Recommend me a bad book!

Queen Michael

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The book Modelland by Tyra Banks fits the bill perfectly. It's the kind of novel that

1. Clearly was published because the auther is a celebrity.
2. Obviously was written by Tyra Banks herself, since no ghost writer would mess up this horribly.
3. Probably makes sense to Tyra Banks, and clearly doesn't make sense to anyone else.
 

RedDeadFred

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Dean Koontz has written some particularly stupid pieces of shit:

Your Heart Belongs to Me:
The main character is a rich guy who thinks that someone is out to kill him and then nothing happens for the whole book. Then the ending happens, you find out who is trying to kill him, it's for pretty stupid reasons. Then it ends with something even more stupid which I won't spoil. Suffice to say, Koontz is way to obsessed with dogs. Fuck this book made me mad. I haven't read a book by him since. He has some good ones, but this was the last straw after a string of awfulness.

Brother Odd:
The premise of this series was actually pretty good. The first book was enjoyable, the second was fine, and then this... I was stunned by the drop in quality. It went from a fairly smart detective thriller (Odd can communicate with the dead and uses information to solve cases -I can't even remember what his actual job is though) to pure stupidity. He's in a monastery and everything basically becomes hyper religious. The main bad guy is using science to prove the existence of god. He causes a bunch of demons or something to start roaming around though and they end up killing some brothers. The climax was laughably bad.

The Face:
I barely remember this one. It was really just forgettable. Half way through it was revealed that there's angels walking around or something. The ending was disappointing from what I remember. I wouldn't recommend reading this for acting out. It was long and boring.

There are plenty of others by him that I don't even remember because of how damn forgettable their plots were.
 

Drake Barrow

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E-Dogg said:
"Silverfall: Stories of the Seven Sisters" by Ed Greenwood. It's set in the Forgotten Realms campaign-setting from D&D (which Greenwood created/co-created, or some such). I read it the first time when i was 16 or so, and kind of liked it. Read it again a few years (and tons of books)later, and threw it away in disgust. It reads like seven different Mary Sues crammed in to one horrid book. It seriously gave me nightmares.
Thank you, E-Dogg. You actually summed up pretty much everything wrong with 2nd Ed Forgotten Realms in a very concise manner. They fixed the most egregious examples in 3rd and 3.5, just in time to blow it all to the Nine Hells for 4th. It always gladdens my heart to know I wasn't the only one who felt that way.

OT: I've got a couple authors for you. Pretty much all their books are terrible, so pick and choose as you will.

John Ringo. ANYTHING by John Ringo, but the Paladin Of Shadows series (starting with Kildar) is especially suitable for targeting. Paper-thin characters, terrible cliches, contrived situations that will make you scream to the uncaring gods of Military SF...it's got the whole package.

William C. Dietz. The Legion Of The Damned universe is basically a galaxy full of Mary Sues, each one worse than the rest. Oh, and enough cliches to fill an encyclopedia.

Andy Remic, specifically the Combat K novels. Oh. My. God. Sloppy writing, inconsistent characters, a tone that never fully decides if it wants to be an awesome transhuman cyberpunk-inspired sci-fi epic or messy parody of same, and EVEN MORE CLICHES.

Any of the above will provide you with nights of dramatic reading entertainment.
 

TheYellowCellPhone

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I recall reading this book a few years ago that I thought was try to knock off "The Road". Post-apocalyptic, old guy and young boy surviving and meeting people, some monumental even happening. I can't find the actual name and author of the book, but I remember it sucking horribly with each page turn. It was simply bad, no real improvement I would recommend for it other than completely restarting the whole book anew.

The worst book I've ever read by a long shot is the American classic The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Awful fucking book. Just not good. Starts slow, never gets exciting, it's full of a bunch of mock science and psychology, completely indistinguishable cast, and all written to the theme of Hawthorne's heavy-handed beating you with the hidden message in the book. Hawthorne spent more time in getting his thoughts about sin and popularity down, and completely neglected to explain the story.

The story is really freaking bad too. It's like reading a murder mystery where the victim is never written about, and there's only one suspect, and all evidence further proves that the only suspect is the murderer, and then the suspect admits to murder. You know who the person who did the wrong deed was by around the third chapter, and Hawthorne pretends that you don't know until the climax, twenty-five chapters later.

And if you read the book before, I was absolutely appalled by the ending. The adulterer died by grief after admitting his sin, the malefactor died soon after, the bastard child recieved all the wealth, and the mother died. Two pages for the end, filled with "yeah they died I guess because of bad feelings" and emotionless statings of the bastard child fleeing America to live in Europe.

What a fucking book.
Yopaz said:
thehermit2 said:
Have you thought about looking at fan fiction? Lots cheaper than buying books, and while there is a lot of good fan fiction there is a lot that is not so much good as very, very not good.

