Books you finished and just thought: "Well...that was shit"

[Innegativeion]

READ!!! Nothing your school made you read. The School board knows as much about literature we'd like as much as I want to sacrifice Justin Bieber's soul to whichever supernatural embodyment of evil I can find.

Sorry, I am obliged to quote Terry Pratchett here:

Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.

With this out of the way, lots of time ago, I read a sci-fi book called ...something like Moon Ranbow or Lunar Rainbow (can't remeber exactly). Well it had two books and I stopped reading halfway through the second one. Because I realised I remembered nothing from what I read so far. This includes the first book. Which I finished the same week. I was just going through these books and absolutely nothing worth remembering was happening. I just left it off. I couldn't be arsed to finish it. I literally had to read everything again and jot down notes to follow the plot. And the plot wasn't even twisted or mysterious.

Ugh, I've had this reaction to an unsettling number of books I was made to read in highschool.

At the moment, those that particularly come to mind are

Silas Marner: NOTHING HAPPENS. The central conflict (at least according to the back of the book) shows up in the last third and is resolved in one chapter.

and

The first two books of Tale of Two Cities: Soooooo dragged on. I nearly lost it when it took Miss Pross 3 pages to ask when they were going back to England.

 

[Don Savik]

Any book I had to read in my American Literature course in high school. Huck Finn, Catcher in the Rye, The Old Man and the Sea, all that crap. HATED EM ALL. They were boring, irrelevant, and not worthy of their status. The only one I liked was The Great Gatsby because the story was at least somewhat interesting. I can't understand why these are classics.

Eragon. I felt unclean after reading it. Completly fucking atrocious.

He was 17 when he wrote the first one. For what thats worth I would say its better than most fanfic crap people on the internet spewed out. I enjoyed them, they weren't the best, but they were fun books.

 

[Freechoice]

Mass Effect: Deception.

Oh, I remember reading something about that on TV Tropes.

Spoiler: THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED

 

[sylekage]

I'm gonna go with Catcher in the Rye. I honestly had no idea what was going on in it, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why it became so huge.

Maybe I should read it again and pay more than half attention to it

 

[Renegade-pizza]

Mass Effect: Deception.

Oh, I remember reading something about that on TV Tropes.

Spoiler: THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED

I'd love to see a link for that tropes page. Also, his colon had also be an adrenaline ajunkie for whats coming next.

 

[croc3629]

Cycle of Hatred by Keith DeCandido

A Warcraft novelization far worse than almost anything Richard Knaak has ever written, except for Day of the Dragon, which was a steaming pile of shit from the first few pages and didn't get better from there.

Those two books caused me pain.

 

[SometimesSchizo]

Speaking as a big Chuck Palahniuk fan, I can safely say that Pygmy was kinda crap. The protagonist was impossible to relate to and the ending was totally inconsistent with the rest of the book. It was so bad I went and read Choke again to make myself feel better.

 

[tkioz]

If I think a book is shit I generally don't finish it... then again I've forced myself to read some stuff that I've found odious just so I can be informed about it; for example the Twilight series, it's a disgusting misogynistic piece of crap, and being actually able to say I've read it leaves 90% of it's fans unable to argue with you

 

[Jakub324]

Mockingjay, of the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
The first two book were alright at worst, but Mockingjay completely shifted the tone and feel of the series. The ending felt rushed, hollow, predictable and pandered to people like my sister, who aren't happy without a good love story.

 

[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?!?!"

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

I don't read bad books. I can tell pretty easily if I won't like it by the first chapter or two.

 

[putowtin]

All of the recent Star Wars books:
they are they paint by numbers of the literature world

Captcha: That Bad? yes captcha they really are!

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

The first Twilight book. Read through it on a friend's recommendation and at the end deciding I would never trust that friend for recommendations again.

Maximum Ride book 4, such a monumental let down after all the stories that had come before. I enjoyed the first three, and then along comes book 4 and just blindsides me.

Most recently, The Hunger Games. I read all three, and at the end of each one put it aside and said 'that was not a very good book' then I went and banged my head against a wall until all the stupid was gone.

 

[Korolev]

Gravity's rainbow - because it didn't make a lick of sense. And I know it wasn't supposed to, but still, I felt it was a waste of my time. It was strangeness for the sake of strangeness.

Also, Dice man. Because the characters are psychopaths.

 

[Buffoon]

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? 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.

 

[Piorn]

Walter Moers - Labyrinth der träumenden Bücher
Seriously, the first one was imaginative and exciting, but the second one was just the protagonist getting drunk and watching a puppet movie of the first book. A real slap in the face.

 

[Kehnerack]

Orson Scott Card's
Ender's Game Series
When it was released I worked at a bookstore and everyone I knew was raving about it.
I have even seen it in top 100 Sci-fi books of all time.
Beating out such amazing classics such as Douglas Adams.
And it is Total Shit!
I wish I could get back the time I spent reading it.
And there is No way it beats Hitchhiker's series!

 

[Fat4all]

At OP: Hey, not all required reading's were that bad. I remember that in the 4th grade our teacher had us read both "Animal Farm" and "Fahrenheit 415". I learned more about literature in Elementary school than in Middle or High school, that's for sure... Although in my final year of literature we did read the fascinating story "The Cold Equation".

On topic: While I'm usually a big murder mystery fan, and thus a big Agatha Christie fan, I was very disappointed with all of her Miss Marple stories. "A Murder is Announced", "A Pocket Full of Rye" and "Nemesis" were all underwhelming and a bit underdeveloped. I suppose I just don't like Miss Marple too much as a detective...

Luckily Agatha Christie also made the fantastic Hercule Poirot stories to balance them out.

 

[science girl]

I thought the Dreamcatcher by Stephen King was a bit disappointing. When I finished it I felt like if it had ended a few chapters before it would have been a better book overall. The movie of it was also terrible in my opinion.

 

[science girl]

The Hunger Games and the Twilight series. I did not understand the love and hype for these books at all.

you baster you did not understand for these books they are awesome well maybe not the not the frist twlight book but apart from that there awesome and your the baster for not geting it

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.