What are the most over-rated books?

[Fire Walk With Me]

Inspired by Bennyboy's band thread.

What books have you been recommended or hyped and in reading, found lacking?

I for one don't care for Isaac Asimov very much. Too strutty. And "Dune" was too "castle politics in space" for me when I first encountered it in high school. My "home" life had enough lies and backstabbing that it didn't fly with me, at least at the time.

What are yours?

[Chan790]

1. Canterbury Tales n/m

[RetroLounge]

2. The Bible

aka A Million Little Parables

Here I thought it was a memoir and I find out it's pure fiction.

:hide:

RL

[IzaSparrow]

4. hahah

you beat me to it! :rofl:

[ThomCat]

10. Absolutely! Far, far overrated. Individual stories may have been

well written, but only some of them. The editing sucks. There's very little continuity, and too many blatant contradictions.

I have no idea how this became one of the most influential works of fiction ever written. :shrug:

[alphafemale]

13. LOL! There are some good bits though.

Like the one where God talked outtta the guy's ass?

:evilgrin:

[CreekDog]

66. Reminds me of a joke: who is the most flexible man in the bible?

Balaam because he tied his ass to a tree and walked 20 miles.

:rofl:

(source: Garrison Keillor)

[CreekDog]

65. well, that didn't take long

:rofl: i disagree however. :hi:

[Glorfindel]

3. "Insomnia" by Stephen King - the definition of boring & pointless

I can only conclude that he wrote the thing because he's compelled to write something, anything, all the time, without ceasing.

[Richardo]

14. That's the last Stephen King book I've read.

I struggled through the entire thing and thought: "That's it, he's officially out of ideas." And that was back when it was first published, whenever that was.

[alphafemale]

15. King has hits and misses

Anyone that publishes as much as he does will have a clunker every now and then.

Agree that all the way through Insomnia...I was like...What? I paid for a hard cover 1st Edition for this shit? And they made a Movie from it! Grrr!

[harmonicon]

73. you know he doesn't write all of them, right?

He admits that it's now just a brand - he has ghost writers. I don't think he writes very many books these days.

[alphafemale]

81. LOL! Maybe he just doesn't want to cop to the lousy shit.

Can't say I'd want to be responsible for those last few Dark Tower chapters either.

Oddkins my ass.

No. Those are all King. All authors have a definite "voice." Even when King has been off his game, he has a very distinctive voice.

This "King doesn't write all those books" canard has been around for ages now. He even made light of it by penning books under the Richard Bachman name. It's a joke. As are some of his stories...but I digress.

[harmonicon]

85. I swear I saw/heard/read an interview where he fessed up to it.

[alphafemale]

89. All 3 huh?

You know I rather doubt it.

That'd mess with those royalties just a bit...doncha think?

[harmonicon]

121. no, one of the three

It wouldn't mess with royalties at all - it's all about who owns the copyright, not who actually wrote the thing. Composers do it all of the time. John Williams doesn't write every John Williams score, but he has a company called "John Williams" that churns them out. I have a friend who used to work for the Dust Brothers, and he did some of their stuff, especially if it was just for a tv commercial or something. He was paid by the company, and that was just part of his job. I don't think there's anything wrong with it so long as the alleged author is happy with the work - the people doing the writing/producing are obviously happy with the arrangement, or they wouldn't do it.... and it's a job.

[Downtown Hound]

128. Actually they never made a movie out of that one

There was a movie called Insomnia but it was unrelated. Even Hollywood wouldn't touch that novel. One of King's worst.

[SPKrazy]

19. and that is one of the few Stephen King books that interested me

and I liked :rofl:

[Broken_Hero]

57. the book is useless, unless you read the Dark Tower

series, a lot of the things discussed in Insomnia tie in directly to The Dark Tower series.....

Insomnia was the first King book I read and I thought it was worthless...once I read the Dark Tower, I had to reread Insomnia because it was tied in so deeply.

I think it was in book 6 of the DT series(Song for Susannah) that the premise of Insomina is sort of a bible, to understand the DT series.

[alphafemale]

68. Many King books refer back to Dark Tower if you know what you are looking for.

Shame that odyssey ended in such a collective fart.

