what book you most regret having read? must have finished the fucker to qualify. (1 Viewer)

[skiroomalum]

Hands down The Davinci Code.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Gideon Bible

 

[Bruno Dante]

I really couldn't get away with 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'.
Sorry.

 

[Otto jr]

Harry F. Potter.

 

[number6horse]

"The Art Of Fielding" by Chad Harbach. Baseball and Buddhism are two "religions" I identify with, but this 500 pp. screenplay-treatment-in-progress has made me swear off of any book over 300 pp. since then. I need to get over that sometime and I will..... but goddamn.... what an investment of time for so little of a return.

 

[hollowlight]

I was going to name one of the very few Dean Koontz books I've read, but The Davinci Code takes the cake.

 

[David]

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

 

[Black Swan]

Meaning what? Regret because it is over
or regret because it was a waste of time?

 

[Purple Stickpin]

The latter, Black Swan. Like that time you tried to seduce Richard Simmons. :rolleyes:

I've not made it through most books I didn't like, so I'm not sure I have an answer other than this: Me and Your Sometimes Love Poems. It's the only book I've hated that I actually read through, all the worthless way. What a pile of sappy tripe. Good thing Buk ended that episode with a multi-transference of "THE BUST" and the concomitant pint of Cutty Sark, cellophane and all. At least something funny came out of that.

See? That's gettin' to it. Those of you who cite The Davinci Code either like to be counter-populist or pseudo-intellectual. I called out the master. And I'm right.

 

[Black Swan]

The latter, Black Swan. Like that time you tried to seduce Richard Simmons. :rolleyes:

Reading Simmons wouldn't be as bad as the exercises that he suggests. Plus, if you count the outfits that you would need in order to look GREAT. :abge:
If I did, I would deeply regret.

I usually do not finish books that I dislike. o_0o

 

[hollowlight]

See? That's gettin' to it. Those of you who cite The Davinci Code either like to be counter-populist or pseudo-intellectual. I called out the master. And I'm right.

Well, I adore Stephen King, so I'm not counter-populist. And I loathe David Foster Wallace so I'm not pseudo-intellectual. That must mean Dan Brown is a terrible novelist.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Well played, the both of you...

 

[skiroomalum]

I could also add Love In The Time Of Cholera. I have an unfortunate compulsion to finish almost every book after the first two pages.
I actually stopped reading The Tropic Of Cancer after the first page and haven't picked it up again.

 

[5:28am]

War and Peace... maybe it was a bad translation. I was incarcerated at the time and I would have preferred something by Dostoevsky.

 

[Black Swan]

Was it this one, five twenty eight ?

 

[5:28am]

I wish. :DD

 

[Skygazer]

Well, I adore Stephen King,

Well yes, he's all that. . . but do ya like his books? Bought Doctor Sleep recently for my Kindle, but have you seen that for Joyland he has said the following:

"I also loved the paperbacks I grew up with as a kid, and for that reason, we're going to hold off on e-publishing this one for the time being. Joyland will be coming out in paperback, and folks who want to read it will have to buy the actual book." Stephen King

Not sure if I think it's lovely and sweetly sentimental or just a bit schoolmarmish, do remember and still buy actual books, would have preferred to choose the option for myself, but do kind of understand what he is saying.

 

[hollowlight]

Yeah, I'm okay with that. Maybe people will dust off their library cards for this one. I know I will.

 

[LickTheStar]

I've finished the last couple Dean Koontz books out of some sort of misplaced loyalty... I read Koontz and King and Barker a lot in middle and high school, but can't stomach them much anymore... But those last two Koontz books almost put me under. They're thinly veiled screeds of a mentally-unbalanced right-winger with an extreme gun fetish. Ugh...

 

[Dora]

Twilight, even if I couldn't read the last volume. I want those hours back. Those books should never have been written, ever.

 

[jordan]

why not just stop reading? so you can post in threads like this?

 

[Skygazer]

I've finished the last couple Dean Koontz books out of some sort of misplaced loyalty... I read Koontz and King and Barker a lot in middle and high school, but can't stomach them much anymore... But those last two Koontz books almost put me under. They're thinly veiled screeds of a mentally-unbalanced right-winger with an extreme gun fetish. Ugh...

