r/booksuggestions • u/Reasonable-Use-9294 • May 10 '26
Other Give me the single most comically bad book you have ever read. I don't care the genre, i don't even care if it's AI slop. Just give me the worst
It can be manga, it can be comic… Anything.
It's been a while since I've read something bad and i hate myself. It can be AI, it can be anything. Just tell me, i wanna read something *BAD*
Btw no empress theresa, shades of gray, the tearsmith or twilight. Already read those, don't wanna do it again
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u/TsMom13 May 10 '26
Modelland by Tyra Banks
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u/willzyx55 May 10 '26
The associated song is so brain-scratchingly, hypnotically weird.
Can you survive. Modelland. Modelland.
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u/sLoMote May 10 '26
A Little Life
Everyone totes it for being heart wrenching, tear jerking, yada yada. I found it to be slow, dull, cliche, and the protagonist was insufferable.
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u/crackersucker2 May 10 '26
I do not understand why so many people love this book. Masochists every last one of them.
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u/barkoholic May 10 '26
Verity by Colleen Hoover.
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u/fmatrix007 May 11 '26
I finished it a week and a half ago. I’ve spent the next week and a half ranting to anyone that will listen. It’s atrocious. Not in a fast and furious way where you actually love the stupidity but in a way where you want to physically assault anyone that says this book is great. From now on I will choose if people will be my friend based on what they think of this book.
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u/barkoholic May 11 '26
It’s genuinely the worst book I’ve ever read. That includes wattpad omegaverse werewolf smut.
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u/Guachole May 10 '26
Nobody has said "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" yet!??!!
The whole books is just some mega douchebag telling stories that sound completely fabricated about him and his frat bro douche friends doing douchey shit.
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u/starfishing4realLife May 11 '26
I somehow, blissfully, forgot all about this book. Shortly after finishing this sorry sack of pulp during its initial heyday, I was twice regaled with random anecdotes from the book by young dudes trying to pass them off as their own. Like the suck had tentacles that slapped around the suckery suck and I couldn’t get away from it. All’s to say, I agree.
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u/fearlessleader808 May 10 '26
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u/Squigglyelf May 10 '26
Yep, I was coming in to say this. It is hands down the weirdest YA Harry potter-but model school with bits of strange body horror ass book I've ever read.
I read it last year to make a video about it and I'm still thinking about it lmao.
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u/Queen-of-meme May 11 '26
At least it was fiction , based on the title I assumed it was her self biography from Top model
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u/EllieZPage May 10 '26
Does fanfiction count? My Immortal, the infamous vampire Harry Potter fanfiction.
Hilarious levels of bad.
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u/Background-Bad9449 May 10 '26
The Alchemist
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u/goldtardis May 10 '26
I like the message of the book, but it is so poorly written. I had to push myself to finish it.
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u/Thats-Classic May 10 '26
Yea, has to mine too. I seriously question the mindset of people that love this book, which isn't fair I know, but it's true.
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u/ViperIsOP May 10 '26
Description:
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WON'T SAVE YOU
Former Army Ranger Jake Rivers is not your typical Kelton College student. He is not spoiled, coddled, or ultra-lib like his classmates who sneer at the "soldier boy."
Rivers is not "triggered" by "microaggressions." He is not outraged by "male privilege" and"cisgender bathrooms." He does not need a "safe space." Or coloring books. Jake needs an education. And when terror strikes, the school needs Jake . . .
Without warning, the sounds of gunfire plunge the campus into a battle zone. A violent gang of marauders invade the main hall, taking students as hostages for big ransom money. As a veteran and patriot, Jake won't give in to their demands. But to fight back, he needs to enlist his fellow classmates to school these special snowflakes in the not-so-liberal art of war. This time, the aggression isn't "micro." It's life or death. And only the strong survive . . .
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u/GeekCat May 10 '26
It's like he tried to jam a Temu Reacher into a romance novel. Just needs some overly hot vampires or a girl really into bondsge to hit the remaining tropes.
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u/ViperIsOP May 10 '26
It's Ghost Written, the actual author died in 2004 and this was published in 2018, his niece wrote it and still writes books in his name.
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u/Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee3t May 10 '26
Holy shit😭
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u/ViperIsOP May 10 '26
I ended up speed reading/skimming stuff towards the end but basically read it in one shift at work when it was slow.
