It has been said that any publicity is good publicity. But when someone describes your writing as "like reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine. It makes you wince," as John Irving said of Tom Wolfe's "A Man In Full," that credo loses a bit of credibility.

Book reviewers, generally speaking, tend to keep their heads when assessing a book's worth. They are, after all, charged with the task of objectively analyzing a work. Sometimes, however, professionalism and decorum give way to vitriol and downright disgust. The words in these hateful reviews are less letters on a page and more the transcript of a critic's frenzied ravings.

So, here are the worst of the worst, the most dispiriting, and the meanest. But what did we leave out? What are the meanest reviews you've ever read?

Disclaimer: We apologize if you are the author of one of these books.

PHOTO GALLERY Meanest Reviews