Books you think are overated.

Most of the teenage girls I know think it's overrated.

 

You get this kind of mindless, lemming-over-the-cliff hate for any literary phenomenon that rises to this level. Or maybe even any cultural phenomenon. It's what the cool kids do. lol

 

This actually reminds me of a demotivational picture my friend showed me on the net. It was a bunch of older women in semi-provacative dresses. Supposedly they were all screaming at the male star of Twilight. At the bottom it had a caption: "Twilight: If these were a bunch of 40 year old men screaming for a 16 year old, someone would call the cops!"

 

Judging by the sales figures of Breaking Dawn, and general mass hysteria, many teenage girls you don't know think otherwise.

 

So? The point is that even people within the target audience think it sucks.

 

So it's not really over-rated, so much as as good as people generally think it is.

The topic of the thread isn't bad books, it's over-rated ones...

 

I know a lot of young (13-16) teenage girls, mostly because my Aunt calls on me a lot to be the 'cool' chaperone of my young cousin. Also I am technically a teenage girl myself, though probably a bit old to be Meyer's audience, seeing as her books mostly appeal to younger girls. My point is that only one of those girls likes Twilight. A couple of others tolerate it, but don't think it's anything special. The others do not like it. I loathe it myself.

Also, Meyer has said that she wrote the book "for herself", as her own creepy fantasy thing - I may have paraphrased that last bit a little. The fact that a lot of teenage girls also like it doesn't mean that it wasn't written with at least one 30 year old housewife in mind.

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, back on topic...

I found the Pickwick Papers to be highly overrated. I had a few teachers who told me it was a must-read, so I picked it up at the library...I think it was the first book that I didn't finish reading. I renewed it like three times in an effort to force myself to finish, but after slogging through half of it, I decided I just couldn't do it. So. Boring.

I didn't really dig The Grapes of Wrath, either, but that one I can at least understand where people are coming from, liking it.

 

I wasn't a huge Grapes of Wrath fan, either. I felt it was long, slow, and dull, personally.

Also, I had to read Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in college (literature), and man.... that was a dull read to me. Now I like a touch of philosophy in my books, but Zen was overkill.

 

I absolutely despised "The Catcher in the Rye." but read it to see what all the fuss was about. Mostly because I hated Holden Caulfield and his pathetic angst.
Who cares?

I also hated "Wuthering Heights", I don't think there was a sympathetic character in the whole book and the style was torture to read. Yet I read it!

 

I have to this date never been able to finish any of the Twilight books. Also the Tale of Genjii is adored by all of Japan but I`ve never managed to get through that either. Maybe I`m just reading the wrong translation.

 

the almost universal annoyance with twillight is interesting...it is young adult...how does it compare to its peers?

 

/\ Well, the Hunger Games trilogy is considered YA, too, and I think those novels are so much better. Same goes for the Mortal Instruments... this is OT but I love your Wall.E icon, by the way

 

I think the last two books of the Millenium trilogy (The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) are overrated. The first book was really, really good IMO, but the last two didn't live up to it.

 

It was intended to be a 10-part novel series, so those two books were never intended to be the second and third parts of a trilogy, but the second and third parts of a ....decology? Which kinda changes how you read them and think about them in terms of plot and development. The third one especially is basically a filler novel that's been made into the final part of a story, and in some parts, it's pretty obvious.

 

I'm dredging through The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest at the moment. Kind of an 'I told myself that I would read the trilogy, so I'm gonna read the whole damn trilogy' thing. It's almost painful.

The problem is, I think, a lack of suspense. Suspense is crucial in books like these. The first book had it, which made up a little for the fact that (in my opinion) it wasn't written very well. I still enjoyed it. The Girl Who Played With Fire, I didn't enjoy, and my mind keeps wandering as I read Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. I'm halfway through a chapter now, and I'm critiquing it on the internet! A good book should at the very least engage me enough to keep me from doing that.

Also, anything Jane Austen puts me to sleep. I hate the style, hate the descriptions, hate the plots, hate everything.

When I was in high school, the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Johnathan Stroud was pretty popular, and I could never get into the books. I can't place why, exactly, they don't make me cringe, I just don't have any desire to keep reading, once I pick one up. Probably that all important suspense thing again.

 

If I think of it like that, I see what you're getting at. If there is a 4th book, and if it is published, I'll definitely read it and I'll probably think differently of the last 2 books.

I agree with the suspense. The first book had a lot of it, which kept me reading, but the latter books didn't have as much. Still, Lisbeth Salander is one of my favorite literary characters, I must admit.

I agree completely with Jane Austen as well, everything of hers really is a cliche and just drags for me.

 

I think American Psycho is one of the most over rated books i've ever read. It was just so annoying to keep reading endless descriptions of what people were wearing i felt like screaming 'WE GET IT IT, BATEMAN IS MATERIALISTIC'. It is not an enjoyable read by any stretch of the imagination not unless you want to keep reading sentences about the patty winters show and full chapters on whitney houston

 

Twilight, no discussion. No idea where the rave is at.

 

Anything Nicholas Sparks. Every book of his is a huge cliche from beginning to end.

 

Thank You!

 

Anything (badly) written by Dan Brown. Most of Ann Rice's stuff, a lot of vampire novels, including Charlaine Harris.

 

twilight. and new moon. and breaking dawn. and whatever else is associated with them.
i actually read the first book, then went and purged it out by reading some much better books. :S

 

I, Alex Cross. Maybe it was just me, or may it was the fact that that was the first book I've read by him, but I didn't think it was all that good. Sure, it was entertaining, but not great like everyone made it out to be.

 

The Exiles Trilogy by Ben Nova.

Is probably one of the worst science fiction stories I've ever read.