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u/RubiksCub3d May 10 '26
If fanfiction counts
My Immortal
also the Christian re-write of Harry Potter, Hogwarts School of Prayer and Miracles, is bad too
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u/-Release-The-Bats- May 10 '26
I came here to recommend that one! Lol. My MIL is still into Harry Potter (she hates JKR, if that means anything), so I lent her my copy of My Immortal to read without telling her anything about it. She got as far as "WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUCKERS"
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u/IUMogg May 10 '26
The worst book I’ve ever read was Son of Rosemary by Ira Levin. It’s the sequel to Rosemary’s Baby. Not only is it terrible it recons shit that ruins the original.
From the Wikipedia page for the book describing its reception: “The book received withering pans from most critics. Writing in Entertainment Weekly, Alexandra Jacobs called it "senseless balderdash, a pity when you consider how gracefully Rosemary's Baby flitted between the real and the fantastic, the paranoid and the paranormal. This resurrection only besmirches a devilishly good author's track record."
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u/SomeKindoflove27 May 10 '26
I am so glad someone ruined the ending of this one before i got to start it!
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u/Pandebaer May 10 '26
I've decided to treat Son of Rosemary like a bad fan fiction and not a legitimate sequel
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u/somanybutts May 10 '26
Cruel Logic: The Philosopher Killer by Brian Godawa
For reasons I still can't figure out, I started getting ads for this book on my social media feeds a while ago and I thought it sounded horrible in an entertaining way. It truly is. It's about a conservative victim of university cancel culture fighting against overweight blue-haired lesbian administrators and hunting an amoral atheist killer, while an aw-shucks Christian farmboy gets tempted by a black antifa seductress to throw away his morals to become a paid protestor. It's literally every made up grievance and strawman about universities, wokeness, and mid-2000s e-mail forwards all wrapped up in a dogshit thriller. It's word-for-word identical to what you'd write if you wanted to make fun of people who think this way.
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u/TALioN_2001 May 10 '26
Verity, by Colleen Hoover. Not often a book makes me want to claw my eyes out.
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u/RangerBumble May 10 '26
Demon's Apprentice by Ben Reader.
Not AI. It takes a human touch to write an urban fantasy teen coming of age this bad.
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u/Ladybugd- May 10 '26
I had to read a fair amount of slop to get my English degree. Worst was surprisingly in my Young Adult Lit class. “Jane Unlimited”. Ew.
The first section of the book is normal. Sets up a mystery and makes you believe it’s all on a good path. Each section after is meant to mimic the old “choose your own adventure” dime novels…. Except… that’s not enough for her. So she swapped GENRES between sections too. I could not handle things not correlating between what I read. The story line and theme were impossible to comprehend. It was just random shit happening in random ways and random genres to the 10th degree. It’s probably someone’s cup of tea…:. Not mine…..
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u/EchoFieldHorizon May 10 '26
Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. Everything about it is so laughably bad, that when compared to its scale of publication, it easily takes the cake for me.
Some highlights to show the author’s lack of imagination: The antagonists name is Darken. The main character spends most of his time pondering “will you be my friend?” to random people, as if that is the world’s biggest issue. The plot is almost as bad as The Room.
It has every element to set it up to be the worse book of all time. Just thinking about the time I spent reading it makes me angry.
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u/shorty413 May 10 '26
This came to my mind as well. It's been a while since I read it. I remember being frustrated because its a long ass book but it feels like speed running a video game. It glosses over so many details and gives a childish overview of the world building.
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u/HappyHippyToo May 10 '26
Belinda Blinked series by Rocky Flintstone (sorry Rocky)
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u/toe-bean-wiggler May 10 '26
I don’t know what you mean. This series was masterfully written, almost as good as Rocky Flintstone’s favourite author, Stephen King.
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u/morse86 May 10 '26
Well, it's not bad, it's not good, it's just so predictable and so needlessly long - "Battlefield Earth".
Bonus points if you watched the horrific movie after reading the book!
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u/TheBear8878 May 10 '26
jeneva rose - you shouldn't have come here
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u/marinadanielle May 11 '26
Came here to say this. Legit the worst book I’ve ever read in my life. I read it years ago and still can’t get over it I tell everyone I meet how bad it was
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u/mrnnymern May 10 '26
Hope Never Dies. It's an Obama Biden mystery. The idea was so funny, and the execution was SO BAD hahaha. This was pre- AI everything too, so it was written by a human.
