Books you think are overated.

The last three books of the Sword of Truth Series. Chainfire, Phantom, and Confessor should have been a single novel, not three. I just read those three just to finish the series. Goodkind's writing is just getting worse and more preachy...

 

For me it is the entire Twilight series. I just don't see the appeal. It has flat characters, a terrible plot, and is just not written very well. I hate when people try to compare it to Harry Potter. I don't think Twilight would bother me as much as it does if people didn't say that every YA fantasy series is a Twilight rip-off. *rolls eyes*

 

Thank you! I also think Richard and Kahlan got super annoying after a while.

 

Also, after some of my coworkers raved about Twilight and and True Blood (sensing a theme here?) I actually went out and read all the books.

Twilight is just awful. Bella and Edward are psychotic and annoying, and the ending was horrible. I can't believe this is what today's teenagers like.

As for The Sookie Stackhouse Series, shoot me. Main character was annoyingly self righteous and preachy and just so simpleminded. All she wanted to do was screw vampires and shifters, and work as a barmaid instead of using her skills to help the greater good.

 

OKay...

AS far as books and authors go, I think Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is INCREDIBLY overrated.

And perhaps the most grossly overrated book I've read, Ulysses by James Joyce. Yeah, yeah, I know all about what he was trying to do, and parts ("Penelope" comes to mind) are very, very good. But as a whole, I recall that quote by Albert Camus: "Those who write clearly have readers. Those who write obscurely have commentators." Coupled with Ralph Waldo Emerson's quote that "The virtue of books is to be readable" (emphasis added), James Joyce may be esteemed, but he'll never be read.

And since movies/TV were mentioned, let me just throw this one out there: I think the series Madmen is ridiculously overrated.

 

Sorry to say, a lot of the latter Koontz novels seem overrated. I was a HUGE fan when I was younger. I still want to get back into him, but the non-stop character backstory + standardized dialogue tunes me out. I say "seem overrated" cause I haven't read most of them, mainly the Amazon samples and such. The novels I bought, I just couldn't make it through. Just recently bought a kindle and blasted through the Hunger Games. So maybe I'll give Koontz another go (early Koontz first).

 

But is Koontz really overrated? Who actually thinks Koontz is good? He sells a lot of books, but I hardly ever see a good word tossed his way by a serious critic. He's probably right where he wants to be: selling literary Big Macs to the fast-food literary consumer.

 

Yeah but critics do write those eloquent adorations on the covers of his novels. And it's funny, some of the same people who claim he's so horrid always have a review of his latest novel. People are buying his books. And he writes that much with an 80's era PC, two-finger typing. An enigma.

 

I find anything by Nicholas Sparks overrated. Then again, I've never big a fan of lovey dovey romance novels. However I find his work to be especially atrocious.

 

Oh I wish I could remember the name of this one book. Everyone was raving that it was the best thing ever. It had two stories and you had to flip the book over to flip stories. They were written next to each other, but upside down compared to each other. The writing was really weird though, I had been told to read 8 pages at a time of each character to get the full story since they are supposed to take place at the exact same time. Beside being written as sorta poetry or something (sorta being the main point) there were big differences between the story. Not in the "wow a different point of view really changes the story" but "wait why are they seeming to be talking about the same person doing something, but one describes them as a man and the other as a women" I swear they were talking about the same thing... except the details were off. I reread the same pages over and over to try and figure out if I was missing something and it was a different character they each were looking at... but they both were at the same place... I think.

Point is as far as I could tell the point wasn't the story, but the "unique" way it was told. I gave up at the 8 page mark of each side. Like I said the narrative wasn't "he walked over" but closer to "stones lay at feet, walking, he got there" I really just remember being confused.. and I was devouring a ton of books at that point in time. A new book every few days at least.

 

Faulkner. Of his books I've read I have never been surprised or stimulated by any of his writing. I read on because I assumed that people must like him for some reason. But no.

