Books you think are overated.

Haha, Vamp, you just got Steerpiked, made me chuckle a lil...

I stopped reading Harry Potter about half way through number 4 when it was becoming more of a teenage soap opera than a fantasy adventure. Disappointing seeing as the three before were not that bad. Having read bits of 5 and 6 I'm glad I stopped when I did. I also stopped reading Brisingr, the third Eragon book after realising 'this guy doesn't have a clue how he wants this to end'.

 

I liked the Potter books well enough, though I think I skipped 5 and 6. I couldn't get through the first Eragon, and I usually like that sort of thing.

The best YA fantasies I've read recently were a couple by Kristin Cashore.

 

I really, really disliked Water For Elephants. I didn't expect that it would be great, but it was so schmaltzy. Paper thin characters and horrendous cliched dialogue.

 

The first ain't great either, but the 2nd one is awesome I think, which focuses more on his brother. The action scenes are well written and characters are better than in the first and 3rd.

I've gone off fantasies lately, it's hard to find an original now. Plus I only recently read Magician by Feist at last, and think it has to be the best fantasy around that I've read from memory!

 

I thought The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson was pretty original, particularly in the world and it's magic system. So was his Mistborn trilogy.

 

Oh there still are originals out there, it's just I've forced myself to broaden my horizons due to less of them being out there. I love short story collections at the mo... if there's a bad one you can just skip it and go to the next!

 

1984 and Animal Farm. Don't get me wrong, Orwell is one of my favorite authors - as an essayist and non-fiction writer. 1984 is one of the most over- and mistaught books I can think of.

Politics and the English Language is an amazing essay though, and should be required reading in all schools. It also lends to one's understanding of 1984.

Also The Sun Also Rises. It's not that I dislike Hemmingway - Old Man and the Sea was a very powerful read. I just found Also Rises to be unforgivably boring.

 

Twilight series, Harry Potter series, Stephen King works, etc. It comes down to scientific fiction or fantasy. I really hate both genres, so the books that fall under the aforementioned genres don't do a thing for me.

 

Some of the classics are a little overrated IMO. I thought that Old Man and the Sea was boring and melancholic. And Of Mice and Men too, call me a hater

 

^ I think some classics are, too. Dickens just never sat well with me, I'm afraid.

 

I think Old Man is one of those books that needs to be read in one sitting, or as close to one sitting as possible, in order to be fully appreciated, but that just might be me.

 

For the classics, definitely Wuthering Heights. The characters, especially Catherine, were over the top. In fact, the only Bronte book I could get through was Jane Eyre. I love Austin, though.

Ulysses? Bah! Horrible. I don't understand all the dis-satisfaction with Dickens, though. I love Dickens.

For modern: The entire Wheel of Time series, where nothing at all happens, most of Stephen King's books, except IT and The Stand, anything by Philip Pullman and the Di Vinci Code, blech! How did that thing become an international best-seller?

 

George R.R. Martin and his Song of Ice and Fire... modern day Tolkien? I retched a little bit when I heard someone on the radio say that. Don't get me wrong, the guy can write with pretty decent style (for fantasy), but he's about as talented at making a story and sticking to it in a relevant manner as Robert Jordan, who lacked for both writing style and ability to hold a meaningful plot together. They both just tend to... wander... and unlike the quote a little ways above me, I'm pretty sure the both of them became quite lost and overpowered by their own stories.

I didn't like Dickens so much when I was younger, simply because his over the top and very colourful characters didn't fit well with my idea of what a serious grown-up novel should be. I forced my way through a few of his books anyway, but I found that I enjoyed them quite a bit after I became old enough to appreciate the humour inherent to it all. I will, however, refrain from commenting further on classics... simply because I have a penchant for feeling the need to lash out with a righteous fury upon anyone who thinks to call them "overrated". Old Man and the Sea remains one of my favourite books to date.

Saying Harry Potter is overrated is a bit like a mixture between beating a dead horse and picking on the mentally challenged kid in the locker room; suffice to say, it does what it did very well -- draw in huge audiences because it's so easy to read and in many ways so likable -- but I simply cannot get over the atrocious writing style that rears its ugly head every time I read an excerpt, or pick up one of the books in the library thinking that maybe I'll finally read them and learn once and for all what all that crazy and hoopla was about.

 

I hate to say it, but.... The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I had to literally force myself to read the first half of the book because there was SO much backstory that I got bored. In the second half, the novel definitely picked up, and it got suspenseful and intriguing (albeit disturbing). Overall, a decent book, but the thing is, it just didn't live up to ALL the hype I've heard about it. JMO

 

Yeah. I thought it was a decent, but more or less mediocre, thriller. Not sure why all the fuss.

 

But Of Mice and Men is so sad.

I couldn't get into it. I read the first few pages but I just got bored. It sounds good and interesting, and considering it's an international bestseller I thought it would be good but nah, just didn't do it for me. I'm going to give it another go at some point though.

