Really awful books, you wouldn't recommend to anyone

Bumping this thread up because whilst on vacation in Greece, someone gave me a book by Ken Follett (WORLD WITHOUT END) to read and his writing was so bad that I gave up after chapter 2.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. I'd love to quote some passages from it to wow you all but I cut them out of the book and sent them to a friend.

The Elegence of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. Pretentious, lame school-teacher's reveries about Japan and how all rich people are ignorant philistines. A school-teacher's book in the worst sense.

The Passion by Jeanette Winterson. Same kind of pseudo-philosophical blatherings as the previous one.
And short sentences on a new line.
Which are really profound.
Like the author.

And Confederacy of Dunces. Cheap, poor, unfunny.

And The Grapes of Wrath.
Dull, dull dialogue. Repetitious. Preachy. Drab.

The Moustache by Emmanuel Carrère. Gratuitous depression. NO joy. Look how bleak I am. At least Céline does it with humour and vim.

Then there are the goodies....

I love this book.

what little I read of it
I intensely disliked

from what you've told me i'd likely want to smack the guy, Suz. Then again Lark and Termite might irritate me, buy i'll try to read the latter before too long

I don't think
yo'll feel that way
about Lark and Termite biscuit
not at all

Can one write a book about the Depression without making it drab?

what's his excuse for The Red Pony then, eh?

Haven't read that one.

it seems like steinbeck is always under or overrated: he's never seen as just being a really good/ great solid professional writer...

I think the confederacy is one of my favorite books period.

Can one write a book about the Depression without making it drab?

possibly not, but maybe a drab of real resource and substance?

Can one write a book about the Depression without making it drab?

possibly not, but maybe a drab of real resource and substance?

Go back to The Grapes of Wrath and read the horrifically sentimental last chapter where the young mother gives her breast to the dying old man. Urgh.

Drab subject matter doesn't mean you need to do drab writing!

Horrifically sentimental? Man, I didn't read the last chapter that way at all...

On the surface it may be a tad sentimental or melodramatic, but then what to make of that last line? "Smiled mysteriously?" I guess the image of a young women breastfeeding an old man was simply too jarring for my mind to go there. I think it's a rather bold way to end the novel actually.

What I make of it is lazy sentimentalism as I say. Plus everything's so wholesome. Do you think she's going to have an affair with him? I don't think so. Either way far too noble and rrrrrrighteous for my taste. Plus I can't stick Dialogue in Dialect (almost gave up on Wuthering Heights precisely for this reason, but happily stuck with it).