Overrated books/authors

Plowman

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K4t

Jane Austen. Pointless, never-ending drivel. Have no interest whatsoever in her or her writings. Boring.

Plowman

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Red Hand

J K Rowling...I still haven't managed to finish the potter book I was reading 2 years ago.

Though it may not be literature!

foxy06

Dan Brown. His books are enjoyable but some people go overboard about him.

Osgoodisgood

Colin Forbes.
The man wrote the same novel 25 times!

A murder in East Anglia. Mysterious billionaire lives nearby. Pointless trips to Zurich. Murderer turns out to be..................the billionaire! But wait! What about the 40 year old blonde with the crush on Tweed? Yeah, she had nothing to do with it.

Denerick

I always thought Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was terrifically over-rated (Still a good read though)

As for under-rated (and unread), I think Umberto Eco should be in the hall of the greats in terms of his abilities with the written language, but I don't think he's all that well read in the English speaking world. Granted there is a fanbase there, but if he was a natural English writer I think he would be much more famous than he is.

sold

foxy06 wrote: »

Dan Brown. His books are enjoyable but some people go overboard about him.

Totally overated! He really only became famous with the Davinici code, bit like the satanic versus, gets your name in the paper quick when you hit at religion.

Plowman

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Denerick

Plowman wrote: »

Don't get me started! I love Umberto Eco. According to Wikipedia he has sold 50 million copies of The Name of the Rose alone, so he might not be that under-read.

I stand corrected! Though I am now drunk, after getting back from town. My humility is all yours, sir.

kraggy

James Patterson. Unrealistic, far-fetched.

Page-turners yes but often you find yourself shaking your head and saying "for feck's sake".

DarkRaven

After running a teenage writing forum for almost a year now, I'd say that the two worst young adult series to hit the shelves have to be the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini and the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer.

Paolini's books are completely and utterly unoriginal. On top of that they are brimming with purple prose ([url].http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose[/url]) The characters' speech is totally overdone:

“Why did Galbatorix countenance my father’s torture?” - Eragon.

Keep in mind that Eragon is a peasant farmboy who only recently learned to read. A nobleman may speak like that, but a peasant farmboy - not a chance.

Meyer's novels are more original than Paolini's - their plot is not stolen directly from Star Wars, but they are brimming in literary sin. Bella is a total Mary Sue. (Wikipedia: Mary Sue) The whole series is filled with purple prose and unrealistic dialogue.

Both of those series should never have been printed, simple as that. How they have a massive fanbase is beyond my comprehension.


On the ''grown up'' front, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. She's done almost everything I've been told not to do while writing - from massive expositionary passages (some of them 60 pages long) to dragging explanations of character’s morals, sexualities, and stoicism against emotional trauma. On top of that it's a long sucker - 1168 pages. I'm not going to get into Rand's insane views - they are insane, enough said. Really, it's a headache of a book and I highly recommend you avoid it if you do not want to be bored to tears.

There is a reason why it's one of the bestselling books of all time, I'm sure - it just completely and utterly escapes me.

eclectichoney

I find Kerouac (with the possible exception of Big Sur) incredibly overrated. I can tell I'm gonna get lambasted for this one :pac::pac:

Eliot Rosewater

I wouldnt call Ayn "I hate poor people" Rands ideas insane, but her way of portraying them is. Ive only read the Fountainhead and it was a lesson in self-indulgence: she said less in 700 pages than most authors do in half that. A lot of repetition.

I watched Twilight the other night (please dont judge me) and assuming the general plot is similar to that of the book I cant give it any credit. The second half of it (the chase) is in no way a natural product of the first half, so the plot doesn't flow at all. That baseball scene with the arrival of the vampires was constructed solely to elongate the book and was not in line with the rest of the plot. The girl had only met the family once and the evil vampires were never seen before that.

I add a +1 to Kerouac, with the large caveat that Ive only read On The Road. Yes, its an exiting book. But its no where near as good as the novels its usually put alongside in peoples tastes, such as A Clockwork Orange.

Personally I think Dracula is way way overrated.

Pipz

I completely agree that Stephenie Meyers books, the Twilight Series, are completely over rated.

The plot is very flawed, and the writing is terrible. They only became so popular because it's the age of the 'emo', and every single teenage girl, emo or not, loves the idea of the perfect guy, which is what Edward is supposed to be. It makes it all the better for them with the gothicness of vampires, and the added forbidden love, and then once again even better because she introduces the male best friend as competition.

However, going through the book, the amount of grammar and spelling mistakes is really bad. Those books would have gone nowhere if they were released about 5-10 years ago.

