Overrated books/authors

Holmer

diddlybit wrote: »

You think? I don't think it was his worst, but then I have a particular fondness for Atomised. "The Possibility of an Island" is a car wreck of a novel...

Must agree with everyone's view of "On the Road". I couldn't even finish it. And along the same lines of Kerouac's self-indulgent masculinist twaddle, one of the most over rated authors has to be...

...Phillip Roth.

If I wanted an insight into a crisis of masculinity, all I need to do is go to the pub on a Saturday night

I actually meant to say Atomised, I just realised! Haven't read Platform...but they have very similar covers, me gets confused

Eliot Rosewater

sceptre wrote: »

Cecilia Ahern on the other hand is a piss-poor Maeve Binchy...

My gf got me a few books for Christmas, and for the lulz she designed some faux Cecelia Ahern covers with blurbs and quotes etc, and blu-tacked them on. Might be worth a bit of a laugh for Boardsies:

Back of PS: I Love You Too Bai wrote:

Holly is a twenty-something/thirty-something year old woman searching for the perfect guy, apartment, job or shoe. Along the way she questions everything from the way she was raised to the quality of her life, but all in a very neat and non-psychologically intrusive fasion. Her quest leads her to rediscover herself, inner-happiness and an especcailly gooey, tender kind of love with a rugged yet ultimately sensitve and emotionally viable love interest.

It all ends in an ecstatically happy flurry of rainbows, unicorns and sparkles as though engineered in that way in order to give hope to despondent housewives enduring their mundane lives but secretly rejecting the crushing tedium ... or something like along those lines.

"Magical" - The Star.
"The novel of fate on love and life" - Glamor.
"Cecelia who?" - legitimate literary critic.
"Bubbly, sparkling and completely opaque." - authentic wine critic.
"Another $200,000 in the bank and a summer house in the Hamptons for me!" - Aherns publisher.
"*" - Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions joke).

Back of A Place Called ... Hiroshima wrote:

"A romantic tale of longing and loss." - Journalist who couldn't get a job with a real paper.
"A sensational debut novel that proves true love never dies." - Cosmopolitan.
"I would not permit my cat to wipe its posterior with this trash." - Harold Bloom (literary critic).
"I would not wipe my posterior with this trash." - Harold Blooms cat.
"One cannot determine with any certainty whether or not the cat wiped its posterior with this book when placed in a steel chamber, as the cat is (according to quantum law) in a superposition of states." - Schordinger

Plowman

This post has been deleted.

2040

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

My gf got me a few books for Christmas, and for the lulz she designed some faux Cecelia Ahern covers with blurbs and quotes etc, and blu-tacked them on. Might be worth a bit of a laugh for Boardsies:

Excellent. What books did she actually get you?

Cadiz

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak: It's popularity is incomprehensible to me. Another poster called the writing clunky, which is spot on - although perhaps it wasn't written in English, if it is a translation that would explain and excuse a lot. In places the grammar and figures of speech are just dreadful. It's just badly written and, like many contemporary books could have done with a decent and merciless editor. The exploitative sentimentality is awful.

Anything by Ian McEwan - a completely over-rated author.

My Name Is Red - Orhan Pamuk. A raved about Impac winner. Why? The narrative was completely incoherent in parts. The story had some fascinating detail but the writing (or maybe the translation of the writing) was terrible.

Brooklyn - Colm Toibin. I enjoyed it, the era it's set in is extremely interesting, I thought it was his best book yet, but I can't understand the huge amount of accolades it received.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry. I found it almost unreadable. Where is he going with that faux old style Irishy speak? The subject matter had so much unmined potential.

Almost anything by JM Coetzee, Phillip Roth or Richard Ford. The vain, fatuous preoccupations of tragic middle-aged men rendered in print - how fascinating. :rolleyes:

Eliot Rosewater

Plowman wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Its funny satire! If someone wrote satirical blurbs for books I like and they were genuinely good Id find it as funny

2040 wrote: »

Excellent. What books did she actually get you?

A Place Called Home Hiroshima contained Hiroshima by John Hersey and PS I Love You too bai covered On The Beach by Nevil Shute.

One day my gf was in town (Cork) and she overheard two 14/15 year old "knackers"/"scobes" having a personal moment. The girl said "Its different cause I love you" and then the boy replied "I love you too bai"!!

Amazotheamazing

The God of Small Things. Rubbish.

emeraldstar

Have to agree with Catcher in the Rye. Never saw what was supposedly so great about it. Boring, had to make myself finish it.

2040

emeraldstar wrote: »

Have to agree with Catcher in the Rye. Never saw what was supposedly so great about it. Boring, had to make myself finish it.

I don't want to sound sexist or anything but i don't think many women get Catcher in the Rye. I was astounded when i first read it. I could relate to so much of it as a teenager and probably still would now.

banshee_bones

Notorious wrote: »

I think Heller's Catch-22 is massively overrated. I couldn't understand the hype behind it at all and it's one of the few books I started to read that I never finished. I thought it was boring and the odd characters didn't interest me in the slightest. Though I've promised the OH that I'd get back and give it another go.

