The Worst Book Ever Written

When trying any activity, it's important to set realistic goals for yourself. I set a goal for my first novel, an achievable one. I wasn't going to write the worst book ever written. Or, perhaps, the worst book ever published.

I've read more than a few absolutely terrible books, and listened to many more on audiotape when I was stuck in a car, typically going to and from some college. I've got to give Cracker Barrel credit for renting books on CD, but their selection needs some work.

But, amazingly, I wasn't exposed to the worst book ever written through Cracker Barrel or sheer boredom. No, this is one of those books that I was forced to read by school, one of those hated classes that attempts to drive all love of reading and story out from its students. This is the worst book ever written:

Plainsong. The characters are boring and largely unlikeable, the setting is dull, and nothing interesting happens the entire novel. Pick the most boring person you know: Plainsong is a novel about that guy, except even less interesting. I'd compare this to watching paint dry, but there you might get high or dizzy from paint fumes; there's no such escape from this thing. And in an effort to make his "bore de force" even more unreadable, the author doesn't bother to include quotation marks to signal the beginning and end of dialogue.

I was told by my teacher that this was to make the writing seem more organic, but I know that if I tried that on one of my papers I'd lose some serious points. Perhaps we should eliminate punctuation altogether to make our writing more organic (or absolutely destroy clarity, take your pick). But even without the quotation fiasco, this book would top the list as the Worst Book Ever Written for its boring characters, plot, and inability to make me give a damn about anything happening to anyone in the book.

Now my book triumphs over Plainsong, although it's by no means a great book. A good start, certainly (well, maybe). I've heard that when he was writing Nine Princes in Amber, Zelazny had no idea what he would end up writing. He just started with a man waking up in a hospital with no memory of who he was and ended up creating one of the best fantasy books ever (the rest of the series drops off, IMO).

Not having any idea of what to write either, I started the exact same way as Roger Zelazny, although we obviously ended up in very different places. But it has plot, action, and characters, so I consider it a far better story than Plainsong.