Good idea, bad writer IMO.

In saying all of that, I did like the story (being a teenage girl), but I just hate the huge fanbase she's gotten. I like them, but they're just not that good. She's now among the rich list, and listed with the top authors of the past decade, when personally, I dont think she deserves it.

Rant over.

Blush_01

Plowman wrote: »

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See, I found Atonement quite compulsive, and The Cement Garden was pretty interesting too. Perhaps I like self indulgence though!

Notorious

I think Heller's Catch-22 is massively overrated. I couldn't understand the hype behind it at all and it's one of the few books I started to read that I never finished. I thought it was boring and the odd characters didn't interest me in the slightest. Though I've promised the OH that I'd get back and give it another go.

Denerick

Notorious wrote: »

I think Heller's Catch-22 is massively overrated. I couldn't understand the hype behind it at all and it's one of the few books I started to read that I never finished. I thought it was boring and the odd characters didn't interest me in the slightest. Though I've promised the OH that I'd get back and give it another go.

Catch 22 depends on your personality style. Its written in a particular style, and if you don't have that kind of sense of humour you won't enjoy it. I love all of his inverse paradox's and absurdities, its just the kind of humour I'd love to be able to master. The thing about it is that it will never be regarded as an objectively brilliant book because it relies so heavily on humour to put its point across; if you don't enjoy that humour then his message becomes redundant.

Catch 22 is easily in my top 3 of favourite all time books, but I can also see why others mightn't like it.

Eliot Rosewater

I found Catch 22 moderately enjoyable; I wouldn't rank it as high as Denerick does. It was certainly funny and a little wacky. I think the chapter about how one of the characters buys and sells products to himself so as to create an illusion that hes selling them to the Army below cost is hilarious.

I dont rank it well as a war book though. They are in effect flying planes and thus never really in the nitty gritty of war (which is one of the themes of the book I know). I think A Farewell To Arms and Slaughterhouse 5 would be much better war books, personally.

Denerick

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

I found Catch 22 moderately enjoyable; I wouldn't rank it as high as Denerick does. It was certainly funny and a little wacky. I think the chapter about how one of the characters buys and sells products to himself so as to create an illusion that hes selling them to the Army below cost is hilarious.

I dont rank it well as a war book though. They are in effect flying planes and thus never really in the nitty gritty of war (which is one of the themes of the book I know). I think A Farewell To Arms and Slaughterhouse 5 would be much better war books, personally.

I don't regard it as a war book either. Its a satire about authority, buraucracy and an incredibly cynical work showing how absurd the world really is. The war element is pretty much in the background, as it should be.

gogo

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

I watched Twilight the other night (please dont judge me) and assuming the general plot is similar to that of the book I cant give it any credit. The second half of it (the chase) is in no way a natural product of the first half, so the plot doesn't flow at all. That baseball scene with the arrival of the vampires was constructed solely to elongate the book and was not in line with the rest of the plot. The girl had only met the family once and the evil vampires were never seen before that.

Did you actually read them?? You cant judge a book by the film version of it, and the film is rubbish by the way.
But saying that I do think its totally overrated, I spent last christmas glued to these books and im old enough to know better, it was only after I finished that i copped it was a week of my life I'd never get back. But when reading them i couldnt put them down ... weird.

jaffa20

Cecelia Ahern.

L1984

The Hobbit. Just not for me, I should probably have given it a miss anyway as i love horror but tend to gloss over when it comes to anything sci-fi or fantasy related.

Although I realise that will rankle with many people here!

Hermy

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

I add a +1 to Kerouc, with the large caveat that Ive only read The Road. Yes, its an exiting book. But its no where near as good as the novels its usually put alongside in peoples tastes, such as A Clockwork Orange

Who is this Kerouc you speak of?
And didn't Cormac McCarthy write The Road?;)

I've read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald once and I fail to see why it is so highly regarded.
Has anyone else thought so too only to change their mind on rereading it?

Colpriz

da vinci code..drivel..film was even worse

sceptre

Hermy wrote: »

Who is this Kerouc you speak of?
And didn't Cormac McCarthy write The Road?;)

I think it's pretty obvious to even the blind that he's referring to Kerouac and On The Road.

Aside, McCarthy's The Road is horribly over-rated. I blame Oprah as she's a convenient scapegoat.

