Just Plano Bad Books for 2008

I saw a thread like this in another group and thought I would give it a shot here. Did anyone read what they consedered a clunker in 2008? I was pretty fortunate and read only one really bad book. I know a lot of people think highly of E.L. Doctorow but i just absolutely hated Loon Lake. I cared nothing for any of the characters. I kept thinking if I finished it there would be some character would have some redemption and it just never happened. I though the book was written in a confusing style and I am not completly convicned the publishers did not put it together wrong. Noramlly I usually try and give an author a second chance, but I am not sure I will with this author. I kow there are many who think well of Doctorow and I am not sure I ahve the intellectural cahoonas to disparage one of his novels, but I jsut did not like this book.

I've kept most of my reading to the group reads for the SF group and the Group Reads Literature group, as well as the tried and true. I've read a lot of Grahame Green this year and was happy with all of them.

The literature reads have all been good with the possible exception of the current read, The Trial by Franz Kafka. I've only read the first chapter and part of the second and so far it reads like an exercise in literary weirdness. Apparently there is a trope that the original German allows for that makes this a boffo read in German, but not so much in English.

The science fiction group read yielded a clunker, IMHO, in The Book of the New Sun. The protagonist was too laconic and the ennui apparent in the text just made me not want to care one whit, so I stopped reading after the first book. If the author didn't care about the reading experience, I didn't care to exert the effort.

On the other hand, we read The Day of the Triffids, which was one of the best books I read all year. Makes me want to read The Midwich Cuckoos.