Apr 10, 2026
What’s the worst book you’ve ever read? For me it’s Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. An anthology of forgettable ‘ow the edge’ stories with an absolutely dreadful frame narrative that mocks writers doing outrageous things to become famous, which is pretty ironic considering the first story in it is Guts.
If a book is truly bad, I probably don't remember reading it because I gave up. The only two books I disliked enough to remember are: On the Road, which seemed repetitive, lazy, and juvenile even when I read it at 15. The other is Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?, which is one of the dumbest pieces of sophistry ever to come out of "International Relations," a field crowded with contenders for that title.
jpwicks1 month ago
never understood On the Road’s firm embedment in the canon except as an artifact of a scene/movement. it’s really a pretty shitty book.
chocolatine_volante1 month ago
Non fiction: L'homme parano (The paranoid man) by Claude Olievenstein, who was a famous French psychiatrist. I had randomly picked it up from the street library. It was written in very opaque French which I found extremely difficult to follow and so did not enjoy at all. Fiction: Nadja by André Breton. Just didn't click with the stream of consciousness surrealist stuff.
tokyodrifter2 months ago
Not sure about worst ever, but the ones I remember disliking most are: Dharma Bums Desperate Characters The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
Probably not the worst one I've read, but most disappointing - Fahrenheit 451