Most overrated book

paulanthony

What is the most overrated book you have read and why?

For me it has to be Beatlebone by Kevin Barry.

I don't know if it is the worst book I have ever read (it may be) but I say overrated as it has won awards and garnered a lot of praise.

It strikes me as the literary version of the recent taping a banana to a wall in an art gallery or a blank canvas with one dot in the middle where everyone stands around and says it's amazing as they are all afraid of being branded a philistine by saying is this not just a load of ****?

I thought it was a self-indulgent load of nonsense - the kind of "modern literary" book someone might write as a joke to see how many awards it might win. The chapter towards the end about the writing process really took the biscuit too.

The White Feather

I have a few that come to mind straight away!

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger - A tedious read about a whiny teenager

Fear and loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson - Complete drivel that I abandoned

The Old man and the sea by Ernest Hemingway - Old guy goes fishing in a boat. The End. zzzzzzzzz

the purple tin

The White Feather wrote: »

I have a few that come to mind straight away!

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger - A tedious read about a whiny teenager

Fear and loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson - Complete drivel that I abandoned

The Old man and the sea by Ernest Hemingway - Old guy goes fishing in a boat. The End. zzzzzzzzz

That's my one too.

Day Lewin

"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood: unconvincing, and derivative from science fiction - the whole idea was done much better by John Wyndham.

ThewhiteJesus

The bible

Anything by Ayn Rand, difficult to make a virtue of selfishness but she kept plugging away to oblivion.

dashoonage

Rules of the Road.

Das Reich

Rich dad poor dad.

padohaodha

Ulysses...pack of shoite

[Deleted User]

Eat, pray, love. Complete rubbish

Jane Eyre, terrible book with a hypocritical ending. Sorry I ever bothered.

Sorry about that

The Heart's Invisible Furies, by John Boyne.

Day Lewin

bubblypop wrote: »

Eat, pray, love. Complete rubbish

Jane Eyre, terrible book with a hypocritical ending. Sorry I ever bothered.

Oh, I disagree with you there!!

[Deleted User]

Day Lewin wrote: »

Oh, I disagree with you there!!

On both?

Nigel Fairservice

Shantaram, I thought it was a slog of a read. I think Gregory David Roberts enjoys the ambiguity around what is fact and what is fiction.

HalloweenJack

I'd put these down as books that seemed to be highly-rated but I really struggled to get into.

Naked Lunch - Really didn't get an idea of why people like this so much. I can imagine it was ground-breaking at the time but it seemed to be too try hard. I managed to finish it but it was a pain in the arse.

Anna Karenina - It was just too much. There were some parts that I liked but it just seemed to go on forever and I can't even remember how the story went or what the characters were even called. It was a chore to read and I felt let down by the end, like I'd put in all that effort for nothing.

The Curoous Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - I just couldn't warm to it as a book. The narrator's voice was very well done but it made it very difficult to get into.

Those are the ones that stick out in my mind.

ShamNNspace

That they may face the rising sun by McGahern.. Completely overrated and overblown by the usual suspects

[Deleted User]

Pillars of the Earth

The characters are paper thin, the storytelling lazy and some key plot points just stupid.

I enjoyed the setting but by the end it became incredibly predictable. Getting over the denial of the fact that I’d read over a thousand pages of what was an ultimately unfulfilling reading experience was a struggle, but one I’ve come to terms with.

adrian92

Latest Robert Harris book disappointing

RandomViewer

padohaodha wrote: »

Ulysses...pack of shoite

Has anyone actually read the whole thing

Lyan

The Crying of Lot 49

Whestsidestory

A girl is a half formed thing by Eimear McBride I didn't get past the first chapter as the sentences were all over the place and totally comprehensible but it got rave reviews so It must be the work of a genius

Sardonicat

I tried reading something by Cormac Mccarthy once - the name of the book escapes me. It was just sooo slow. While I enjoyed the gradual unfolding of the central character and found him sympathetic and fascinating the swathes of dialogue in Spanish, that sometimes went on for pages, without translation, just made it pointless to continue. I do get why an author would want to keep the dialogue authentic but I fail to see the logic behind not supplying a translation for the benefit for those of us who don't know any Spanish. Put me off reading anything else by him, despite the great things I've heard.

RandomViewer

Dracula by Bram Stoker, the use of diaries, journals and newspaper reports is gimmicky .

[Deleted User]

Sardonicat wrote: »

I tried reading something by Cormac Mccarthy once - the name of the book escapes me. It was just sooo slow. While I enjoyed the gradual unfolding of the central character and found him sympathetic and fascinating the swathes of dialogue in Spanish, that sometimes went on for pages, without translation, just made it pointless to continue. I do get why an author would want to keep the dialogue authentic but I fail to see the logic behind not supplying a translation for the benefit for those of us who don't know any Spanish. Put me off reading anything else by him, despite the great things I've heard.

Was it Blood Meridian? Brilliant book

ShamNNspace

RandomViewer wrote: »

Has anyone actually read the whole thing

You probably won't believe me but Bertie Aherne once said it was his favourite book on one of those questionnaires they ask celebrities at Christmas time

Sardonicat

Sardonicat wrote: »

I tried reading something by Cormac Mccarthy once - the name of the book escapes me. It was just sooo slow. While I enjoyed the gradual unfolding of the central character and found him sympathetic and fascinating the swathes of dialogue in Spanish, that sometimes went on for pages, without translation, just made it pointless to continue. I do get why an author would want to keep the dialogue authentic but I fail to see the logic behind not supplying a translation for the benefit for those of us who don't know any Spanish. Put me off reading anything else by him, despite the great things I've heard.

I'm not sure which novel you read, but Blood Meridian is his masterpiece. Numerous extremely violent scenes, but it also has writing so vivid and pure that it will take your breath away.

RandomViewer

RandomViewer wrote: »

Has anyone actually read the whole thing

Yes.

Titclamp

Sardonicat wrote: »

I tried reading something by Cormac Mccarthy once - the name of the book escapes me. It was just sooo slow. While I enjoyed the gradual unfolding of the central character and found him sympathetic and fascinating the swathes of dialogue in Spanish, that sometimes went on for pages, without translation, just made it pointless to continue. I do get why an author would want to keep the dialogue authentic but I fail to see the logic behind not supplying a translation for the benefit for those of us who don't know any Spanish. Put me off reading anything else by him, despite the great things I've heard.

Blood Meridian was epic read. I was spooked for days.

The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. Self indulgent and boring.

Sardonicat

Amelie Yummy Pan wrote: »

I'm not sure which novel you read, but Blood Meridian is his masterpiece. Numerous extremely violent scenes, but it also has writing so vivid and pure that it will take your breath away.

Oh, his prose was pristine! I just could not be doing with pages and pages in a language I know not one word of without a translation.

Dr Bob

The White Feather wrote: »

I have a few that come to mind straight away!



Fear and loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson - Complete drivel that I abandoned

Each to their own , I quite like Fear even if the plot is Thompson saying ' Hey remember that time a respectable magazine paid me to do an article and then instead I did ALL the drugs..'
It's a bit juvenile , but the hectic style and black humour kind of works for me..