Books you think are overated.

His Dark Matireal's ending was so tacked on. And there's an odd classist streak in the books as well.

 

Nevermind.

 

I have to say that I feel that the entire Harry Potter series is overrated. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed them, but in the past few years, I've started to feel that they're more an introduction to reading than anything as deep and profound or spectacular as some proclaim (It seems to infer that some people are fundamentally evil?). It also seems to me that, where I'm from, liking Harry Potter seems to be a "cool" thing, the same thing with vampires (Dammit, I liked those aristocratic boogeymen before they were cool and sparkly!).

 

They still are aristocratic and cool. Twilight is just the rough social equivalent of a kid who got a trust fund very early on in life, without any conditions and never had to work a day in his life.

 

Twilight, anything by Nicholas Sparks and a lot of Stephen King books (not all, but a lot).

 

I thought the Shannara books were highly overrated--to me they were just Lord of the Rings warmed over

 

I read the first one in middle school and really liked it, and then a few months later came across LOTR for the first time and of course my perspective on a lot of things changed, including my opinion of Shannara books.

 

I'll take Twilight Saga for five-hundred, Alex .

I also agree with the others on The Chronicles of Narnia and the Golden Compass series. Also, The Hunger Games Series, slightly. I mean, I enjoyed them, but there have been far better YA apocalypse novels.

 

The Brothers Karamazov...The Woman In White....Mein Kampf (jk)...

 

That was my reaction to it too.

I don't think Twilight or Eragon really count as overrated because, at best, opinion of them is highly polarised- they aren't universally well regarded at all.

For me, it's Who Has Seen the Wind. It was the only book I read in either high school or university that I disliked.

 

One I wanted to add to the list.

Wuthering Heights. This was a book we were forced to read in my Senior AP English class in high school. And I'm sorry if this makes me seem less "cultured" than the rest, but I just couldn't get past the first page of this book.

And before the masses start pecking at me like a hundred hungry vultures, let me clarify, that when I was fourteen, I was the only kid in my class to voluntarily read the full version of Flowers for Algernon because I was not satisfied with the grossly over edited version that was presented to us in the textbook. So I was and always will be a fairly dedicated reader. Wuthering Heights makes my overrated list, doubly so since some marketing exec got the brilliant idea of using it to hook the Twilight crowd.

And while I found Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies to be somewhat cute and entertaining, I think this trend of "updating" Jane Austin classics is getting somewhat old.

 

I'm pretty sure this is grounds to revoke my English degree, but...

I don't like Joyce's Ulysses!

*is ashamed*

 

lol - rambling and well some people like it but ...

 

Agree about the Golden Compass, but that was possibly because a friend of mine bragged about it so much, it seemed like crap in comparison to how he described it.

Also, what's with all the Anne Rice hating? Once you get through the descriptions (I'll gladly admit they can be annoying at best) her stories are real page turners. It just takes her some time to get there. Though I agree that the three first books of the Vampire Chronicles were the absolute best.

Is Twilight really overrated? I mean, the series even has a very popular hate forum. Very few books get that much hate.

And while I don't think the book is bad, I have almost finished reading American Psycho, and I'm kind of disappointed. I expected more from a book that critically acclaimed.

 

That sounds the exact same logic that made me write off Northern Lights. Sure, any book can have its good parts. There are even a couple of lines with some merit in the Twilight series. It's just not worth reading all the rest to get to them. By your own logic you answered your question. It's not so much why it's a bad book, merely why one would be disappointed or think it didn't live up to the reputation.

 

Twilight. This girl in my class said I should read them but I was like are you joking that is junk and a waste of paper

 

lol...there are plenty of masterpieces that are...well...unreadable...

 

Foundation, the only interesting character was that farmer woman from Trantor. Issac Asimov's other stuff I like however, like the robot detective stories.

 

Same, couldn't get into it when I first read it years ago. I reread it this year for my course, and enjoyed it but I still think it's overrated.

 

Most popular novels/authors. Well, I wouldn't say they're "overrated" but I personally don't seen the appeal in the vast majority of them. My tastes are apparently unusual.

However, I will back-up many others: Twilight. I read the first book out of curiosity and the second with the idea that I might as well read on to see if Meyers writing style had improved after the first novel; I gave up five chapters into New Moon.

 

Stephen King. I'm not saying he's a bad writer, but I just don't like his writing style (that man could write ten paragraphs about a lamp. This is NOT good for writing horror, if you ask me). I'm get so bored I quit reading before I can get to any good parts.

Edit: Pfft, I need to work on my reading comprehension skills. Then I pick Desperation by Stephen King. I never managed to read far.

 

Words cannot express how much I hate Twilight et al. Which is opposed to my normal indifference for most works that I don't care for. Next on the list is the Southern Vampire series. And I LIKE vampires.

 

House of Leaves. I can't stand it, and it seemed like it would be something I love. Abstract stylistic choices? Check. Footnote frenzy? Check. Influences from Hodgson and Borges? Double check. But when I read it, I couldn't stand it. It wasn't difficult, it was just tedious to no end. And I'm a fan of Moby Dick; I can tolerate tedium.

Also, even though I do like the book, I think the amount of hype that The Book Thief gets is a bit much. It's a good book, but it's not revolutionary, and I wasn't brought to tears by it. The writing kind of got on my nerves. Particularly those little asides. It's a cool idea, and I liked the story a lot, but a lot of things about Death didn't sit well with me, and I couldn't say it was a great book.

 

The Inheritance Cycle - Christopher really rubs me the wrong way, and the books blatanly rip off Star Wars and LOTR so much it's ridiculous.

Twilight - Self-explanatory.

Cat's Cradle - I like Kurt Vonnegut, but this book just got odd for me. Understood it's themes and stuff, just felt it was overrated.

 

Robert Jordan _ The Eye of the World.

It. Was. So. Dull.

Only made it halfway through