Most overrated book

Mules wrote: »

I didnt like Ulysses either. Although tbf I didnt really understand it. I stopped reading when he starting giving a description of someone having a s.h.i.t. I was eating at the time and thought ah for feck sake, that's enough of that now

You'd wonder about people who put Ulysses as their favourite book in those questionnaires around Christmas, have they really read it? I remember Bertie putting it as his favourite book in one such questionnaire in the sindo in the boomtime, ya right he might have read the cover that'd be the height of it

Joe_ Public wrote: »

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.

I read it years ago as a teenager and it was a struggle to get to the end - I think it took me a couple of months and I didn't find it very amusing. A couple of years later I read it again finished in inside a week and enjoyed it so much I've read it at least another three times over the years since.

s7ryf3925pivug wrote: »

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.

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

Sounds about right. The irony is that that if I remember correctly *thing that happened* is the only thing that happened in the whole book. It's a very depressing read and unlike Catch-22, I've never considered it worth a revisit.

sydthebeat wrote: »

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

Gormenghast is a sequel to Titus Groan which is so slow and dense that it makes Gormenghast seem like a PG Wodehouse farce. I read them almost 30 years ago and thought them great but they're still sitting on my shelf unread since.

Ready Player One is awful

PowerToWait wrote: »

There's a general policy of over rating Irish authors in Ireland. Kevin Barry, Joseph O'Connor, Colum McCann, John Boyne, that lad from Wexford, have all written some terribly self indulgent muck, but not one critic will ever, ever criticise these sacred cows. Which is unfortunate.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was simply massively overrated.
Everything by Joseph O'Connor is terrible. Kevin Barry similarly way overrated.

I know that this is very old post, but I've just tried to read Kevin Barry for the first time and was searching for mentions. I couldn't get past the first 10 pages of City of Bohane. When glancing at some of the writing it looked like an extreme variant of colloquialisms from Cork or Limerick, which I didn't get. Colloquialisms can cause trouble as they are naturally, so why bother trying an extreme variant? When I actually got down to reading it properly it was worse than I thought; it was a mix of South Western and African American slang, which resulted in a bizarre hybrid that was genuinely tough to read. The kind of writing the forces you to read a sentence several times to try and understand what is being said. While I truly think that people should write how they want to write, writing like his is the least attractive to me. If something takes great effort from sentence to sentence, it's very hard to view it with any sort of favorability.

The only lesson learned from this experience, is to not take book recommendations from Irish literary elite, as anytime I do I'm nearly always left underwhelmed.

Probably a very unpopular choice but I detest Lord if the Rings. It’s the first book I never finished.

On The Road

Just a tedious aimless screed. Was only able to finish it on audiobook.

I found it to be a terribly written book in the sense it was very hard to follow and the author and his protagonist are not half as smart as they think they are.

The Alchemist - the best part about it was it was quite short and I hadn’t over invested to complete it.

Another one for On the Road

I remember reading the introduction notes, and they were so well written, the guy hypes up Kerouac and the book itself no end.

And then I start reading it, and its just like you say tedious and aimless.