Buffoon:

superbatranger:
Atlas Shrugged. It took me months to finish that tedious load of crap. I thought it would be interesting, but damn, you could use it to put an insomniac to bed.

I'm surprised anyone would read that book for more than a hundred pages or so if they didn't like it, let alone finish it. It is one of the longest novels ever published, after all, why punish yourself? :P Personally, I... got something out of it, at least. It was as nothing compared to her earlier book, The Fountainhead.

For me, hmm... The Beach. I knew it had been made into a film by Danny Boyle and I thought he'd have good taste in source material. I was wrong.

Well, it was a case of "it can't be this bad the entire book". I was sadly mistaken.

Mockingjay:The entire cast that I cared about the first two books have a personality change. Katniss moves between insanity, whining, and grim determination at random, Peeta lost his mind, and I'm supposed to be rooting for a rebel faction with a clearly evil leader. I liked the ending though. It's a great deal better than the cop out ending where Snow is dead and everybody's fine forever.
Catcher in the Rye:This book does not deserve to be famous. It's about a certifiably crazy brooding teenager going on about why he hated the world because people were jerks, all while purposefully losing expensive equipment that wasn't his, not giving a shit about his grades, trying to kill someone, getting drunk and calling up his girlfriend, shouting all the time...you get the idea. This isn't making an intellectual point, nor does it have good characters, an interesting plot, or even particularly good writing because it's being told from the point of view of, again, a broody teenager. Cleanse it with fire.
Of Mice and Men:Hated this thing. I read the thing in the time that the assignment to read it was being handed out, and all I could think was"are you shitting me?". The movie rendition was better though. I actually felt sad about that ending.
The start of Inheritance:I actually liked inheritance, apart from the beginning, which I felt was rather slapdash. It gains momentum later on.
Every Terry Goodkind book after #6:The fuck was going on? I particularly hate the habit that characters have of pulling random facts out of their ass that are supposedly self evident.
The third kingkiller chronicle book:I am not being pessimistic here. I don't so much think that it won't live up to its pedigree as it's going to take another five years to write and I'll vibrate with anticipation by year 3. It'll be rather difficult to eat, I suppose.

Dangit2019:

Thank you for posting this. I needed a good laugh and that video supplied.

Happy to help! If watching someone mercilessly ripping Twilight to shreds can't brighten your day, what can?

I once read a collection of short stories from the Bolo universe a while back (titled Honor of the Regiment)
several of them were complete shit

SecretNegative:
Eragon. I felt unclean after reading it. Completely fucking atrocious.

i think its actually a really good book. i loved eragon and i loved brisinger. but i haven't read the empire yet.

the only book i remember that i read and was shit (and its not Iranian) is Les Misérables. well its not shit. its boring. he described the priest for 100 pages! when the priest's whole role was giving silver candle sticks to the hero. 100 pages! i couldn't get past the 250 page. it was just boring.

Brisingr.

First two books showed promise, then went incredibly cliche and poorly written about here. It made me wonder if Paolini was really responsible for the script of that abomination of a movie adaptation for Eragon.

The Hunger Games.

Honesty, I didn't hate it. It held my interest 'till the end but having finished it and closed the book I couldn't help but feel that some of it was a bit rushed.
The book just has a weird pacing that I didn't really like. Concepts were introduced and then ignored or rushed over to get to the next part.
I'll admit that some of the sour taste might have been from the finale of the games itself

girl with a pearl earring

it manages to have no plot,no likeable or even interesting characters, a dull setting, the whiniest most uptight little c**t for a main character/narrator and still be one of the most depressing stories i've ever read/seen/heard

seriously f***k prerequisite reading, why can't they ever give us good books?

Bitches please.

This isn't a book, but have any of you tried to read "My Immortal"?

Couldn't stand Lord of the Flies
I was actually pretty okay with it when I read it the first time (in grade 7) but when I read it again in grade 11 for English... well...
After having read a plethora of both good and bad books, I was shocked by how poorly the author transitioned between scenes and settings, and the overall theme of the book was the sort of highschool philosophy that made me hate going to English class

Also, as stated previously, for those of you who got tricked into reading Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead is shorter and, quite frankly, better written

As for the Eragon business
I liked the book until I read The Belgariad and realized that Paolini had managed somehow to copy certain parts of it almost word for word ;)
And he didn't even have the good bits either

beeman1991:
Couldn't stand Lord of the Flies
I was actually pretty okay with it when I read it the first time (in grade 7) but when I read it again in grade 11 for English... well...
After having read a plethora of both good and bad books, I was shocked by how poorly the author transitioned between scenes and settings, and the overall theme of the book was the sort of highschool philosophy that made me hate going to English class

In fairness, I think it was pretty good for a first novel. I quite liked it, though I don't agree that it's the masterpiece people claim it to be - for me, it was just a good book with the odd bit of clever symbolism.

I read Catcher in the Rye finally about a year ago, thought it was shit. The guy is such a whiny cunt.

I also hated The Fountainhead. Howard Roark can just go ahead and eat my ass.

