Most overrated book

facehugger99

Breakfast of Champions - about halfway through and seriously considering giving up and starting something else.

What am I missing?

protosByte

John Banville - way too wordy and his books are boring and depressing

Julian Barnes, I always finish every book I start, and `Lets talk about death` or whatever it was called, really screwed up my reading cadence. It took me 6 months to get up the stomach to finish it, and it's a tiny book.

Agree with OP on Beatlebone. I liked other KB books, but couldn't finish this one.

I also agree that there's a lot of complacent scratching of each others backs with Irish authors. Paul Murray, Colm Toibin and Colum McGann are excellent, but the rest feel lazy and self-indulgent.

Hermy

Banville is one of the finest writers alive today - his writing may not be to everyone's taste but he is certainly not overrated and is fully deserving of all of the acclaim he has received.

irishspiderplant

Lolita. Not because of the content but it just didn’t live up to the hype!

spakman

Edit: This is re Prophet Song. Quoting earlier post on it is not working for some reason

I agree completely. The dialogue I found to be completely unbelievable, and if I can't identify with the characters then it's not going to keep my attention.

I also thought it moved far too slowly at some points, and then skirted over some massive moments far too quickly.

spakman

trying to quote an earlier post but not working for some reason...

yagan

Interesting reading through this resurrected thread and I can't help but feel that books like Catcher in the Rye have suffered by being important in one era and completely irrelevant to the next generations. I remember reading it in my early teens and it did make an impression on me as it was a rare voice to me in an era when the RCC still strongly framed civic discourse and general individual morality. I no doubt would find it tedious now.

The Alchemist was dreadful, couldn't get past five pages as I could feel my brain ossify. Worse though was being recommended the first Harry Potter book way back then by someone I trusted when it came to literature. My respect for that person never recovered. The only positive is that I ended up with a Bloomsbury first edition (not first run, which is worth a lot of money).

Honestly I feel the whole Harry Potter thing being embraced by adults in the anglosphere was a symptom of a wider desperate need for escapism after 9/11. I know it was a popular kids read in Ireland but thankfully it was never recommended to me by an Irish adult.

Dont Be at It

Fascinated by the differing opinions in here. On Kevin Barry, I Ioved Beatlebone but couldn't finish City of Bohane!

I thought Milkman to be superb. The John McGahern critiquing is sacrilege 🤣 His books always appear on the top 100 lists but I found Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness to be near unreadable.

pavb2

I thought City of Bohane was ok but also previously mentioned there is a lot of hype for ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’ I thought it was just pointless.

MacDanger

Just finished The Bee Sting, very disappointing IMO. Around 300 pages too long and the ending felt like it was written with a view to being made into a movie

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123038898#Comment_123038898

Honestly I feel the whole Harry Potter thing being embraced by adults in the anglosphere was a symptom of a wider desperate need for escapism after 9/11. I know it was a popular kids read in Ireland but thankfully it was never recommended to me by an Irish adult.

Your post reminds me of this Onion piece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV32uLQGFR8

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123039821#Comment_123039821

Oh god, that perfectly captures my incomprehension with adults getting totally sucked in with the Harry Potter series. I did give the first one ago but didn't last very long, the signpostings in the opening chapter were like massive motorway billboards.

Later I lived in England for a while and then understood why adults there might want to revert to a simpler magical space.

memorystick

Tuesdays with Morrie. How any person can be so self important is beyond me.