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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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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..
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