 

Agreed. <Warning: Spoilers for the end of As I Lay Dying>

I had to struggle through his As I Lay Dying for my American Lit II. class and it was just horrible. I don't understand why people say this is a great book. Please tell me this: Who, in their right minds, would name their kids the following: Dewey Dell, Jewel, Cash, Darl and Vardaman? Now here comes the spoiler where I list their dysfunctional quirks that got on my nerves:

Spoiler

To sum it up: A dysfunctional family has to bury their loved one, Addy Bundren. Mr. Anse Bundren only cares about getting teeth, Dewey Dell is pregnant, Jewel is hot-headed and only seems to care about his horse, Cash literally works himself to to the point where his legs don't work, Darl goes insane, and Vardaman spends the whole book trying to convince everyone that Addy Bundren is a fish and that Jewel's mother is a horse.

 

I haven't read it in a while, but when I found the Wind in the Willows very boring when I finally forced myself to read through it. That was a few years ago though. Not sure how I'd feel about it now.

 

I loved the movie adaptaton! >8( <Sics Toad in a Motorcar on you>

 

^This. I barely finished The Notebook, and then I cringed. It didn't make me cry. It didn't really make me feel much at all.

 

I REALLY liked Odd Thomas.

I will admit this as well: I hated every Charles Dickens book that I had to read in school. They were all stiff and blah.

 

Da Vinci Code, Catcher in the Rye

 

As a person who works in a used book store and over an entire shelf of our store carries only him, I'm forced to say that you're correct. However, I did really like his book Seize the Night. If I never read anything else of his, I'll keep thinking he's pretty good. I tried to read some other stuff, but it was like I was reading the same book over again.

Anyway, as for overrated books, there is no greater offender than The "Great" Gatsby. To me, anyway. I mean, crap, here we are in school, and they're going to make us read a stupid romance novel where everybody's cheating on everybody, only rich men are counted as worthy to date, and everybody besides the two people who most deserve it die in the end. What the crap is that crap? Sheesh, no wonder it's hard to get kids to read school books.

 

Not just a single book, but I think James Rollins is overrated. I read two of his most popular books cover to cover. One was a complete ripoff of 'The Da Vinci Code' the other read like an action script converted to novel form.

 

I found this annoyed me a lot too, but I appreciated that it was consistent and true to her character throughout - as in she never stops being a crap character. Ever. Having said that, I enjoyed the first book but found that from about book 3 onwards it just got more and more shallow and poorly written. She's a lazy writer and the books go on far too long, making the story spread very thin.

I adored the TV show but season 4 is a bitter disappointment.

 

A lot of people here have mentioned The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Swedish books in general. I know this is an old thread but does anyone still going through it agree? Could you explain why better than "couldn't get into it"? Would be appreciated as I can't understand what these amazing books and authors are doing in a thread called books you think are overrated.

PS: I'm not trying to start a debate (who would want to do that?), just asking a question.

 

It looks like there are a few legitimately overrated authors that have been mentioned in this thread. The rest of them seem to be put forth by people with extremely short attention spans. Lord of the Rings overrated? Great Expectations overrated? Dostoyevsky overrated? Gimme a break. Those books require two things; intelligence and attention. Let's face it, every book is not going to be as easy to understand as Transformers 2.

 

Forgive me, but I'm going to have to defend Catcher in the Rye here. It's something different from the usual storylines! Not the usual Intro, Climax, Resolution. Kind of like "all in days work" kind of thing.
Anyways I have to agree about Eragon being overrated but I also simply could NOT finish InkHeart Trilogy. It started off okay but then you got overwhelmed by the fantasy, paper thing.

 

A Game of Thrones: caricature and flimsy. I didn't hate it, but considering how highly it's revered I was surprised at how shallow and lifeless I found it.

Gardens of the Moon: tinderbox-dry. I had to read it with a glass of water to hand. One for the RPGers: those who admire system and process and world-building over character and plot and message.

 

Game of thrones uses carciatures? Are you serious, it's got some of the most complex characters in literature.