This afternoon I found myself rummaging through my bookshelves looking for something promising that I hadn’t read already.  After about three minutes of shuffling books I came across this god awful piece of crap that I finished reading a few months ago.  It is the most painful waste of paper that I’ve ever suffered through.  I think the only reason that I still have it, is that I want a memento to the misery.  It’s called “The Grand Complication”.  The back cover of the book had glowing comments from Entertainment Weekly, The London Times, The Los Angeles Times, and USA Today.  Sounds promising right?  The main premise of the book is the adventures of an uptight librarian.  OK, that’s a plot that has been done well in the past… but not this time.  I won’t bore you with all the details.  I’ll just give you a taste.  On average there is one discussion per chapter of the Dewey Decimal System and/or its creator who is idolized by the books main character.  There are lengthy discussions of innovative filing methods and detailed descriptions of cross referencing material.  Please God, make it stop.  I kept waiting for it to get good.  I figured that if the book started that badly, it must have an amazing ending to get those glowing reviews.  Nope.  Just more sucking.

Any of you ever read anything that was epically bad? Not just Ann Rice bad, but something truly atrocious?  Got a funny story about it?

my brother recommended to me a book called rhapsody, by elizabeth haydon. turns out he had got it from someone, it sucked, and he gave it to me just to piss me off with the sucktitude of it. there is apparently a whole bunch of books in the series, though i can't imagine who would have bought enough books to encourage the author to write any more. i recommend to everyone that they skip any of elizabeth haydon's works, unless you have insomnia and are a bit dingy in the head anyhow.

as for good books, i got some enjoyment out of the runelords series by david farland. i also like some of dr. suess' stuff. and "where the wild things are". good stuff. oh, and "the thief of always," by clive barker.

To answer the original post, and I'll keep it limited to the scifi/fantasy genre, the absolute worst book I've ever read, in my 42-ish years of literacy, has got to be Battlefield Earth.  One of the few instances where the movie was superior to the novel, and the movie stunk to gawd awful heaven.

Mr Dianetics set out to write the longest scifi novel ever written to that point, and he succeeded.  Unfortunately, he only had about 100 or so pages of anything worth reading.

OMG, I need to clean my brain now just thinking about that steaming heap of offal.  Thank god I've got some Glen Cook waiting for me when I arrive home from work this evening.

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Define "TODAY'S times".

If you've never read them, then don't dismiss the YESTERDAY'S times writers.  Here, I'm mostly going on about Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

There's so much Conan junk out there (and I do mean junk) that the original Howard (aka REH) is obscured.  Fortunately, Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or , in the chronological order that they were written, not published.  The best part, is that, these are only the stories written by the original Texan.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft.  That's all that I'll say.

Clark Aston Smith (aka CAS, aka Klarkash-Ton)  The consummate wordsmith.  If you can get a hold of the out of print books by Necronomicon Press, Tales of Zothique and The Book of Hyperborea, then you will not be disappointed.  Again, stories are presented in the order of their creation, not publication.  If you can't get the Necro stuff, then Night Shade books has a new collection: Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!!  You need to or .  Currently, volumes I, II & III are available.  I believe there will be five total.

For In Your Face action, there's Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser (start with Swords and Deviltry) and Michael Moorcock's Elric saga.  As for Moorcock, I'd definitely stick with his older works.

Glen Cook's The Black Company is a great read, as is Ursula LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea and Tombs of Atuan.

The oldest writings I've mentioned here can date back to the '20s and are as recent as the '80s.  Yeah, I doubt that they make the cut for "TODAY's times", but all of these are great reading.  If you haven't read something from the list, then you definitely should!

Now, what may make the cut for something a bit newer would be Barbara Hambly's Winterlands and Raven Sisters series.

I'm done typing, but if you want more, then I'll go there.

It's probably not the WORST book I've ever read, but...
...I'd never read any Orson Scott Card, when one day I picked up "Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus." It was a stunningly original book, an excellent read. Finished it, then immediately read it again. Then, walking into my used book-store, I saw that the only book they had by Card was "The Alvin Maker Series." I'm usually not a fan of long series, but what the heck, he was a great author.

In it, the primary character WORSHIPS THE PLACENTA OF HIS STILLBORN SISTER, which he carries around with him, and has conversations with. Yes, it talks back to him. I can't remember any more than that, but really, what more do you need to know?

Books worth reading today, or anytime, really:
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Author	Title(s)
Orson Scott Card .	Tales of Alvin Maker (series) Ender (series)
Jim Butcher	Harry Dresden (series)
Robert R. McCammon	Wolf's Hour, Swan Song
Paul Kidd	Queen of The Demonweb Pits (first two in series are good too)
Simon R. Green	'Nightside' series
Marc Matz	Nocturne for a Dangerous Man
Julian May	Saga of the Pliocene Exile (series) / Intervention (series)
J.K.Rowling	Harry Potter (series) - really pretty good

As stated, a few of these are out of print.  I went looking for many of the ones (that I found interesting) from a couple of these lists...but, I was only able to find Card's: Pastwach.

Swords and Deviltry is out of print...so, I think I can get it off of Amazon.  I just hate to purchase before thumbing through first.

I'll keep looking.