Books you regret reading

[Newtonyd]

The Sword of Truth novels, for pretty much the same reasons mentioned by those who regretted reading the Anita Blake books.

Decent protagonist and his love interest slowly morph into mindless marty stu and mary sue. The problem is that the transformation takes long enough that the by the time you realize it you've already bought 6 books and wasted a ton of money (or if you were smart, borrowed 6 books from the library, and merely wasted many hours of your life). On the plus side it least it didn't have furries and necrophilia, so I feel slightly better than if I'd read Anita Blake from what I've seen of the reviews in this thread. But only slightly.

You were lucky you didn't see this series out to the end, and only read the better books. Out of all the series I've read, this is the one I regret the most.

The author seems to have a weird obsession with rape, since every book is filled with pages on pages of innocent civilians getting raped by thugs. Towards the end, the story is just a series of constant depictions of rape and murder on the part of the transparent effigy of communism. The author abandons any attempt to keep his political views out of his writing, to the point where the main character becomes a successful capitalist for half a book for the purpose of showing the folly of communism.

The final two books are almost entirely composed of one-sided philosophical arguments on letting humanity promote itself vs. making humanity suffer. At this point, the author, Terry Goodkind, has become the fantasy version of Ayn Rand. The awkward, forced twists of logic and story made characters that I had cared about become alien to me. The ending was a forced travesty that gave me a headache.

I'm sad to say I actually finished this series, if only because my family kept buying the books for me at birthdays under the impression that I enjoyed the series (I couldn't tell them how much I despised their gifts). If there was ever a crime against literature, it is this series. It's a shame, the first books showed such promise.

 

[KingCrInuYasha]

And while I don't regret reading it... Christ, A Clockwork Orange... Dear. Oh, dear me... I wasn't right for days after reading that. It's just so... Cruel, almost to a pointless degree. It makes me feel like a monster just to have taken part in it by reading that story.
Furthermore... Alex sucks. He ought to have been taken out the courtyard and killed by neckshot. And what's worse is, there's thousands of him. What on earth happened to Alternative Nadsativerse London?!
Also, I'm now the sworn arch-enemy to any and all Alex-apologists. Kubrick did the right thing when he did a self-imposed ban on the film version in Britain after he learned some wastes of air tried to emulate it. Oh, dear, oh dear... I can't really stomack to look at it.

On the one hand, I think that was kind of the point. I don't think the story would have worked as well if Alex wasn't the monstrous individual he was. From what I gather, the whole idea of the story was "How far are we willing to go to punish the worst of criminals, and is it worth the price?". One the other, the ending to the British version was kind of a cop-out.

Spoiler

At the end, Alex decides to stop his evil ways and decides to become a normal, family man. Really? The Ludovico treatment showed that a rotten person can still be rotten, even with the treatment. Yet free will will magically make criminals reform. Maybe, but I highly doubt Alex is one of those individuals.

Nonetheless, if you want something in that vein, yet don't want to go back to Clockwork, you're probably better off renting The Dark Knight.

 

[Yojoo]

I absolutely hated the final Harry Potter book. It felt so slapdash and disorganized, with so many added elements to finish the story, that it actually ruined the series for me. I actually liked the first six books, but now I hate the entire series. Ugh.

Second place goes to Baldur's Gate. The author took one of the best stories I've ever heard and made a terrible, terrible novel out of it. When you already have as great a story as Baldur's Gate featured, ruining it takes a special sort of failure.

 

[Melon Hunter]

Flood by Stephen Baxter. About the entire world being flooded, in 40 years. No, not just a large-scale sea rise of, say, ten metres. Literally the entire surface of the Earth is flooded. The last scene of the book has the characters watching the peak of Everest go under.

I don't know what's more insulting; the vague assertions by the author that this is possible because of massive water reservoirs beneath the ocean floor that might be there (despite the fact the sea level rise accelerates exponentially, because everyone knows that when you pierce a pressurised container, the contents dribble out at first, then gradually leak out faster and faster /sarcasm), the fact it takes a mere 40 years to happen, the way that every character who's trying to save humanity is treated as a villain, while the Luddite bastards who sabotage these attempts are somehow treated as the good guys.

The child of one of the main characters is such a precocious little twat I was begging for him to die in some horrible way before the end (it doesn't happen). He somehow ends up in an American nuclear submarine, and has a chance to see the submerged ruins of London. He isn't interested. All the little bastard wants to do is swim. I have never been so overwhelmed with hatred towards a character before.

It is the only book I've gladly thrown in a charity bag. It is utter cack, and I urge you not to read it.

 

[Gincairn]

Dirk Gentley's holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.

It just didn't really grip me and so I felt that I had forced myself to read it

 

[Raven_Operative]

Catching Fire.

Ugh... The first book in the series is one of my favorite books, but the second one... ugh.. It made my brain cry just reading it...

 

[pixiejedi]

Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan

They took the lore, squiggled around with it, and then fucked up one of the most awesome characters in the Star Wars universe so that they could make a tie in for the shittiest MMO in history.

Yeah, I mad.

Word, that book, grrrr....

I don't know why I bought that book. I always play as a chick in games I get to choose in so I tried to just cut it some slack, but really? After the end I just kinda sat there and thought, "well that was pretty stupid" Did Revan get a lobotomy or something? that was one of the worst plans in fiction.

Snip

Yeah its good to know its a theme with Harris. I read the Sookie Stackhouse books and its the fucking same thing! True Blood entertains the hell out of me so I tried the books. Its like Stephanie Meyers grew up to write trashy novels. Harris goes all out describing things that make no difference at all, then jumps into something suddenly making me think I missed a couple of pages. Every character wants Sookie for absolutely no good reason and don't have lives or interests of their own.

TLR, Watch True Blood, skip the books.

 

[drthmik]

Almost everything under the classification of "Classic"
Fahrenheit 451
Pride and Prejudice
Great Expectations
Lord of the Flies
The Odyssey
Everything by Shakespeare
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Atlas Shrugged
Robinson Crusoe
Moby-Dick
The Plague
Foundation
2001: A Space Odyssey
2010 (I liked 2061 and 3001)
On the Origin of Species
The Descent of Man
Most of E. A. Poe's works

 

[Ventilator89]

The Hunger Games.
Honestly, the movie was better (in my opinion) than the first book. I just enjoyed it more, but this really wasn't due to the story. The worst type of writing for me is first person writing. In many cases it is fine, eg. The Hobbit. (because the author was the "first person"... Person, not Bilbo.) But in cases like the Hunger Games, it was there to cover up the crap skill in writing of the Author. Ive heard of Susan Collins before, but I've never (or I can't remember) reading any of her books. But god the writing was crap. Even the Twilight writing was better, though they were pretty much exactly the same style. I would have loved the book if it was in third person. I would literally almost ( almost btw) Worship it. The story I found was interesting , though the first section of the book was blah. Yet I only regretted reading it after I read the series once. Not in the middle of it.

Also, the last twilight book.
Yes, I actually could somewhat stand the other books of the series, but the last book I actually considered stuffing it back into my school library. That hunk of ... Yea. I believe that I have made a point. I regret reading this book.

Oh yea, and the robin hood and the 'sword for a dark queen" or something by someone redcliffe. Glah. I can't remember what the author is called.

 

[Shoqiyqa]

Two thirds of Titus Groan. Two people both bought me it for the same birthday.

In the first two-thirds of the book, amounting to about one and a half Tom Clancy novels, a baby is born, two people don't like each other and one of them finds a sword-cane.