Belladonna asked a good question in her comment on my last post. And it got me thinking: what are the worst books I’ve ever read?

I could come up with two right off the top of my head: Zel by Donna Jo Napoli and The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. I don’t remember why I had such a loathesome reaction to Zel. But I did. I hated it. And because of that, I’ve never read another book by Napoli becasue of it. The Sparrow I enjoyed for most of the book, but the end turned overly disturbing and explicit. I just felt nasty after finishing it. There are ways to do provocative that doesn’t have to be gross.

There are books I don’t like because of the language and/or explicit sexual content: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffengger and Neuromancer by William Gibson (though I didn’t finish this one) are three that come to mind in this category. Often I can look past the language, if the story or characters are sufficiently compelling. But in both of these cases, the language overtook the story and ruined it for me.

Interesting side note: much adult science fiction/fantasy falls into the worst book category. I love fantasy books, but too often the author spends too much time on the world and not enough on the story.

There are those chick-lit books I didn’t like because I just thought they were dumb: Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants by Ann Brashares, The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot, and The Monk Downstairs by Tim Farrington. I know “dumb” is a subjective thing. What I find “dumb” might be really compelling to another person. And, admittedly, it might be compelling to me on another day. It took me years to get through Pride and Prejudice. I always thought it was “dumb”. Likewise, I found Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley to be really compelling the first time through, but by the third, it was pretty dumb.

Notice all those were chick lit. Hmm…

I could go on. But I won’t. What’s your worst book ever that you finished?