S/O What's the worst book you've read

Log in / Sign Up

List of Forums + New Post Recipe Box Usergroups Following My Posts Bookmarks

Private Messages Advanced Search Rules New User Guide FAQ Advertise Contact Us

Forum -> The Social Scene -> Chit Chat

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next

View latest: 24h 48h 72h

gingertop

Wed, May 08 2019, 12:34 pm

I had a hard time phrasing the title of this thread because mature and adult books sound bad. But which non-children's book was the worst you've ever read?

Let's not list frum authors (who may be on this site).

The book may have plot holes, terrible characterization, terrible writing, or otherwise be offensive or wrong.

Like-if you also hated that book or if you haven't read it but the description of it's badness makes you chuckle.

Hug- you read the book and think it's really good.

Edited to change to any book ever read.

Last edited by gingertop on Wed, May 08 2019, 2:05 pm; edited 1 time in total

Ravenclaw

Wed, May 08 2019, 1:45 pm

can I include books not from this past year?

gingertop

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:04 pm

Ravenclaw wrote:

can I include books not from this past year?

Go ahead. I was just trying to figure out how to write the title.

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:06 pm

Here, here

saw50st8

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:07 pm

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

gingertop

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:08 pm

Can you write a one line explanation of what was so bad about the books?

gingertop

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:17 pm

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers

It was a fascinating book with tons of intriguing data and it gave me a sense of how assimilated and intermarried Jews in Germany were.

The academic part was great. But the whole book was so upsetting, I was just infuriated throughout.

-The first section details Halachic and lehavdil Aryan rules for Jewishness. The author deliberately makes them appear equally racist.
-The author carried too much water for the general German excuse that they didn't know about the Holocaust, in order to explain how someone of Jewish ancestry could be in Hitler's army.
-The chapters about the post-war fallout was horrible. No regrets. Just complaining about their German family for treating them like Jews and complaining that Jews didn't want to welcome them in shul (can you guess why Einstein?)
-At least one of them explicitly says that Jews are as bad as Nazis because they threw him out just like the Nazis didn't accept him fully Exploding anger

Raisin

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:18 pm

Does boring count?

I dunno, I just stop reading books I don't enjoy.

Unless its a kids book my kid wants to hear as a bedtime story.

gingertop

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:20 pm

Raisin wrote:

Does boring count?

I dunno, I just stop reading books I don't enjoy.

Unless its a kids book my kid wants to hear as a bedtime story.

Boring counts.

SixOfWands

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:43 pm

Ulysses.

I actually liked Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but I loathed Ulysses. It may be the only book I didn't finish for school.

chicco

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:45 pm

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

I read it after I read Gone Girl which I thought was disturbing, yet brilliant. After Dark Places I am pretty sure the author is psychotic. There are no likeable characters. Everyone is depicted as the lowest a human being can be. It is over the top disgusting. No redeeming quality to reading this.

FranticFrummie

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:47 pm

The DaVinci Code. I want those three days of my life back!

I waded through the whole thing hoping it would get better, and by the end I wanted to throw it across the room.

All I can say is, I'm glad the book belonged to a friend, so I didn't actually spend money on it. That would have been adding insult to injury.

FranticFrummie

Wed, May 08 2019, 2:50 pm

Around the World in Eighty Days. Sooooo racist!

It's a classic, it was a different time, blah blah blah. That doesn't mean I have to enjoy reading about "darkies dancing around like apes." Blech! I felt like I needed a shower after that one.

vintagebknyc

Wed, May 08 2019, 3:29 pm

saw50st8 wrote:

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

This is in my top five favorite books, lol.

thunderstorm

Wed, May 08 2019, 3:36 pm

I shut the book and forget the title if I don't like it or find it too boring ...so I honestly can't think of one! I don't remember.

SuperWify

Wed, May 08 2019, 3:44 pm

FranticFrummie wrote:

I liked because I agree the book is racist.

I also “hugged” because I love that book and in those days unfortunately colored people were not considered humans in most parts of the world 🙁. So the author wasn’t trying to be openly cruel or blatantly racist, he was just doing what society did then.

(Another example that comes to mind is Charles dickens book, Oliver Twist, where he calls the thief Fagin, The Jew over and again. When confronted, he argued he wasn’t anti-Semitic, just that Jews in east London where mostly crooks 🙁. Again, society was very faulty then - with believing all Jews were dishonest- and he had no problem taking that idea. This was a brilliant and beloved man and yet his logic was so twisted.

Bh we came a long way from then.)