I agree and I suppose we all got into that genre in high school, read them like crazy and then sickened ourselves of them.
But for me, Stephen King is set apart and stands beside Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Robert L. Stevenson and H.G.Wells.
I loved Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Green Mile series, Dolores Claiborne, Different Seasons novellas (including Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption).
His JFK novel 11/22/63, I read this year and really enjoyed it.

 

[LickTheStar]

I keep hearing good things about 11/22/63 and will have to try it out. I was just so underwhelmed by the Dark Tower stuff, I'm a bit wary... some day though.

 

[Rekrab]

I never finish a book if I'm not enjoying it, so I've got nothing. I don't even finish a lot of books that I'm loving. Mostly, I start books. Sometimes I come back years later and finish them. Worse book I abandoned because it stank: The Girl with the Half-Assed Tattoo (or whatever the actual title is) by that dead Swedish guy.

 

[jordan]

The worst book I put down out of hatred was Adverbs by Daniel Handler. By far and away the most precious piece of shit ever published. I literally hated the book, meaning that it was so infuriatingly awful that I wanted to punch it repeatedly.

edit: lest you think I'm being harsh, here is the blurb, which was clearly written by the author:

Can Joe help it if he falls in love with people who don't make him happy? And what about Helena—she's in love, but somehow this isn't enough. Shouldn't it be? And if it isn't enough, does this mean she's not really in love? It certainly seems to be spoiling the love she's in. And let's say there's a volcano underneath the city—doesn't that make things more urgent? Does urgency mean that you should keep the person you're with, or search for the best possible person? And what if the best possible person loves someone else—like the Snow Queen, for instance?

This novel may not answer these questions, but nevertheless the author and publisher hope it will be of interest.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Love, volcanos, and Snow Queens. What's not to like? :eek:

 

[5:28am]

I just realized that 90% of the science fiction novels I've read are contenders in this category.

At least most of them have cool pictures on the cover...

 

[Rekrab]

Sci-Fi covers promise so much, the books deliver so little -- in general. There are some great ones.

 

[roni]

haven't read into this thread until right now, due to the headline-demand of its founder, that one "must have finished the fucker to qualify".

I've experienced a BIIIIIIG lot of bad books; but once I've found that out, NEVER considered to read them any further.

That obviously doesn't qualify me to name one of them.
Only thing I can say is:
I don't see Any reason, why a sane or semi-sane person should read through a book they hate (unless it's their job to do so).

note:
this is Not meant to insult all you patient readers of sucking books! I just don't understand it.

 

[LickTheStar]

I used to be compelled to finish something I started, no matter what. With some books, it became a bit of challenge to finish them...

But then I realized there were too damn many books to read and it wasn't worth my time to continue finishing up shit books.

 

[Bukfan]

Same here. Who wants to finish a shitty book? Now, a thread about unfinished shitty books would be a different matter. :hmh:

 

[Skygazer]

Probably the worst book I've finished and regretted reading was Jean Cocteau: Les Enfant Terribles, starts out weird, becomes grim and weird, mostly the everyone in it dies (thankfully there aren't too many characters) and the worst part is, you don't really care, I kept thinking it started out bad, so it has to have a better outcome, but nope. Thankfully it's a short book and nice sketches throughout the book though by the author.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Hmmm, I think I have a copy of that somewhere around here. Sounds as if I should put it on my "to be read" list and then never get around to it, like so many other books...

 

[Ponder]

Kosinski.

 

[d gray]

Now, a thread about unfinished shitty books would be a different matter. :hmh:

how about "threads i most regret having read"...:?:

 

[Bukfan]

Great idea! I think we would have to limit the thread to, say, "10 threads i most regret having read", otherwise we´ll never finish the thread. :p

 

[5:28am]

I don't see Any reason, why a sane or semi-sane person should read through a book they hate (unless it's their job to do so).

I've finished books because they were historically significant. Marx's Capital is one of those...

Some of it was witty, esp. the part where he describes a young woman dying of exhaustion "without having finished her work, much to the astonishment of her employer."

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Kosinski.

You know, I've read several (The Painted Bird, Steps, Being There) that are great. Some others were horrible.

 

[skiroomalum]

Painted Bird was possibly partially ghostwritten by one of Kosinski's "students". Controversial authorship issue with that one.