Worst/Overrated books.

[Jesse]

Amicitia, my only knowledge of US education is from people on this fora. As such, when everyone tells me that they are taught symbolism badly and that you must agree with the teacher, then of course I am going to point out that here in the UK I myself never had that problem.

Nowhere did I evince that the UK education system is perfect; in fact I regularly attempt to change it through my political party.

However, the fact that you did not have a problem in your particular school does not mean that there is no problem in any other schools. I myself am well aware that I had the good fortune of having a school with a fantastic English department, with teachers that really knew what they were going on about, encouraged discussion and the actual students in my class were brilliant, helping to further each other. This will, obviously, not be everyone's experience, but it was mine and thus is all I have to go from.

[teamcorndog]

I think Jhumpa Lahiri isn't a noteworthy author.

I'm inclined to agree, based on the first half of "The Namesake". I have to read it for class, otherwise I'd chuck it out the window at this point. I can't believe how many times it has made me roll my eyes today. ugh.

Also, "Great Expectations" is hella lame.

[dumbclown]

A lot of classic science fiction is somewhat overrated. The ideas are almost always brilliant, but the writing usually isn't very good. Also, many characters are unconvincing.

Yeah, I agree. I did love reading science fiction but after reading so many you come to realise although the idea for the book is good the characters are always predictable.

I feel sorry for people who lack the ability to appreciate subtelty, lyricism, and pacing. I really do.

It's a fantasy novel not a song book. Pacing, maybe you're talking about The Hobbit. It's the one where they get to Riverdell in a third of the time. Oh no, not my subtelty I need that to be human. Wait, what is subtelty? Is it the name of the bad guys pants?

[gmalivuk]

I did love reading science fiction but after reading so many you come to realise although the idea for the book is good the characters are always predictable.

Well of course they are, if all you read is *bad* science fiction.

[@trophy]

To all you HP haters: Bite me. I was once one of you, and then I read the books, and now I've joined the ranks of the HP-nerds. I like good mythology, and HP is as close as we've come to a new mythology for our generation, Star Wars having been ruined by three of the best arguments against the making of prequels I've ever seen.

And as for books that I was forced to read in school and think were over-rated:

Great Gatsby

Of Mice And Men

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

It's the last one that really made me want to vomit the most. The novel exhibited every trait which the characters claimed to hate, and in the end I got the feeling that only those who think anything that's really weird is therefore great art would consider it art.

[platypus01]

And as for books that I was forced to read in school and think were over-rated:

one of these books for me was the scarlet letter. the storytelling seemed... bad......

[Narsil]

And as for books that I was forced to read in school and think were over-rated:

one of these books for me was the scarlet letter. the storytelling seemed... bad......

Yes, The Scarlet Letter is a terrible, terrible book.

It sucks in every way possible.

Which reminds me of how the other day, I told my english teacher that if I ever teach an English class, I'm throwing out The Scarlet Letter and teaching Fight Club.

I am 100% serious.

[Amnesiasoft]

I'm throwing out The Scarlet Letter and teaching Fight Club.

Ooh, my teacher taught that book in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror class. Then decided he wasn't going to teach it again because a lot of people's parents got really mad...

I still can't figure out how I managed to get by without reading these books that everyone else had to read in school...Lord of the Flies, Scarlet Letter, 1984...

(Somehow had to read Great Gatsby twice o.O oh well, it wasn't that bad)

[Narsil]

It's my opinion that Fight Club is modern literature and will be taught as such one day.

Also, why would any parents be mad at that? I mean, so a girl hasn't been fucked in a certain way since grade school. Big deal.

[Malice]

It's my opinion that Fight Club is modern literature and will be taught as such one day.

Also, why would any parents be mad at that? I mean, so a girl hasn't been fucked in a certain way since grade school. Big deal.

The point of Fight Club is that, while the current rampant consumerist emasculation shit is wrong, so is the total overreaction of Fight Club and Project Mayhem and all that.

Unfortunately (and due in no small part to the film, which puts the first forth more strongly than the second), people who haven't read the book tend to forget about the second part, and think that the book is advocating violence and anarchy and sex and other things of that nature. So they naturally get a bit upset.

[Nath]

I think Jhumpa Lahiri isn't a noteworthy author.

I'm inclined to agree, based on the first half of "The Namesake". I have to read it for class, otherwise I'd chuck it out the window at this point. I can't believe how many times it has made me roll my eyes today. ugh.

I think "The Namesake" primarily appeals to a very narrow demographic: people who grew up in the Indian subcontinent and moved to the west. There are a bunch of little things that strike close to home.

That said, I'm in that demographic and still didn't particularly care for the book.

