Books you think are overated.

"Snowdrops" by AD Miller.

Booker shortlist? Gimme. A. Break. Decent enough read, but come on.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb here.

Oscar Wilde.

Okay, I said it, and I apologize, but my God, did he purposefully make the most unlikable book I have read? Yes I know you aren't supposed to like his characters, but that ends up making me not like a book. I found most of them too intolerable.

 

Ulysses - James Joyce

Stream of consciousness my ass. I don't mind a difficult read, and yes the idea of writing exactly what is flowing through somebody's thoughts is novel, but this book is unreadable for me. I have read antique translations of the Illiad, and Greek/Roman historians, Faust, Greek playwrights, Rabelias, etc. But this, I cannot read. Hell, one of my favorite works are Essays by Montaigne, and he takes forever to get to the point, but not this. I chewed up thirty-five pages and I guess I understood what was going on, but I just so hated the process of reading it that I could not continue.

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

Shut up about your treacherous hand!

 

Crime and Punishment.

Anyone got an axe?

 

touche

 

I might get a beat down for this, but...

The Lord of the Rings

It was definitely what popularized fantasy, but Tolkien was not a writer, he was a linguist that needed a background for his Elven language. Anyone remember Tom Bombadil? Not in the movies for good reason. He added NOTHING to the story.

 

... The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. It's become quite popular, but I can't even finish the second book. It's just so... I don't know why I don't like it, but I just can't bring myself to read it.

 

Not being able to read something doesn't make something a bad book. I cannot get through Ulysses but I still think it's a fantastic book.

 

Ulysses is very good, I just don't like the ending.

How can you think a book is 'fantastic' if you haven't finished it? You might know it's reputation, or like what you've read, but thinking an entire book is fantastic when you haven't read it all is just plain silly. Especially with such a massive and varied work of fiction.

It's like someone saying the entire work of Shakespeare is fantastic and not having read it all. In all honesty, I didn't care for Measure for Measure.


Overrated: Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austin. Don't get me wrong, it's good fun and well written, but nothing reallly amazing. It's the type of book that you read in the bath or slouched on a sofa covered in half-eaten chocolate, and I think it even knows it.

 

True Blood. How could you like those books? Maybe it's cause i hate the writing style when i read it......

 

I don't see what's particularly objectionable about having a positive evaluation of a book you haven't finished, especially when the book in question isn't really plot-driven. People make negative evaluations of books without finishing them all the time.

 

I just find the idea of making a judgement of an entire book when you haven't read it all a bit strange. What if, say, the sections you haven't read are awful? Would this change your opinion of it. Making a negative comment or review of a book without finishing it is understandable, because you know it's flaws; but making not-fully-informed positive opinion is brave to say the least. Joyce was a great writer, one of my favorite, but I don't like Finnegan's Wake. I had to force myself to finish it, and I know I'm not the only one who doesn't like The Wake. Joyce didn't have Midas' touch, no one does.

Sides. It wasn't an objection.

 

Making a positive comment or review of a book without finishing it is understandable, because you know its strengths.

I must say, I disparage entire genres without having read a single word of them.

 

All books that are considered by a lot of people (most people?) as "must reads" and important. Well, they're not. An example is LOTR. Also the works of those long dead, like Shakespeare. The works and books I avoid at all costs, and therefore will never waste my time with.
Twilight, overrated. I kinda like the story, but the writing is... just redundant at times too many.

 

How exactly is Shakespeare not important? He basically invented half of the modern English language.

 

Can one not learn a lot from the past?

I don't quite get the mentality.

 

Invented. That was in the past, is not at present. The reason I said what I said comes from the "obsession" with him and others like him at present. While I was in school there was the "obsession" with him and the others, I hated it then and I hate it now. How about moving on? You do not maintain, you change and create new - you move on!
Holding something or someone as important and constantly "obsessing" over all that is wrong.
I actually care and think about the future and this "obsession" does not get us anywhere.

 

^
So everything should only be for the now? Things to be enjoyed, and then disposed of and forgotten?

You can keep alive the best of the past (be it music, books, art... philosophical ideas etc), and still always be open to the new.

 

I'll admit I'm not Shakespeare's greatest fan, but Shakespeare is more than just the language. His characterization, particularly of Richard II and Coriolanus, is almost flawless (a lot of the time); he's still funny at times, and his examinations into the human condition are amazing. Also, he's still fun. That's why he's still around.

 

That is not what I meant. They teach in schools the same they taught sixty years ago. Even then they were old, and they still keep on going.
I understand if best of the past is always available when someone wants it. But what is going on now, and has been for a long time, is this pointless obsession.
New gets old, and once it becomes too old you move on, to something newer.

 

Harry Potter. Overrated. The author is richer than the queen yet I couldn't get past the first book! And Twilight. I mean, come on, moody vampires?

 

You're equating "old" with "bad" and "new" with "good". Shakespeare, and others, are still around because they're damn good! They're not just historically important; they're good.

When newer works come along that are also good, they are added to what people read and study in schools. But the fact that there's a new good book doesn't make the old books bad or not worth our time.

 

So, because there are newer philosophers like Hegel, Nietzsche and Rand, then no one should study Plato, or Aristotle, or Aquinas in school?

 

I don't think Plato and Aristotle should be focused on so heavily. In the same way, Shakespeare should not be focused on so heavily. I will admit that these figures are certainly foundational and for that reason they should be studied, but to focus on them exsclusively without taking into account literature that is more pertinent to our present day affairs is somewhat backwards. Plato and Aristotle never philosophized on the effects of technology, or the effects of capitalism, or the concept of gay marriage etc. Shakespeare not only was but is beyond reproach, and there is a lot to learn from him, even if you only read a few of his plays. However, there are also a lot of great writers in the present who have produced great literature.

 

^ There is a difference, you can't disagree, between de-emphasizing writers and thinkers and stopping their studies altogether.