dan brown, dan brown, so bad i read it twice (1 Viewer)

magicbastarder

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worst book you've actually finished?
a toss up between 'angels and demons' by dan brown, foisted on me by my brother because we were going to rome on holidays and he said i'd recognise a lot of places in the book; and 'i am pilgrim' terry hayes. both kinda compulsive (which is a given because at times i felt like throwing each book across the room)

i think this gives a flavour of the dan brown book, from part of the plot as it is summarised on wikipedia:
"Langdon manages to survive the explosion using a window cover from the helicopter as a parachute, a trick he learned while touring CERN with Maximillian Kohler and lands in the Tiber River. "
 
I really did not like In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider. It was so full of itself and took ages to build up to this big revelation that was not that interesting, or maybe I had just stopped caring by then.
I read less than 100 pages of A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgard but I have no doubt that the whole 6-vol series is the worst thing ever written.
 
I read The Davinci Code in Vegas, in a crappy motel. Bizarre memory I have of that one.


anyway I would say the worst book I ever finished was this one


IIRC the lead character (a very thinly veiled version of the writer) waxes lyrical in great depth about the writer's PHD thesis and uses it to solve a murder, outsmart Freud and Jung, and dazzle the young woman at the centre of the trial into falling in love with him.

Honestly, the "Suspension in Wake of Sexual Harassment Investigation" section of his wiki should come as no surprise.
 
worst book you've actually finished?
a toss up between 'angels and demons' by dan brown, foisted on me by my brother because we were going to rome on holidays and he said i'd recognise a lot of places in the book; and 'i am pilgrim' terry hayes. both kinda compulsive (which is a given because at times i felt like throwing each book across the room)

i think this gives a flavour of the dan brown book, from part of the plot as it is summarised on wikipedia:
"Langdon manages to survive the explosion using a window cover from the helicopter as a parachute, a trick he learned while touring CERN with Maximillian Kohler and lands in the Tiber River. "

a book by George Monbiot

it was a concept straight out of a leaving cert essay.
 
a book by George Monbiot

it was a concept straight out of a leaving cert essay.

Oh that's a pity, I quite like George Monbiot. I know he's just a well meaning wealthy guy speaking to the converted, but you need everyone on your side

Anyway I just remembered some second place novels for me:

Mr Penumbra's 24 hour Book Store (social networking will save the world)
Ready Player One (good-hearted nerds should be in charge)
The End of Mr Y (Post-structuralism and Homeopathy unlock secret powers)

I won't even get into some of the YA i've struggled through.
 
The Da Vinci Code was a hate read for me. Absolutely awful and still infuriates me. Reading in the Dark was one I did for the Leaving and I’m also still annoyed at that one.
 
The Da Vinci Code was a hate read for me. Absolutely awful and still infuriates me. Reading in the Dark was one I did for the Leaving and I’m also still annoyed at that one.
I remember Reading in the Dark being pretty good?
 
Same here - I liked Reading in the Dark, but I didn't read it in school

Another vote for Dan Brown books in general. These days I stop reading a book if I'm not enjoying it, but even so one really stands out for me. Don't want to name it, cos it was self-published by a guy I know and I don't want him to find out via google. I don't know why he decided to write a book, he just has no feeling for language or character or story at all. If someone is listening to the radio you'll get a list of at least 5 songs that are playing, if someone goes out you'll get a detailed description of what they and everyone they meet is wearing, down to the last button. The goodies are good-looking, the baddies are ugly. Protagonist gets hit by a car about 1/4 of the way in, and finds herself back in the 80s, and so decides to prevent the death of a friend that will happen THE VERY NEXT WEEKEND!!!!!11!!! For fuck's sake

The best moment in it is a bar scene - another list, of people this time, and one of them is "Maria, of course, with a face like a bulldog, licking piss off a nettle". The misplaced comma made me actual lol
 
I really don't read enough books to be in this thread.

Sometimes I buy ones for my sibling who'll chew them up ina few hours and TLDR them for me.

I'm reading a book about ancient carpentry at the minute and eh, its not popular for the writing style.
 
worst book you've actually finished?
a toss up between 'angels and demons' by dan brown, foisted on me by my brother because we were going to rome on holidays and he said i'd recognise a lot of places in the book; and 'i am pilgrim' terry hayes. both kinda compulsive (which is a given because at times i felt like throwing each book across the room)

i think this gives a flavour of the dan brown book, from part of the plot as it is summarised on wikipedia:
"Langdon manages to survive the explosion using a window cover from the helicopter as a parachute, a trick he learned while touring CERN with Maximillian Kohler and lands in the Tiber River. "

I read it about 2 years ago and thought it was terrible but sort of entertainingly terrible. There was one line from the book that always because of it's complete shitness, it went something along the lines of: "She gave Robert Langdon the OK symbol and he wondered if she knew it was actually an ancient symbol to denote fertility."
 
Mentioned it elsewhere, but I reckon Ken Follett would be the worst author I've read.

Initially I picked up some book from a bookshelf when I was desperate, and flipped through it. It was memorably bad, about Afghanistan, I think it was called Lie Down With Lions. I didn't notice the author though.

Years later I was reading something else and I was thinking something along the lines of "man, this is as bad that terrible Afghan book", looked up the author, and it was the same guy.

Later I picked up something called The Pillars of Earth, and I read the intro which set out something along the lines of "This is TRULY Ken Follett's masterpiece", and it went on and on about what a great piece of work Ken had created, epic, etc. So... I fucking took the bait, and started reading. Sure enough: terrible shite.

So, I had a look back at the forward. How could this be considered a masterpiece? Who the fuck thinks that? And I realised that Ken Follett had written his own review... of his own book... and attached it as the book's forward. At that point the penny dropped.
 
Notable mention would be that Barbara Kingsolver. Jesus. Some of the most trite, self satisfied, patronizing bollocks I've read, like Poisonwood Bible, and other one about Appalachia called The Prodigal Summer.
 

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