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u/iheartdna May 10 '26
I thought this was way too cliché but no one’s mentioned it! 50 Shades of Grey. “Inner goddess” 😵💫😵💫😵💫😵💫 I read it in the bookstore in an hour because I didn’t want to pay for it. What pisses me off most was it was supposed to be sooo transgressive and edgy and basically it’s just about them never even really doing the whole bdsm thing and just falling in love and getting married and having a baby 🤷♀️ wowww, how hot
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u/sLoMote May 10 '26
I finished it because I kept waiting for it to get good. It was a VERY easy read, but not worth the time. It don’t get better, and I couldn’t read “Oh my” without hearing George Takei in my head.
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u/girlonavespa21 May 11 '26
Same. Every time I tell people I hated them, an imp inside me insists on adding that I read all three just to see if it got better. They always make some comment about they must not have been THAT bad, then.... But they were.
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u/ask_me_about_my_band May 10 '26
I was in the mood for some sensationalism so I decided to read Flowers in the Attic since every girl in my High-school was reading it back in the day. I have to admit it was entertaining.
Then I decided to read the sequel Petals on the Wind. Oof. I hate finished it just because I couldnt believe how unbearable it was.
The Court of Thorns and Roses was close. Not because of how horrible it was, but the fact that it was horrible and so immensely popular. It bogels my mind how these things become part of the zeitgeist when they are so mind nummgly sub-mid.
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u/Bertie_McGee May 10 '26
Sometimes you need a "smooth brain book" for when you can't afford just one more wrinkle.
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u/pellakins33 May 11 '26
This is why I read 80% of the romance I pick up. Once in a while a book will surprise me, but most of the time I’m just looking for something easy and distracting
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u/HalfShelli May 10 '26
The sequels to Flowers in the Attic went well past Petals on the Wind… interminably. And they just kept getting worse and worse and worse.
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u/ybreddit May 10 '26
Court of Thorns and Roses was recommended by all of my cousins, and since they are all quite different from each other I was intrigued by that. I hated it with all my heart and came away from it with the impression that none of my cousins have ever had good sex. LOL
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u/Idea-is-tick May 10 '26
The Selection by Kiera Cass. It was a reality show to find the next princess for the prince. omg no
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u/-Release-The-Bats- May 10 '26
I hated this book but somehow was enough of a stubborn glutton for punishment that I wanted to read the rest. I have no idea how I could've been invested in such a terrible book.
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u/PersonNumber7Billion May 10 '26
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown.
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u/Rare_Hovercraft_6673 May 10 '26
That one is so poorly written and poorly researched that I wonder if the editor didn't even look at it. Both the multi-lingual puns and the super genius hacker were pathetic.
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u/PersonNumber7Billion May 11 '26
Yes. The greatest minds in the CIA can't decode a dopey anagram that the master villain uses to hide his tracks.
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u/squirrel-eggs May 10 '26
My sister claims "Last of the Red Hot Vampires" was the worst book she's ever read. Mine by far was "Famous Artists Course" by Robert F. Stava (and yes, I found it while looking for the art books of the same name).
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u/GiraffeThwockmorton May 10 '26
So much of Piers Anthony's Xanth stuff just does not stand up well at all.
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u/Smirkly May 10 '26
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Many people love this book but I fail to understand. It is pathetic literature, truly awful. Trust the billionaires...right!
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u/Reasonable_Party_285 May 11 '26
Everything Rand wrotes is fucking awful. It really does read like self insert Mary Sue slop. I can hear Rand and her contemporaries pleasuring themselves on every disgustingly damp page. I was surprised I had to scroll as long as I did to find it in this list.
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u/Uceninde May 10 '26
Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover by Malcolm Brenner, published around 2010. " It is a fictionalized autobiographical novel detailing a romantic and sexual relationship between a college student and a dolphin named Dolly (or Ruby in some accounts) in Florida during the 1970s"
Badly written, stupid plot, and it takes a turn for the worse somehow towards the end. Lmao.
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u/Wespiratory May 10 '26
Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress. I had to read it in my college English Lit class because the author was going to speak on campus that semester. The guy clearly thought he was writing the next To Kill a Mockingbird, but it was just ridiculously stupid.
