Top Ten Unreadable/Unfinishable Books Reviews

1. Salmon fishing in the Yemen. This was awful. Truly awful. It wasn't told as a story - you had to piece it together from excepts of diaries, letters and newspaper articles. It was rubbish!! Basically someone wants to put salmon in the Yemen, and someone else says you cant. So they set out to put salmon in the Yemen and prove everyone wrong. ...  Read the complete review

I absolutely love reading books and I would say 90% of the time I really enjoy them. The problem is though that there is that 10% that are just so bad that they deserve to be labeled as the worst books ever so that people can be warned. However I do realise that everyone cannot have the same taste so please don’t take offence if I say I hate ...  Read the complete review

Books, I love them, but there are some that should never have been published! Here?s a selection that I, personally, couldn?t stomach: Lucy Talk by Fiona Walker: She?s a popular writer, is Fiona Walker, and personally I?d count some of her earlier work under my favourite books of ...  Read the complete review

Unreadable books? Yes, indeed, they can’t be read, these 20 manuscripts have never been accepted by any publishing house. I wonder why? For Whom The Smell Rolls - A History Of Deodorants Far From The Madding Kraut - German-free Holiday Destinations About A Buoy - Memories Of A Lifeguard ...  Read the complete review

This isn't a particularly easy category to write in, actually, as many of the books that cause my brain to go numb at the very thought have also caused said brain to warn me not to read them in the first place! But one must be fair: that being so, I have restricted this list to books that I have actually read while (more or less) conscious. ...  Read the complete review

I'm a voracious reader and had real trouble thinking of any books I didn't manage to finish, but I can think of plenty I wish I'd never started to read, so here goes: 1) Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad First book on my syllabus at university, a short novella, so I thought 'this should be easy going!' and of ...  Read the complete review

It's a rite of passage - one day, every dooyoo-er has to write one of these top ten ops. Well then, here's my initiation... and what better way to go than with a top ten that's not a top ten but a "hate" ten?! Lovely... Before I start shooting, I must tell you that until a while ago, I fervently subscribed to the ...  Read the complete review

What a fascinating category to write on and one that I simply could not resist. Reading on average five books a week means that I have discovered a fair few bad ones along the way, it also means that I have I have formed opinions on those that I don’t want to read. Now, I get to rant on about all of them…..FANTASTIC!!! Here ...  Read the complete review

Here’s my top ten list of unreadable books. Books that I’ve failed to finish or struggled through with serious difficulty for various different reasons. Books that I wouldn’t touch again with a bargepole. Books that are the answer to an insomniacs prayers. Books that should come with a health warning attached. !!! BE ...  Read the complete review

Give them fifty, that’s the motto. Fifty pages and that’s their whack, if you aren’t hooked by then it’s their fault not yours. I once believed that not finishing a book was a sign of weakness on my part so I plugged away and away and hence my Marcel Proust op. Then, a young lady pointed out that every page you ...  Read the complete review

I started reading at a very young age. Reading has always been a big part of my life. In books I have traveled to foreign places, I have ridden on dragons, I have been at the bottom of the ocean. There is little you can’t find in books if you want to. I have shared my love of reading with my children. Books have long been ...  Read the complete review

Horror of horrors, a book so horrendous that you either lose interest half way through (or sometimes a lot earlier than that!) or toss aside in a fit of disgust when upon reaching the conclusion. I hope what follows will be a warning to fellow bookworms. Avoid these at all costs and if the synopsis of any book is a little scanty, please ...  Read the complete review

Ok, sorry about the title. Let me just think about Nic Cage for a while. (Coughs, blushes and shuffles papers). I will catch up with my C of F very soon. But first.. 1. Learning To Teach in Higher Education by Paul Ramsden. Routledge (1999 Reissue) £7.99. One of the main textbooks on my course. I have tried to read it three ...  Read the complete review

This may not be quite the right category for this, but I’m justifying it by saying it’s a list of authors who’s books have all – except for one (or, at a push, two) classic(s) each – been completely unreadable/unfinishable. Beware, controversial op coming up… 10. JRR Tolkien – What, I hear you ...  Read the complete review

Help! I've been abducted by Sue Lawley's evil twin-sister and she's left me stranded on a desert island. There's an old gramophone here, but the only records are bagpipe music and Showaddywaddy... She has left me some books as well, but they're all unreadable! There's a mountain of ...  Read the complete review

This is my list of shame because I always feel disappointed with myself when I fail to finish books. It’s even worse when I fail to finish books which are beautifully written. I think I’ve become a bit lazy with my reading – after completing an English Lit degree I had a bit of a literary backlash, e.g. old classics or anything ...  Read the complete review

This category is deeply funny... I think. Where else is it socially acceptable to rant and rave about books you've never read without some puritanical, pedantic arse leaping out of the woodwork and asking, in a puritanical-pedantic-arsey kinda way: 'How can you say that about this book? Have you even read it?' The problem is ...  Read the complete review

Once upon a time I felt compelled to finish every book I started, no matter how dreadful it turned out to be. A bit of the old obsessive-compulsiveness going on there. But no more. Life too short... Here then, are 10 books I have never finished. Julio Cortazar - Hopscotch Back cover blurb claims it was the first hypertext novel ...  Read the complete review

Oh the joy! The absolute joy of writing yet another Top Ten List. Hold on a mo... What's that? A list of the ten worst books I have ever attempted to read, or at least have picked up and flicked through with an eye to perusing and taking in their contents? Er, okay, I'll give it a go. I must admit that I cannot even aspire to the ...  Read the complete review

Here are some books. 1) Lila visits her Aunty in Spain. This book is third in the series of Lila the big girls' blouse's adventures. It would have always been hard for the author to follow "Crisps and Chocolate pudding" and "Lila's fish stall" which are both very good books but the Mr. Author man ...  Read the complete review