[Broken_Hero]

90. Well, Insomnia ties directly to it,

everything in the book deals/goes hand in hand with the DT Series, its not just a "Hey, he mentioned a character that was in Insomnia" the novel ties in pretty well(as does Salem's Lot)...I think thats why as a stand alone novel, Insomnia sucks so badly....

The storyline in Insomnia is critical in book 5-7 of the DT series....damn, as a matter of fact, I think it ties in directly with book 2(The Drawing of the Three)...if memory serves...:D

As for the DT ending in a collective fart, I disagree, it ended the only way it could...it fit Rolands mindset, to a tee.

[alphafemale]

94. Hearts of Atlantis does as well.

I liked "Hearts of Atlantis" much better as a stand alone story though.

[Broken_Hero]

96. I haven't read that one yet, I got it sittin on my bookshelf

its been sitting there for a while now...I watched the movie, and from what my wife tells me, its nothing like the book...after reading the DT I now know what the Low Men are,and why he was on the run, and what they wanted him for...the movie is very misleading(so says my wife, the S. King freak)....:D

I was very skeptical reading King, especially after reading Insomina(I read it in...99 I believe), but my wife is a huge King fan, so I basically had to bite the bullet and try his work again...I stared with Dreamcatcher(it was pretty damn good, movie was a complete joke), and then I got on the DT series...and I've been hooked since...

I believe his best stand alone novel is Needful Things...damn good book.

[alphafemale]

98. Needful Things is perhaps the most disturbing story ever.

Because you can see how those things could happen.

Dreamcatcher was kind of fun as a story...and to this day when either my hubby or I has a bit of digestion...err issue...

We say...don't go in there...I had a visit from the Shit Weasel.

[Broken_Hero]

102. Ha,

I know what you mean about Dream catcher(aka the shit weasels)....reading those gruesome parts had me queasy.

With Needful Things, you nailed it...I like it because it seems so...like it can happen, you can see "how easily" it could happen. Just a little nudge here, a little push here....and whammo.

BTW, have you read IT, I believe IT/Dreamcatcher/and the DT series are tied together also....

[alphafemale]

104. Yeah. Dreamcatchers and IT are connected.

I don't remember all the details now but somehow the kids connected telepathically and the little mentally challenged boy was the strongest of all of them.

[Connonym]

88. Now I really liked that one

[skygazer]

5. Gone With the Wind

If you're looking for sacred cows, that's one. An apology for slavery, a whitewash of the KKK, and a perpetuation of the "good darky" stereotype.

[Fire Walk With Me]

6. In high school, I didn't care much for Dickens.

Has anyone, as an adult, found him more enjoyable than as assigned reading as a child?

The amazing coincidences in his work were horribly tedious and aggravating, IMO.

[RevolutionaryActs]

22. Me.

I read a Tale of Two Cities when I was 19, loved it. But I hated Catcher in the Rye. :shrug:

[Fire Walk With Me]

54. I haven't read Tale of Two Cities... I've read Catcher a few times

and liked it, but I just could not get into his Fanny and Zooey.

[hyphenate]

83. Funnily enough

I hated most Dickens lit in high school, but I actually liked Nicholas Nickelby for some really strange reason. It was (IIRC) longer than Great Expectations and the myriad other novels we were forced to read, but it was a lot better to get through.

I think I resented and rejected most HS lit because there was no fantasy or SF on the curriculum, which I was reading outside of school. No Sherlock Holmes or Mark Twain, either, which mystified me. I was reading them outside of HS as well, getting well read, just not in the classics.

[ACapsizingBoat]

93. Bleak House is pretty decent--sort of.

[BurtWorm]

109. Oliver Twist has some hilarious moments in it.

Especially concerning Bumble the Beadle.

[Giant Robot]

7. Pride and Prejudice was never my bag

But I had to read it in high school and could have cared less then. Maybe it would be different now, but somehow I doubt it.

[tishaLA]

8. that JD Salinger book

[alphafemale]

12. "Catcher?"

I think that's an important work because it sounds like someone in their early/mid teens wrote it.

It captures that feeling of frustration and disenfranchisement almost perfectly.

But if you don't "age out" of that world outlook it is called mental illness...so there you go.

[Xipe Totec]

17. Bingo! That's the one

I would add that it sounds like an American in his early/mid teens wrote it.

I'm not trying to be snarky, but people in other countries grow up a hell of a lot faster.