I did love reading science fiction but after reading so many you come to realise although the idea for the book is good the characters are always predictable.

Well of course they are, if all you read is *bad* science fiction.

I wouldn't call the likes of Asimov, Clarke, Niven and Pournelle "bad science fiction"; these are the sort of authors I was referring to. I love some of their books, but certainly not for the characters.

[Narsil]

It's my opinion that Fight Club is modern literature and will be taught as such one day.

Also, why would any parents be mad at that? I mean, so a girl hasn't been fucked in a certain way since grade school. Big deal.

The point of Fight Club is that, while the current rampant consumerist emasculation shit is wrong, so is the total overreaction of Fight Club and Project Mayhem and all that.

Unfortunately (and due in no small part to the film, which puts the first forth more strongly than the second), people who haven't read the book tend to forget about the second part, and think that the book is advocating violence and anarchy and sex and other things of that nature. So they naturally get a bit upset.

That was total sarcasm, there.

But I do think Fight Club is a very deep and meaningful novel. There are so many different levels of things you can take away from it.

[PatrickRsGhost]

To all you HP haters: Bite me. I was once one of you, and then I read the books, and now I've joined the ranks of the HP-nerds. I like good mythology, and HP is as close as we've come to a new mythology for our generation, Star Wars having been ruined by three of the best arguments against the making of prequels I've ever seen.

QFT. I have a feeling that 20, 50, or 100 years from now Harry Potter will join the ranks of Tom Sawyer, Moby Dick, and other timeless classics. Sure, the story itself may become a bit dated over time, but the underlying story of good vs. evil is timeless.

books that I was forced to read in school were over-rated

Fix'd for truthfulness.

A lot of books I was force-fed in high school seemed a bit overrated. Some of them I never really cared for. Of Mice and Men being one of them. How do you ruin an otherwise fairly good book? Write a term paper about one of the features covered in the book, or about the book itself, or a biography of John Steinbeck. Talk about overkill.

The only stories or books I actually liked that we were force-fed were:

The Odyssey - I actually knew of some of the Greek mythology in that story already, mainly some of the characters.

The Crucible - read it around Halloween.

The Masque of the Red Death - Poe. Kicks. Ass. 'Nuff said.

The Raven - see above

I remember in sixth grade our teacher read to us "The Silver Crown." That was a rather cool book. A bit sci-fi-ish, if I remember right. May have to look for it on Amazon.

[gmalivuk]

To all you HP haters: Bite me. I was once one of you, and then I read the books, and now I've joined the ranks of the HP-nerds. I like good mythology, and HP is as close as we've come to a new mythology for our generation, Star Wars having been ruined by three of the best arguments against the making of prequels I've ever seen.

QFT. I have a feeling that 20, 50, or 100 years from now Harry Potter will join the ranks of Tom Sawyer, Moby Dick, and other timeless classics. Sure, the story itself may become a bit dated over time, but the underlying story of good vs. evil is timeless.

I'm not a "HP hater", but anyone who thinks the series deserves to join the ranks of Mark Twain is very much, in my opinion, overrating it.

[podbaydoor]

To all you HP haters: Bite me. I was once one of you, and then I read the books, and now I've joined the ranks of the HP-nerds. I like good mythology, and HP is as close as we've come to a new mythology for our generation, Star Wars having been ruined by three of the best arguments against the making of prequels I've ever seen.

QFT. I have a feeling that 20, 50, or 100 years from now Harry Potter will join the ranks of Tom Sawyer, Moby Dick, and other timeless classics. Sure, the story itself may become a bit dated over time, but the underlying story of good vs. evil is timeless.

I'm not a "HP hater", but anyone who thinks the series deserves to join the ranks of Mark Twain is very much, in my opinion, overrating it.

I heard a reviewer recently rate it higher than Lord of the Rings. I wanted to reach through the radio and rip his throat out. Or at the very least, chew on it.

Not that Lord of the Rings is perfect. But let's see Rowling invent a bunch of languages and build an intricate mythology out of them. She basically took existing fairy tales and chucked them in, because the whole premise of HP was basically "but what if wizards were REAL??"

[Alisto]

Whether someone invented a language or drew from existing mythology has far less effect on how good a work is than you are implying.

