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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.

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Your Face

Catch 22.
He really took the title and ran with it.
I should have read it as a teenager, it probably would have impressed me at that age.

NedLowry

NedLowry wrote: »

The Great Gatsby.
Not terrible by any means, just... average, really.

Having given this another go recently, I would like to retract my original statement.:o

bocaman

CrankyHaus wrote: »

I only watched the film, great performances. Similarly I thought the Red Riding TV adaptation was solid but didn't read the books.
The only book by Peace that I read was Tokyo Year Zero. I couldn't get into it, the writing style put me off.
Are his other books the same?

Read or Dead is change in style, slightly. Have to say I liked Tokyo Year Zero. To each their own.

bocaman

I couldn't stand The Catcher in the Rye. Absolute drivel about an entitled teenager.

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. A book I really looked forward, but which I found flat and one dimensional.

sydthebeat

Tried to read gormengast years ago after rave recommendations from friends only to be very bored with its dense language and depressing narrative.

I'm going to give it another go this summer to see if it has gotten more relatable as I've got older

Swiper the fox

A visit from the Goon squad couldn’t end quick enough for me

Ipso

Mick McGraw wrote: »

I read 1974 by David Peace and thought it was awful, really boring and difficult enough to follow. He seemed to be writing in a style where he deliberately wanted to make things confusing for the sake of it and I felt their was just no enjoyment to be got from the book.

The story is quite confusing, the next book intertwines the Yorkshire Ripper. I didn’t like it as much as the first but the third and fourth are better. Very grim story.

Mick McGraw

I read 1974 by David Peace and thought it was awful, really boring and difficult enough to follow. He seemed to be writing in a style where he deliberately wanted to make things confusing for the sake of it and I felt their was just no enjoyment to be got from the book.

robinbird

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

Out of the current Leaving Cert books I've read The Spinning Heart and I thought that was awful personally. The culchie-fied dialogue sounded very inauthentic and grated on my nerves.

If we restricted this thread to non LC books it wouldn't be much of a thread as books that people had to read for the LC are most of those being mentioned.

Shapey Fiend

Out of the current Leaving Cert books I've read The Spinning Heart and I thought that was awful personally. The culchie-fied dialogue sounded very inauthentic and grated on my nerves.

CrankyHaus

Hercule Poirot wrote: »

It had to be published everywhere with that disclaimer - Clough's family sued and I think Giles reached a settlement of some sort, amongst others - still a great read though, a fictionalised version of true events is the tag it uses now I think

I only watched the film, great performances. Similarly I thought the Red Riding TV adaptation was solid but didn't read the books.
The only book by Peace that I read was Tokyo Year Zero. I couldn't get into it, the writing style put me off.
Are his other books the same?

Hercule Poirot

CrankyHaus wrote: »

I was surprised to see The Damned United in there. Apparently it had to be published here with a non-factual disclaimer because of it's portrayal of Johnny Giles.

It had to be published everywhere with that disclaimer - Clough's family sued and I think Giles reached a settlement of some sort, amongst others - still a great read though, a fictionalised version of true events is the tag it uses now I think

Whestsidestory

The Lovely Bones..read it when I was travelling around Australia and the amount of random people who raved about it when they saw me reading it made me think this must be some book. I thought the ending was farcical

CrankyHaus

I was surprised to see The Damned United in there. Apparently it had to be published here with a non-factual disclaimer because of it's portrayal of Johnny Giles.

magicbastarder

that's a decent list. 'if this is a man' is some book.

CrankyHaus

Idle Passerby wrote: »

Charity shops are full of them because they are on school curriculums.

Are they?
Here's the current LC prescribed list of novels/memoirs:

ADICHIE, Ngozi Chimimanda Americanah
ATKINSON, Kate Behind the Scenes at the Museum
ATWOOD, Margaret The Handmaid’s Tale
AUSTEN, Jane Persuasion
BARRY, Sebastian Days Without End
BRONTË, Emily Wuthering Heights
DOERR, Anthony All the Light We Cannot See
DONOGHUE, Emma Room
ELIOT, George Silas Marner
FITZMAURICE, Simon It’s Not Yet Dark
ISHIGURO, Kazuo Never Let Me Go
LEVI, Primo If This Is A Man
O’CONNOR, Joseph Star of the Sea
ORWELL, George 1984
PEACE, David The Damned Utd.
RYAN, Donal The Spinning Heart
SATRAPI, Marjane Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and
The Story of a Return (Graphic Memoir)
TAYLOR, Sara The Lauras
WALLACE, Jason Out of Shadows
WILDE, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891 version)

New Home

..and because you can often get them new in bookshops at 3 for a tenner, so they're easy to buy, you don't have to invest as much in them as you would in a hardback.

