Originally Posted by OldSnowy

Worst? As in badly written, shoddy plotting, pish-poor characterisation and general turdiness - nothing I've read in years comes close to:

The Da Vinci Code

It's just apppalling - from the very first page you know it's a turkey. Its great success did nothing to disprove my theory of the general thinckness and gullibility of people.

If you think the book was bad, then may I recommend the audio-book. I was facing a 8 hour return journey by car the other day and realising that BBC Radio Swansea wasn't going to keep me awake I dropped 16.99 on the audio version. Cry? I almost killed myself arther than listen to the next paragraph.

There's one reader for the entire book so whenever the female daughter is speaking we get a 50 year old bloke doing a french girls accent that sounds like a 5 year old. The English guy is typical american-english and the french policeman is gruff like Frenchmen aren't but people think they are. All the dialogue is appalling. If you want my copy to light a fire, just PM me..

Originally Posted by romach

A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson

disagree, but then I might be stupid.

The Beach.

I ploughed through this book for hours expecting the plot to get exciting at any moment - and then it ended. I enjoyed the Da Vinci Code - hyped and flawed though it was, it had some substance. The Beach was a bunch of tourists who fish and swim all day and then get the sh*ts. Whoop-dee-f*cking-dooo.

Originally Posted by Mr Happy

Originally Posted by TankiesYank

Since OldSnowy took my first choice...

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. One of the odd cases where you should save your money on the book and go straight to the DVD.

He buys a shirt, kills someone, takes a shower, kills someone, etc....who cares? Social commentary, my ARRSE.

The only book to make me feel physically sick.

I know what you mean...I think that deliberately OTT graphic description was what annoyed me the most about it, though. I'm generally pretty willing to go along where an author wants to take me, but I dislike it when I sense that the author is blatantly going for controversy.

Originally Posted by maguire

Colin Forbes

Oh dear God! That man writes prose as Harry Enfield's "Mr. Chumley Warner" speaks!

I went through a real mental stage a few years ago though and would buy the books because the stories looked quite entertaining, but I'd be kicking myself after 5 pages when my internal reading voice became louder and louder, mocking me with its RP accent as the old duffer Tweed patronisingly referred to yet another female as "a remarkable woman!" if she so much as refrained from having an attack of the vapours when she stubbed her toe!

I feel better now! :D

The Nemesis File.

If you haven't, dont!

Originally Posted by Mr Happy

Originally Posted by kevthemed

JAR HEAD- waffelling load of shite

Without an ending...

I'm sure they chopped up the chronology to hide the fact that it was one blokes rather badly written adventures.. IN fact adventure is too strong a word, more has happened to me on the way to the train station on a Monday morning that occurred in this book.

And the film was just as shite, Best bit of the book was the start when he describes the contents of his Bergan. AND SLEEP!!!!

Worst book Stevie Wonder ever read, was his cheese grater - f ucking horror story that was.

"Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell" bought in the mistaken belief that Tom Clancy was involved with the book rather just included in the title (in big letters).

The only book I've ever read to the finish because I couldn't believe anyone could have such utter sh!te published. Better work could be written by a 10 year old as a homework assignment.

2nd to that "The DaVinci Code". I only finished that because I was waiting for something to justify the hype. A very badly written book with no charaterisation and a dreadfully predictable plot. Got the BBQ going quite well though.

“The Specialist” by some über-walt cunt called Gayle Rivers.

I read it when it was published in 1985, the year before I joined up. Even then, as a civvie yet to take the Queen’s shilling, I could tell he was a complete fantasist knob-jockey.

It’s not even an entertaining work of fiction, but it’s probably on every airsoft walt’s required reading list.

If you want a laugh, here's the blurb, from someone selling a copy on WaltBay -

THE SPECIALIST
From SAS to mercenary in covert operations.

Among mercenaries, as in all professions, there is a heirarchy of rank and stature and the tough-talking, flashy dogs-of-war who grab the headlines are often at the bottom of it. At the top is an elite group of specialists who plan and execute the most dangerous and politically sensitive missions, far away from the media spotlight, and ex-Anzac special forces (SAS) covert warfare expert Gayle Rivers is a leader even among that elite.

Through a career which began with the SAS in Vietnam, on attachment to the US Special Forces, Rivers has served many governments. For the British, he has hunted IRA terrorists in Northern Ireland and track and murdered IRA gunrunners in Europe and the Middle East. For the Spanish, he has assassinated Basque terrorist leaders in their hideouts in France. For the Iraquis, while training their special forces, he has led commando raids against Iranian oil installations and international shipping in the Gulf. For the Americans, he has carried out covert missions in Lebanon to help protect the Marines, including a raid on a Druze command post, leading a US Special Forces team to assassinate three Syrian intelligence officers.

Catch sight of Rivers in a London club or a Geneva restaurant and you see a quietly spoken, well-dressed businessman who is, in reality as well as appearance, president of his own aviation and arms dealing corporation. But Rivers is equally at home in the mercenary bars of Marseilles, at the controls of a combat helicopter or fighting street gun-battles with French agents in Cairo.

For the first time, we see the mercenary world as it really is: as governments order the missions which shape politics and world events without news of them ever reaching a newspaper or a TV screen.

Utter shite