Best And Worst Novels And Stories You've Ever Read

[Clansman]

To this day, I don't know why I stuck with Terry Goodkind as long as I did. But I never did find out what happened to Richard Rahl and Kahlan (I think? It's been so long), after I binned a book half way through their journey into a remote kindgom of "magicless" people. It was binned with, as Bick said above, "with nary a backward glance". Goodkind was always hopelessly trite, but it became obvious that his story telling ability had locked in at age 12, and never matured a day thereafter. I suspect he is still writing, but I haven't bothered to look.

As for the best, that's impossible. It keeps changing. Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay comes to mind (though he has written the stinker Ysabel, to his shame). Just about anything by my fave, Janny Wurts, but as a stand-alone, To Ride Hell's Chasm was un-put-downable. Renny Airth's books are always a thrill to read, with some of the best-ever titles, like The Blood-Dimmed Tide. Too tough a question to answer, really, to put down the best. These are just the ones that come to mind at the moment. I'll think of more as soon as I hit "post reply"!

 

[Rodders]

I read a book called "The Quick" by Burt Cole. Crikey, it was awful and i can't remember a single thing about it exepted a rather long part explaining how the lead character believed that the world and everything that happened was a creation of his own brain. (Solipsism i think he called it.)

Best books are very subjective, but my favourite is Iain M. Banks's The Player of Games.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

Yes I'm totally with you on that one. It was unfortunately (for me) the first Heinlein I ever read. It was fifteen years before I would touch another of his books. First impressions really do count. I should have started with his earlier work...

It was the last Heinlein I ever read. About halfway through, I said, "Yep. That's it. He's lost it." and tossed it.

 

[Vince W]

Year Zero by Rob Reid. Just a dreadful book. Only read this if you are keenly interested in digital music rights, and then be very wary.

 

[GATCHO]

Commonwealth Saga of Peter Hamilton is surely one of the best SF saga I've ever read. The worst... hum... The Divergent trilogy, in my opinion, is badly written. The Hunt Trilogy of Andrew Fukuda is also written with the left foot. A lot of self-published books on Amazon have a really bad quality because there isn't the filter of an editor anymore but, mysteriously, some of them encounter a great success around the world. Nevertheless... it's a good thing.

 

[nixie]

No secret I am a big fan on Erikson's Malazan series and the best was Memories of Ice.

I really didn't like Steve Cockayne's Wanders and Islanders and absolutely detest Goodkind, although the first three were readable but they went down hill fast and I will not finish the series.
Eddings Elder Gods and Redemption of Althus were awful.

 

[BAYLOR]

No secret I am a big fan on Erikson's Malazan series and the best was Memories of Ice.

I really didn't like Steve Cockayne's Wanders and Islanders and absolutely detest Goodkind, although the first three were readable but they went down hill fast and I will not finish the series.
Eddings Elder Gods and Redemption of Althus were awful.

Erikson is amazing one the best writers out there

In the case of Eddings, his Belgariad series is pretty good . I could not get into anything else he wrote.

 

[Elvraie]

The worst, or one of the worst, that just pops into my head : The first volume of the Void trilogy, by P. Hamilton. Trite, waffle, boring, characters quite ininteresting.
The best: The Birthgrave by Tanith lee.

 

[Andrew J. Luther]

I have a few bests (based on genre and on how often I re-read certain books), but I'll just mention two for me that haven't been mentioned yet in this thread.

The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker is a book I've probably read about 9-10 times. It's not-quite-horror, more similar to Tim Powers than Stephen King. I've said before that if I was to try writing a novel like that, I wish I could do something as good as this book. Unfortunately, the sequel novel wasn't nearly as good.

Ghost Story by Peter Straub is another that I love and have read multiple times. There's something about that book that just gets to me (in a good way).

For the worst, there was a fantasy book that I got from the library about 15 years ago that was just atrocious. It was about an actor who got sent through a portal into a fantasy world to save a "good" kingdom from a generically "evil" dark lord and his minions. Of course, the actor had been in a bunch of fantasy movies, so he already knew how to sword fight properly, how to ride a horse like a pro, etc. And he was described as incredibly handsome. And smart. And charming. And immediately after he came through the portal, a wizard character "healed" him of any mental/emotional stress from finding himself in a completely different world (because why have any mental/emotional conflict). Naturally, the super-gorgeous princess of the "good" kingdom immediately fell in love with him.

I don't remember the name of the book, and I couldn't bring myself to read more than about a third of it before I took it back to the library. I do remember thinking, though, that the writer must have been the nephew of some executive at a big publishing house or this drek would never have made it into book form.

 

[galanx]

It was the last Heinlein I ever read. About halfway through, I said, "Yep. That's it. He's lost it." and tossed it.

Me, too.

