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Most Overrated Books?

Posted on 04/12/2013 8:28:36 PM PDT by MNDude

There are hundreds of books that are considered classics and probably even more over-hyped ones on bestsellers lists. Which do you think are the three most overrated books?


TOPICS: Books/Literature
KEYWORDS: books; vanity
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To: MNDude

Good Night Moon

A depressing litany of “farewells” uttered to various “things” arranged about a small, dark bedroom. Was forced, by my wife, to read this book every night to small children. Their infantile intellect failed to offer any insight or meaning to this boring novel.

Even THEY would fall asleep before the last page...


101 posted on 04/13/2013 4:01:09 AM PDT by Paisan
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To: fhayek
It took me 3 months to finish The Perfect Spy..

My God, it was so bad, I could only read 1 or 2 pages at a time... but had to finish it since I started it (and had no other reading material, at the time).. :p
102 posted on 04/13/2013 4:01:37 AM PDT by Bikkuri (Molon Labe)
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To: dinoparty

WHAT? To Kill A Mockingbird is my favorite book of all time!


103 posted on 04/13/2013 4:33:57 AM PDT by freepertoo
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Atlas Shrugged - The entire idea behind this book is that capitalist Atlases should shrug and let the socialists destroy civilization so that a new utopia can magically rise out of the ashes. Stupid.

Yeah, much better to stay within a system that regards you as a slave, and forces you to work under ever-increasingly difficult rules, all so that the vast majority of the product of your labors can be taken from you, and used for the benefit of others, to the credit of the ones who stole it from you. Pretty stupid for a successful person to walk away from that, and leave the idiots to suffer under the consequences of their own impossible ideas. You're a genius.

104 posted on 04/13/2013 4:41:56 AM PDT by Teacher317 (Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast)
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To: what's up

Ditto on the “Lord of the Flies”, could not stand that book in school.


105 posted on 04/13/2013 4:49:24 AM PDT by NH Red
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To: Revolting cat!
"And the writer reports that he was astonished when the readers answered, why, the next one on the bestseller list!"

Alfred Hitchcock called the New York Times Bestseller list "Sleeping Pills with Dust Jackets"...

106 posted on 04/13/2013 4:54:05 AM PDT by Mad Dawgg (If you're going to deny my 1st Amendment rights then I must proceed to the 2nd one...)
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To: MNDude

The Cathcer in the Rye. Ugh. That book sucks.
On The Road. Incoherent babble.
Any book by the Bronte sisters


107 posted on 04/13/2013 4:57:58 AM PDT by strider44
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To: elhombrelibre

I like Catcher in the Rye but never thought it as good as many say it is, but for me Salinger’s Best Book is “Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters” it transports you to a time long past when formal occasions were an affair that required social protocol and how people react when those protocols were disrupted.


108 posted on 04/13/2013 4:59:49 AM PDT by Mad Dawgg (If you're going to deny my 1st Amendment rights then I must proceed to the 2nd one...)
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To: onyx

Reading Moby Dick was an almost unbearable experience.


109 posted on 04/13/2013 5:08:03 AM PDT by csmusaret (America is more divided today , not because of the problems we face but because of Obama's solutions)
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To: fhayek
Ulysses is positively unreadable. I have tried three times. I guess I am not sufficiently intellectual enough to get it

I tried the same with "Finnegan's Wake". Each time, about 40 pages in, I decided that whatever the reward might be, it wasn't worth the effort.

Life's too short to read bullstuff, too. If it doesn't entertain, or if it doesn't make you a better person, take a nap. You won't be sorry.

110 posted on 04/13/2013 5:35:27 AM PDT by chesley (Vast deserts of political ignorance makes liberalism possible - James Lewis)
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To: Cincinatus; Jim from C-Town
Well, Mark Twain's opinion must be respected.

That said, I enjoyed both LOTM and The Deerslayer. Never got around to the others yet.

JFC was a stiffish writer with no great style, but I liked his story.

That said, the Daniel-Day Lewis version really was much better than the book.

111 posted on 04/13/2013 5:46:50 AM PDT by chesley (Vast deserts of political ignorance makes liberalism possible - James Lewis)
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To: MNDude
Mark Twain might have suggested "The Deerslayer", by James Fenimore Cooper.

True and fair or not, this is absolutely hilarious!

"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"

An excerpt:

"There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction -- some say twenty-two. In "Deerslayer," Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the "Deerslayer" tale to the end of it.

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the "Deerslayer" tale.

112 posted on 04/13/2013 5:56:39 AM PDT by Chasaway (Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?)
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To: MNDude

Ethan Frome was awful, as was Paradise Lost (both inflicted on me in high school).

Fortunately, we were also forced to read the Canterbury Tales and Candide, which balanced out the bad.


113 posted on 04/13/2013 6:32:39 AM PDT by LadyBuck (Yo, Bartender, Jobu needs a refill!)
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To: MNDude

First three books with Hunter Thompson as author.


114 posted on 04/13/2013 6:54:35 AM PDT by gusopol3
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To: Jim from C-Town

***The Last of The Mohicans was unreadable. Long, boring and did I mention long & boring. And lets not forget boring. And long.****

You aught to try RODRICK RANDOM. It is an adventure story told in narrative. Lo-o-n-g and boring. even though there is lots of adventure in it they just could not deliver the story in an exciting way.


115 posted on 04/13/2013 7:21:02 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (The murals in OKC are destroyed. The director and actors wept.)
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To: MNDude

Dhalgren: Delany


116 posted on 04/13/2013 7:45:43 AM PDT by Peet (Come back with a warrant.)
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To: MNDude

Almost every book Oprah ever featured.


117 posted on 04/13/2013 7:57:49 AM PDT by schurmann
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To: boop

James A Michener

guy could write 1,000 page short stories

ugh


118 posted on 04/13/2013 8:15:42 AM PDT by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: AnAmericanAbroad

Interesting. I’d never read or heard that before. Enjoy the pivo.


119 posted on 04/13/2013 12:03:19 PM PDT by elhombrelibre
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To: MNDude

Doris Lessing - Briefing for a Descent into Hell.

It was in 12th grade English, it was hell.

Anything written stream of consciousness is.

So was Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Also, 12th grade English.

Joyce Carol Oates - only know the early stuff, but they were disturbing.

But I loved anything by Steinbeck.


120 posted on 04/13/2013 12:10:14 PM PDT by KosmicKitty (WARNING: Hormonally crazed woman ahead!!)
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