As I said, we have now reviewed 70 books in our group. We started to assign scores out of 10 a few years ago, and then applied scores retrospectively to the whole list. Ian has produced some fantastic spreadsheets to analyse all of the information, and from this I can reveal that the current bottom 10 are as follows:
70: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (2.6 out of 10)
69: My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell (4.6 out of 10)
68: Noughts & Crosses by Ian Rankin (5 out of 10)
67: The Strategy Of Deception by Paul Virilio (5.4 out of 10)
66: Mr X by Peter Straub (5.8 out of 10)
65: Beloved by Toni Morrison (5.8 out of 10)
=64: This is Your Life by John O'Farrell (6 out of 10)
=65: Layer Cake by J.J Connolly (6 out of 10)
=66: I'm Not The Only One by George Galloway (6 out of 10)
=67: Teacher Man by Frank McCourt (6 out of 10)
The Alchemist is comfortably at the bottom, and my personal score awarded for this was zero out of 10, and it was lucky to get even that. I am mystified why it has sold mega millions around the globe. Anyway, I'll say no more and will reserve my bile for a future post about this abomination.
Some may find the inclusion of Beloved in the Hall of Shame, with Toni Morrison being such a revered author. I found the book okay, but the consensus was that it was a pile of cack - I paraphrase.
Any thoughts about the list, let us know!
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Oh No - four out of the bottom 5 books were mine. The shame of it.
ReplyDeleteNone of my choices made it! This could suggest that I am being a bit safe in my choices....
ReplyDeleteI don't subscribe to the theory that the Toni Morrison book is 'cack'. But that's probably because I don't remember reading the damned thing at all!
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