Worst book you have ever read

[Virgil0211]

Pretty self-explanatory. Name the worst book you've ever read. It can either be the worst quality-wise, or the one that caused the worst emotional reaction in you.

[Travis Retriever]

Probably Beowulf...
It didn't make much sense.
Seriously, I don't care if it was a classic or not, it still sucks.

[AHPMB]

Fiction-wise, I choose Great Expectations by Dickens. I realize everyone considers the character of Ms. Havisham to be some kind of literary archetype, but she's far outweighed by the main character, a snotty git who we're for some reason supposed to identify with, who is constantly orbited by a series of one dimensional characters created specifically to show off their quirks.  Ugh, I'm an atheist and I was praying he'd die at the end.

Coming in a close second would be The Stand, by Stephen King, an epic book ruined by a cheap Deus Ex Machina ending, and I mean that literally.  The hand of God comes down and sorts everything out.

[MrBogosity]

I pretty much hated anything by Hemingway. How anyone can love war that much is beyond me.

I couldn't make it past the first couple of chapters of The Fountainhead. Just atrocious writing!

[Gumba Masta]

Hmmm, now we know why he commited suicide, he read one of his own books. Either that or he just mixed up the whisky bottle with the 12 gauge.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

Hated Lord of the Flies in school and the fact that I wound up having to read it in two different years didn't help.

If I want a story about kids being idiots, I'll go watch a Nickelodeon movie.

[AHPMB]

You know, I loved Lord of the Flies in school, but as I got older I started to really understand the implications of the book.  It argues that without constant invigilation from a daddy like authority figure, we all immediately start killing each other, destroying civilization and putting pigs heads on sticks.  It's an insult to humanity, fuck Hobbes.

[FSBlueApocalypse]

Not sure if it qualifies as a book, but we had to read Cat on a Hot Tin roof in my junior English class and that was a terrible read.

[Gumba Masta]

You know, I loved Lord of the Flies in school, but as I got older I started to really understand the implications of the book.  It argues that without constant invigilation from a daddy like authority figure, we all immediately start killing each other, destroying civilization and putting pigs heads on sticks.  It's an insult to humanity, fuck Hobbes.

I think it's not completely untrue, if a group of people who only knew how to look for that authority figure suddenly gets deprived from it it is most likely that in the confusion many people simply will loose it. After all if your world as you knew it would suddenly crumble away, could you be completely sure that you could resist the madness? I think what the story, unintentionly maybe, implies is that when you raise people in complete dependence of someone "higher up" yo, ah, screw them over thrice.

[AHPMB]

I think it's not completely untrue, if a group of people who only knew how to look for that authority figure suddenly gets deprived from it it is most likely that in the confusion many people simply will loose it. After all if your world as you knew it would suddenly crumble away, could you be completely sure that you could resist the madness? I think what the story, unintentionly maybe, implies is that when you raise people in complete dependence of someone "higher up" yo, ah, screw them over thrice.

Actually, early on in the book it shows the complete opposite of madness. It shows that societies form quite organically in the absence of authority, as by the second chapter or so, the boys have a perfectly workable system.  They create a new form of authority in the form of a council called by blowing on a conch shell.  They develop a sound plan to be rescued, lighting a fire that will burn on a cliff-side, and work out how power is distributed, and who will gather food.  The problem isn't a lack of social skills or ingenuity, the author argues it's that people are inherently chaotic and will never hold to this without an authoritarian figure observing and punishing them.  Thus, without the threat of punishment, the choir boys reject society and revert to the lowest form of barbarism and superstition.  It's the same kind of misanthropic attitude I hear from Christians who say, without God watching them, they'd immediately start murdering and raping everyone in sight.  It's based on Hobbes' Leviathan which argues that a centralized, all powerful authority is necessary to keep people's lives from being brutish nasty and short.

[Gumba Masta]

I always thought that the lowest spiritualism and barbarism involved around a higher authority figure, I.e. god, dishing out the punushinaments left, right and center.