Most overrated book

8kczg9v0swrydm · 22-05-2020 4:17pm

Harry Potter. Awful stuff.

Camus, de Beauvoir - struggled to get through, the message was terrible.

To School through the Fields - some bits were ok, though did not appreciate the preachy tone and the constant 'my childhood was so much better than today'.

Rodin · 22-05-2020 4:19pm

Catch 22.
Didn't even finish it.

Yossarian was one hateful so and so.

Ulysses Gaze · 22-05-2020 4:22pm

Rodin wrote: »

Catch 22.
Didn't even finish it.

Yossarian was one hateful so and so.

Same here.
Lots of people I know raved about it, but I thought it was woeful.

s7ryf3925pivug · 22-05-2020 4:26pm

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

I liked all of these.

I find the status of The Catcher in the Rye surprising all the same. Perhaps I would understand if I reread it as an adult.

I'm going to say that you didn't get The Old Man and the Sea.

magicbastarder · 22-05-2020 4:26pm

CrankyHaus wrote: »

The latter.

if i think the book is **** and not worth my time, i'm saying it's overrated. there's not much more to it than that. saying to someone 'it's not overrated, you just didn't like it' is either snobbish or misses the point.

s7ryf3925pivug · 22-05-2020 4:28pm

Wabbit Ears wrote: »

Magician by Feist. It was young adult fantasy back when that genre was actually mainly read by young adults. Many people really loved the book and its always on every fantasy reading list. Problem is its muck. The magic system makes no sense and everything is completely contrived. Grand if you're a teenager but its adults recommending it to other adults based solely on nostalgia and the fact we had limted access to this genre In ireland at the time it came out.

Yeah that one.

CrankyHaus · 22-05-2020 4:37pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

if i think the book is **** and not worth my time, i'm saying it's overrated. there's not much more to it than that. saying to someone 'it's not overrated, you just didn't like it' is either snobbish or misses the point.

I disagree. There are lots of things I don't like that I can appreciate may have some merit.

People raised the example of Cormac McCarthy's books earlier. Apart from All the Pretty Horses I did not enjoy his books. However many, including many on this Thread, feel differently.

I have enough respect for those people's opinions to accept that his books have some qualities.

You call this snobbery? If anything the snobbery is in thinking that any book you do not like is objectively bad, and if well regarded it must be "overrated".

The OP gave a good example of a book that may be overrated. The "rating" in that case comes from an industry, and a commentariat beholden to it, that is really just trying to shift books and is often guilty of "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome.
Most of the Thread since has just been people saying they didn't enjoy Ulysses or whatever, therefore it must be overrated.

magicbastarder · 22-05-2020 4:43pm

CrankyHaus wrote: »

Most of the Thread since has just been people saying they didn't enjoy Ulysses or whatever, therefore it must be overrated.

that's the point. they didn't like it, so they think it's overrated. it's that simple.

s7ryf3925pivug · 22-05-2020 5:00pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

that's the point. they didn't like it, so they think it's overrated. it's that simple.

You can separate your enjoyment of something from your ideas about its literary merits.

magicbastarder · 22-05-2020 5:05pm

anyway, back on topic, there was a book i was recommended a few years back, by several people, as a 'must read' which i read and i hated it so much, i have blotted the title out of my mind. it was about some **** hot american intelligence agent chasing down a criminal mastermind hell bent on releasing some awful biological agent on the world.
weirdly, i managed to finish it.

i managed the same with 'angels and demons' by dan brown, but to be fair, i didn't go in expecting anything much.
what i didn't expect was in the opening pages, that there would be a useless, eye wateringly pointless, detail about CERN owning a mach 25 plane, which does not advance the plot in any way except to make the reader wonder 'was the guy who wrote this a 12 year old?'

r93kaey5p2izun · 22-05-2020 5:11pm

Jana Prickly Seascape wrote: »

You can separate your enjoyment of something from your ideas about its literary merits.

Yes, it works both ways. I enjoyed Catcher In the Rye. Still think it's massively overrated. Did not enjoy anything by Tolkien, but don't think he's overrated.

looksee · 22-05-2020 5:21pm

Dare I say 'A Game of Thrones'? I am a fantasy fan (I like Magician btw) but I have tried GOT several times and haven't managed to get past the bit where the dogs are introduced. I haven't seen the tv series.

