Daystar Clarion said:
Twilight. I thinks it's pretty self explanatory.
Horrible plot, horrible characters and it systematically destroyed vampires as an awesome mythological creature.
Heh, I knew Twilight would get mentioned within five posts. Though I expected the OP to say it, to be honest.
Anyway, can I just say something here. Fine,. Stephanie Meyer isn't a great author, by any means. However,
SHE IS NOT A BAD AUTHOR. Fine, the plot of the books is pretty crap, and the characters are mostly Mary-Sues. However, there are two things that everyone conveniently decides to ignore when they bash Twilight. Of course, most Twilight-bashers haven't even bothered to read the books, but those who have tend to overlook the following two important things.
1. She actually writes fairly decent prose, when she's not over-describing characters and using stupid terms like comparing Edward to a Greek God and whatever...
2. She writes dialogue pretty well.
For the first point, I'll accept that Meyer has such an annoying tendency to overdescribe characters, and she seems to idolise anything her characters find 'beautiful'. Like every time Edward Cullen turns up, she starts going off on how his "chiselled body was like that of Adonis" or whatever (well, that sort of thing, anyway). But if we look at other parts of the book, where she isn't writing like that, we see some really good prose and decent description of places, non-vampire characters, and events as they unfold in the books. Overall, while by no means a great author, she's fairly good, especially compared to some of the other crap on the market nowadays.
As for the second point, I feel very qualified as a writer myself (including screenwriter) to state this. I can recognise good dialogue when I see it, and indeed dialogue is my own personal strength. So trust me when I say that in conversations that aren't between Bella and either Edward or Jacob, where Meyer again has a tendency to go overboard with the sillyness and idolisation, the dialogue in the book is pretty good, and fairly realistic. Especially when you consider the characters, mostly being high-school students or similar. If Meyer had decided to write Twilight without the need to go overboard with Edward and Jacob and how 'godlike' they seem to be, then you would have very few people complaining about Twilight in the way that people do now (though I assume most people would still complain about the silly plot...).
And yes, I have read all the books, so I do know what I'm talking about here...
Anyway, rant aside, I personally can't really say what I find to be the 'worst book ever', as there are so many books around that are just complete and utter crap and not even worthy of being made into pulp. However, there are some books I reckon are completely overrated, that seem to have an almost immortal status as 'classics' of literature. My most prominent example being The Lord Of The Rings. Now, this isn't a slight on Tolkien, indeed I don't really mind his work and he himself was a really good writer. However, I tried to read the LOTR trilogy and I just couldn't get through it. Which is odd, as I loved The Hobbit. The style he uses in that series was just really tedious, and there were plenty of scenes that the films wisely cut that just seemed really tacked on and pointless, the two most notable being the Tom Bombadil scene and the bit in the Houses of Healing after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Though I did enjoy the Scouring of the Shire, and I'm still pissed off at Peter Jackson for cutting that from the films...