OhJohnNo:

In fairness, I think it was pretty good for a first novel. I quite liked it, though I don't agree that it's the masterpiece people claim it to be - for me, it was just a good book with the odd bit of clever symbolism.

I was mostly bothered by the lack of writing "smoothness" and the fact that some of the events felt really fake (even in the context of the story)
It's certainly not the worst book I've read, but it definitely didnt meet expectations for what I was told was a "classic"

DugMachine:

I also hated The Fountainhead. Howard Roark can just go ahead and eat my ass.

You should probably avoid everything written by Ayn Rand, as most of her characters are like Roark

You should probably avoid everything written by Ayn Rand, as most of her characters are like Roark

I've heard this too and for that very reason i've avoided any other stories written by her. I wish I could explain why but I seriously raged everytime the dude spoke.

DugMachine:

I've heard this too and for that very reason i've avoided any other stories written by her. I wish I could explain why but I seriously raged everytime the dude spoke.

I think it's because Rand manages to combine her own brand of Ubermensch characters with the whole Lovecraft-inspired Our-Reasons-Are-Beyond-Your-Understanding attitude (minus obvious elements that make that element of a character or otherworldly horror work) that they all seem to subscribe to
It's like the uncanny valley of character development posing as the perfect being

It's definitely a lot worse in stuff like We the Living

I already put one in, but Sent by Margaret Peter Haddix ruined everything she made great in the first book.

She pretty much takes the simple-enough premise, and adds like 10 new convoluted ideas in the span of the first 20 pages. I could not keep reading because I had no idea what the stakes were or just what was going on.

|Sith|Eldarion:
Mockingjay:The entire cast that I cared about the first two books have a personality change. Katniss moves between insanity, whining, and grim determination at random, Peeta lost his mind, and I'm supposed to be rooting for a rebel faction with a clearly evil leader. I liked the ending though. It's a great deal better than the cop out ending where Snow is dead and everybody's fine forever.

This. The entire time I was reading that book I was thinking "who are these people, because they are not the characters I fell in love with." I seriously wonder if Collins wrote this or if she had a ghost writer, because I can not believe this is her work. Hell, my favorite character in this series is killed, in a fairly horrible way, and it didn't even really sink in for about half a page because the writing was so jumbled with Katniss' random whining thoughts that I couldn't see his death behind all the useless angst.

Horrible.

I heard so many great things about "Perks of Being a Wallflower." Hated it. Nothing else I can really say, it was just pointless and the main character seemed literally retarded.

David Foster Wallace's "Oblivion: Stories". It's a collection of short stories written by someone who decided that it's not literature if you can actually read it. The writer is explicitly anti-plot, which is the functional same as a doctor being anti-medicine. And he's definitely anti-reader.

Now, let me just drop in that I am far from illiterate. I'm an English graduate and currently in postgraduate study with a strong emphasis on political literature. I read heavy shit with no problem and I don't mind working a little to decipher the meaning; I love postmodernism and dense referential texts. I made it through Atlas Shrugged without the sheer evil contained within driving me to Arkham. I also believe firmly in freedom of artistic expression, but this book made me see the merits of the odd bibliocaust. Oblivion: Stories is a fraction of the length of Atlas Shrugged but feels significantly longer, and twice as pretentious. I could understand the points he was making and the themes of the text. He just made those points and explored those themes in the most deplorable ways a writer could. You will never see a book work so hard to spit in your eye.

The worst part is that the literary scene I'm in absolutely fucking loves David Foster Wallace and argue that the sheer pain he inflicts upon his readers is the 'point' and that's why he's so good. I, as you might have gathered by now, disagree. A spit in the eye is still a spit in the eye, no matter how well-aimed it is and I'm not going to thank him for spitting in my eye.

There are two reasons I can think of why people like David Foster Wallace.

1) The misconception that art must be unclear, 'difficult' or obscure in order for the points it makes to be worthy; to put it another way, art can't be clear, enjoyable or accessible. This perception leads to an envrionment where dissent is actually discouraged; if you don't like what is currently popular in the art world, the implication is because you don't get it. Like I say, Wallace's themes are obvious and the points he makes are not ones I particularly disagree with, although they're far from ground-breaking or even particularly insightful. It is not that I do not 'get' what he writes about. He just writes about it BADLY.

2) He's dead. This has a few ramifications when it comes to art and literature that you don't really see in other areas. Now that he's dead, his work is more 'valuable' in some way - think about Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers. A writer still working has a chance to screw things up and crash his career, but Wallace died. He can't crash.

As you can tell, this is something I really dislike.

All I can say is if you find yourself in a shop with David Foster Wallace on the shelves, turn around and get out as soon as you can. Run as if the very devil were behind you. Seek shelter and sanctuary and know terorr in the very depths of your soul, for you have walked in the shadows of the damned.

Then find yourself a copy of Dany Laferriere's "How To Make Love To A Negro Without Getting Tired". It is a brilliant and punchy book with a great jagged humour (as if you couldn't guess from the title) that satirises North American perspectives on inter-racial relations.

