Read it and weep

Next week, the BBC reveals the results of a poll to find the nation's top 100 novels. But one man's masterpiece can be another's claptrap. Here, leading figures choose their literary bugbears, with an introduction by John Walsh

"If I had to live my life all over again," said Woody Allen, "I'd do it all exactly the same ­ only I wouldn't read Beowulf." You know how he feels. The relationship between the reader and the Work of Literature is sometimes a chilly, argumentative one, full of ranting pretension on one side and fuming incomprehension on the other. Three hundred pages into The Magic Mountain or The Golden Bowl, the first-time reader of Thomas Mann or Henry James can start to shout internally, "Why are you telling me all this?" Reading a book you cannot abide, but have forced yourself to read because of its author's reputation, can make you feel as though you're chained to a madman (William Burroughs) or dining with a monster of solipsistic preciousness (Virginia Woolf) or stuck in a prison cell with an interminable, academic mega-bore (JRR Tolkien).

We are all impressed, and a little cowed, by great reputations; so when we confront the works themselves but fail to appreciate their achievement, their technical skill and their freight of wisdom, we assume that the fault must lie in ourselves ­ in our limited grasp, our philistine blindness. But sometimes we hit back and allow ourselves the luxury to say, "No, no, it's this damn book that is wrong; it's this crappy plot and its flat-as-a-flounder characters, and this dismal dialogue." One of the most bracing experiences available to mankind is to come out and admit you completely loathed a famous book. It's essentially an Oedipal impulse, like killing a figure of authority. And for some cautious bystanders, who haven't had the nerve to "come out", it's a huge liberation to watch the mugging of an Olympian figure, whether it's Hemingway or Hesse. The day I read John Carey's demolition of Malcolm Lowry (after years of wrestling with Under the Volcano) was like watching the sun emerge from behind clouds.

The BBC is shortly to announce the 100 most popular novels in English, as voted for by the British population. Discovering the nation's favourite-ever work of fiction in The Big Read will go on for months until the final Top 10 are given their own discursive showcases in October. We thought it might be more entertaining to discover which books make people's blood boil, and bring out their most attractively teeth-grinding qualities.

So draw near, gentle reader, as 50 leading lights on the literary, political, opinion-forming and media scene identify their worst reading experiences, confess their hatred of global superstars from Shakespeare to the authors of the Bible, and administer a good kicking to victims across the literary spectrum, from Jacques Derrida to JK Rowling.

And when you've finished ducking the flying spittle, it will be your turn to tell us which book gets your vote as The Lousy Read.

Antony Beevor: Historian and author

Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer

It was so badly written, I wasn't gripped at all.

John Pilger: Campaigning journalist, writer and film-maker

Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow

Typical of the kind of propaganda dressed up as journalism that serves rapacious American power.

Bel Mooney: Novelist and broadcaster

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

I found it a revolting diatribe against women, masquerading as super-cool wit.

AS Byatt: Novelist

Belle Du Seigneur by Albert Cohen

It is the most narcissistic and pretentious book I've ever read; it's so self-indulgent and its eroticism is sickly. It is dreadfully slow and it is far too derivative of Marcel Proust.

John O'Farrell: Satirist and author

Diaries: Into Politics by Alan Clark

Having so enjoyed the original bestseller, I was relishing this posthumously published prequel. However, without Clark there to rework his erratic jottings, all that's left are the poorly structured ramblings of a racist hypochondriac.

Monsignor Bruce Kent: CND activist

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

It was just too tedious. There was so much about 19th-century food, I couldn't cope with it. All the family were forever sitting down for large dinners described over five pages. It was interminable.

Matthew Parris: Journalist and former Conservative MP

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

I found it infuriating as a child, as it was extraordinarily well-written but nothing ever happened. I was always waiting for some kind of plot to emerge.

Jonathan Dimbleby: Broadcaster

Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer

Not so much because it was dire, but because I was trying to promote my own book ­ The Palestinians ­ in New York at the same time as Jeffrey was promoting Kane and Abel. And he did a lot better.

Ann Widdecombe: Conservative MP

The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson

I had to read this whilst judging the Whitbread prize. It is a children's book about a drunken mother and her two children by different fathers. I thought these themes should not be promoted for children, and I disliked it intensely on those grounds.