Anyway, my selection is from a dark period when I was reading political fiction. Political fiction is almost always bad, but by far the worst one I read was a self-righteous "update" of George Orwell's 1984 called American 2014 by Dawn Blair.
I just glanced over your post and saw 1984... in a thread about bad books... that could have gotten ugly.
To be fair, 1984 isn't a good story. A mind-opening book about philanthropy and the ideas at work though.
 

Dr. Cakey

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I'll raise the option of Left Behind, which weighs in at number two on my person list of "Worst Books Ever Written". It's supposedly about the world post-rapture (not to be confused with the world post-apocalypse, they're completely different), but it's mostly about the characters making a bunch of phone calls. It may, however, be too long and/or too dull.
 

Queen Michael

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Dr. Cakey said:
I'll raise the option of Left Behind, which weighs in at number two on my person list of "Worst Books Ever Written". It's supposedly about the world post-rapture (not to be confused with the world post-apocalypse, they're completely different), but it's mostly about the characters making a bunch of phone calls. It may, however, be too long and/or too dull.

Seconded, friend. I got the first book from the local library, and the dumbest thing about it was the way it started with all the children of the world (and a few adults) disappearing but lots of people not acting all that shocked.
 

MidnightCat

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He Sees You When You're Sleeping [http://carolhigginsclark.com/books/he-sees-you-when-youre-sleeping/], written by Carol Higgins Clark and her mother, Mary Higgins Clark. It's crime fiction, and it is a crime against fiction. This is honestly the worst professionally-published book I have ever read.It well and truly covers the holy trinity of terrible writing, ridiculous plot and woeful characterisation.

The book's about a guy who dies but didn't do enough during his life to warrant access to heaven, so he's sent back down to earth to help out this little girl whose family is being targeted by thugs for some reason. The creepiest thing in the book is the part where the middle-aged (or elderly?) dead guy stands over the girl's bed and watches her sleep, JUST because they needed to shoehorn the title of the book in somewhere.

It isn't a long book, and it should be perfect for you if you're just looking for a laugh.
 

wintercoat

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RedDeadFred said:
Dean Koontz has written some particularly stupid pieces of shit:

Brother Odd:
The premise of this series was actually pretty good. The first book was enjoyable, the second was fine, and then this... I was stunned by the drop in quality. It went from a fairly smart detective thriller (Odd can communicate with the dead and uses information to solve cases -I can't even remember what his actual job is though) to pure stupidity. He's in a monastery and everything basically becomes hyper religious. The main bad guy is using science to prove the existence of god. He causes a bunch of demons or something to start roaming around though and they end up killing some brothers. The climax was laughably bad.
He was a fry cook in the first two books. In Brother Odd, he's just...there. He cooks sometimes for the monastery, but isn't the actual cook. That's the big, imposing Russian quantum physicist ex-military guy that just happens to be there when the other, rich quantum physicist turned monk uses SCIENCE!!! to conjure fractal ice demons with quantum mechanics. Also, we lose Elvis at the end. :`(

In Odd We Trust was worse, though. Odd has to stop a terrorist attack...involving nukes! TERRORISM!!!!!!!!!! D: Oh, and Frank Sinatra apparently makes a rather assholish ghost.

I haven't read the more recent entries, but based on how Brother Odd and In Odd We Trust went, I'm guessing they aren't as good as the first two either.

Oh, and you forgot to mention that Odd can see into the future...vaguely...somewhat.
 

RedDeadFred

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wintercoat said:
RedDeadFred said:
Dean Koontz has written some particularly stupid pieces of shit:

Brother Odd:
The premise of this series was actually pretty good. The first book was enjoyable, the second was fine, and then this... I was stunned by the drop in quality. It went from a fairly smart detective thriller (Odd can communicate with the dead and uses information to solve cases -I can't even remember what his actual job is though) to pure stupidity. He's in a monastery and everything basically becomes hyper religious. The main bad guy is using science to prove the existence of god. He causes a bunch of demons or something to start roaming around though and they end up killing some brothers. The climax was laughably bad.
He was a fry cook in the first two books. In Brother Odd, he's just...there. He cooks sometimes for the monastery, but isn't the actual cook. That's the big, imposing Russian quantum physicist ex-military guy that just happens to be there when the other, rich quantum physicist turned monk uses SCIENCE!!! to conjure fractal ice demons with quantum mechanics. Also, we lose Elvis at the end. :`(

In Odd We Trust was worse, though. Odd has to stop a terrorist attack...involving nukes! TERRORISM!!!!!!!!!! D: Oh, and Frank Sinatra apparently makes a rather assholish ghost.

I haven't read the more recent entries, but based on how Brother Odd and In Odd We Trust went, I'm guessing they aren't as good as the first two either.