[platypus01]

Of Mice and Men being one of them. How do you ruin an otherwise fairly good book? Write a term paper about one of the features covered in the book, or about the book itself, or a biography of John Steinbeck. Talk about overkill.

thats interesting.... i read of mice and men for fun on my own, around 8th grade or so (maybe...) and i love it. never had to read it for school so far. seems like school just ruins everything or something....

or maybe my tastes are screwed up? i dunno

[Malice]

Of Mice and Men being one of them. How do you ruin an otherwise fairly good book? Write a term paper about one of the features covered in the book, or about the book itself, or a biography of John Steinbeck. Talk about overkill.

thats interesting.... i read of mice and men for fun on my own, around 8th grade or so (maybe...) and i love it. never had to read it for school so far. seems like school just ruins everything or something....

or maybe my tastes are screwed up? i dunno

No, I did the same thing, read it on my own and loved it. (Same for Catcher in the Rye, which remains one of my favorite books.)

There are two explanations for the "I hate this book I read in school thing":

1: Being forced to read something makes it a lot harder to like.
2: The people who hate the book are not the type to have read it outside of class in the first place.

Of course, there is number 3...

3: Some books assigned for class really aren't good (or at least not "fun"), possibly (partially) because schools are restricted in terms of content.

---

Whether someone invented a language or drew from existing mythology has far less effect on how good a work is than you are implying.

In fantasy, I think it does have some effect. After all, some of the joys of reading a fantasy novel are the exploration of a fantasy world which has been richly created; and language is an important part of that feeling.

On the other hand, that's not the reason Lord of the Rings is better than Harry Potter. It's better because it is written better and is a better (and more meaningful) story.

See, Tolkein knew how to write.
Rowling guessed. Over time, her guesses got better.

[Amicitia]

That's an understatement, Malice. Tolkien's prose is fantastic. On the other hand, Rowling's isn't worth noting.

[Jesse]

So very true. However, Harry Potter is far more accessible, especially to those who don't do an inordinate amount of reading. Her prose is unremarkable, but she managed to start a phenomenon and get loads of kids reading, that is a pretty cool thing really.

And Harry Potter existing doesn't detract from quality of prose like Tolkien's or Don DeLillo's. (Seriously, go read Underworld right now!)

[Amicitia]

I'd like to think that people who aren't intense readers get into Harry Potter and then see things like Tolkien as more accessible.

[Jesse]

Well this is the hope, and I think it is right, the same way that a lot of these things work. Reading is a skill, one we often take for granted, but for those who don't read often it can be quite difficult. Hopefully they start with something light and enjoyable, and through constant, enjoyable reading are then able to enjoy other books they may not have been able to before.

The contention I have (Not against any of you, just in general) is that somehow because say, LOTR, is such a well-written book in a literary sense that people should somehow not enjoy reading Harry Potter, which I find a ridiculous statement.

[Belial]

That's an understatement, Malice. Tolkien's prose is fantastic.

Speaking of overrated authors.....

Tolkien should've just written a "Middle Earth Almanac" and stopped trying to be a novelist.

Or maybe waited a good hundred years and written RPG Sourcebooks. Just as long as it wasn't supposed to have a story.

[Jesse]

Hahaha, so very, very true. His prose is fantastic, but I think part of it for me is that I read it as a child, so I have nostalgia, and a love of language to get me through. I wonder how a 'death cut' of the books would go down. Like the books with everything cut out of them bar what was shown in the films.

[Nath]

That's an understatement, Malice. Tolkien's prose is fantastic.

Speaking of overrated authors.....

Tolkien should've just written a "Middle Earth Almanac" and stopped trying to be a novelist.

Or maybe waited a good hundred years and written RPG Sourcebooks. Just as long as it wasn't supposed to have a story.

Thank you. I did enjoy the Lord of the Rings, but don't see what all the fuss is about. I liked it because it conveyed a sense of scale, like an old epic. It had some good lines scattered here and there. Most of the page-to-page stuff was a bit tedious, though. Also, people often talk about how 'meaningful' it is. I'm not sure what that means; I didn't find it particularly thought-provoking.

[Axman]

No mention of Dan Brown.

What a douche.

[Alisto]

That's an understatement, Malice. Tolkien's prose is fantastic.

Speaking of overrated authors.....

Tolkien should've just written a "Middle Earth Almanac" and stopped trying to be a novelist.

Or maybe waited a good hundred years and written RPG Sourcebooks. Just as long as it wasn't supposed to have a story.

Goddamn right. I had to force myself to read LotR. While the story and the world and everything are great, the writing itself was torturous. Later, I read a bunch of his letters and background on the world. That was far more enjoyable.

[Ren]

I'm going to go ahead an disagree with most of what's been said here.

"The Scarlet Letter" was one of the books that I truly enjoyed on my "List of Classics to Read". I like Moby Dick, and Harry Potter, and even some of the classic greek literature.

What can I say? I'm a loser. Or I've found different doorways into each that allow me different perspectives on them. You can't *read* Harry Potter with the same perspective as you read Lord of the Rings. It's like expecting oranges to taste like apples.