Prof Roger Scruton: Writer and philosopher

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

It's nihilistic, destructive of all human decencies, and very badly written.

Joan Smith: Author

Possession by AS Byatt

It's a kind of schmaltzy Mills & Boon romance dressed up with cod Victorian poetry to make it seem more profound, but there's no emotional depth in it at all. It's incredibly shallow and trivial.

Quentin Letts: Political columnist

Common Worship The new Church of England prayer book

It has plastic language, trite liturgy and a depressing lack of poetry. I loathe it.

Peter Tatchell: Gay rights activist

The Bible

It is to gays what Mein Kampf is to Jews. Contains the theory and practices of homo-holocaust: Leviticus 20:13 says that gays should be killed.

Ken Follett: Author and campaigner for the Labour Party

Atonement by Ian McEwan

It is a wildly implausible melodrama of mistaken identity. That a man would be convicted of a serious crime on the evidence of a young girl, a known fantasist, who said she saw him leaving the crime, is surely inconceivable. Insulting my intelligence like that really spoiled my enjoyment of an otherwise powerfully written book.

Neil Hamilton: Disgraced former Conservative minister

Ulysses by James Joyce

I always failed to get very far with this. It's one of those books you think you ought to read because everyone says it's such a classic, but it's completely incomprehensible. I found it impenetrable and I got fed up with the style. It's been decades since I tried to read it, and I don't think I'll bother trying again.

Jonathan Meades: Author and broadcaster

The Harry Potter books by JK Rowling

I think they are absolute shit, just terrible, worse than Enid Blyton. I have discouraged my children from reading them. They are not particularly badly written ­ I don't mind bad writing ­ it's the smugness and the complicity with the reader that I dislike. It's like they're written by a focus group. JK Rowling is the sub-literary analogue of Tony Blair.

Philip Hensher: Author, art critic and Independent columnist

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

I can't bear it: it's incredibly boring and stupid. There are patches of great poetry, but nothing happens.

Dr Jonathan Miller: Director, author and broadcaster

Anything by Jacques Derrida

When I plunge into the murky depths of Derrida I feel I am drowning ­ I can deal with difficult topics, but Derrida fails to make them interesting, as his writing is completely impenetrable. He purports to be philosophical, but in fact he's perversely obscure.

Virginia Ironside: The Independent's agony aunt

The Diary of Anaïs Nin

Although I've never been able to finish it, I found the book pretentious, drearily female and pseudo-poetic.

JG Ballard: Author

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

Joyce's incomprehensible novel, which has provided a living for generations of English Literature professors, represents a lamentable tendency in 20th-century fiction: the quest for total obscurity. Finnegans Wake is the best example of modernism disappearing up its own fundament.

Sir John Mortimer: Author and creator of Rumpole

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Anything about Gandalf, and those little things with hair between their toes. I hate that sort of portentous, phoney, medieval-magical way of writing.

Martin Bell: Former MP and BBC correspondent

The Harder Path by John Birt

It's the worst book ever written. It's self-serving, lacks humility, or the suggestion that the critics might just be right.

Richard Curtis: Creator of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill

Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut

In the book he announced that it was his last book ­ and he's the single author I've always most loved.

Miles Kington: Independent columnist

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle

My wife brought it for me when I went to Provence on holiday. I learnt more there in two weeks than Mayle did in a whole year. A lazy book.

Barry Cryer: Comic and broadcaster

A la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust

It was so leaden and defeating that I needed to get some fresh air. It literally stunned me.

Simon Heffer: Political columnist

Das Kapital by Karl Marx

I fundamentally disagree with what it says and the style is pretty turgid.

Blake Morrison: Author and literary critic

Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach

One of the worst books ever, even at just a hundred pages. It's a self-important parable and complete piffle.

Ken Russell: Film director

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

It has a huge reputation as a masterpiece, but I found it to be a fascist tirade about how wonderful American tycoons are in business. Still, it is very cleverly written.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Independent columnist

How to Make Love to a Negro by Dany Laferriere

He thinks he's being clever, but it's horrible stuff; he thinks its satire but it's not, and I loathe it.

DJ Taylor: Literary critic

Orwell by Raymond Williams

It whitewashes the Russian-led suppression of the Trotskyist militia in the Spanish Civil War.