I had the exact same problem, maybe other posters are right with just not getting that humour?

L1984 wrote: »

The Hobbit. Just not for me, I should probably have given it a miss anyway as i love horror but tend to gloss over when it comes to anything sci-fi or fantasy related.

Although I realise that will rankle with many people here!

Completely agree with you, I read it after i finished the trilogy and for th life of me I just couldnt get in to it. I also find a sad pattern of people who havent read the trilogy because they started with the hobbit. So i pleaded with them to ignore the hobbit and just try to start off with the fellowship!

starn wrote: »

Paulo Coelho
J. R. R. Tolkien

Actually you wouldnt be the first, i have heard it before but I didnt know how 'popular' his stuff was. I Loved the Alchemist , but I also read the witch of portobello, i think his stuff can be hit or miss....!

And i also didnt 'get' The Catcher In The Rye... painful read...

me-skywalker

Earthhorse wrote: »

Only ever read On the Road and I certainly thought that was overrated.

In the other "overrated" thread I mentioned Tolkien along with Pratchett. Neither can write particularly well, in my opinion.
.

Woah Pratchett is a legend!! On the Road is an amazing book of adventure and freeing oneself from lifes ties. Bar the Aunt which fundamentally makes everything happen, that is the only glaring plot-device or cheap effect.


As for the elitist 'snobbery' poster on their opinion on fiction and basically rom-com, whimsical novels... Not everybody is interested in reading great literature or epic novels. Some people enjoy reading a 'light' book for the same reasons as many others. For the characters and story adn the escapism much like movies. Just because you dont read them does not maen they cannot be succesful. Most of the general reading public get their books from the Tesco cahrts and probably will never hear about great writers or great books.


Anyway for my over-rated book... Lord of The Flies, yea I know its a very 'Leaving Cert' book but I hated it at the tim and re-read it last year and I hated it again... Watership Down is what it is not.

Psychedelic

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - I think the author even admitted he was embarrased that this book had become so popular, and I can see why, coz some of the material is really cringey, like the countless descriptions of sex scenes, and the way the author forces in references to loads of cool 60's songs to make his book seem cool.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - didn't quite make to the end, skimmed over the last 100 pages or so, just boring and over sentimenal crap from what I remember.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón - started out promising but gradually turned to rubbish. The last 40 pages which is just a letter explaining the whole story is one of the worst things I've ever read.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis - no characters, no story, just descriptions of suits, dodgy 80's bands and gruesome murders for over 400 pages.

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon - over 900 pages of extremely difficult to follow "narrative" and tons of characters who aren't described enough to make remembering them easy. If I had to describe this book in one word it would be schizophrenic.

Lizzykins

Cadiz wrote: »

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak: It's popularity is incomprehensible to me. Another poster called the writing clunky, which is spot on - although perhaps it wasn't written in English, if it is a translation that would explain and excuse a lot. In places the grammar and figures of speech are just dreadful. It's just badly written and, like many contemporary books could have done with a decent and merciless editor. The exploitative sentimentality is awful.

Anything by Ian McEwan - a completely over-rated author.

My Name Is Red - Orhan Pamuk. A raved about Impac winner. Why? The narrative was completely incoherent in parts. The story had some fascinating detail but the writing (or maybe the translation of the writing) was terrible.

Brooklyn - Colm Toibin. I enjoyed it, the era it's set in is extremely interesting, I thought it was his best book yet, but I can't understand the huge amount of accolades it received.

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry. I found it almost unreadable. Where is he going with that faux old style Irishy speak? The subject matter had so much unmined potential.

Almost anything by JM Coetzee, Phillip Roth or Richard Ford. The vain, fatuous preoccupations of tragic middle-aged men rendered in print - how fascinating. :rolleyes:

I have to agree with the inclusion of My Name is Red. Incomprehensible is not the word. I threw it away after 20 pages. Complete drivel. As was another tome called "Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell.!" I got 50 pages into it and still have no idea what it was meant to be about. The critics loved it!
Memo to self. Do not buy any books that the critics rave about or that win big literary prizes.

diddlybit

Psychedelic wrote: »

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis - no characters, no story, just descriptions of suits, dodgy 80's bands and gruesome murders for over 400 pages.

Yes! And stomach churning too...

Hrududu

Psychedelic wrote: »

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - I think the author even admitted he was embarrased that this book had become so popular, and I can see why, coz some of the material is really cringey, like the countless descriptions of sex scenes, and the way the author forces in references to loads of cool 60's songs to make his book seem cool.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - didn't quite make to the end, skimmed over the last 100 pages or so, just boring and over sentimenal crap from what I remember.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón - started out promising but gradually turned to rubbish. The last 40 pages which is just a letter explaining the whole story is one of the worst things I've ever read.

I completely agree with these three. The Book Thief in particular just left me angry. Everyone in it was either all good or all bad. There were no shades of grey and everything was written so clunkily(is that a word?). The worst point was when someone did something nice and the text went "Was this Germany? Was this Nazi Germany?" Jesus beat us over the head with us why dont you.