The People Next Door by Christopher Ransom got completely drawn in by the blurb which promised I'd never guess their secret, and never forget the twist. Within 100 pages I'd guessed the secret and the twist was very forgettable. Really should have looked at the reviews before I'd bought it.
But by that logic you'd be writing off quite a few of the female authors of the 19th C. Actually commentators from years back discussed (with some surprise) the issue of how it was possible for Charlotte Brontë to knowledgeably portray a passionate relationship in Jane Eyre when she wasn't married herself - and of course in those days people didn't sleep around before marriage (well not if they didn't want to be 'fallen women').
So it is possible for women of that time to discuss relationships without having 'lived' them - they just had good imagination and understanding of the human mind. Indeed, that's part of the skill of being a talented author! If you don't find the relationship presented in Wuthering Heights convincing then that's a different matter but you can't extrapolate from that opinion that virginal women weren't able to address relationships in general.
Charlotte Bronte was a really good writer. Villette is an excellent book. Emily was not in her class IMO.
I think Charlotte did get married at one point though. She certainly appears more worldly than her sister.
I just found Wuthering Heights very juvenile. I think that is why it appeals to young people and those in love with the idea of love. It seems to be the basis for all sorts of romantic mills and boon type fiction. The tall dark handsome stranger with a cruel streak that melts the heart of the girl etc. etc.
I think all books resonate with you depending on what age you are when you read them. Some books I loved when I was younger I would dismiss now.
Many people here will probably say how much they loved Bridget Jones - I despised her and didn't make it to the end of the book.
Anything by D.H Lawrence. I managed to force myself to read 'The Rainbow' for uni and hated, hated, hated it. If he was alive today I'd try to steal his computer so he couldn't inflict more fiction on the world.
'Nice Work' by David Lodge. I disliked most of the characters and found it mind-numbingly dull.
I've never felt the slightest desire to read anything by Stephanie Meyer, JK Rowling or Dan Brown, so can't comment.
I also loathe that new category of books that seems to have sprung up in WHSmith and The Works... the tragic autobiography. I think it started with 'A Child Called It' (which I did read at work, when there was nothing else to do). There are dozens of books with sad-faced children on the cover and titles like 'No, Daddy, No' or 'Innocence Betrayed'. I'm not saying that survivor stories don't have a part to play in society and reaching out to others, but there are so many of them and I find it horrible, just being confronted with hundreds of pages of misery and depressing stories of child abuse.
The one exception to this was 'A piece of cake' by Cupcake Brown.
I know it has already been said, but Twilight is awful.
My friend bought me the 1st book for my birthday last year and I just couldn't get into it.
Me and my other friend was discussing the 2nd book (somehow I managed to make it through the first :sleep:) and we discussed in length how boring the story is, how nothing happens really until 3/4 of the way, how the story is poorly written and how the main character is so unlikeable.
Everytime I read it, it makes me want to start slitting my wrists, Bella is so depressing!:yawn:
I wish I could recall the worst book I've read..........there's been loads that have been relegated to the bin before I got by the first chapter or two. They were so bad I don't recall the name of the book or the author who wrote them. :eek::o
It wouldn't be Philippa Gregory's "Alice Hartley's Happiness" by any chance would it? I read this (generally like Gregory's historical fiction) but despised this with a passion. Just truly awful.
That book was shocking. I'm in a bit of a Philippa Gregory phase at the moment and I'm enjoying the others but I have no idea what she was thinking with that one!
I wish I could recall the worst book I've read..........there's been loads that have been relegated to the bin before I got by the first chapter or two. They were so bad I don't recall the name of the book or the author who wrote them. :eek::o
I get like that. Now if I buy a book from a store I make sure I read the first few pages there just to ensure that it will be a book I can get into.
Ordering online you don't really get that luxury, although now i find that if you google the author you can read excerpts of the books. Very handy!
Behold! The infamous bad English thriller writer Sydney Horler, who boasted he
was a better writer than Dashiell Hamment and Dorothy L. Sayers:
"Gusta Straube was a good type of the Teutonic feminine…. With the monocle screwed into her left eye she looked forbidding and sinister: the glass could not hide the basilisk quality of her stare…Her face was heavy. the flesh, creamy in tint, had a dull, lifeless appearance. One might have expected the eyes of such a woman to be glazed but instead they were reptilian. Through the glass of the monocle the left one appeared to have a stupefying effect upon all who looked her way.’
From "The Curse of Doone", 1928.
