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What book is so awful that it deserves a space on your shelf just for being so awful? (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by michelleinbal@alien.top to c/books@metacritics.zone

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For me, it's Jude the Obscure. That book is easily the worst book I have ever read, without a single redeeming quality, other than that it finally ends. I only finished it because Far from the Madding Crowd was so damn good.

But really, Jude is the gold standard of awful books, in my opinion.

What's your so-awful-it-deserves-shelf-space book, if you have one?

Or am I just weird?

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[–] kittenofthehouse@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I thought Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus was insufferable

[–] -WhoWasOnceDelight@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

THANK YOU. I couldn't believe how many of my friends were deeply moved by this wish-fulfillment fluff. As a teacher licensed in teaching academically gifted students, I can't get over the misguided and unrealistic portrayal of Mad (the main character's daughter) and her extreme precocity, which is supposedly owed to her mother's assumption that she can reason like an adult.

My aunt, who was a working woman in the sixties, and I shared an "I hate this book" slam fest conversation when we realized we'd both read it recently. She couldn't get past how relatively easy it was for the main character to bypass social norms and have a professional life as an unwed mother. "It just wasn't like that," she said.