For me, it’s Jude the Obscure. That book is easily the worst book I have ever read, without a single redeeming quality, other than that it finally ends. I only finished it because Far from the Madding Crowd was so damn good.
But really, Jude is the gold standard of awful books, in my opinion.
What’s your so-awful-it-deserves-shelf-space book, if you have one?
Or am I just weird?
I own several books that fit this category. Atlas Shrugged. Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt. I like trying to read stuff from other viewpoints. I haven’t gotten to Atlas Shrugged yet.(I plan to read the ~70 page speech towards the end of the book). I read like 40 pages of Hazlitt and stopped cuz it was garbage.
At the start of this year at a library book fair I bought a copy of the Social Animal by David Brooks. After reading a few pages I went online and did a little reading about the book. I then threw it in my recycling bin. It was too bad to keep on my shelf.