The Hunger Games hands down. Incredibly cliched and annoying characters and an ending that was obviously tweaked to make room for a sequel and squandered its only chance at redemption. It was advertised as a gritty, intense, brutal tale of survival. Its a romance novel for the teenage fangirl audience and that audience only.

/rant

also the deltora quest. absolute shit. the characters were shallow the story was not good the so called hard journey didn't seem hard enough. it was all so childish and shitty

Leftnt Sharpe:

-Tie-in good (Karen Traviss goes here?)

in all fairness though, its not that I take issue with her writing style but her approach to canon

Artemis Foul: The Atlantis Complex.

I honestly loved all of the other books, but this was the only one the was below awesome in my opinion. I didn't finish it, because as soon as we get to something interesting, it swaps to a different character in a different location! This was one reason! This isn't including the multiple chances of pace that made me go;

"Wait, WHAT?! That's bull, we all know that." Artemis... GOOD??? No. That just doesn't fit. The good thing about this series was because he was a scumbag and fully opportunistic, but still did good things as a sort of karmic balance.

Mikael Hernandez:
I don't remember the title but aliens were attacking earth. A warring civilization that some how never thought to do much with weaponry (despite having been taking over planets for some time). They kick our asses but only by a small margin. Theres a whole universe of other aliens watching this and going "eh just let these uncivilized cretins duke it out". So it seems pretty interesting.

A resistance is formed, we fight back. Then when all is almost lost...fucking dracula goes aboard the aliens ship and kills them...

My first thought was "How the fuck did this get published?!?!"

god reminds me of doctor mcninja except bad and dracula doesnt have a giant laser on the moon ( i dont think)

Halo: The Flood. Knew how it would end and the way it was delivered was crap. Something a teenager would write in a month.

erttheking:
I can't help but feel that the ending to Lord Sunday came right the hell out of nowhere.

Yeah, I remember reading that and thinking "Wow, he must of really wanted to stop writing" It came out of bloody no where gave absolutely no round up to any of the events that happened.

I would have to say the girl that kicked the hornets nest. It was quite repetitive and lacked the charm of the first book, but I did like some parts of it.

The Wykydtron:

Romblen:
Maximum Ride: The Final Warning. It's the fourth in the Maximum Ride series which were for the most part pretty good, although the science was a bit strange at times.

I won't go into detail, but the book is about the main characters having nothing to do, so they go to Antarctica, play with penguins, defeat a brain in a jar(yes, really.) by accident via hurricane, then they talk to Congress about global warming.

Oh, and a talking dog grew wings for absolutely no reason.

Hmmmm, apart from that there's... Maybe the last few Darren Shan books in the Vampire and Demonata series'? He really seems to have a problem ending a long running series without throwing a "world resets from zero" plot device into it.

That oneshot he did about that executioner? Did anyone read that? Was actually really good I think. He just has to up the stakes to ridiculously high levels in his long running stuff so he can't really end things well without it coming off as Deus Ex Machina levels of contrivance

GOD I loved that book, brilliant stuff

Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was one of those books that is readable while it's in your hands, but leaves you with a general feeling of "WTF was that airplane novel shit I just read?" when you put it down. I also did the same thing with Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, The Da Vinci Code, and The Kite Runner, so apparently I suck at pattern recognition.

The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons. Part of me wants to toss in Endymion as well, but it was a passable book. The Rise of Endymion, though, that was just shiate all the way through.

I'll admit to a bit of bias in this, though - Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion are two of my favourite books, and I also love Illium and Olympos, so I had rather high expectations for Endymion and The Rise of Endymion.

I found Dan Brown's books to be hard to digest. The many inaccuraties (despite the fact that Brown said a good deal of the stuff he says was accurate), the WTF moments (like when in Illuminati, the good professor falls off a helicopter and lives to tell the tale) are just the tip of the iceberg.

SckizoBoy:
Dan Brown - that book that was turned into a film with Tom Hanks... which I'm currently very proud of being unable to remember the title of.

Other than that... oddly enough, when I read Song of Ice and Fire, I really didn't like it. I've still got the first few books kicking around (cheap fucker that I am, got a whole load for much cheapness), so I'll have to give it another go.

I thought about including book 2+ from the Song of Fire and Ice series since I haven't liked anything after book 1. But my beef with that isn't that the writing is shiate, but that I simply don't like the liberties he takes with narrative conventions.

Tono Makt:

SckizoBoy:
Dan Brown - that book that was turned into a film with Tom Hanks... which I'm currently very proud of being unable to remember the title of.

Other than that... oddly enough, when I read Song of Ice and Fire, I really didn't like it. I've still got the first few books kicking around (cheap fucker that I am, got a whole load for much cheapness), so I'll have to give it another go.

I thought about including book 2+ from the Song of Fire and Ice series since I haven't liked anything after book 1. But my beef with that isn't that the writing is shiate, but that I simply don't like the liberties he takes with narrative conventions.

Yeah, that series does go downhill. The eating:plot ratio just keeps going up and up and up...

I don't mind that GRRM disregards narrative conventions, but I do mind that he doesn't seem to disregard them in an organic or consistent way. Like, he'll kill off characters, but you can immediately tell which characters he will and won't kill off.