"Follow Friday" is a book blogger meme hosted by Rachel @ Parajunkee
This week's question is:
Let's step away from "besties"... What is the worst book you've ever read and finished?
The worst book I ever read and finished would have to be Moll Flanders by Daniel Dafoe. Moll Flanders is the name of the protagonist, the character the story is all about, and she is just the most selfish annoying character ever created! Well, she's one of the worst I've read about, anyway. I had to read the novel in a college course on 18th century British novels and it is one of the oldest ones. No paragraph breaks, no chapter breaks, no quotation marks around dialogue, no dialogue tags. It was a real mess since the above innovations hadn't been discovered by the British just yet.
Since she was a prostitute, perhaps that was how she could justifiably be so selfish and stupid, but I still like my protags to be less irritating.
Hi & Happy Friday!
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard of this one - a good thing maybe ;)
My FF, http://obsessionwithbooks.blogspot.com
Have a nice weekend..
No paragraph breaks, no chapter breaks, no quotation marks around dialogue, no dialogue tags.
ReplyDeleteJust reading that make my eyebrow start twitching! I don't know if I could make it through a bookful of that...
BJ
Dark Side of the Covers
@Sharon: Yes, consider yourself lucky to have not heard of this book! Thanks for visiting.
ReplyDelete@BJ: It was hard, as I remember, getting through this book. But, mostly because I hated Moll. Thanks for stopping by!
Sadly I can never make it through most of the classics...at least you made it to the end!
ReplyDeletehttp://rantsnscribbles.blogspot.com/2011/07/follow-friday-and-book-blogger-hop-july.html
@Gwenny: My background is in the classics and I used to read them pretty exclusively. But, I read them far less now than contemporary genre fiction. Thanks for commenting!
ReplyDeleteHopping through. If protags are irritating, I like them to grow and change so they're not always annoying.
ReplyDeleteMy Hop
@Alison: Yeah, I agree with that. A protag can start out really awful in anyway, just as long as there is some character growth later on.
ReplyDeleteNew follower hopping through. I haven't read Moll Flanders yet, but I plan to. It's really too bad when classics turn out to be awful (and that happens way too often!).
ReplyDeleteHave a good weekend! :)
Alyssa
Reader's Refuge
Oddly enough, Moll Flanders always seemed like it would be my kind of a classic but I never read it. Oh, well, probably never will!
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by my blog yesterday, and I'm following back now! Have a great weekend!
Book Brats!"
@Alyssa: Thanks for following! Classics do turn out bad way too often. Our tastes these days must be very different from people back in the old days.
ReplyDelete@Megan: You're welcome and thanks for following me back! Have a great weekend, too.
Hopping through on a FF. It's really hard when people tell you the worst book because then it prejudices you to that book, especially if you haven't heard otherwise. I've learned about a lot of books I probably won't read. (Not that I don't already have a ton of books in my TBR pile)
ReplyDeletewww.yafictionbookreviews.blogspot.com
@Tammi: You're right. I do feel more leery of a book when I've been told by someone I trust that it's not a good book to read. I usually end up not reading it, but I have a HUGE TBR pile, also, so it's probably no big deal to not read it, anyway.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone ever wonder who determined that some of these books were classics while others were not? I think I wondered that about a lot of the books I had to read for classes.
ReplyDeleteNew follower. Please visit me at www.thebookaddictnet.blogspot.com :)
@Shanan: Does make you wonder what made certain books qualify as "classics". I think they are so revolutionary for their time, they stick in people's minds even long after that newness wears off.
ReplyDeleteThanks for following! I'll go check out your blog now...