Tom Lubbock: Art critic and illustrator

Photoshop for Dummies by Deke McClelland and Barbara Obermeier

From practical necessity, I have had to consult this often. Its style is unflaggingly cheery-jokey, supposed to sugar the pill of instruction. On first reading annoying, on fifth sickening.

Johann Hari: Young Journalist of the Year

The War Against Cliché by Martin Amis

It reveals what a disgusting, malformed, literary dwarf Martin Amis is. His whole approach to life ­ that if you write good prose you are morally superior ­ is so ridiculous and snobbish.

Carmen Callil: Publisher and founder of Virago Books

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

It combines total lack of originality of thought and narrative with romantic, twittering prose.

Stephen Bayley: Cultural commentator and design guru

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

A novel that brings the term "experiment" into disrepute. The thought-trains of camouflaged Bloomsburyites are witlessly recorded to no good end. I only wish they had been derailed at the start of a gruesome inward literary journey.

Ruth Padel: Poet

Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

It's badly written, full of clichés and dangerously distorting about the period of Greek history it's set in. It exploits the image of Greece.

Boyd Tonkin: Books editor, The Independent

The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch started her career with one brilliantly funny novel, Under the Net. From then on, it was downhill all the way.

Jah Wobble: Musician

Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

When I was 14, I expected Mein Kampf to be really disturbing; a charismatic evil genius would have a very dynamic view of the world. But when I finally bought it, it was as interesting as reading a bus timetable.

Eileen Atkins: Actress

A House and its Head by Ivy Compton-Burnett

She just drives me mad with irritation. She is so arrogant not to mention who is speaking for pages and leave it up to the reader to understand.

Sally Ann Lasson: Independent cartoonist

Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

Contemporary fiction is usually crap. I read it under peer pressure; it was a complete cop-out, with a Mills & Boon ending.

John Walsh: Author and Independent columnist

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

There have been many contender, but for inspiring life-long loathing and contempt, nothing beats The Lord of the Rings. The childish storytelling, the valetudinarian mythologising, Tolkien's lack of any feel for language, description, landscape, emotion or confrontation, the desire to garotte Pippin and Merry in a dark alley ­ how can so many readers have put up with such codswallop for so long?

Elaine Feinstein: Author

All self-help books by various authors

Because they just don't help. You'd find more consolation in the Bible or a poem.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes: Explorer

The Last Place on Earth: The complete story of the dramatic race for the Pole by Roland Huntford

If you know the facts, you wince as you turn the pages. Huntford's diatribe against Scott of the Antarctic is a benchmark in ill-informed denigration hiding under the cloak of historical research.

PD James: Author

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

I find Max de Winter a deeply unsympathetic character. He's arrogant, bullying and insensitive. Surely he must have realised that his young, inexperienced bride couldn't cope with Mrs Danvers.

Brian Sewell: Art critic

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

It was unreadable ­ and who cares, anyway? I'd heard so much about it. I borrowed a copy from a friend and tried to read it. Christ Almighty, what crap.

Sir Ian Mckellen: Actor

The Book of Leviticus

It's full of old legal nonsense that some people still take seriously.

John Peel: DJ and radio presenter

Managing my Life: My autobiography by Alex Ferguson

I'm a Liverpool supporter.

Alain De Botton: Author and philosopher

The Lord Of The Rings by JRR Tolkien

I've never understood the point. It's strange, weird and frightening, and makes me feel like I'm on the sidelines of a joke I don't understand.

Rowan Pelling: Editor of The Erotic Review

A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch

It's the sort of hysterical book that intellects read because they are too snooty to watch EastEnders like everybody else.

Tony Banks: Labour MP for West Ham

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

You think you understand it, but then you get to the end, and realise you don't.

Timothy Garton Ash: Writer and political commentator

Platform by Michel Houellebecq

In the present climate of philistine French-bashing I would love to point to a really good contemporary French novel. This is not it.

And now it's your turn...

So, by a narrow margin, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings carries off our Lousy Read trophy. But what do you think? Is there a text that makes you retch, a publication that you'd like to pulp? As a counterpoint to the BBC's Big Read, we'd like to know which book Independent readers feel is the worst ever written. Send your nomination, together with up to 50 words explaining your choice, by Friday 16 May, to: Worst Books, The Independent, 191 Marsh Wall, London E14 9RS, or worstbooks@independent.co.uk. We'll be publishing the results in due course.