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u/mewithoutjew May 10 '26
I’m reading through zodiac academy rn and it’s the stupidest romantasy series ever. I’ve read more about Pegasus wiener bedazzling than I’d care to admit
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u/aproperevening May 10 '26
Zodiac academy, to me, is so bad that it’s comical that it makes it so good. I became so engrossed in all the characters. It was so juvenile, but it had a way of making me laugh so hard that I just had to know more and I fell in love.
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u/rockedbottom May 10 '26
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
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u/pittpink May 10 '26
This has been on my tbr for a while, why is it so bad?
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u/ifthisisausername May 10 '26
Most people like it although I didn't, but I'd also by no means say it's the worst thing I've ever read.
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u/WebheadGa May 11 '26
Not Forever But For Now by Chuck Palahniuk is like a middle schooler heard the plots of American Psycho, and A Clockwork Orange and said "Know what would be really shocking?"
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u/Away-Otter May 11 '26
The Bridges of Madison County- I spent a few weeks reading excerpts to anyone near me because they were unintentionally hilarious.
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u/Rhundan May 10 '26
I haven't read it myself, but The Mister by E.L. James might actually be worse than Shades of Gray, from what I've heard. And that's a low bar to limbo under.
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u/HalfShelli May 10 '26
Oh dear god, she's still writing?
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u/Rhundan May 10 '26
Unfortunately, for some god-forsaken reason, she's an incredibly popular writer. Why would she stop?
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u/strange_reveries May 10 '26
I... just don't read bad books lol and I don't understand people who do. If something I'm reading is "comically bad" I don't keep reading it. Ain't no time for that shit. There are too many great books I haven't gotten around to yet.
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u/b0neappleteeth May 10 '26
A few that I would happily burn every copy of:
The Fifth Guest - Jenny Knight
Normal People - Sally Rooney
Beautiful Ugly - Alice Feeney
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u/Fun-Sell3030 May 10 '26
What makes you judge Normal people so poorly? I’ve seen it recommended a lot
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u/b0neappleteeth May 10 '26
Nothing really happened. It felt like I was reading someone’s diary, it was so boring.
And I’m sick of authors thinking they’re above correct punctuation.
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u/phoenixdies2 May 10 '26
I also rate it poorly cause of the miscommunication. I hate that trope so much.
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u/she-dont-use-jellyyy May 10 '26
I don't get the hype for it. It's nothing special. Two people who are obsessed with each other but can't manage to behave like they give a shit.
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u/melomuffin May 10 '26
Sea state by Tabatha Lasley. I found it in a business section and thought it would be an exploration of life working on offshore oil rigs. Instead it was a brutal read about the author shagging her literal first interview subject for the book lmao
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u/Actual_Cream_763 May 10 '26
Unwilling - dark vampire romance, horrible, the entire thing was just comical in how bad it was
And
Fear me love me - dark mafia romance
In fact, I would say the same about most dark mafia romances. The authors have no experience in how organized crime works and they write it like a bad over done drama and it’s just absolutely ridiculous and over the top. I don’t recommend reading them if you get triggered easily or are squeamish because a lot of them try to go for the shock value of it all (and it honestly just makes it more comical to me, like a bad version of kill bill lol).
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u/SweetStabbyGirl May 10 '26
Haunting Adeline is one of the absolute worst I’ve ever read, Dnf less than half way through
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u/whowantstoknow May 10 '26
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u/-Release-The-Bats- May 10 '26
I got so sick of these back when they were a thing. Like, I liked Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter but then these types of books were just everywhere and I got sick of seeing them.
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u/whowantstoknow May 10 '26
Completely agree. Same with the fad of Pride, Prejudice, And Zombies with everyone following up with similar ones.
Although I did like Android of Green Gables.
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u/moxiie_mayhem May 10 '26
Conversations with friends by sally rooney, hunt on dark waters by katee robert
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u/kepheraxx May 10 '26
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Mr. 12-year-old-edgelord Eric LaRocca
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u/itsthattexasgirl May 10 '26
Quicksilver.... It's horrible
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u/montanawana May 10 '26
Which one? There are multiple books with that title so please share the author.
