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

[Atmos Duality]

Anything with the name "Tom Clancy" on the cover from the late 90s onward. They're like the Dirk Pitt books, only instead of using nifty tidbids of Oceania and general madness to drive the plot forward, it's just hundreds of pages of shit you'd see in a Michael Bay screenplay.

"Cutting Edge" was a book I picked up at the supermarket while out camping, and it literally padded its plot out for close to 300 pages, only to resolve EVERYTHING clumsily in about half a page.

"He runs in, shoots the guy in the head, and saves the hostage. PLOT COMPLETE!"

Certain Dean Koontz novels disappointed me greatly, like the 3rd Odd Thomas novel.

 

[BartyMae]

I read Rhapsody: Child of Blood by Elizabeth Hayden(?) a while back. I have no idea why. I kept thinking it would get better, but it didn't. It really, really didn't. I gave it away as soon as I could.

Hell's Gate by David Weber and...somebody else who I don't remember. Was pretty bad. I don't know why, but I actually read its sequel, Hell Hath No Fury, which, at the time, I actually thought wasn't half-bad. But by the time I got around to reading it, the authors had already shelved the series because it was received so poorly.

Whatever last few Pern books Todd McCaffrey pushed out were pretty terrible too. Oh my gosh, I just looked up his name to make sure I spelled it right and found out his mother died. Awesome. Not only is a great person dead, but now that series is going to go straight to hell.

Thanks, Todd. You suck.

I also read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell recently. Started out really good, but turned into a snoozefest by the middle of the book. Was very disappointed.

 

[Wereduck]

Can't read 5 pages of comments right now so I'll simply say: War and Peace. I swear the entire thing was Tolstoy forcing cardboard cutouts to act out demonstrations of arguments he wanted to make.
Les Miserables was just as bad but much shorter (and I read it for school).

 

[Truniron]

The Hosus Heresy part III: Galaxy in Flames. I can say I liked the series, but the third book made me bored. I felt like 3/4 of the book was just people standing/sitting in a room discussing random stuff or plot points. The book was slow and didn´t had much to offer and it could have been without all the discussions. The actions scenes are quite enjoyable, but they almost feel rushed and shorten down to make place for all the other things.

 

[Wingmna]

Quran, fairly interesting in its pure hatred for any non-Muslims, but ultimately horrible to read.

 

[Serge A. Storms]

I see a lot of books in here that clearly were not fully understood or appreciated and were tragically dismissed as critical darlings of generations that were not exposed to "real" literature such as what one might get from a Halo novel. I'm going to add to that list by saying I couldn't make myself like The Kite Runner no matter how hard I tried.

 

[DasDestroyer]

Thing is, I absolutely can't read a book if I think it is shit, therefore I don't finish such books, and haven't actually ever said upon finishing a book that it was shit.

 

[Shounen-wrath]

I read a lot of books and it's pretty rare for me to be left with a disappointing ending, but Joe Haldeman's "Forever Free" (sequel to the "Forever War") left me with an open jawed expression of "What the flying f*ck?". It's like a different author wrote the book or someone just heavily edited the original manuscript before publishing. After the awesome read of the first book I honestly didn't see this coming.

 

[Sparrow]

The Grapes of Wrath. The thing is terrible. It made it's point 10 pages in and then continued to make the same point for near 500 more pages.

I know that's your opinion and everything, but I really loved that book. Grapes of Wrath was quite possibly one of the best written books I've ever had the privilege to read.

Your statement that it makes the same point for 500 pages is just plain stupid though. From start to finish, yes, it does primarily deal with the rich fucking over the poor. But in-between that there's the themes of lost religion, togetherness in times of hardship, gender roles within a family failing, the ever present question of morality and how communities must support each other to survive. It's not just "hurr durr rich people are bad".

 

[BushMonstar]

Three books come to mind: The Giver, It just had a terrible major plot point, A Wrinkle in Time, just flat out didn't like it, and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, since it was one of those randomly do certain events, and wasn't as good as the first book.

 

[the darknees abyss]

i read some book and some there so bad it kills me on the inside

 

[lettucethesallad]

Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist. Seriously disappointed. Also not really a fan of Terry Pratchett either. Just not my style. Give me a good Haruki Murakami book any day though.

 

[DolorousEdd]

Mm, no. I often hated books in the interim, but they were always just good enough that I thought they were worthwile. And I never got the cliché of hating what the school made you read. I mean, okay, maybe it was inconvenient or hard one time or the other, but I always had to admit that they were bloody good literature. If they were classics at least, and not some modern juvenile novels.

 

[Zaeseled]

The Bible.

I kid! Propably the worst book I ever read was some medieval fantasy-ish-y thing that may or may not have been named "The Age of the Black Wolf" or something. My brain refuses to remember it.

 

[Erttheking]

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

but then, most of Garth Nix's endings come out of nowhere. Nix creates some fantastic worlds, but he just can't seem to put a great story in it.

To be fair I thought that the story was pretty good...up until then. GAINAX ENDING

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

Every Mercedes Lackey book I've ever read.

I tried to like her. I really did. But I just found myself rolling my eyes on every page, cringing at the gratuitous sex scenes, unable to care about any of the characters, and completely uninspired by the setting.

Also, every Pern book that wasn't Dragonsong or Dragonsinger. Those are two of my very favorite books of all time, but the original series was full of unlikeable characters, Dragondrums felt like it had no effort put into it at all, and the later books were just stupid and felt really forced. I absolutely adored the world they were set in, but only two of the books were good.

 

[varulfic]

So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish, the fourth book in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series.

This is point where the series jumped the shark in a huge way. The fifth book sucked aswell, but the fourth was especially infuriating due to the sudden and egregious shift in tone. Instead of surreal intergalactic adventures with humorous sci-fi concepts, the book takes place entirely on Earth and focuses on a dull love story. The romance is pretty much the entire book, with only the last chapters touching on anything remotely Hitchhiker-like. And the worst part is that the entire plot is essentially meaningless since the love interest introduced in the book isn't even in the next one!

Y'know, now that I think of it, the fifth book (Mostly Harmless) might be even worse. "Thanks for all the Fish" might have been boring read, but Mostly Harmless is like a straight up fuck you to fans of the series, and ends things off at a terribly. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy really should have stayed a trilogy.

 

[Hoplon]

Probably get endless amounts of hate for this but Enders Game by Orson Scott Card. It was just dull and when it wasn't dull it was just ludicrous.

 

[ABLb0y]

Love Stephen King. Picked up Duma Key expecting to love it. Put it down a week later, thinking "Wow. What the hell, Steve?"

 

[dslatch]

Mocking jay 3rd book of the hunger games... I now deny its extistense.