Idle Passerby

JustAThought wrote: »

I wonder whether ‘THE CLASSICS’ are ever revisited and reevaluated or are just ignored snd left as ‘ the classics’ because nobody actually rereads them or has visited them in decades.The likes of the old must haves on the shelf -Dickens/David Copperfield/Robinsoe Crusoe/Middleton/Northanger Abbey/Emma etc. Charity shops are littered with them.

Charity shops are full of them because they are on school curriculums.

JustAThought

I wonder whether ‘THE CLASSICS’ are ever revisited and reevaluated or are just ignored snd left as ‘ the classics’ because nobody actually rereads them or has visited them in decades.The likes of the old must haves on the shelf -Dickens/David Copperfield/Robinsoe Crusoe/Middleton/Northanger Abbey/Emma etc. Charity shops are littered with them.

Hercule Poirot

PowerToWait wrote: »

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was simply massively overrated.

I completely disagree with this. The fact it became so popular hurt it because it's a much better book if you know nothing about the plot before you read it but I wouldn't say it's overrated.

Jimbob1977

Catcher in the Rye became "cool and edgy" because Mark Chapman (murdered John Lennon) read the book and thought that he was the embodiment of Holden Caulfield. South Park have a very good parody of it.

It's a good book.

georgina...c

Mick McGraw wrote: »

I hated Catch 22.

I gave up on it after about 100 pages as I couldn't take any more of it. Reading it felt like having to endure a really annoying obnoxious individual continually shouting the same joke at you and elbowing you in the side and saying "Funny, isn't it. It's funny this is isn't it" .

Oh god nothing worse. I endured that in real life.

Hated Catch22 too.

growleaves

I loved Catch 22 but later realised its a rip-off of Céline to some extent, especially 'Journey to the End of the Night', a truly great and strange book (though one which is disliked by many people). Céline's sense of humour is even darker and grislier.

Madeoface

The Power of Now. Could it even be classed as a book? One idea that could have been 2 pages long.

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown(trout). I had started a new job and a colleague gave it to me as people ranted and raved about it in the canteen....being new i couldn't say how ****e I thought it was, that anything Kipper did in my kids 12 page books had more intrigue. It was google maps with a plot stitched on.

(I liked Slaughterhouse 5 - Catch 22 ok, over-rated perhaps).

mc25

Atonement

Didn't much like the movie either!

magicbastarder

'something happened' is brilliantly written; it's an awful downbeat slog though, but the last few pages are some of the best pages i've read in a book.
that said, i'm not in any rush to reread it.

s7ryf3925pivug

Mick McGraw wrote: »

I hated Catch 22.

I gave up on it after about 100 pages as I couldn't take any more of it. Reading it felt like having to endure a really annoying obnoxious individual continually shouting the same joke at you and elbowing you in the side and saying "Funny, isn't it. It's funny this is isn't it" .

I liked it.

I read some other books by Joseph Heller. I disliked Good as Gold and Something Happened. He also did a sequel to Catch-22, which I don't remember very well.

Something Happened is a guy talking about how much he hates everything in his very mundane life for an entire book. Then at the end something happens. It's an extraordinarily bleak book. I feel a little depressed just thinking of it.

The only thing in his life that brings him any joy is his son. At the end his son is involved in a car accident. He is distraught and holds him very tightly. It is subtly revealed that the boy was not badly hurt in the crash, but was in fact smothered to death by his father holding him. The narrator doesn't let anyone know that this is what happened and just continues his life in a state of utter despair.

So it has literary merit but is also a horrible read.

Joe_ Public

Is there anybody who thinks Catch 22 was...merely ok. It's one of my all time favourites but seems a kind of ultimate marmite book. Love or hate.

magicbastarder

Speaking of slaughterhouse 5, I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd hoped. Much preferred 'bluebeard'.

Mick McGraw

I hated Catch 22.

I gave up on it after about 100 pages as I couldn't take any more of it. Reading it felt like having to endure a really annoying obnoxious individual continually shouting the same joke at you and elbowing you in the side and saying "Funny, isn't it. It's funny this is isn't it" .