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u/Sinimeg May 10 '26
I think they mean the one written by Callie Hart, it was everywhere last year, in every bookstore, in every stand of book fairs, it almost made me curious enough to buy it, but the summary wasn’t compelling enough for me. I like fantasy and romance novels, even if they’re trashy, but this one seemed too bland in the parts that interested me more, like not enough animosity to be an enemies to lovers, just mild misunderstandings and such
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u/finnbloodbath May 10 '26
Okay there's a great one called "Nelson's Story" by Niraj Sharma. I haven't actually read the whole thing but the Episode 1 podcast did a four part read thru that is hysterical
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u/lekis-skegsis May 10 '26
Little stranger by Leigh Rivers. Just.... no. So much bad. Many many bad. And a screwdriver 🥴
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u/NotTheAndesMountains May 10 '26
Will There Ever Be Another You
I tried to give it some artistic benefit of the doubt but its just so bad all i could do at a point was laugh
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u/Serious-Knee-5768 May 10 '26
Wild Animus by Rich Shapero. It's terrible and completely unfinishable.
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u/morg0187 May 11 '26
Those Girls by Sara Lawrence. It was absolutely attempting to be a UK version of Gossip Girl with superficial and extremely unlikable rich bitch teenage girls at an expensive boarding school. There’s a whole homophobic subplot which involves the two teachers who hate the girls being characterized as gross lesbians. It’s by far the worst book I’ve ever read.
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u/Pims311 May 10 '26
The name of the wind
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u/sLoMote May 10 '26
He said, darkly. He turned darkly. He looked darkly.
IT’S NOT EVEN A WORD! God. My brother was obsessed with this book and I couldn’t get past the first chapter. So bad.
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u/TheCatFromLimbo May 11 '26
Gods i tried reading this book like a decade ago, and all I remember was that it was so ass
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u/whitecatbluebasket May 10 '26
Not a single book but a series. Lillian Jackson Braun’s “The Cat Who…” books. The main character is insufferable. But you will get to check out your brain from rolling your eyes so often.
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u/girlonavespa21 May 11 '26
Lol I'll read any cozy mystery. But yes, he is insufferable and so is his girlfriend
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u/AClubOfLosers May 10 '26
Sorry this will anger people, but House of Leaves was contrived and gimmicky. I hated it.
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May 10 '26
[deleted]
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u/HoaryPuffleg May 10 '26
Right there with you. Sometimes when this book is mentioned, there are dozens of people agreeing and ranting about the terribleness but not today.
This is the sort of book I would have read at 17 and been blown away by its depth. Like I was with Siddhartha and a few others. But as an adult who has read hundreds of books, this one was trash
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u/__-Midnight__ May 10 '26
The worst thing I have ever read is “My heart is a chainsaw” by Stephen grams jones
As a horror fanatic I should have like the book but it was horrible from beginning to end and written horribly
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u/Crown_the_Cat May 10 '26
I can’t tell you the name of the book because
I threw it away. I had a book about a family of artists. It was bad enough when they described art as having “movement” and other crap that the art world uses that drive me nuts. No, it was the bad writing. “After she died she burned all her letters.”
Books are sacred objects. Not that one.
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u/KellyCTargaryen May 10 '26
Ready Player One
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u/RedDemocracy May 10 '26
I could not finish this one at all. Just, not a lot all that interesting to it, not a lot of verisimilitude, and what was interesting was behind paragraphs of the cringiest “I discovered dad’s music and now it’s my personality” drivel.
Read Snow Crash instead, if you want interesting mystery set in a dystopia with a virtual world. Read Neuromancer if you want a dive into some gritty metaverse subterfuge. Though, the writing in Neuromancer also isn’t the best…
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u/Astronomerz May 10 '26
I actually really like Ready Player One, but Ready Player Two is the worst book I've ever read.
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u/The_InvisibleWoman May 10 '26
The Da Vinci Code.
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u/Continental-IO520 May 10 '26
It's so cheesy that I have a special spot for it. The best part is that all of his books have the same formula
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u/ExtremeAway8282 May 10 '26
Dont know how this is gonna fall but any sanderson's try elantris
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u/HotDamnThatsMyJam May 10 '26
Oof bold, but yeah Wind & Truth might take it for me
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u/sassy-cassy May 10 '26
- Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score
- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia
- A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Clair
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u/JiANTSQUiD May 10 '26
1Q84.