 

Twilight of course (good plot, awful writing --- if I had to see glower one more time I was going to set the things on fire and watch them burn), I am Number Four (holy crap.. and yet I have the next one pre-ordered ugh. Crappy books are like crack for me), Time Machine (couldn't get through the writing).

 

Are you talking about the one by Wells?

 

I'd have to say the most overrated books I've ever read are these ones:

The Hobbit--I found this book so boring, I wanted to chew my foot off halfway through. I think it's just not my type of story. I just didn't feel any rapport with the main character, and I wasn't interested in where they were going or why they were going there. I appreciate the originality of it and the nice flowing passages, but I don't see why people call it a masterpiece, and it doesn't make me at all interested in the rest of the series.

The Secret Life of Bees--I kept hearing this was a great book, but when I opened it and finally read it, I found a clicheed message about how we can all be nice to each other and change racism in the South and etc. I believe in the message, of course, but it would take the worst kind of bigot to disagree, which makes the book preachy and kind of irrelevant in my opinion. Not exactly To Kill a Mockingbird!

The Red Badge of Courage--I just don't understand why this is a "classic". Crane seemed to think that the best way to universalize a boy's struggle in becoming a man during wartime was to make the character so vague we know nothing about him except that he's young and inexperienced. Crane was a stupid individual. If we'd understood anything at all about the character, like what kind of family he had or what his childhood was like, we would have felt some kind of rapport with the main character. Instead, he's called "the youth", his friend is "the tall soldier", and we're dragged along on this dull journey that finally leads to a trite coming-of-age theme. Yuck.

The Scarlet Letter--I guess this was WAY more shocking in the 19th century, but today it's just not all that scandalous anymore. A woman has a baby out of wedlock. Oh, OK. So? Add to that pseudo-Puritanical text (someone from the 19th century trying to write like something from the 17th or 18th century...oh joy) which is distressing hard to read, and the fact that Hawthorne makes it so obvious who impregnated Hester that I was tempted to skip five or six chapters of him feeling guilty about it and get to the end, and you've got one of the most famous works of literature of all time.

Breakfast of Champions--Vonnegut himself rated this work a "C" in an essay in which he graded his own work, yet literature bohemians everywhere claim that it's a brilliant existential novel. If "existential" means "about nothing" or "pointless", I guess I agree. But my problem isn't the philosophy; I love Camus's The Stranger, after all, even though I personally reject the idea that life is meaningless. The problem with Breakfast of Champions that the characters are flat, the plot goes nowhere, and Vonnegut foreshadows everything that's going to happen so when it does happen, it's uninteresting. I found it unbelievable that I could ever dislike a book by Vonnegut, but I did.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man--I think the main reason this book is famous is the stream-of-consciousness style, which was revolutionary at the time it was written. I can't dispute how influential Joyce's style has been in modern literature. However, I do think this book is way overrated. Nothing happens the entire time. 15 pages are taken up by the entire text of a fire and brimstone sermon...couldn't Joyce have edited that down to a page or two? Not a single comma is used in the whole book, which makes it hard to get through the rambling sentences, and the characters break into Latin frequently. I can only imagine Ulysses! Also, nothing happens...the main character is a kid, then he's a teen, then he leaves Ireland. He loses his faith, regains it, and loses it again. There's a climax, I guess, but getting there was unexciting for me. Joyce was a pioneer, I guess, but if I said I enjoyed this book, it would just be a lie.

Nothing personal to anyone who loves these books. To tell you all the truth, I'm an uncultured slob. I once got yelled at for trying to sit on a piece of modern art; I thought it was a bench. True story.

 

Oh my god, I hate The Hobbit so much...
We had to read it for school in Year 6, and it was the worst. I don't mind the Lord of the Rings triliogy, but damn it the Hobbit is overrated.

 

Twilight is, naturally, at the top of my list.

Martin Eden, well, I read the first half but just skipped to the end by then. Don't get me wrong, Jack London is great, but this book bored me a little. It was just so... Long.

What else? I Am Number Four is over-rated, I think. But I enjoyed it to some extent.

 

Most definitely Twilight. I know some people will hate me for it but I never understood the appeal of this series. There was no consistent plot, the characters were two dimensional, the writing was mediocre at best, and Breaking Dawn was so anti climatic and certain events were so random and unnecessary that I had to struggle to finish the book.

 

Yes. God, yes. It's just a book that hasn't aged well -- so much more shocking back then than now.

 

What? I love The Scarlet Letter! It's not shocking, but it's still magical. I agree that Hawthorne makes it obvious who impregnated Hester, though.

I hate hate hate Jane Austin books. Bleh. I'm sure they have some really good qualities, I just can't stay awake long enough to find them.

 

Amen to that! Northanger Abbey? Yawn!

I want to try Pride and Prejudice because I love the TV adaptations, but I don't find the bits I've ready very inspiring.