Worst book you ever read?

[Ed Anger]

The worst book I read must've been Twilight. Someone female recommended it to me before the movie hype knowing I like vampire stories. Hundreds of pages describing how good looking that main guy is. I sat it through waiting for a story to begin, only there was none but for the last 50 or so pages.
Another really bad vampire story (based on the WoD stuff) was Eternal Hearts. At least that one had pornogoric elements.

The movies, particularly the first, are pretty hilarious.

I wanted to go to the theater and beat off in the corner to all the tweens in the audience.

[HVC]

The worst book I read must've been Twilight. Someone female recommended it to me before the movie hype knowing I like vampire stories. Hundreds of pages describing how good looking that main guy is. I sat it through waiting for a story to begin, only there was none but for the last 50 or so pages.
Another really bad vampire story (based on the WoD stuff) was Eternal Hearts. At least that one had pornogoric elements.

The movies, particularly the first, are pretty hilarious.

I wanted to go to the theater and beat off in the corner to all the tweens in the audience.

is that how you met the wife?

[Ed Anger]

Seriously, stop stalking me. It is getting disturbing.

[HVC]

Seriously, stop stalking me. It is getting disturbing.

Now you're just being mean

[Barrister]

The thread lacks Dan Brown hate. The one about computer hacking was rather inept.

I dunno man.  I read Da Vinci Code, and I found it to be a perfectly serviceable pageturner.  And I had actually read Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the 90s, long before Da Vinci Code was written.

It wasn't good enough for me to seek out any other Dan Brown book, but I have certainly read much, much worse.

[grumbler]

I'm with those who vote Dan Brown as merely inadequate, not horrific. 

Von Daniken was fun, as was Velikovski.

The book that I most recently really strugggled to finish was Pratchett's The Monstrous Regiment, but I can't say it was an awful book because it wasn't written for adults (I read it because my niece told me to and she expected a discussion about it when I visited).  Before that was probably Anansi Boys.  Gaimen when he is that self-indulgent is pretty intolerable, IMO.

[Gups]

Books I have hated the most:

Shantaram, Gregory Williams. Autobigraphic novel. Loved by million of semi-literate hippies and chin scratching students. Cardboard cut out characters, self-obsessed cunt of an outhor and writing like this:

The hole in my life that a father should've filled was a prairie of longing. In the loneliest hours of those hunted years, I wandered there, as hungry for a father's love as a cellblock full of sentenced men in the last hour of New Year's Eve.

I see people reading this on the train all the time and I want to slap them.

The War of Wars by Robert Harvey; Really looked forward to this as I'd wanted a single volume history of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars for ages. It was so bad I decided to boycott the publisher. Full of factual errors and contradictions (Pitt is a great orator on one page but on the ver next page succeeded despite his lack of any oratorical skills). Typos. Jesus. Imagine Timmy writing a 900 page book and you've got it. And really biased (towards the Brits). It's history NOTW style!

[Agelastus]

The book that I most recently really strugggled to finish was Pratchett's The Monstrous Regiment, but I can't say it was an awful book because it wasn't written for adults (I read it because my niece told me to and she expected a discussion about it when I visited). 

I feel sorry for you; Monstrous Regiment is just about Terry Pratchett's least enjoyable book.

It was, however, written for adults (allegedly), since Pratchett has a separate line of books specifically written for children. Do the publishers lump them together in the USA?

[Agelastus]

The War of Wars by Robert Harvey; Really looked forward to this as I'd wanted a single volume history of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars for ages. It was so bad I decided to boycott the publisher. Full of factual errors and contradictions (Pitt is a great orator on one page but on the ver next page succeeded despite his lack of any oratorical skills). Typos. Jesus. Imagine Timmy writing a 900 page book and you've got it. And really biased (towards the Brits). It's history NOTW style!

Thanks for the warning; I've been thinking of picking that book up myself.

[Duque de Bragança]

Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac. I read 30 pages of it. I think I was only in sentence number 5.

It sucks. Naturalism & Realism are stupid movement. They are the reality TV & Sun journalism of the 1800s.

The keske generation has spoken...

[Norgy]

No first one is A&D.

Brown published a novel before Angels & Demons, which along with The Da Vinci Code are run-of-the-mill-read-when-you're-bored novels that are certainly passable (as has been noted).
Digital Fortress is about computers, hacking and a virus. It has very few redeeming qualities and is not worth the bother.

After carefully looking through my Bookshelf Of Shame (stuff bought on impulse, sale, when drunk or when utterly bored), I found a few gems.

Joseph P. Farrell's Reich Of The Black Sun is fairly horrible. I also noticed two Turtledove novels.
The SS Brotherhood Of The Bell by Farrell is there too, although I have never read it.

The most over-rated book I ever suffered through has got to be the fucker Paulo Coelho's The Alchymist. I think it's why I developed man boobs.

[Grey Fox]

Right. I forgot about DF.

I liked DVC & the Lost Symbols. Pedestrian book are still good book. These days I enjoy books about farm life in pre-industrial time. Not everything needs to be enlighted.

[Siege]

A Dance With Dragons.

Well, I haven't read yet of course, but I will, and then I'll hate it!!!!!!

[grumbler]

I feel sorry for you; Monstrous Regiment is just about Terry Pratchett's least enjoyable book.

It was, however, written for adults (allegedly), since Pratchett has a separate line of books specifically written for children. Do the publishers lump them together in the USA?

I don't know about that.  I remember reading the first book of short stories about Discworld, and moderately enjoying that, but TMR is the only other Pratchett I have read.  The distinction you note may, indeed, exist, and I just don't know it.