Mystery writers Bill Pronzini wrote two very
funny books, "Gun in Cheek", and "Son of Gun
in Cheek", where he takes the p*** out of Horler and other bad crime writers.
Charlotte Bronte was a really good writer. Villette is an excellent book. Emily was not in her class IMO.
I think Charlotte did get married at one point though. She certainly appears more worldly than her sister.
I just found Wuthering Heights very juvenile. I think that is why it appeals to young people and those in love with the idea of love. It seems to be the basis for all sorts of romantic mills and boon type fiction. The tall dark handsome stranger with a cruel streak that melts the heart of the girl etc. etc.
I think all books resonate with you depending on what age you are when you read them. Some books I loved when I was younger I would dismiss now.
Many people here will probably say how much they loved Bridget Jones - I despised her and didn't make it to the end of the book.
Charlotte Bronte did get married, but not until the end of her short life, and after she had written Jane Eyre and the brilliant, fabulous Villette (one of my favourite books: better and darker than Jane Eyre imo). Emily was a strange one who lived in a bit of a world of her own. I haven't read Wuthering Heights for many years but I do remember that I didn't particularly like it
There is a big difference between reputable books you dislike, a fair point, to worst books. There is actually a thread for this.
Some answers in this thread are clearly only for shock value.
There is a big difference between reputable books you dislike, a fair point, to worst books. There is actually a thread for this.
Some answers in this thread are clearly only for shock value.
I don't, personally, enjoy Jane Austen's books, but
I know she has skills at the art of fiction writing that
inept authors like Sydney Horler completely lacked.
I don't, personally, enjoy Jane Austen's books, but
I know she has skills at the art of fiction writing that
inept authors like Sydney Horler completely lacked.
Exactly. Sydney Horler is the perfect example.
I do not like Middlemarch for example, a book mentioned a couple of time in this thread, but i can recognise that Eliot and even that particular book are colossus in the world of of literature. She's an amazing writer, simply not to my taste. Disliking a book does not make that book instantly bad or a contender for the worst book.
Just awful a dreadful ending. I just wrote this review on Amazon.
The book starts off really well, but goes downhill pretty fast. Does Max even find out that Julian is dead? It seems he dies and then is only referenced once or twice after that. The ending is ridiculous, Max uses his smartphone even though he has just come out of a police cell to learn martial arts and then kills Frank quite easily. The new born baby literally new born he should be 4 hours old is submerged under water but is fine after getting wrapped up in a towel? And we're meant to believe they could just sail away into the sunset and live happily ever after?
I picked up Midnight by Josephine Cox paperback in the supermarket because it had a shiny cover! I have read one or two of hers but this one is so dire it's laughable.
In the first chapter, she actually writes "suddenly, without warning".
I keep it in the loo to read when I'm sitting there. To be honest I should be wiping my asre on the pages. That is all it's fit for.
I'm reading John Rickard's The Touch of Ghosts, and oh my GOD it's bad! It's not the worst book I've ever read, but it's bad. I picked it up from a pile that was free to a good home in our staff room thankfully - I would be very annoyed if I'd paid money for it! It's supposedly a detective thriller, but it's just ridiculous. It's cliched and trite, and irritating. The main character's girlfriend has been murdered, and he starts investigating it, and the police just give him free access to their confidential reports and crime scene and invite him along to arrest a drug dealer (and tell him to bring a gun!) - he's ex FBI but hasn't been a cop for years, and apparently he can just get told everything in a case because it involves someone he knew. And the dialogue is ridiculous, and I don't think the author knows a thing about the area it's set in either. Not one bit of it rings true. I've only got about 80 pages to go, but I don't know if I can be bothered. I'm pretty sure I know what the twist is going to be.
I can't stand Martina Cole's books. A friend swears by them and gave me a shedload to read a couple of years ago because "you like crime novels". They're so badly written and the characters are from the Big Book of Cliched Laahhndan Gangsters. Ironically I really liked the TV adaptation of The Take, but that might have been more to do with Tom Hardy....
The Stone and the Flute - Hans Bemmann (translated from German over 800 very tedious pages)
I mean I'm sure there are worse books out there. I'm pretty sure that The Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey and much of Barbara Cartland's back catalogue are dreadful. But I haven't read any of those unlike the two above...unfortunately.
I picked up Midnight by Josephine Cox paperback in the supermarket because it had a shiny cover! I have read one or two of hers but this one is so dire it's laughable.
In the first chapter, she actually writes "suddenly, without warning".