Snobby and all as I can be (as I've previously mentioned, I once went up to a woman buying a Cecilia Ahern book and said "er, you know if you keep buying them she''ll keep writing them?"), people like Cecilia Ahern and Dan Brown don't write good "literature" books and people who read good books know they don't. Brown in particular writes yarns and they can at least be a good read if people don't pretend they're world-changing or anything near. They're filling a gap in the market and I'm not sure it's even fair to regard airport fiction as overrated. Here's the snobby part: if there aren't writers of books like that, people won't read something different, they just won't read anything. Brown writes thrillers. The kind of thrillers where it's convenient to tear the pages out as you go so you can remember your page. There's nothing wrong with that: that kind of reading can be very entertaining indeed.

Cecilia Ahern on the other hand is a piss-poor Maeve Binchy. Actually she's a piss-poor Deirdre Purcell who in turn is a piss-poor Maeve Binchy. And I'm not a Maeve Binchy fan. She even uses short words for no particular reason. That's not good. But kudos to her for getting a book deal because no-one else can really figure out how that happened (please take note: this is not the Politics forum). Now Brown on the other hand deserved his book deal, even if you don't enjoy his stuff all that much.

But overrated? Of course they are. Both of them.

Plowman

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Denerick

I think Cormac Mc Carthy's 'The Road' is a brilliant book, which only suffers from the quality of its advocates.

The basic fact remains that if the Road had a cult following and not a mass following, it would be regarded as one of the greatest books of the noughties.

/controversy

Denerick

L1984 wrote: »

The Hobbit. Just not for me, I should probably have given it a miss anyway as i love horror but tend to gloss over when it comes to anything sci-fi or fantasy related.

Although I realise that will rankle with many people here!

I love Lord of the Rings with a passion only an anorak nerd can sympathise with (re-read the trilogy recently) but I do agree somewhat with your opinion of the hobbit. People have to remember that its a childrens book, and therefore rather limited.

Amazotheamazing

DarkRaven wrote: »

.


On the ''grown up'' front, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. She's done almost everything I've been told not to do while writing - from massive expositionary passages (some of them 60 pages long) to dragging explanations of character’s morals, sexualities, and stoicism against emotional trauma. On top of that it's a long sucker - 1168 pages. I'm not going to get into Rand's insane views - they are insane, enough said. Really, it's a headache of a book and I highly recommend you avoid it if you do not want to be bored to tears.

There is a reason why it's one of the bestselling books of all time, I'm sure - it just completely and utterly escapes me.

I've only read the Fountainhead, but I find it interesting you say she's does things you've been told not to do. Isn't that part of her point, that to be an individual means doing what you want, if you think thats what you need to do? So what if she breaks the rules someone's taught you, as long as the work stands on it's own merit?

I don't think her views are insane either, just outdated and formed in a time when totalitarian forces were destroying her homeland and most of Europe. You have to remember what she would have experienced fleeing from St. Petersburg as a teenager to understand where she's coming from.

Earthhorse

eclectichoney wrote: »

I find Kerouac (with the possible exception of Big Sur) incredibly overrated. I can tell I'm gonna get lambasted for this one :pac::pac:

Only ever read On the Road and I certainly thought that was overrated.

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Personally I think Dracula is way way overrated.

Yes. Would agree. One of the few books I couldn't finish. But I think it's the idea more than anything that has made it such a big seller.

Hermy wrote: »

I've read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald once and I fail to see why it is so highly regarded.

Another I would agree with. Not as bad as the others, not even bad at all actually, just not a masterpiece, classic or other superlative.

Denerick wrote: »

I love Lord of the Rings with a passion only an anorak nerd can sympathise with (re-read the trilogy recently) but I do agree somewhat with your opinion of the hobbit. People have to remember that its a childrens book, and therefore rather limited.

I don't remember reading this post but somehow I have ended up quoting it!

In the other "overrated" thread I mentioned Tolkien along with Pratchett. Neither can write particularly well, in my opinion.

sceptre wrote: »

Snobby and all as I can be (as I've previously mentioned, I once went up to a woman buying a Cecilia Ahern book and said "er, you know if you keep buying them she''ll keep writing them?"), people like Cecilia Ahern and Dan Brown don't write good "literature" books and people who read good books know they don't.

Wow. That is pretty snobby, dude.

Haven't read anything by either of them but my understanding is that Ahern does come up with some nice ideas for plots.

But to make my own contribution to this thread I read John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces" last year and spent the entire time wondering where this satirical masterpiece I'd been promised had vanished to. If I was a publisher and the manuscript had been submitted to me, I'd have rejected it too.

Hermy

Earthhorse wrote: »

Another I would agree with. Not as bad as the others, not even bad at all actually, just not a masterpiece, classic or other superlative.

