed to be sympathetic were much worse than him in their actions regarding the unfolding apocalypse.
I’ve found this with her work. Both this one and her Newsflesh trilogy had ideas that are square in my interest areas. But, I… just… hate… her… characters. In both cases I never made it past the first book in the respective trilogies and I think I’ve finally learned my lesson on her work.
I nominate this because if it gets any worse, I’m outta there. I finished this one because, like I said, parasites, be still my beating heart… so I desperately hoped it got better. I have limited time for reading and I refuse to force my way through truly terrible work. Such as one, if I recall, Messengers. In the second chapter a character so whiny, so annoying, just beyond my tolerance, appeared. Gone. Done. Outta there.
[1] Grant is a penname she uses for SF and Horror. She does Urban Fantasy under her real name Seanan McGuire.
I’ve found this with her work. Both this one and her Newsflesh trilogy had ideas that are square in my interest areas. But, I… just… hate… her… characters. In both cases I never made it past the first book in the respective trilogies and I think I’ve finally learned my lesson on her work.
I nominate this because if it gets any worse, I’m outta there. I finished this one because, like I said, parasites, be still my beating heart… so I desperately hoped it got better. I have limited time for reading and I refuse to force my way through truly terrible work. Such as one, if I recall, Messengers. In the second chapter a character so whiny, so annoying, just beyond my tolerance, appeared. Gone. Done. Outta there.
[1] Grant is a penname she uses for SF and Horror. She does Urban Fantasy under her real name Seanan McGuire.
lovecraft68
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As I was reading the part of your post about how the character suddenly loses integrity and does a completely unwarranted and disappointing 360 I was thinking Dani in GOT, and then you mentioned it.
I haven't read the books beyond the first, and I doubt the blowhard narcissist who is writing them has gotten that far, but her sudden switch from flawed nobility and some decency to a psycho-using family history as its only loose basis-was beyond ham handed and only done because no way on hell was that pile of shit going to end with a woman on the throne unless she was nude, on her knees and being raped.
Not sure if anyone is following, but a You tuber I subscribe to releases periodic updates on how Martin is not even halfway through the second to the last book because he's too busy talking about himself and taking on other projects. At his age, health and obvious inability to finish what he started, the HBO ending will be the only ending anyone will get. And I'm fine with that because the trash material and its base who tries to claim its anything but shock value, torture porn, and rape porn got the exact ending they deserved.
Yes, my pettiness knows no limits, and I fully embrace that.
