Books you think are overrated

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Both The Remains of the Day and The Great Gatsby are on my shelf waiting to be read, I hope I don't feel the same way!

You might like them! Lots of people I know love Gatsby and Remains of the Day won the Booker Prize so obviously some people thought it was great, I just thought it was quite slow XD Tell me what you think when you read them :smile:

Reply 21

Obfuscator

Original post by The Fez

I have to agree with you on Twilight, but Kite Runner? Care to elaborate?
Oh and it's just when I talk to people about that amazing trilogy, they will give me this confused look and have no idea what books I'm talking about. Maybe I need a new group of friends :tongue:

For me Kite Runner was a bit By the Book in the way it was written. I mean, I enjoyed the insight into Afghani culture, but most of the imagery to me seemed cliche. I can kind of appreciate why some people really loved it but for me it was cushy and there was nothing original in terms of the writing. I hear some of his other books are significantly better though.

Reply 22

The Fez

Original post by Obfuscator

Fair enough, I can see why you say that. It's the story we've all heard before, just in a different place. It's still a powerful book though. I've never read his other books, but I'll check those out soon.

Reply 23

Our_Lot

Underworld by Don DeLillo. He is one of my favourite writers, yet I thought his most well-known and critically acclaimed novel was a load of crap. There is one extremely long scene where he spends 50+ pages describing a baseball game, which I can safely say is one of the most tedious reading experiences I have ever had. After a few hundred pages of feeling nothing whatsoever, I decided to stop wasting my time and put it down. To paraphrase something someone said about James Joyce (that I didn't agree with, incidentally) it could have done with a good editor.

If the book said one interesting thing about America, it said too many American writers are obsessed with filling as many pages as they can and attempting to write something that one unimaginative critic will inevitably call 'the great American novel'.

Reply 24

y2k1

Original post by Pendulii

So you start reading a book expecting it to be brilliant purely because of the hype/ reviews/ awards it's received, and then when you read it you can't understand the fuss? This happened to me with The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (however I highly recommend his book Never Let Me Go, it's brilliantly insightful :smile:

)

Also, some people might kill me for saying this, but I really don't understand the craze about Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (don't shoot me! Stop making that face and shaking your head at me :nooo:

) It's good yes, but the greatest American novel? Really?

What are some of the books that you think are overrated?

Ironically I watched Never Let Me Go yesterday and was baffled as to why they simply did not run away. I read somebodies explanation that 'they just gave up' that it was some sort of metaphor but I wasn't impressed. If a plothole that big was in Star Wars then George Lucas wouldn't hear the end of it.

Reply 25

j.alexanderh

Life of Pi was the most over-hyped rubbish I have ever read.

Reply 26

ChessMister

Candide I found to be fairly dull, and not reflecting the wit of Voltaire. I imagine it would have been fairly groundbreaking when released, in that it may satire things for the first time, but anyone who now finds it an essential read must be clutching at straws.

Reply 27

Brevity

Original post by Pendulii

It's weird that you like Never Let Me Go but not Remains of the Day—stylistically (as with all of Ishiguro's novels except The Unconsoled, perhaps) they're all so similar. Especially, those two (probably more than any other pair of his novels).

I think Gatsby is not only the greatest American novel, but one of the greatest novels of all time—one of the reasons is that its so precise. Not a single line could be cut from that book without making it worse: it's like a perfectly formed diamond throwing shafts of light casually from its lustre.

Even thought I have more Haruki Murakami books than any other author on my shelves, I KNOW that he's over-rated, and definitely not deserving of the Nobel Prize that so many people clamour to give him (although the Nobel Prize is a pretty bad judge of literary value so…).

Also, anything by Dickens.

(edited 12 years ago)

Reply 28

myNameHere

I could never get into Shakespeare. I'm sure it's not overrated at all for the people who love it, but for me, it's just... Eugh. If something's that difficult to read it's not enjoyable.

Reply 29

Brevity

Original post by myNameHere

I could never get into Shakespeare. I'm sure it's not overrated at all for the people who love it, but for me, it's just... Eugh. If something's that difficult to read it's not enjoyable.

So you don't read anything that wasn't written in the last 100 years? Don't you think that's a bit sad.

If you only read what's easy to read, you'll only think what's easy to think, no? And what's the point of literature if it doesn't make you think slightly differently?

Reply 30

aeterno

Twilight, that mother****er :colonhash:

And Wuthering Heights - dear god, I wanted to kill Heathcliff and Cathy throughout the whole bloody book :unimpressed:

Reply 31

Theconomist

The secret, pseudoscience ...

Reply 32

miser

Catch-22. It's funny, but it is so long and repetitive.

Reply 33

Kerr Avon

Philip Pullman's stuff, Artemis Fowl (can't stand the guy), Erast Fandorin, Lord of the Rings, Arthur C Clarke's stuff, religious books AND Richard Dawkins' books, any books or other written material written by John Humpyries.

BRING ON THE NEGS!!!!! :fight:

Reply 34

#Limabean1

Anything by the Bronte sisters. But mainly Wuthering Heights.

Catcher in the Rye, maybe, but I suspect that's more down to being taught it by a incredibly awful English teacher.

Reply 35

The Anti-Hero

Anything written by Thomas Hardy.

I tried to like his stuff, I really did.
But for me, it's slower than a glacier and his characters ALL frustrate me, to the last.