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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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[–] adlittle@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

I have always had a soft spot for fiction set in prehistoric societies (basically anything pre-agriculture). Back when I first got my kindle, I didn't realize that there were a boatload of self-published novels on Amazon. I'd previously only bought paperbacks that, while of widely varying quality, had generally known the help of an editor and had to be good enough for a publisher to take a chance on.

Bought a book called "Ember" that was set in prehistoric Europe and, wow, it was so bad. Just everything was a wreck, I didn't know you could pay actual money for a book with misspellings, fragments, changes in voice, and random asides written like a junior high report on anthropology. I made maybe a quarter of the way and gave up.

My introduction to self-publishing put me off of trying anything else, though maybe that's unfair and there are lots of hidden gems?