 

[galanx]

"Magician" by Raymond Feist- got about a third of the way through and thought "I've got better things to do, like slamming my head against a brick wall."

 

[Dan Jones]

Best would be, in no particular order, The Name of The Rose; Moby Dick; Nineteen Eighty Four; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; 2666; The Go-Between; The Lord Of The Rings; and for sheer entertainment, A Storm of Swords (the high point of ASOIAF).

Funny that I really like the books Jo despises! The bleak tragedy of Jude The Obscure really touched me, while Moby Dick is my cathedral of prose, my touchstone, the greatest ambition for what a novel can be.

As for worst, that's tricky. There are only a couple of things that spring to mind, and they are self-published efforts. The first, The Hidden Planet, is simply incompetence writ large; the most amateurish botch job of a book imaginable. Not malicious, just very very crap.

The second comes from the High King of bad prose, the Dark Lord whose writing defiles the history of literature with his pestilential publications, whose terrible evil Cthulhu cannot equal and Gandalf the White could not rent asunder. It can be none other than The Kingdom And The Elves, by the one and only Robert Stanek. The only book that made me physically ill by reading it. I'm still not convinced it's by some sort of advanced DARPA weapons programme.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I like 1984. Just saying. (But I think we all know I'm not the kind of gal to enjoy a 400 page book about whale hunting*)

* and before you all howl, I'm being tongue in cheek. I studied it for my degree. I know its layers. It still bored the life out of me.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I read the novelisation of Star Wars. I was locked in while working and couldn't leave. It was so bad I dropped the book in a dustbin twice and threw it at a wall more times than I remember. Terrible, just terrible. Also the Mothman prophesies. I just couldn't get through it.

I loved Star Wars! Read it loads of time as a teen. But I never claim to have great taste.

I also loved, loved, loved the Martian. I didn't expect to, so it was all the more fun for that.

 

[The Big Peat]

The very first book that sprang to mind as best - not just favourite, but best - was Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart. It is witty, captivating, incredibly evocative, touchingly sentimental and at times laugh out loud. Li Kao is one of my very favourite ever characters and while there is a slight flaw in his character, in the book there is none*.

I mean, I though of it before any Terry Pratchetts. Now... that is perfection.

Worst... *cracks knuckles*

Willful Child by Steven Erikson. Yes, I'm still bent out of shape by this one. Its crass, unfunny, preachy and possessed of a weak plot and characters.

The Elder Gods by David & Leigh Eddings. A lot of authors become pastiches of themselves by the end of their career but Eddings took this to new and craptacular heights with this shallow regurgitated mess of everything they had done before.

Snuff by Sir Terry Pratchett. All of the subtlety of his masterworks gone to be replaced by caricatures, stale jokes, and blatant preaching. I didn't want to put this one on the list, but I couldn't escape just how much this book disappointed and frustrated me.

Earlier this year I got about 30 pages into a book about a Bow Street Runner who, in that time, fought 5 men, seduced a duchess and threatened to beat up the Prime Minister, which everyone somehow allowed. Life's too short for that.

I wasn't aware Richard Sharpe had been a Bow Street Runner.

 

[j.grey]

I loved Star Wars! Read it loads of time as a teen. But I never claim to have great taste.

I also loved, loved, loved the Martian. I didn't expect to, so it was all the more fun for that.

I never read the book as a teen. I read all the Trek movie novelisations and dozens of others and for the most part they were all better than the movies. I was stuck in an office with nothing but the Star Wars ANH novel as a grown adult. Ouch, it was a painful experience, I threw it angrily in the bin several times but boredom took me back to it. As a kid, I would have loved it.

I've been looking for a copy of 'The Martian' but books are scarce where I am. I loved his short story, 'The Egg' and used it as a teaching aid in class. Some of the smarter kids really got something out of that.

 

[Gnrevolution]

Best: Hyperion, BNW, Best Served Cold/Heroes, Flowers for Algernon, echo the Commonwealth Saga, The Enemy Series

Worst: Wheel of Time (actually the first 4 books were ok/good, it was the drop off in quality thereon in that made me regret ever starting), Battlefield Earth (yes, I actually read the whole thing before throwing it in the bin), Absolution Gap (that ending sucked).

 

[BAYLOR]

Best: Hyperion, BNW, Best Served Cold/Heroes, Flowers for Algernon, echo the Commonwealth Saga, The Enemy Series

Worst: Wheel of Time (actually the first 4 books were ok/good, it was the drop off in quality thereon in that made me regret ever starting), Battlefield Earth (yes, I actually read the whole thing before throwing it in the bin), Absolution Gap (that ending sucked).

I never got beyond book 4 of the Wheel of time either.

 

[BAYLOR]

Half life by Hal Clement not a good book at all .

 

[BAYLOR]

The Dead Zone by Stephen King great book