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Worst Book of All Time


themaninblack

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Like the title says, whats the worst book of all time that you read?

My vote goes to either Daughter of the Drow by Elaine Cunningham or Elfsong by Terry Brooks. This may change when I finally get around to reading Wizards First Rule like one of my friends keeps telling me I should.

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The first book in the Shannara-series by Terry Brooks. I couldn't read more than 200 pages before my eyes started burning.

(Hm, I wonder how long it will be before someone mentions mr. Goodkind in this thread...)

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My vote goes to either Daughter of the Drow by Elaine Cunningham or Elfsong by Terry Brooks. This may change when I finally get around to reading Wizards First Rule like one of my friends keeps telling me I should.

Daughter of the Drow is pretty crappy and not at all good in any sense, but it's not actually *bad* as in, it at no point made me actually cry out in horror and despair for humanity.

WFR does that.

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I'm with you here. If you're going to hate on Goodkind, don't choose Wizard's First Rule. Wizard's First Rule was green meadow with bunnies and butterflies, it was a lucid and logical treatise on morality and ethics, it was a triumph of literary wonder, compared to what came after it.

I would go with Faith of the Fallen as well, if he hadn't topped it when he wrote Naked Empire. That book is a detriment to mental health.

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Pillars of Creation? or Faith of the Fallen?

Now these were real crap-tastic books...but dont forget Chainfire and Phantom.

I would also like to nominate The Redemption of Althalus, by David Eddings. I dont want to bad mouth Eddings too much, because I loved him as a young reader....but this book made me want to break his figers. He destroyed all my good feelings towards him as a writer with this one book.

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Now these were real crap-tastic books...but dont forget Chainfire and Phantom.

I would also like to nominate The Redemption of Althalus, by David Eddings. I dont want to bad mouth Eddings too much, because I loved him as a young reader....but this book made me want to break his figers. He destroyed all my good feelings towards him as a writer with this one book.

Really...why did you not like it? I am quite fond of Althalus. It's not the greatest book by him, that honor would have to go to Castle of Wizardry or Belgarath the Sorceror, but Althalus really wasn't that bad, The Dreamers book 1 was worse to me, I didn't make it through that one, which is saying something since I am a big Eddings fan.

I'll not hate on Wizards any more, but I'm really iffy about reading it and anything else in the series.

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Eragon barely edging out Goodkind's Pillars of Creation. Though if you include non-genre fiction, it would have to be James Joyce's Ulysses.

Though to be honest, when I was a teenager (twenty years or so back) I read some really shitty Star Trek novels - thankfully I do not remember the titles or authors. :)

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The Scarlet Letter. Absolutely hated reading it in high school, and unlike other classics I have revisisted in later years, I will never re-read it.

And Faith of the Fallen. (wasn't that the book about carving the Statue?) It was so crap-tacular that it broke me free of Goodkind forever. I concede that later novels in that series may have been worse; I just wouldn't know.

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The Scarlet Letter. Absolutely hated reading it in high school, and unlike other classics I have revisisted in later years, I will never re-read it.

We had great fun with The Scarlet Letter....we read it after "The Pearl" (Which I nominate for worst book ever. Hated it!) and so mixed the two together and came up with great inside jokes.

"Dillingsworth, throw Pearl into sea!" was one...ah yes. Took on a whole new life. If it hadn't been for that, I would have hated it beyond all measure. The only thing I really remember about that book was how she ornately embroidered the A...kind of a little Up Yours to all those people who made her wear it.

Gulliver's Travels...that was a terrible read! I hated that, too. And anything by Nicholas Sparks. I attempted one and it nearly put me into a diabetic coma it was so sweet. I read 5 pages.

**Goes to edit post in worst author to suggest Sparks**

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The Knight by Gene Wolfe, after 100 pages of the most incomprehensible writing I'd ever seen with characters who I couldn't even keep the names straight on, the book was permanently shelved. Runner up: Pillars of Creation. Not only crappy crappy writing, but completely unneccesary to the advancement of the story line also.

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You are nominating a Gene Wolfe book as "worst ever"? Is this some kind of joke or do you really mean that?

I mean... sure, you can think him overrated. Sure, you can dislike his work. Maybe you even think his work is tripe. But can you actually claim he's worse than Terry Goodkind or Robert Newcomb or the Eye of Argon? With a straight face?

(oh, and the knight is one of his more accessible works too. I recommend not reading his others.)

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