Oh, and you forgot to mention that Odd can see into the future...vaguely...somewhat.
Wow forgot about so many things in that book/series. I stopped reading those books after Brother Odd. I didn't even know there were more (seems like he's milked this character a little much....). Apparently the next book after the one you mentioned (which from you description does sound awful) is called Odd Apocalypse and then Deeply Odd. Those are two of the dumbest titles I've ever seen.
 

Gottesstrafe

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Sometimes my friends and I like to go to the Romance section of Barnes and Nobles and find a random harlequin romance novel to read aloud. Last week we found one about an ex special forces agent career women who fell for the simple charms of an American midwest farmhand/lawyer and read out passages in the voices of Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman, Bender, Duke Nukem,and Nathan Explosion. We even had a 15 minute dialogue between the two romantic leads played respectively by Toki and Skwisgaar. After that we developed a fixation with using the voices of the cast of Metalocalypse, and promptly switched to another novel about eco-friendly vampire horticulturalists that tended to a hydroponics garden in their loft in downtown Detroit in between their (sometimes incestuous) orgy sessions.
 

wintercoat

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RedDeadFred said:
wintercoat said:
RedDeadFred said:
Dean Koontz has written some particularly stupid pieces of shit:

Brother Odd:
The premise of this series was actually pretty good. The first book was enjoyable, the second was fine, and then this... I was stunned by the drop in quality. It went from a fairly smart detective thriller (Odd can communicate with the dead and uses information to solve cases -I can't even remember what his actual job is though) to pure stupidity. He's in a monastery and everything basically becomes hyper religious. The main bad guy is using science to prove the existence of god. He causes a bunch of demons or something to start roaming around though and they end up killing some brothers. The climax was laughably bad.
He was a fry cook in the first two books. In Brother Odd, he's just...there. He cooks sometimes for the monastery, but isn't the actual cook. That's the big, imposing Russian quantum physicist ex-military guy that just happens to be there when the other, rich quantum physicist turned monk uses SCIENCE!!! to conjure fractal ice demons with quantum mechanics. Also, we lose Elvis at the end. :`(

In Odd We Trust was worse, though. Odd has to stop a terrorist attack...involving nukes! TERRORISM!!!!!!!!!! D: Oh, and Frank Sinatra apparently makes a rather assholish ghost.

I haven't read the more recent entries, but based on how Brother Odd and In Odd We Trust went, I'm guessing they aren't as good as the first two either.

Oh, and you forgot to mention that Odd can see into the future...vaguely...somewhat.
Wow forgot about so many things in that book/series. I stopped reading those books after Brother Odd. I didn't even know there were more (seems like he's milked this character a little much....). Apparently the next book after the one you mentioned (which from you description does sound awful) is called Odd Apocalypse and then Deeply Odd. Those are two of the dumbest titles I've ever seen.
It's sad, because the first two books were really good. The first one was a good read, and, while not as good as the first, the second was also pretty good.

Also, Dean Koontz has a huge thing for dogs. Pretty much every one of his books has a dog in it that helps move the plot forward. Brother Odd, speaking of which, had a ghost dog that led Odd to the crazy physicist monk's secret hideout.

Dean Koontz' books are rather hit or miss, really. Some are just stupid as all hell(there's one where a bodyguard is protecting a woman and her son, who turns out to be the antichrist, who are being hunted down by a religious cult. He falls in love with her, and continues to protect them, even after the whole antichrist reveal. Did I mention near the end the kid kills a couple cultists with a swarm of bats that eat them alive? Cuz that totally happens. And dude's still sticking around, 'cuz love blahblahblah). Some are great reads, like Odd Thomas. Some are just...meh.
 

GabeZhul

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Wow... Thanks guys. I think I will have a hard time cherry-picking from all these recommendations, but you just provided me with material for at least a year or so. I should have done asked you sooner.

Thank you. :)
 

Gottesstrafe

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wintercoat said:
RedDeadFred said:
wintercoat said:
RedDeadFred said:
Dean Koontz has written some particularly stupid pieces of shit:

Brother Odd:
The premise of this series was actually pretty good. The first book was enjoyable, the second was fine, and then this... I was stunned by the drop in quality. It went from a fairly smart detective thriller (Odd can communicate with the dead and uses information to solve cases -I can't even remember what his actual job is though) to pure stupidity. He's in a monastery and everything basically becomes hyper religious. The main bad guy is using science to prove the existence of god. He causes a bunch of demons or something to start roaming around though and they end up killing some brothers. The climax was laughably bad.
He was a fry cook in the first two books. In Brother Odd, he's just...there. He cooks sometimes for the monastery, but isn't the actual cook. That's the big, imposing Russian quantum physicist ex-military guy that just happens to be there when the other, rich quantum physicist turned monk uses SCIENCE!!! to conjure fractal ice demons with quantum mechanics. Also, we lose Elvis at the end. :`(

In Odd We Trust was worse, though. Odd has to stop a terrorist attack...involving nukes! TERRORISM!!!!!!!!!! D: Oh, and Frank Sinatra apparently makes a rather assholish ghost.

