okay, so i'm an English major - so for my "development of the modern novel" class i have to do a presentation on Mrs. Dalloway - a book that i would never read on my own time, but kind of had to. this was by far the dullest book i've ever imagined possible. just pointlessness mixed with pointlessness with a dash of boringness on top. ugh. what are the worst books you've ever read.
catch 22 probably because it's supposed to be great. I've tried getting through it about 4 times, and just can't...Don't know why...usually i like those kinds of books. Since i haven't managed to read it through, though -- perhaps its not 'the worst i've read.' It must be worse than even that!
I know Paradise Lost is a epic novel, but I didn't enjoy reading it. It did have a few great quotes in it though.
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut This book isn't horrible, but I was expecting a lot more from it. I'm a big fan of Chuck Palahniuk's (Fight Club) novels , and I'd heard that Vonnegut's writing was very similar. I think I was just expecting too much.
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Wolfe I had to read this for a college course. Most painful thing I ever read.
exactly!!! holy crap, it's funny to see someone else say this about that book. i've picked it up multiple times...i just can't finish it.
Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler was pretty bad. Clive Cussler writes sci-fi/adventure novels to pay for his own, personal expeditions and some of them are okay. You have to suspend disbelief for the duration but he generally tells an entertaining yard (think Michael Crichton minus the "hard" science but with better storytelling and endings). However, Atlantis Found ended up being a pile of doo doo. It started of very cool with scientists discovering artifacts and writings in a cave in the Rockies that had been sealed for thousands of years but then it quickly went downhill. To sum it up his antagonists are Nazis. Instead of a cool yarn about the search for a long-lost civilization you get a fight against the descendents of Nazis. No thanks.
Me three! I finally gave up. I read all of Battlefield Earth before the movie came out. I still can't decide which was worse.
I didn't really enjoy "Catcher in the Rye" either when I read it in middle school, but I've been thinking I might enjoy it more now that I'm older... or not. I wasn't crazy about Mrs. Dalloway, but I generally enjoyed it. I also really enjoyed "The Hours" because of the allusions to Mrs. Dalloway. Breakfast of Champions was the first Vonnegut novel I'd ever read. I love Vonnegut but Breakfast of Champions is definitely not among my favorites of his. Here's my contribution: Before it became a movie, Forrest Gump was actually a book. I almost always prefer books to movies, but I can unequivocally say that Forrest Gump was infinitely superior as a movie than it was as a book.
I was also an English major at UT and I have to admit I would not finish Moby Dick. It put me to sleep.
Was forced to read "Wuthering Heights" in high school english, never did get all the way through it. Thank god for cliff's notes for those crappy english lit books.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I read as much as I could, and sparknotesed(that's a verb!) the rest. I think I finished about 50 pages total.
I've "read" that book twice. Once, I actually did read it for English in Texas. Last year, I had to read it again, here in New York. I read about 2/3 of it and used memory for the rest.
Without question, mine was "Remain's of the Day". Funny thing about it was that it was so bad I remembered it perfectly. Almost out of spite. I had to an essay for it for an English class and I got the highest grade in the class.
