I’ve seen this floating around (I really should join in the Top Ten Picks at Random Ramblings; maybe when the girls go back to school…) and I knew I’d have something to add. (Of course I do.) The basic premise: what are the ten WORST books you’ve ever read?

Well, going through my lists and posts and memory (such that it is), I wasn’t able to come up with ten books that struck me as terrible, no-good, horrible, and you couldn’t pay me to read them again. But I did manage to come up with a few. Five to be exact. (There could be more books, but most are more “meh” than anything else, so I didn’t include them.)

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte: When I read this, all I could think was, “Good Heavens! It’s a complete train wreck.” I finished it; it’s very seldom that I actually finish what I think is a bad book, but I didn’t enjoy the experience. I didn’t like the characters, I found the plot creepy, and there’s no way you can pay me enough to read again. In short: It was a horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad book. And I don’t get the appeal of Heathcliff. Not at all. (Could someone please why they like him to me?)

The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell: This one gets love from people, and out the outset it’s a very good science fiction book. There’s a lot about imposing on a new people; illusions to what the English and Spanish did with native populations, forcing their religion, introducing diseases. And I was enjoying it, for the most part. But then I got to the end! The end is SO important in a book, people, and I was sickened by the end of this one. Absolutely sickened. Killed the rest of the book for me, and I will avoid it like the plague.

Blue Bloods, Melissa de la Cruz
To be fair, I got about a third of the way through this book, and I bailed. So it’s not really one I finished. But, it’s more fluffy than I can handle: all who you know and what you’re wearing, and no plot or character or depth. M read the whole series — she was in the mood for “crap” — and said my fundamental problem is that I’m not a teenage girl. Well, then. That explains it.

Rules for Saying Goodbye, Katherine Taylor
It’s “deliciously witty” they told me. It’s “affecting”. It “winks at real life.” It’ll be fun. Yeah… like root canal is fun. It was painful. It was depressing. It was msierable people. The main character was unsympathetic. The plot was And — oh, yeah! — it was supposed to be satire. Yeah. I don’t get satire. Especially when it looks like this.

The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown
A caveat: I liked Angels and Demons. Really. Thought it was fun. Dumb, but fun. Granted, I read that one first, which, I think, makes all the difference. Not only was this one pretty much exactly like the first one, it was even dumber. I think Brown tried to go for some self-aware humor, but the whole “Indiana Jones in tweed” thing got old really, really fast. And it was so earnest: it’s all real, honest. (It’s just fiction, people. And lousy writing at that.) I always wondered how many people went to the Louvre afterward and whispered knowingly, “She’s down there!”

Bonus play: Hamlet, William Shakespeare: I don’t get it. In spite of my English professor friends’ attempt to convince me of the brilliance of this play — it seems to come up every single time we go see any Shakespeare play — I just. don’t. get. it. Hamlet annoys and irritates me. He’s wishy-washy, indecisive and a jerk. Poor Ophelia, getting mixed up with the self-absorbed bad boy. (Well, he’s not good.) Though I don’t quite understand why she’d want to off herself just because he doesn’t like her anymore. (Yeah, yeah, it’s been explained to me. I just don’t get it.) The play starts out boring and then eventually dissolves into incomprehensible. Thankfully, they all end up dead. (Sorry: spoiler alert.) That part, at least, makes sense.

So, what books are on your worst list?