Certainly not a bad book but just not as good as the hype that surrounds it might otherwise suggest.

Seonad

Notorious wrote: »

I think Heller's Catch-22 is massively overrated. I couldn't understand the hype behind it at all and it's one of the few books I started to read that I never finished. I thought it was boring and the odd characters didn't interest me in the slightest.

I think we need to talk...

DublinWriter

I'll go completely out on a limb here and say James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

Now, I love everything Joyce up to that book, and I've even read Ulysses cover-to-cover, but I think FW is the greatest load of self-indulgence ever created by any author.

It's a feckin' crossword puzzle about 10 miles by 8 miles long in size. I suspect the only people who like FW do so out of the smug self-satisfaction they must feel from decoding the obscure and hidden references.

zenmonk

Anna Karenina - by Tolstoy ...yawn.

Saturday by Ian Mc Ewan...yawn yawn

Lollymcd

Alice Seabold
Mitch Albom

Holmer

Michel Houllebecq-platform
Dreariest book ever written by man or woman

L1984

Denerick wrote: »

I love Lord of the Rings with a passion only an anorak nerd can sympathise with (re-read the trilogy recently) but I do agree somewhat with your opinion of the hobbit. People have to remember that its a childrens book, and therefore rather limited.

Is it really for kids? I heard somewhere that Tolkein wrote it for his son/s but always thought it was a bit of an urban myth.

Just thought of another one, Prozac Nation. Not my thing at all. Maybe I'm being harsh but I thought it was self-righteous nonsense.

jaffa20

Lollymcd wrote: »

Alice Seabold

:eek:

The lovely bones is one of my favourite books.

FloatingVoter

jaffa20 wrote: »

:eek:

The lovely bones is one of my favourite books.

Then do yourself a favour and don't see the movie. How the hell you turn a dark story like that into a sugar and spice fairytale is beyond me but Peter Jackson manages it.

Eliot Rosewater

DublinWriter wrote: »

I'll go completely out on a limb here and say James Joyce's Finnegans Wake.

There can often a discrepancy between how good the reader thought the book was and how good it really is. You didn't think Finnegans Wake was good because (by your own admission) you didn't understand it. Scholars who have studied it think its amazing because they get it all. Clearly your perception of the novel, and a scholars perception of the novel, are quite different.

This causes problems in the overrated discussions because many of the books listed aren't included because they are bad; they are included because the reader couldn't see how they were good. The Great Gatsby is one such book. I didnt enjoy the book one bit. However I dont consider it overrated because having read articles and intros on it it clearly went right over my head.

That is why I always try to make a difference between "I think that book is bad" and "I didn't enjoy that book." They are two different statements, and I think one should reserve the former solely for books one has felt one completely understood. I think Dracula is bad; I didn't enjoy the Great Gatsby. A key difference (let us christen it The Rosewater Differential).


Lay readers of Ulysses are a classic example of readers (imo) who do not enjoy the book but feel compelled by society to pretend they thought it was great (I dont think DublinWriter is like that btw). I was talking to someone who said that they didnt understand the second half whatsoever but that its still great. Clearly they feel the need to praise it lest they be attacked for being stupid. However in that position I would say that "from what I hear the book is great but I personally didnt enjoy it." Theres nothing wrong with admitting you didnt understand a book.

not bakunin

Hermy wrote: »

I've read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald once and I fail to see why it is so highly regarded.
Has anyone else thought so too only to change their mind on rereading it?

I had also wondered about Fitzgerald's reputation as a writer
after reading The Great Gatsby. I found it a great read, but not particularly lasting. Bear in mind that this is the book that Hunter S Thompson would type out on a typewriter over and over as a copyboy for Time magazine so as to learn the correct way to write.
But then I read Tender is the Night...a truly brilliant and beautiful book.

Denerick

Tender is the Night? Really? I thought it was a bit of a yawnfest (Though it had enough saving graces to keep me interested)

The Great Gatsby is a powerful satire, but is only as popular as it is because its a slim book. This might sound ridiculous, but I honest feel thats one of the main reasons why its so popular. Its like a stock satire (The satire is fairly obvious) and its small; hence its very popular (And in nearly every US secondary level curriculum)

I thought it was great, just for the record

Lollymcd

FloatingVoter wrote: »

Then do yourself a favour and don't see the movie. How the hell you turn a dark story like that into a sugar and spice fairytale is beyond me but Peter Jackson manages it.

