What's the worst book you've ever read, discounting self published crap?
I bought my mom Jo Watson's Among Others half a decade ago for mother's day.
I didn't know much about the industry 
so I thought that it winning the Hugo meant it had to be at least of decent quality. It was so bad that she said it had to read it too 
300 pages of the most pretentious precious child crap
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Disappointing relative to expectations: House of Leaves. Bits of it were unsettling, the formatting was fun, and I liked the stuff poking fun at academia. But Reddit peepeeriders made it out to be much more than it actually is. At best, it's a fun meta experiment in the book as physical art. At worst, it's a bunch of stupid crap (looking at you, Johnny) getting in the way of a description of a neat-but-formulaic non-existent horror movie.
Worst book I've read: Someday I'll do a writeup on The Country of Ice Cream Star. A virus kills everyone upon reaching adulthood. Several generations later, America is a country of children sifting through the remnants of past society. A cool premise. But despite the jacket description promising an exciting journey, there is absolutely zero adventure. Instead it's 500 pages of unbelievable worldbuilding, 15-year-olds having s*x, and the author bitching about religion. Also all the survivors are black and it's told first-person in impenetrable fantasy ebonics. Props to the mayofoid author for getting away with it?
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