Top Ten Picks: Worst books you've ever read

Ah now heres a topic to get peoples opinions, the lastest topic on Random Ramblings is top ten worst books you've ever read. We apologise now if your beloved favourite is here amongst our worst books, its only our opinion you know ;)

Firstly from Chris....

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy by S.D Perry

I have read three books in the 'Resident Evil' series, none of which I enjoyed. As far as I am concerned they are all as dreadful as each other but I'm only allowed to name one...

This book is terrible in every conceivable sense of the word; Poorly written, full of crass, foul language and spelling mistakes. The characters are, without exception, two dimensional, unbelievable and boring. The storyline is utterly laughable.

All in all a terrible waste of paper and the most regrettable literary purchases I have ever made.

Falling for Icarus by Rory Maclean

This book is written by a man who suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of his mother. He decides (seemingly out of the blue) to uproot his family, move to Cyprus and build a flying machine.

He is not a mechanic or an engineer, in fact he doesn't seem to have a clue. He drags his poor wife along with him and doesn't care one jot how she feels about the whole thing.

The story bored me stiff. It was written in the sort of roundabout incoherent manner you would expect from a person who has suffered a breakdown. The book didn't inspire me. It annoyed me a great deal. The man didn't need a flying machine. He needed a psychiatrist.

Vampires by Konstantinos

I reviewed this book here on the blog a month ago and you can read the review here. The book tries to convince the reader that Vampires are real. This is not done in any believable sense. The author makes numerous assertions but cannot produce one scrap of solid, reliable evidence. A poor read.

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

This book has earned the dubious accolade as the worst book I have ever read (cue the trumpets!)
It makes me hot under the collar just thinking about how much I hate this book. The story is very strange; it begins with a soldier serving as a private in WW2 who is captured and becomes a POW later in the story he is kidnapped by aliens and forced to mate with a stripper. I did say it was strange.

The phrase 'So it goes' is written every time someone or something dies in the book. This phrase appears 116 times in total (bear in mind the book is only 150 pages long) by the end it infuriated me so much I wanted to burn the book.

Vonnegut also writes about the fire bombing of Dresden as if he is an authority on the subject when he is anything but. His figures are completely incorrect and clearly made up on the spot without any kind of research. I nearly burst a blood vessel when I read this line;

“Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes"

No, Mr Vonnegut I am sure the greatest massacre in European history was the Nazis murdering six million Jewish people in extermination camps, not a bombing raid that killed 24,000 people (not 135,000 as you wrote in the book)

A terrible, terrible book not fit to serve as a draft excluder.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Awful teenage rubbish which bored me to tears. Once again this was reviewed here fairly recently. The main character is a soppy mare who I really had no sympathy with. In fact, I wanted the zombies to make a meal out of her. She obsesses over a boy in her village whilst everyone she knows and loves is eaten alive. Tasteless 'popular' fiction.

And from Jess....

Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks

I really really wanted to like this book. I received this book from Chris one Christmas morning and since I had enjoyed some of his other books like Bird Song Chris had gotten me a signed special edition. But I have never been able to finish Human Traces, it reads very slow and goes on and on about the human condition. I still have it but doubt I'll ever finish it.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

A load of boys stranded on a desert island eventually succumbing to mans more primitive nature. This should have been the best read ever, but why did I feel so bored reading it?

Great Apes by Will Self

Again another great idea, a man wakes after a drug/drink filled night and find he has turned into an ape, as has everyone else in the world. He is shortly moved into an asylum because he 'thinks' he is human. Most of this book is filled with chimps having sex – seriously.

Breaking dawn by Stephanie Meyer

Firstly I'm sorry for jumping on the twilight hating bandwagon. Renesmee, every time I read that name I had to stop and wonder who would name their child that, WHO. That aside we have the big promised battle at the end only to find they can sort it all out with a nice conversation, Bella's father being totally OK with Jacob being a werewolf and her being a vampire, and the love shack of Bella and Edward deep in the forest. I'm sorry if your a fan - please don't hate me.

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H Lawrence

I don't know why but I can never finish this, its not a terrible book or anything but I just cant seem to get past page 100.