Anyway, the only authors I think are really overrated that have been mentioned are Dan Brown and Christopher Paolini, and I probably rant about them far too often.

Thus, I am bowing out.

[b.i.o]

No mention of Dan Brown.

What a douche.

Seriously.

See, Tolkein knew how to write.
Rowling guessed. Over time, her guesses got better.

Except for one or two minor exceptions. Namely book 7.

[CelticxConnections]

War and Peace I got to chapter five and darn near fell alsleep. Mind you I NEVER sleep when I read, and have loved almost everything.

Twenty Years After and The Black Tulip really sucked too. I liked The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask, and The Three Musketeers but after reading The Black Tulip I will not read any of Dumas' other books.

I don't think War of the Worlds lived up to all its hype. Its a good book but The Invible Man or the Ilse of Dr. Moreau is beter.

I generally don't like the storries I have to read in school but they are random bits of stories no one has heard of. However I did have to read To Kill a Mockingbird and God did I hate it.

[Belial]

I'm going to go ahead an disagree with most of what's been said here.

"The Scarlet Letter" was one of the books that I truly enjoyed on my "List of Classics to Read". I like Moby Dick, and Harry Potter, and even some of the classic greek literature.

What can I say? I'm a loser. Or I've found different doorways into each that allow me different perspectives on them. You can't *read* Harry Potter with the same perspective as you read Lord of the Rings. It's like expecting oranges to taste like apples.

This...is a very true statement. To continue the analogy, though, you can eat something you like, but because you expect it to taste like something else, it tastes bad. I once ate a waffle that had what I *thought* was whipped cream smeared in the little crevices. Turned out, it was cream cheese. I like cream cheese, but I nearly gagged because I was expecting something very, very different.

But...

...there are some things that, no matter what you're expecting, taste bad to you. Black olives, for example. Whether I'm expecting black olives, or I've mistaken them for some kind of halloween-themed cheerios, black olives taste awful. Scarlet letter was like black olives.

[Amicitia]

I think David Copperfield is underrated. I liked it better than Great Expectations, for sure.

[Nyarlathotep]

Wuthering Heights. God, I wanted to kill the author, were the author not already long dead.

[cathrl]

Fan fiction or amateur adult films are out of the question, though. And I'm sure that both already exist.

Oh, yeah. Right now, there are 319,887 Harry Potter stories on fanfiction.net alone. Most of them are truly terrible.

Edit: the above quote was talking about Harry Potter.

Dan Brown. I confess, I quite enjoyed Da Vinci Code, it seemed like a fun story and I had a good time sniggering at outraged Catholics saying "but it's wrong!" (Though his habit of creating tension by stopping each chapter the line before you learn something useful is...irritating).

And then I picked up Angels and Demons. And became an outraged physicist saying "but it's wrong!" I couldn't get through it. Which puts it in the very small category of books I have read only half of, along with Pride and Prejudice and something I picked up when I was sixteen thinking it was standard fantasy but which turned out to be a sex romp.

[Severus Severance]

Harry Potter fanfiction genuinely scares me... mainly because of the pairings. Harry/Voldemort? Snape/Hermione? Dobby/Squid? Honestly, the fandom knows no bounds of scary.

[Jesse]

which turned out to be a sex romp.

And you stopped?

I was sixteen

Ah, explains it.

[podbaydoor]

Harry Potter fanfiction genuinely scares me... mainly because of the pairings. Harry/Voldemort? Snape/Hermione? Dobby/Squid? Honestly, the fandom knows no bounds of scary.

You'll find those in any fandom with more than two fangirls.

[Bakemaster]

Can I hear an "R. A. Salvatore"?

Seriously. His first book was unreadable, it was so poorly written. Not that I don't enjoy a little cotton candy now and then.

[Axman]

R. A. Salvatore

Oh, Christ, I forgot about those books. I actually read the whole Dark Elf trilogy, because my friends kept telling me that it was incredible and kept referencing it between each other. The same group turned me on to Neal Stephenson, and I took it on good faith that something incredibly clever would happen at the end. Oh well, live and learn.

But you really could hear the dice hitting the mat between chapters.

[DrStalker]

No mention of Dan Brown.

True Story: I thought my web browser's search functionality was broken because I couldn't find "dan brown" or "Vinci" in the first two pages of the thread.

I read The Da'Vinci Code when I visited home and my mother (a librarian) said "I'm sick of people asking me about this book, can you skim it while you're here and summarize for me?" It's like Foucault's Pendulum for the lowest common denominator, with more car chases and no thinking required.


It gets an Overhyped from me, plus a huge thumbs down for the number of people that read it and assume it's based on accurate and non-contentious information that's just being kept secret.