well, THAT was the worst book ever!

[Giggity]

You know it ... is it a book your mother recommended? One you had to read in high school? One all your friends just RAVED about, even the people whose opinions you trust? One you looked forward to and then found out the author apparently went temporarily insane while writing it?

Dish it, literarions!

For me, oh Lord have mercy, it was White Oleanders. My mother loaned it to me. I hated every single person in that book and wanted to reach inside the pages and just start laying waste.

Oh yeah ... and then there's She's Come Undone. I was in a book group at a former job that decided to read that, and all the women loved it except me. Such a hateful protagonist, and everyone she meets is just a miserable human being. I quit the group after that, because who knows how much worse it would have gotten.

[flo]

The Road.  Not a single ray of sunshine.  No hope anywhere.  Seriously the most depressing book I've ever read.

[rose red]

I mentioned this before, but I was extremely disgusted with The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.  The story sounds good but it was just badly written.  The main problem is the book has no quotation marks which I know is also one of your peeves, Juana.

[StarDrifter]

Twilight.

I accidentally watched the movie (I was on a cruise ship, sick and it was either that or the USPGA) and still couldn't figure out what was so good about it.

I asked one of my friends, who is a voracious reader, what she thought of it. She raved! She said it was awesome! She told me that it was *so much better than the movie!*

Lies.

It's terrible! I'm about ten chapters in, and I just want to take a baseball bat to Bella's head. She's so self-centered and a nasty pessimistic piece of work, then she's all upset with the people who are nice to her, and moons over a guy who treats her like dirt.

Then she meets Jacob and is sarcastic towards him purely because he's younger than her.

I want to strangle her. I think I might like the books, if the main character wasn't such a beeyatch. But since it's written first-person, changing the main character would be kind of hard....

[Bibliophile]

The Road.  Not a single ray of sunshine.  No hope anywhere.  Seriously the most depressing book I've ever read.

POD.  And it wasn't even a very new take on the post-apocolyptic story.  No Country For Old Men also stunk.  I think he's my least favorite author.  

[POF]

White Oleander ... Pod
Twilight ... podddity pod pod
She's come undone ... just yuck.

Cold Mountain.... could not read it

Wicked ... really what was that all about ...

[kymom3]

"The Celestine Prophecy" 

Everyone I knew was raving about this book, it was so enlightening, had such a wonderful message!! Blah blah blah.

I read it and thought it was the biggest pile of poo ever.  And when I shared my opinion I was looked upon like I had suggested eating baby kittens or something.

[Klein Bottle]

I am a big fan of Ann Rule and her true crime books, but there is one I despise.  It is Every Breath You Take, about the tragic murder of a mother of quads, perpetrated by her ex.  Nobody but nobody deserves what happened to this young woman, but it was difficult to empathize with her, as, throughout the book, she came across as a social climber, all about the $$$, and egging on her ex, excusing a lot of his behavior as long as he was providing a great lifestyle for her, and even enabling him in criminal behavior at some points.  Then, following their divorce, she married a man who was physically abusive to the two daughters she'd had with the ex, and that's where she completely lost me.  Ms. Rule explains away and excuses all the bad acts and poor choices made by this woman throughout the book.  I was still heartbroken when the murder was described, and I will reiterate that she did in no way "have it coming to her"; she was just harder to empathize with than many other crime victims.  

I also wanted to throw Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult through a plate glass window.

[whiskeytangofoxtrot]

Pretty much anything by Steinbeck just makes we want to go out and shoot myself.

(And hey there, we know each other IRL too- the bellydancer you see every fall with a tall kilted Scot )

[Sharnita]

Ethan Frome
Anna Karenina
In Cold Blood
Twilight

[siamesecat2965]

I secodn Wicked.  I was really looking forward to it, as the musical got RAVE reviews.  While I know there was bound to be a difference, UGH.  And while I know its fantasy, it was so darn hard to follow.

Water for Elephants.  EVERYONE I know loved it; i thought it was terrible.

The Book Thief - again, just couldn't get into it at all.

Eat, Pray, Love - I finished Italy, and thought she was the most self-centered person I've ever encountered.  She acted like she was the ONLY person whose marriage ever ended.  I know now why my neighbor who lent it to me said "we'll discuss it when you've read it" and repeated herself when I asked if she liked it!

Anything and everything by Jodi Picoult.  Her stuff just doesn't interest me at all.

[Elfmama]

The DaVinci Code.    I plowed through about 100 pages, and then uttered the Eight Fateful Words: "I don't care what happens to these people."

And all the flap about the religious aspects!  DH, a devout Catholic, read it and just shook his head.  He says " Some people need treatment for their cranio-rectal inversion*. It's fiction, folks.  The author made it up.  You're allowed to do that with fiction."

*Well, he actually used a more colorful metaphor that employs the kind of blunt words that the filter doesn't like.

[Sharnita]

I didn't hate Water For Elephants but I didn't reread it either - and I reread books I even mildly enjoy.  It was pretty much 

[Spoder]

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. And anything else by her.

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Pseduo-philosophical/psychological claptrap. I don't get it, and I don't want to.

A book called The Shack that a friend lent me. I can't remember the author, and I can't for the life of me figure out why she thought I'd want to read it. It was about some guy's personal journey to find God. God was some kind of dreadlocked bohemian that the protagonist encountered in a shack, whilst looking for his dead daughter. Or something. The writing was so bad I couldn't stop sniggering.

[mw8242]

I competely agree on The Shack. I actually made one of my other friends read it to see if I was missing something but she didn't like it either.
I have a habit of reading depressing books  so some already mentioned I did actually enjoy but The Shack was just horrible.