Shapey Fiend · 22-05-2020 5:21pm

I absolutely hated Catcher in the Rye but I think I finished it cos I was maybe 13 and I was hoping there'd be riding. Had a read of a chapter of it more recently still found it maddening.

Loved the Old Man and the Sea I think I read it twice.

Catch 22 I really wanted to like cos I'd just finished Slaughterhouse 5 and wanted more wartime black humour but I really didn't find it funny. May need to revisit.

If I'm going to be controversial I suppose I really didn't like Lord of the Rings. I only finished the first book but by god I found it a drag. The Hobbit a bit less so but I didn't like it either. My preference in terms of fantasy books as a kid was the Wizard of Earthsea series which sort of defined what the limitations of magic were so it felt more grounded.

The first Game of Thrones book is a bit of a drag until you're 200 pages in. It's got a slightly grating American tries to write ye olde english dialogue aspect to it. After that I was completely hooked though. The last book wasn't quite as strong as the preceding ones.

Mick McGraw · 22-05-2020 5:34pm

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" .

magicbastarder · 22-05-2020 5:35pm

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

Joe_ Public · 22-05-2020 6:07pm

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.

s7ryf3925pivug · 22-05-2020 6:14pm

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.

magicbastarder · 22-05-2020 6:18pm

'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.

mc25 · 22-05-2020 7:58pm

Atonement

Didn't much like the movie either!

Madeoface · 22-05-2020 8:17pm

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).

growleaves · 22-05-2020 8:36pm

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.

georgina...c · 23-05-2020 8:56am

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.

Jimbob1977 · 23-05-2020 9:13am

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.

Hercule Poirot · 23-05-2020 9:39am

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.

JustAThought · 25-05-2020 10:33am

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.

Idle Passerby · 25-05-2020 10:35am

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.

New Home · 25-05-2020 10:56am

..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.

CrankyHaus · 25-05-2020 11:17am

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)

magicbastarder · 25-05-2020 11:22am

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

CrankyHaus · 25-05-2020 11:39am

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.

Whestsidestory · 25-05-2020 1:58pm

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

Hercule Poirot · 26-05-2020 12:30pm

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

CrankyHaus · 26-05-2020 1:21pm

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?

Shapey Fiend · 26-05-2020 1:22pm

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.

robinbird · 26-05-2020 2:07pm

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.

Mick McGraw · 27-05-2020 12:11pm

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.

Ipso · 29-05-2020 6:59am

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.

Swiper the fox · 29-05-2020 5:26pm

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

sydthebeat · 29-05-2020 5:54pm

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

bocaman · 03-06-2020 8:04pm

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.

bocaman · 03-06-2020 8:07pm

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.

NedLowry · 11-12-2020 3:03pm

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

Your Face · 11-12-2020 3:56pm

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.

Be right back · 11-12-2020 4:00pm

Normal people.

Where the crawdads sing.

11-12-2020 5:02pm

I was really not a fan of Hilary Mantel's book on Thomas Cromwell. It was over written and totally confusing confusing on its pronouns.

accensi0n · 11-12-2020 5:04pm

The old man and the sea.

growleaves · 16-12-2020 1:25pm

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.

I liked it but the spiteful dad struck me as implausible in his motivations. I'd call it a decent book but only a slight achievement.

growleaves · 16-12-2020 1:26pm

Catch 22 is partly a rip-off of a much better book, Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine.

donfers · 02-03-2021 11:44am

I lot of my classmates thought dunmharú ar an dart was excellent. I found it generic and unevenly paced however

sydthebeat · 02-03-2021 11:56am

Been mentioned loads of times already but "old man and the sea" is such an overrated bore fest.

Recently though I read "cipher" by kathe koja.
Won numerous awards for horror, nominated for many others including the Philip k Dick award

Absolutely terrible book. Characters with no redeeming attributes. No 'hero' to be on the side of. Essentially a story of wasters.

The writing style of 'thought-flow text' is about the only interesting feature of the book, but the storyline is no where near good enough to sustain it.

Most overrated book

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