Books you think are overated.

Number one book series I hate the most (and my brother and the boys in my class just love) is ALEX RIDER and any other spy/ secret agent teen who has the first name Alex, totaly over done! And it like the same story over and over again, get sent on a mission get to do a much of cool stuff, almost die a few time then defeat the villain blah blah blah, too boring and lame.

 

I'm part way through the wheel of time (almost finished lord of chaos.) and while I'm enjoying it very much it has a lot of flaws. Mainly the fact that Jordan is terrible at romance, and characters discover long lost powers with no help from anyone. I'm looking at you Elayne, Egwene and Nynaeve.

 

You want to talk about overrated books with downtrodden plots? You're talking anything by L.J. Smith. In case you don't know, she's the author of Vampire Diaries. I know that vampires are in right now and it's the coolest thing since sliced bread but she takes it to a whole different level. You only need to read one of her stories to know them all. She uses the same plot in everyone - every single one!

I am always amazed whenever I do catch the series on TV, at just how much they fixed them. That show is a million times better than the books, I kid you not.

 

I may get slapped for this, but I just think Holden Caulfield is the most unsatisfactory and sour character I have ever approached. It may have been the fact that I approached the book with a bad taste in my mouth, in that I needed to read it for a class, but I "read" this wondrous story a month before I even had to. The whole style of writing irked me. All of Holden's little euphemisms and phrases just totally portrayed him as a whiny jerk. The book was completely useless in my opinion; I didn't get anything out of it. Just horribly worded and jumbled idealism of an obstinate and immature boy. It was a breakthrough for the time period in which is was written because of it's controversial nature. In relation to this time period, it may be considered slightly if at all 'risque' if a teen read it, considering I remember watching things on TV with plot lines twenty times heavier when I was 12 and 13. Everyone in my entire class just absolutely loved the book, and read through faster than a Playboy because there was really no meat in it, and they could get the gist of the book by reading a paragraph of the sparknotes and making overarching and bs assumptions. Catcher in the Rye was completely and utterly useless.

I may also think this because I believe that J.D. Salinger milked his "fame" and was a pervy asshat. Just my opinion.

(I'll brace myself for the backhands)

 

I started rereading Machiavelli's "The Prince" and I gotta tell ya, for such a prestigious work it's a piece of pedantic drivel.

He quickly glosses over the complex geopolitics of regions and governments over the time scale of millenia and conveniently finds a way to compare it all to his contemporary period. As an ancient history buff I can tell you human societies are much too complex to just pidgeon hole like that.

So...take all his advice with a grain of salt, luckily none of use are princes, I don't think O__o

 

King Henry IV part 1 by William Shakespeare.

I found it so overrated.

 

Anything Richard Jordan and Terry Goodkind, Neil Gaiman's novels (I like the comics), everything Tom Clancy, most of Anne Rice, anything Jacqueline Carey, Laurell K. Hamilton and Laura Antoniou. Norah Vincent.

And very recently David Belbin (gosh, is he a moralising zealot), and Kody Keplinger (absolutely awful, her teenagers are worse arses than Dr. House).

 

:O y-y-you dont like Neil Gaiman?

 

I seem to commit sacrilege here

Yep, I dare say I don't much like his novels. I'm aware of his major contributions to fighting censorship, and I respect him for that, but that doesn't mean I have to like him. I find his prose boring and soporific, I never managed to finish any of his books. Usually I end up skimming and then reading the end. Not a good sign.

But tastes differ, probably not everyone else likes the authors I adore.

 

I don't like Neil Gaiman's work either. So what?

 

Catcher in the Rye
Darkness Visible
Trainspotting

 

The Hunger Games
Any Vampire book
Harry Potter

 

James Patterson. A friend gave me one to read when she saw me reading thriller/suspense type books. I can't remember which one it was but it was hugely disappointing after all the hype I've heard over the past few years.
Harry Potter. Probably awesome when read as a kid/young adult, which is who it was meant for, but as an adult I can only say it was okay, nothing more. But if it gets kids reading, I'm all for it.
Dean Koontz. It pains me to say that because I read him fanatically as a teenager, then re-read and re-read them, but I can honestly say that, barring a couple of exceptions, I find his writing excruciatingly boring these days because every freakin' book is the same! Same types of characters, same scenery, same damn furniture and collectables and plants in the garden and dogs, same everything. Yawn.
Then again, when it comes to both books and movies, the stuff I like most people think is absolute tripe

 

pretty much the whole of the chick lit genre makes me go "meh" one thousand times over.

 

I've never read a Russian classic I've enjoyed. Maybe it's a translation thing, but omniscient first-person narrators irk me terribly. And the books are so damn long...

Generally, though, I don't buy into "overrated" as an adjective. It's rarely used to critique a writer; more to critique that writer's fanbase, or to justify one's own personal distaste for something a lot of people like. Which seems silly to me.

 

I love Neil Gaiman's comic books, but I agree, his novels are not as good. His stories and imagination are great, but his prose and descriptions are so-so.

 

Definitely James Patterson. I honestly have never read the twilight series but the whole concept doesn't appeal to me.

 

How is Hunger games overrated? I know im a fan, but i would like to see from a different perspective.

 

Lucky Jim is not funny, at all. Do not read.

 

Agreed.

 

The Great Gatsby.
For a book that is considered by many as one of the greatest goddam books ever written, it is extremely overrated. I mean, it's a good book and all, don't get me wrong old sport, but my god is it overrated.

 

Anything written by Stephenie Meyer and anything written by J. K. Rowling; also the Necronomicon (if you have ever hung out in occult forums the last one will make sense).

 

The great thing about J.K. Rowling's books is that while they were being published the character grew up with the reader. I was one of the lucky few to have been in the same grade as Harry while the books were coming out. Each time I moved up a grade, so did Harry. The effect was freaking amazing and I've been a die hard Harry Potter fan ever since. It was a brilliant marketing tool on her part that kept readers coming back for more. If you examine the series, the writing style, vocabulary, and maturity of the content advances with each book. I think that this is more than enough to prove to anyone how talented a writer J.K. Rowling is.

As for books that I think are overrated, definitely The Catcher in the Rye. I think that what was so appealing about this book was that rather than hand you descriptions of the characters emotions on a silver platter like most writers, all that he described were their actions. Not even their outward appearance. He left a whole lot about his characters to be inferred. For example, he never goes into depth about the main characters personality. In a way, he brought his character to life in a sense that nearly all writers fail to do. I think that this is a great literary technique and very difficult to pull off, but the story just wasn't that interesting to me. Great writing, boring story.

 

I want to talk about Anne Rice. Perhaps the greatest thing that Anne Rice did was make her readers fall in love with an unlikeable character. I'm talking about, of course, the vampire Lestat. Lestat is a selfish, controlling, pompous, conceited prick. Lestat tells you this very often, at the beginning of nearly every book his written. (Anne Rice writes her books in first person through Lestat) If you examine his actions in every book he is the star of he presents himself as a sexy saint, a rock star, all while acting like a devil. This is further enforced by Rice's writing through the vampire Louis. In Louis's books Lestat is a villian. Nevertheless, I love the character Lestat. Through Lestat Rice makes her readers feel compassion for a murderer, you find yourself hoping that the bad guy will come out on top. In all of the books I've read, he is my second favorite anti-hero. Next only to Gully Foyle from The Stars My Destination, who is, and always will be, the number one badass of fiction.

 

The Twilight series was not as horrible as most critique said, but certainly not worthy of all the attention it received...