Books you think are overated.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - it wasn't

The Shadow of the Wind - started off well but descended into rubbish. I just can't understand why so many people thought this book was brilliant.

 

Chuck Palahniuk's entire bibliography, apart from Fight Club.

 

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Agreed!

 

Lord Of The Rings.
I don't dislike it but what many class as literary art and genius, to me often sounds like pretentious ramblings.

 

Not the only one, I had to read it for an English class on classic novels, and found it one of the better ones. For me, one of the worst books I've read was The Egoist by George Meridith. It could have easily been cut into a short story without losing any of the paper thin plot (man wants to marry woman, woman says yes, woman changes her mind, man won't let her, woman marries another man), and the dialogue was a mess of confusion. A lot of it didn’t have “he said, she said” tags, so it was impossible to tell who said what unless you stopped to count the lines, and it was pretty inside stuff. An example, if it’s allowed:
“I say, what more likely?”
“Than that he should insist?”
“If he is under the hallucination!”
“He may convince others.”
“I have only to repeat!...”

(No amount of context would make this mean anything, I promise)

 

Gone with the Wind is overrated. I know it was written in a different time and all, but the overly racist overtones of the book piss me off.

 

Ok, I know I am going to get beat up for this but I have to say "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville.

I swear the man was suffering from Writers Block. He went off on so many tangents I could not keep track. Granted, when he got back to telling the story it was great but when you devote an entire chapter to describing a Lamp is a little much.

As for modern stuff Tom Clancy some times boars me like his "Debt of Honer" and Steven King tends to rub me the wrong way when trying to make things scary that are not.

As for bad books I would have to say "Saving Fish from Drowning" by Amy Tan (I think that was the author) was one I just could not finish.

 

The most overrated book ever I came across is James Joice's Ulysses. The writer had written the book so complicatedly that we never can enjoy the read. We cannot flow with the book and we have to lower the pace of reading.

The book has so many difficult lexicons and in fact the writer idiosyncratically tried to impress his readers of his pedantic heights.

He was no doubt very laborious and experimented with style yet the fact is he could not entertain his readers.

 

lol...well put....

 

War and Peace is horrible for tangents. You could cut out 500 or so pages if you got rid of Tolstoy's philosophies.

 

That's pretty much how I experienced it. I honestly tried to read it, but I could only get to page 100. I admire him for doing something unusual, but it's not a book I'll probably read in its entirety any time soon xP;. Complexity is alright, but when it's at the point of wondering whether every sentence is actually "happening" or not, it doesn't make for a book I particularly want to read.

 

'On the Road', whilst being a fascinating read, has far too much hype behind it. Saying that, I don't think that is the author's fault, more the people who think they're Kerouac.

 

I may be lynched here, but Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series. Countless books of nothing happens. Gaah!

 

I'm going to dig up the corpse of Victor Hugo and say that The Hunchback of Notre Dame just is not fun at all. He goes off on all these descriptions of Parisian architecture. I DON'T CARE. GET BACK TO THE STORY, MAN!

Of course, I'm not sure that it's ever been "overrated". Still.

 

Seconded, I gave up after the 8 or 9th. I hate catching up to a writer, and then to top it off when the next section finally released, I realized his characters and plot was entirely forgetable.

I know Harry Potter has already been beaten to a pulp but I'll also second that series was written for kids, and it never losses that niavity.

I'd like to toss under the proverbial bus Dan Brown's most recent book. His character is bland, all his faults have become strengths and it is now just a journey down the same weary path as his former books with no hook to his characters.

 

Beloved by Toni Morrison. I just for the life of me could not get into it.

 

After the disaster that was Crossroads of Twilight, I still haven't worked up the will to continue the series.

 

I gave up at the end of book four, I think. And you know, even five minutes afterwards I couldn't tell you what it was about or the name of a single memorable character. His style of writing is fine, it's just that the plot and characters were as complicated and interesting as caravan sites.

I adore the Harry Potter books. But I read them in the frame of mind they are meant to be read in - similar to Narnia. They are children's books and if read for childish enjoyment they are ideal. The clever part of the Potter series is the continuing ageing of the characters and the writing style and plot elements to match.

Dan Brown's first two were a great read. Not exactly high art, but a good fun ride with enough truth in it to make the fiction believable.

I'll add the Stephen Donaldson "Thomas Covenant" books to my list of overrated writing too. I tried my hardest but couldn't get into them.

 

You gotta give Stephen King credit for The Stand.

You can't deny(well you can deny it easily but alas!)

 

Twilight and Hirsute Sculptor.
They are ok. It's the constant jokes about it, the myriad of references to said(and mocked) books, and ubiquitous hate directed at it that really get to me.

However when I do it, it's the funniest thing ever. Logically.

 

The Red Badge of Courage
Catcher in the Rye
Lord of the Rings

 

I totally agree on Red Badge.

Lord of the Rings was a good book for me but there where parts that were a tad bit long winded. Almost too much building.

 

"Three books of walking --- even the trees walk."

I liked Red Badge as a coming of age story. Like Red Fern or To Kill a mockingbird.

 

An American Tragedy. I hated how it was written. It was like steel pipes haphazardly thrown together, just awful.

 

I may be crucified for this, but.... books by Charles Dickens. Especially Great Expectations. It's just too dry for me, too much to slog through. I just don't have any interest in the story.