What is

[james_davis_nicoll]

The best book you hate?

Comments

[eagle]

A Case of Conscience. I take it on faith that there's something good about this book, but I considered it the worst SF novel that I'd read in the last 10 years.

[yhlee]

Does it have to be sf/f?

Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Multiple English majors explained to me that it was a wonderful novel, and that may be so, but I feel like the time I spent reading the damn thing could have better been spent burning as many copies as I could find.

I'm trying to think of an sf/f novel I hate as much, but my unreasoning hatred of Tess fails to be outdone.

[morpheme]

Neuromancer. Can't stand its style-over-substance hipper-than-thou-ness.

However, I love all of Gibson's recent works.

[auriaephiala]

Anything by Henry James or Joseph Conrad.

[alexseanchai]

ENDER'S GAME

[oh6]

Pretty much has to be Nineteen Eighty-four. Obviously a good book, but I'd rather go to the dentist than read it again.

[filkerdave]

Hmmm...tough one, since I often can't be bothered finishing "good" books if I hate them. Especially if they hit the point of "I don't care what happens to any of these people"

[beckyzoole]

Oh, man, I love Wuthering Heights and Tess of the D'Urbervilles!

You know how there's fascination in a good train wreck? I watch these people destroy their own lives, and know that they cannot help but do so because of who they are, and it fascinates me. Sure, I wouldn't act as they do, and I wouldn't want to be friends with them -- but I have known people just like them.

But most of all, books like these inspire me to try and figure out what self-destructive actions I unwittingly take because of who I am.

But! This does not answer the question!

In general literature, the best books I hate are everything Faulkner ever wrote, and much of Henry James. The stories are good, the writing style turns me off.

In SF, probably David Weber's Honor Harrington series. I loved it at first, loved the whole concept of "Horatio Hornblower in Spaaaaaaace!", and liked the characters. But this HH has become too perfect. I am angry at David Weber for turning a series I liked into a Mary Sue. (My husband disagrees with me and still loves it, though.)

[debgeisler.livejournal.com]

As in the book which people generally thought the world of, but I personally loathed? The Yiddish Policemen's Union. It was one of those books where I read 100 pages (really depressing 100 pages) and said, "Nope." My mother told me life was too short to waste on books one doesn't like.

The other, and I know exactly why it was totally inaccessible to me, was Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. It hits every bad trigger for me with the focus on betrayal. Couldn't finish it...not even to get beyond the trigger-bashing parts. Interestingly enough, Al Reynolds' Chasm City is also about betrayal, in part, but it didn't hit those same triggers for me. (And I generally like Vernor Vinge's work.)

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Got annoyed at and could not finish Little Big.

[seawasp]

You mean the one with the best reputation that I hate most? Probably a tie between Moby-Dick and Lord of the Flies.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Best in your opinion.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

Many other people loved M John Harrison's light, but after they all inexplicably failed to turn into cats, it was no good. I was really excited when I thought they were all gong to turn into cats.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

I don't know about "best", but I have very conflicted feelings about the Harry Potter series. I can appreciate their merits, and I can see why my wife loves them, but there are bits that I have a lot of trouble with because they remind me too much of things from my school days.

I think the closest I've ever come to walking out of a movie was in OotP, when Dolores Umbridge showed up. I don't think a fictional story has ever made me feel quite that homicidal.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I hate The Great Gatsby, but adore Murakami, who thinks Gatsby is one of the all-time greats. I couldn't stand The Sound And The Fury, but worship Marquez, who cites it as a great inspiration. I loathed Tess Of The D'Ubervilles, and -- no, wait, that one's actually just bad.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

It's not in your genre... but I think I'll go with Bruce Cuming's Korea's Place in the Sun. It's an excellently-written history of modern Korea. It is well-cited, clear about its theses, elegantly written, and often assigned for students. It is also willfully blind, occasionally deceitful, patronizing towards many of its subjects, and made some predictions about the future that turned out to be not just wrong, but a strange mix of tragically and hilariously wrong.

[pameladean]

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell. I keep thinking I should read it again. I couldn't possibly hate it. I should purely love it.

P.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That depends upon your definition of best" - if popularity is a large part of the equation then Dune wins handsdown - I think it's wretched claptrap that's exactly as ill-done, misogynist, and dull as everything else Frank Herbert wrote.

If you're actually talking about quality, then pick any book by Octavia Butler -Dawn is a good example, it's well done, I wanted to like it, but it was so full of loathing for humanity that I simply couldn't enjoy it and after trying to read the next novel began to actively dislike it. A good friend suggested its one of the better novels about colonialism (from the PoV of the colonized), which I entriely agree with, but that's just as clearly not Butler's PoV.

[thebluerose.livejournal.com]

Anything by China Mieville

[scott-lynch.livejournal.com]

Someone once memorably called Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND the "worst-written great book" he'd ever read. I tend to nod my head pretty emphatically at that. I think it is a powerful and important and affecting work; I also think it's snide, ass-backwards, misogynistic, purblind, illogical, narratively ramshackle monument to the author's impenetrable self-satisfaction.

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

As an adult, Tigana. I wanted so much to like it, but, no. And I felt so cheated for wasting my time reading it

As a child/young adult, *spit!* Rebecca. When the librarians were trying to convince me I didn't really like science fiction, Rebecca was one of the books they were always shoving at me. I tried more than once, but I never made it through the horrible thing.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

I've never managed to finish The Last Unicorn. The constant shifts in diction and register and level of irony just pulled the rug out from under me-- I couldn't get emotionally invested or even figure out whether I was supposed to be.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

If you're talking about classics, I've never been able to get through _Little Women_ because it makes me want to throw up, although I loved many of Alcott's other books.

A more rfecent case: I loved everything else by this author, and I loved the first 90% of this book, but I will not reread The Exiles by Hilary McKay, because

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER





The ending involves the Grandmother's cherished books in her library being burned completely. That totally squicked me on several levels.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Quite a lot of Christopher Priest. I reread a few of his books recently and came to the conclusion that although I can see that these are good books, by some literary standard, I can't stand them and I'll likely never pick up one of his books again. The real year of all of them seemed to be 1971.

[selidor]

Yellow Blue Tibia &etc. There's something good lurking in there, I just can't figure out how to parse it.

Oh actually, anything Egan's written after Schild's Ladder. The sensawunda somehow did a backflip into bad-lecture-mode.