Jude the Obscure, an awful book? Back when I was in high school, I had to read something from a list of books in my senior year English class, and for reasons lost to time I chose Jude the Obscure. I had hated the standard high school reading books like Silas Marner and A Tale of Two Cities, so I did not welcome one more draggy book. But I sat down and read the book over several days, and got into it instantly, tragedy after tragedy unfolding. Maybe because I was in that awful period of senior year when you are in the midst of finishing college applications, takings SATs and Achievement Tests and whatnot, but I was a 17 year old in a dark mood. So the book spoke to me in the things may be bad, but they ain't that bad place.
The worst book I ever read was not a work of fiction. A guy named Sydney Guilaroff, perhaps the most famous hair stylist in Hollywood's golden age, who likely knew and worked with everyone on 400 plus movies, wrote was is generally believed the worst, most lie-filled, evasive, silliest autobiography ever published. When it came out right before he passed, people actually ridiculed it. What makes it the worst is that if he had been honest and forthcoming, he could have written a classic Hollywood story filled with anecdotes and intrigue, but he elected to concoct a completely false narrative.