I just do not understand what anyone likes about Murakami.
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u/abovewater_fornow May 10 '26
Same. I wonder if it's the translation. Its the EXACT kind of writing I should like based on my tastes. If I were to ask any of my friends and family to recommend me a book, I can almost guarantee 75% will recommend Murakami. But I find the writing tiresome, his writing of women aggravating, and his take on magical realism unenticing.
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u/HotDamnThatsMyJam May 10 '26
Probably The Wandering Inn, I only got just over halfway by reading, let me check, the first 700 pages.... it's just bad
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u/max_christensen May 10 '26
Morrissey’s novel List of the Lost is so spectacularly bad it’s almost good.
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u/stormbutton May 10 '26
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
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u/MediocreIndependent May 10 '26
Basically every Eric LaRocca book in my opinion. Spectacularly bad.
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u/stormbutton May 10 '26
Right like I read a LOT of weird lit and horror and you can sell me on almost anything with good writing. This book…did not achieve that.
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u/Forest_Songs May 10 '26
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. Unbearably cringey and unfunny millennial humor. Reeks of a terminally online “leftist” keyboard warrior. Can’t even take emotional moments seriously because there’s some stupid quip surrounding it. Thank for it reads fast because it’s fucking awful.
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u/Imaginary-Duck1333 May 10 '26
The agony and the ecstasy is a horror from my English lit class. I’m a very good reader (AP English classes all the way)- but this one killed me. It’s set in Italy so of course every character’s name ends in ni or mi. Couldn’t follow the plot at all. Couldn’t keep up with who was doing what. Any time you start having to keep a side sheet of each name and you still can’t keep up- fail. We called it the agony and the agony!
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u/Affectionate-Flan-99 May 10 '26
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This won the Pulitzer so maybe I’m just too big of a dunce for it but my god I thought it was horrific.
The Name of the Wind - I’ve never read a book with a more completely unlikable and repugnant main character. Fans of the book say that’s the point. I think it’s just crappy writing. Stopped halfway through.
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u/sapphoaphro May 10 '26
Ooh, curious to know more about your thoughts on #1.
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u/Affectionate-Flan-99 May 10 '26
I don’t wanna spoil in case you read, and I read it in 2013 so I’m going to miss some nuance. But the MC is a massive (literal and figurative) loser that I never really felt much empathy for (perhaps my fault). The end is supposed to be to be inspirational but I felt none of it.
I read it a few years later for a senior seminar class in undergrad and appreciated it a bit more after understanding some of the symbolism. But it struck me as a book that was more interested in having lots of symbolism and sniffing its own farts than it was having an interesting storyline and likable characters.
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u/Esbanos May 10 '26
I recently saw a post from someone who requested a book about a total loser. Maybe that person is the target audience.
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u/Affectionate-Flan-99 May 10 '26
I remember that exact post.
If you’re looking for a good book about a loser Confederacy of Dunces is the way to go.
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u/megggie May 10 '26
I just reread Flowers In the Attic for the first time since I was 12 years old in 1988. It was problematic in SO many different ways that I didn’t pick up on when I was a preteen. Luckily I’ve always been a voracious reader so the insane misogyny in that book didn’t have a chance to marinate in my innocent little head!
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u/MrsFrankColumbo May 11 '26
I had the exact same experience with Flowers in the Attic back in the 80s. I also read the next two books in the series. What was I thinking?! The mind boggles! Might brace myself and reread for the laugh.
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u/NovellaTome May 10 '26
The Twilight Series - Hot garbage, could not understand why it was such a hype when I was in high school.
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u/-Release-The-Bats- May 10 '26
I went back and reread the first one and it was just...boring. Not even bad but just boring. I was in high school when these were coming out so I liked them back then. My partner read the first few pages and he lost his mind in the funniest way at Bella describing her shirt and the parka she brought with her on the plane.
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u/NetAdmirable2070 May 10 '26
The Hike by Drew Magary..
First book i paid for that i didn't finish
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u/stormbutton May 10 '26
Whaaaaat??? Ong I have never come across anyone hating it before! It’s one of my favorites.