I keep it in the loo to read when I'm sitting there. To be honest I should be wiping my asre on the pages. That is all it's fit for.
ive just trawled through "let it shine". its the first and the last book of hers i'll ever read.
Comments
I'm reading her at the moment. I'm quite enjoying it. Was it the style or content you didn't gat on with.
I absolutley hated it. It should be sucked into a black hole.
The Da Vinci Code
I did 100 pages into middlemarch and got bored but I do like other Eliot books
I actually liked the time travellers wife and catch 22.
Charlotte Bronte was a really good writer. Villette is an excellent book. Emily was not in her class IMO.
I think Charlotte did get married at one point though. She certainly appears more worldly than her sister.
I just found Wuthering Heights very juvenile. I think that is why it appeals to young people and those in love with the idea of love. It seems to be the basis for all sorts of romantic mills and boon type fiction. The tall dark handsome stranger with a cruel streak that melts the heart of the girl etc. etc.
I think all books resonate with you depending on what age you are when you read them. Some books I loved when I was younger I would dismiss now.
Many people here will probably say how much they loved Bridget Jones - I despised her and didn't make it to the end of the book.
'Nice Work' by David Lodge. I disliked most of the characters and found it mind-numbingly dull.
I've never felt the slightest desire to read anything by Stephanie Meyer, JK Rowling or Dan Brown, so can't comment.
I also loathe that new category of books that seems to have sprung up in WHSmith and The Works... the tragic autobiography. I think it started with 'A Child Called It' (which I did read at work, when there was nothing else to do). There are dozens of books with sad-faced children on the cover and titles like 'No, Daddy, No' or 'Innocence Betrayed'. I'm not saying that survivor stories don't have a part to play in society and reaching out to others, but there are so many of them and I find it horrible, just being confronted with hundreds of pages of misery and depressing stories of child abuse.
The one exception to this was 'A piece of cake' by Cupcake Brown.
My friend bought me the 1st book for my birthday last year and I just couldn't get into it.
Me and my other friend was discussing the 2nd book (somehow I managed to make it through the first :sleep:) and we discussed in length how boring the story is, how nothing happens really until 3/4 of the way, how the story is poorly written and how the main character is so unlikeable.
Everytime I read it, it makes me want to start slitting my wrists, Bella is so depressing!:yawn:
That book was shocking. I'm in a bit of a Philippa Gregory phase at the moment and I'm enjoying the others but I have no idea what she was thinking with that one!
I get like that. Now if I buy a book from a store I make sure I read the first few pages there just to ensure that it will be a book I can get into.
Ordering online you don't really get that luxury, although now i find that if you google the author you can read excerpts of the books. Very handy!
was a better writer than Dashiell Hamment and Dorothy L. Sayers:
From "The Curse of Doone", 1928.
Mystery writers Bill Pronzini wrote two very
funny books, "Gun in Cheek", and "Son of Gun
in Cheek", where he takes the p*** out of Horler and other bad crime writers.
Charlotte Bronte did get married, but not until the end of her short life, and after she had written Jane Eyre and the brilliant, fabulous Villette (one of my favourite books: better and darker than Jane Eyre imo). Emily was a strange one who lived in a bit of a world of her own. I haven't read Wuthering Heights for many years but I do remember that I didn't particularly like it
Some answers in this thread are clearly only for shock value.
I don't, personally, enjoy Jane Austen's books, but
I know she has skills at the art of fiction writing that
inept authors like Sydney Horler completely lacked.
The Raven series was absolutely stunning and brilliant. At the end of which it had come to a very good conclusion.
Ravensoul was absolute drivel and should never have been written.
Exactly. Sydney Horler is the perfect example.
I do not like Middlemarch for example, a book mentioned a couple of time in this thread, but i can recognise that Eliot and even that particular book are colossus in the world of of literature. She's an amazing writer, simply not to my taste. Disliking a book does not make that book instantly bad or a contender for the worst book.
Just awful a dreadful ending. I just wrote this review on Amazon.
"Lying on the ground, the horizon could
be uncomfortably close".
In the first chapter, she actually writes "suddenly, without warning".
I keep it in the loo to read when I'm sitting there. To be honest I should be wiping my asre on the pages. That is all it's fit for.
The Stone and the Flute - Hans Bemmann (translated from German over 800 very tedious pages)
I mean I'm sure there are worse books out there. I'm pretty sure that The Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey and much of Barbara Cartland's back catalogue are dreadful. But I haven't read any of those unlike the two above...unfortunately.