I haven't read the more recent entries, but based on how Brother Odd and In Odd We Trust went, I'm guessing they aren't as good as the first two either.

Oh, and you forgot to mention that Odd can see into the future...vaguely...somewhat.
Wow forgot about so many things in that book/series. I stopped reading those books after Brother Odd. I didn't even know there were more (seems like he's milked this character a little much....). Apparently the next book after the one you mentioned (which from you description does sound awful) is called Odd Apocalypse and then Deeply Odd. Those are two of the dumbest titles I've ever seen.
It's sad, because the first two books were really good. The first one was a good read, and, while not as good as the first, the second was also pretty good.

Also, Dean Koontz has a huge thing for dogs. Pretty much every one of his books has a dog in it that helps move the plot forward. Brother Odd, speaking of which, had a ghost dog that led Odd to the crazy physicist monk's secret hideout.

Dean Koontz' books are rather hit or miss, really. Some are just stupid as all hell(there's one where a bodyguard is protecting a woman and her son, who turns out to be the antichrist, who are being hunted down by a religious cult. He falls in love with her, and continues to protect them, even after the whole antichrist reveal. Did I mention near the end the kid kills a couple cultists with a swarm of bats that eat them alive? Cuz that totally happens. And dude's still sticking around, 'cuz love blahblahblah). Some are great reads, like Odd Thomas. Some are just...meh.
How does his Frankenstein series hold up? I read a few of them during a particularly long layover in San Francisco, something about Frankenstein teaming up with Mulder and Scully to fight the pod people in New Orleans. I heard from a friend that in his later books it gets kinda stupid(er) featuring the return of Frankenstein and the X-Files crew, this team squaring off against Cylons in small town midwest America.
 

Specter Von Baren

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Slaughter House 5. Big points if you hold out the book to them when you reach the page where there's an illustration of a woman's locket... with her still wearing it... while she's nude.
 

Greymanelor

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I honestly regret even suggesting this, because it means someone else in the world might have to suffer through this book, but try Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse by James Wesley Rawles. It is, far and beyond, the single worst book I've ever read in my entire life. Heck, if you want a copy for free, message me and I'll be MORE than happy to mail you one. It would save me from finding a safe place to burn the one I've got.
 

0 to 3 Sad Onions

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If you haven't already used it and ~400 pages isn't too long, then Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews might work. There's much, much worse out there (put it next to some of the books already mentioned in this thread and it'll look like the fucking Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by comparison), but it'll do if you really need a pinch-hit.

Latawnya the Naughty Horse is another winner. Good luck finding a physical copy, but scans of it should be all over the Internet.
 

Angie7F

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0 to 3 Sad Onions said:
If you haven't already used it and ~400 pages isn't too long, then Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews might work. There's much, much worse out there (put it next to some of the books already mentioned in this thread and it'll look like the fucking Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by comparison), but it'll do if you really need a pinch-hit.

Latawnya the Naughty Horse is another winner. Good luck finding a physical copy, but scans of it should be all over the Internet.
Flowers in the attic!
Funny thing is, I read it in Japanese, and that version was not as bad.
Translations are wierdd that way.
They can make crappy books ammazing and amazing books not so amazing.

I favorite bad book to read amongst English-Japanese Bilinguals are the Harry Potter series.
So many mistakes... Soooo many mistakes...
 

Forobryt

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AccursedTheory said:
Personally, I liked Ghost Story. But that may just be because I enjoyed it when Mortimer goes from 'cowardly wimp' to 'Wizard who could probably give Chuthulu nightmares.'
My problem with ghost story was the audiobook was voiced by someone else other than James Marsters, when all the books are voiced by the same guy and they suddenly change it is jarring, granted Marsters is back voicing as of Cold Days.


Worst book to me is "To build a Fire and other stories" by Jack London, but thats just because it bored me to tears, so it might not be bad just not for me.
 

gewuerzgurke

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Yeah translating books is quite a good possibility to ruin them :D I think that goes for most language pairs.
But slightly more on topic: I do the exact same thing with my boyfriend (he's the one reading though) and we usually pick thosereally awful romance novels about some sort of knight in shining armour who rescues the oh so lovely peasant lady (in our times though, not with actual knights) or things like that. They're perfect, because they're dirt cheap, very badly written and the "stories" are just plain...weird. I actually did some research on that before answering, to see if they exist in America (apparantly I just assumed that's where you're from, funny...) and I think the keyword would be things like pulp magazine or dime novels.