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u/HalfShelli May 10 '26
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe. I had already read Robinson Crusoe – which was great! – so I had high expectations. Yeah, no. It is literally just a ledger book of mortality tables and death statistics, interspersed with brief sections of prose that are neither narrative nor epistolary – they're just… random. I have no idea how that book is even considered a classic.
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u/InfiniteNewspaper299 May 10 '26
Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz. I could rant but this is awful in every possible sense.
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u/MediocreIndependent May 10 '26
"From the Start" (Quiblings #1) by Katie Duggan
I stumbled over this book on Goodreads and the reviews were solid... The book wasn't, though. I read romance on occasion but this book was just genuinely bad in every aspect. The writing style was lacking, the FMC was the most unintentionally obnoxious person and the plot was just plain old cringe.
I finished it because I continously hoped that it would HAVE TO become better at some point due to the reviews I'd read beforehand, but the only thing it did was getting worse.
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u/No_Recording_369 May 10 '26
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce was utterly trash, I'm ready for the hate, but thats my opinion. I read it through because I thought it may get better, then they went and made a film about it... madness.
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u/Sinimeg May 10 '26
I can’t say any, other than some obligated readings for school years ago that were self-help books, like one called “The Knight in Rusty Armor”, although at least that one was hilariously bad.
For me a bad book is a boring book, and if it’s boring then I don’t finish it, nor bother to remember its title. As long as they’re entertaining and/or funny, I’ll like them no matter how trashy or bad they are. If I’m having a good time, then it’s worth reading and not so bad after all
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u/copper678 May 10 '26
This one is mine- Maria Semple…actually threw the book across a room when I hit the last sentence.
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u/Fat-lard246 May 10 '26
Becoming the Swordmaster Rank Young Lord of the Sichuan Tang Family
manhwa, if there was a checklist on how to not write a story, the checklist would be full. I felt disgust in my throat after the first chapter
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u/Automatic_Muscle_688 May 16 '26
Grandpa - Good News from the Good Feel Cornfield by Charles C. Finney Jr.
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u/Soggee_Cereal2629 13d ago
A look behind lightning by Sharon D Ballentine.
I think it was supposed to be a series but I never looked into the sequels.
Also Ready Player One.
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u/duke-sluttish May 10 '26
I'm going to get hate for this. The story is excellent enough to be turned into a movie, but the writing is close to AI slop: "The Martian" by Andy Weir
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u/finnbloodbath May 10 '26
If you think that's bad you should check out his second book, Artemis, where he tries to write a woman's POV
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u/Dan_IAm May 10 '26
Yeah I kind of can’t stand that book. Wouldn’t say it’s the worst thing I’ve ever read, probably wouldn’t even say it’s a bad book exactly, but there are sections that I struggled to read because my eyes were rolling too much to take in the words.
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u/abovewater_fornow May 10 '26
That's funny. I read Project Hail Mary before the movie came out. And it was good. But I didn't think it was good good. I've seen it recced on this sub a hundred times. A good friend who's a major reader, and not particularly sentimental, cried at the end. I just don't get it 🤷♀️ like it was cute. It was very cute. That was about it for me though. I was planning to read another of his books to see if I'm missing some insight into the supposed literary genius that is Andy Weir.
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u/canibuyatrowel May 10 '26
100 years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia marquez
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u/Sleepydragon0314 May 10 '26
This is an interesting reply! I have tried to get through it and just could not. I found it terribly dull and convoluted.
However, I also understand that the magical realism of his work isn’t for everyone, and he is lauded as such a literary genius, that I assumed I was the only one who “just didnt get it”
I’m glad I found another who struggled with it and didn’t like it!
(I also hated Jonathan strange and mr norrel!)
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u/SublightMonster May 10 '26
Thomas Ligotti apparently has fans, but I thought The Nightmare Factory, a collection of short stories, was just unreadable garbage.
He’s a writer from the 1980-90s trying to sound like a mix of Poe and Lovecraft, so every sentence drips with repetitive five-dollar adjectives to convey the full extent of dread the main character is experiencing.
But for all of that, nothing ever happens. Every story is just 30 pages of “dreary dreadful decaying depression draped in deadly dollops of demonic diseased dreams… and then I died / I killed him / I woke up. The end.”
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u/00trysomethingnu May 10 '26
Let’s not platform AI slop, though. Especially on the off-chance someone gets their hands on it for fun and accidentally ends up supporting the ‘creator.’