Books of 2010 I Wish I Hadn't Read- Adult

In 2010 I read a lot of really amazing books. Unfortunately I also read quite a few terrible ones, and so to help others avoid making the same mistake I have decided to share the top five books of 2010 that I wish I hadn't read.

5. Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman (Review)

His novel certainly had potential, but unfortunately Chuck Klosterman, author being the quirky and enjoyable (if slightly pretentious) Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, just doesn't do fiction well. Downtown Owl felt just like Klosterman, and while that works okay when you're doing opinion pieces the end result was a novel where all the characters sound the same and the reader can never really fall into the book.

4. Ruby and the Stone Age Diet by Martin Millar (Review)

Remind me again of that age-old saying, never judge a book by it's cover, because I did just that and picked up the visually stimulating but otherwise completely blah Ruby and the Stone Age Diet. Not only did the title have almost nothing to do with the book, but I'm still not entirely sure what the book was about, it just rambled and didn't really make any coherent sense in a way that mostly just got on my nerves. The novel itself is fairly short but it seems to drag on forever because the reader doesn't care about any of the characters or what is going to happen to them. There was a cute little story about a werewolf girl included though- why couldn't Millar have made that the novel instead? 

3. The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire (Review)

I feel like I have probably berated The Next Queen of Heaven enough to last a lifetime, but that's only because I was so disappointed in it. Maguire had about twenty good story ideas- he just shouldn't have put them all in the same book. As somebody who enjoyed Wicked, although it has been about a decade since I read it, this book just lacked the polish and wit and instead left me muddled and bored.

2. Cleaving by Julie Powell (Review)

After only sorta enjoying Julie and Julia, I'm not sure what I decided to pick up Julie Powell's next memoir, Cleaving. The funny thing is, despite being a vegetarian, it was actually the portions about butchering I enjoyed the most. What wasn't so fantastic? The self-involved flaunting personality that Powell exhibits when it comes to her two year affair on her husband, as well as a pseudo "Eat Pray Love" journey to foreign countries to supposedly learn about butchering but really just tell the reader how attractive foreign men think she is.

1. Anything by Chuck Palahniuk (Specifically Snuff and Tell All) (Review #1, #2)

So maybe it is cheating to include two books under one option in a top five, but to be perfectly honest, I didn't want to waste any more of my life talking about the disgusting latest novels from Palahniuk. Besides, it's really hard to decide which book is worse. I mean, both Snuff and Tell All were so bad I honestly don't even want to write a whole paragraph discussing them, I just want to warn you to stay far far away- this coming from a girl who can pretty much quote Fight Club from memory. The only good thing I can tell you about these novels is that they are short, so at least the pain is over with quickly.

Do you agree or disagree with any of the titles I've included? What Adult books would make your worst of the year list?