Eeeek! I'm sorry! Too sentimental for me! Movie does look awful though

starn

Paulo Coelho
J. R. R. Tolkien
Terry Pratchett

Chinafoot

Ann Enright - The Gathering.

Greatest load of woe-is-me, self-indulgent twaddle I've ever read in my life. It was a chore to finish it.

mrsdewinter

Labyrinth, by Kate Mosse. The historical stuff is alright - much better than the completely forgettable contemporary subplot - but it has no more literary merit than the second-rate stuff I used to pick up as a teenager in the mobile library at home 20+ years ago.

Plowman

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Earthhorse

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

That is why I always try to make a difference between "I think that book is bad" and "I didn't enjoy that book." They are two different statements, and I think one should reserve the former solely for books one has felt one completely understood. I think Dracula is bad; I didn't enjoy the Great Gatsby. A key difference (let us christen it The Rosewater Differential).

I disagree. For starters, how can one know, or "feel", whether one has completely understood a book or not? You can only really know when you haven't understood something.

This causes problems in the overrated discussions because many of the books listed aren't included because they are bad; they are included because the reader couldn't see how they were good.

No. They are included in the thread because they are overrated, or considered overrated by some contributors to the thread. A book doesn't have to be bad to be overrated, they're entirely different things.

The Great Gatsby is one such book. I didnt enjoy the book one bit. However I dont consider it overrated because having read articles and intros on it it clearly went right over my head.

Doesn't the fact that you had to read articles explaining to you why the book was so great say something about some deficiency in the work itself? Did reading these articles inspire you to reread it and, if so, did you then reevaluate your opinion of it?

I was talking to someone who said that they didnt understand the second half whatsoever but that its still great. Clearly they feel the need to praise it lest they be attacked for being stupid.

Not necessarily. I didn't understand most of David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. Not only for its aesthetics but in part because the narrative and theme is difficult to follow, which created an atmosphere of mystery in the piece. Indeed, it could be said that my lack of understanding contributed to my enjoyment of the work.

However in that position I would say that "from what I hear the book is great but I personally didnt enjoy it." Theres nothing wrong with admitting you didnt understand a book.

Nope. Nor is there anything wrong with criticising a book for being obtuse or opaque, for being purposefully difficult or for underplaying it's theme to the point where it goes unnoticed. These are valid criteria by which we can also judge a work.

Damian Duffy

sceptre wrote: »

Aside, McCarthy's The Road is horribly over-rated. I blame Oprah as she's a convenient scapegoat.

No, just no. That is a stunningly well written book and I'm not one of these people who know McCarthy from this book alone and the film adaptation of No Country For Old Men. I have read all ten of his books and his play The Sunset Limited and although this book is alot less dense compared to previous works like Suttree, it is nonetheless a fantastic book. Each to his own though and your perfectly entitled to your opinion.

I could not agree more about Cecilia Aherne et al and I'm delighted you told that woman in the book shop how you felt ( although it's a very very snobby thing to do!) but as you said, you can't convert those sort of people into big readers of literature, if those books (Dan Brown etc) didn't exist they just wouldn't read at all.

Have you ever just looked at the top ten in Easons etc at any given time? It's a disgrace!

Eliot Rosewater

Earthhorse wrote: »

I disagree. For starters, how can one know, or "feel", whether one has completely understood a book or not?

A very good question. Generally if a book was hailed as great by so many, and I found nothing in it, I would assume my interpretation skills weren't sharp enough. "Getting" a book can be a tough task, and it requires a bit of thought and reflection. We are usually trained to read books from start to finish, but the ideal way to read would be to pause at the end of every chapter and ask "why was that chapter included?"

Although bowing to the pressure of commending books even if one didn't enjoy them is something I criticized, I suppose I suffer from it a bit myself.

Earthhorse wrote: »

Doesn't the fact that you had to read articles explaining to you why the book was so great say something about some deficiency in the work itself? Did reading these articles inspire you to reread it and, if so, did you then reevaluate your opinion of it?

Thats a question of accessibility, and accessibility is something I do commend. The Gatsby issue is solely mine though; I read it a month or two after starting to read "proper" books so I wasn't in a position to understand it. Yes, I will reread it (havent yet) as will I reread other books I felt I didnt get such as Huck Finn at a later date.

Earthhorse wrote: »

Nor is there anything wrong with criticising a book for being obtuse or opaque, for being purposefully difficult or for underplaying it's theme to the point where it goes unnoticed. These are valid criteria by which we can also judge a work.

I agree. I think though that one should be specific in ones criticism. I dont often hear people giving out about accessibility; usually they just criticize the book as a whole.