I read it for sophmore English, at age 18, and could not connect.

[alphafemale]

25. Maybe that's it.

You didn't read it early enough. 18 is pretty late.

A person should first read it at 10-14 then again at 18+ to have the difference in perception.

And to think the guy wrote it when he was in his twenties....well.

It's a great work because it IS disturbing....In a "Yellow Wallpaper" kind of way.

[Xipe Totec]

26. 10-14?

Originally published for adults,the novel has become a common part of high school and college curricula throughout the English-speaking world.

I just can't see this book being made part of middle school reading lists.

Do you?

[alphafemale]

41. I don't know about schools...

But I certainly had my kids read it in middle school.

The Jungle the Animal Farm and The Grapes of Wrath too.

I'm an evil nasty Mommy. :D

[Xipe Totec]

44. Those are great books

Do they understand the references?

In particular the characters in Animal Farm. Would they know which animal represented Kirov, or Trotsky, and why?

[alphafemale]

60. That's a tad much info for a middle-schooler.

The message that absolute power corrupts, absolutely, was enough at that stage.

Fighting for your ideals and thinking you've won is never enough.

You'll always have to mind your "leaders."

[RiffRandell]

76. Catcher was one of my favorite books that I read in high school.

I was 15. Loved it. Same teacher had us read Gatsby---loved that too.

[alphafemale]

9. Any breed of Rand....Blaeach

Weird, overwrought, self-important nonsense.

[ThomCat]

11. Very true. It's shallow writing with an obvious agenda.

Bad writing of cheesy stories to validate half-assed philosophy.

[alphafemale]

101. No kidding. And I've given up arguing with Rand Fans.

It's pointless. Selfish people are immobile when given a canard to cling to.

[Xipe Totec]

18. Ayn playing dress-up with paper dolls (nt)

[TZ]

16. Wuthering Heights! And any and all Jane Austin...

All I can say about them is::puke:

[SPKrazy]

21. I'm with you turtlensue

:puke:

wuthering heights

not all Jane Austin is terrible but

that one

yeah

[TZ]

23. nitpick

It was either Charlotte or Emily Bronte that wrote Wuthering heights..but to me Jane Austin is very similar

[CBHagman]

33. This is why English teachers are weeping.

And inventors of Internet search engines despair.

Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights.

And the other author you refer to is Jane Austen.

Clean up your vomit, Kinder.

[TZ]

37. Hmm

My mother is a retired English teacher. I always did get the Bronte sisters mixed up though..

[DarkTirade]

79. Because they both sucked equally? :P

:shrug:

[CBHagman]

130. I think that's a trap.

It was either Charlotte or Emily Bronte that wrote Wuthering heights..but to me Jane Austin is very similar

You don't specify what traits the Brontes and Austen share, but I would submit that though they are all 19th century Anglophone female writers you might have been made to read in high school or college, you can lumping-together process just a bit too far, as did one of a former professor of mine who peevishly announced that all notable women writers were famous for was the gothic novel. He didn't know from genre, that one. Today I would say, "With all due respect, sir, WTF?!"

[AlCzervik]

20. The Da Vinci code.

i just didn't think it was that good although it was way better than the movie.

[graywarrior]

28. I hated that book.

All that hype for nothing. And the movie was worse.

[AlCzervik]

29. everyone i knew read it were just gushing over it, that should have been a warning

and that movie, omg what total shit.

[devilgrrl]

31. I thought it was okay, definitely over-rated though.

salon.com put it nicely: "it's the worst book you'll ever like" and it's true.

[graywarrior]

35. God, it was torture getting through that book.

[Richardo]

36. My rants against that POS are all over the archives

Stupid characters who take dozens of pages to figure out simple anagrams, or somehow never knew (or didn't remember) that DaVinci wrote his notebooks backwards.

And they're a couple of code experts. Right. :eyes:

[graywarrior]

43. The Harry Potter characters were more believable

Oh wait, they're real!

[terrya]

42. I read that book and thought..."ok, whatever"

I didn't think it was that big of a deal. :shrug:

[AlCzervik]

46. when i was reading it my sister would call me almost everyday "What do you think, huh, great right?"

she was quite displeased when i finished it and gave her my book report.

[terrya]

47. I just thought it was Robert Ludlum with religion.

I mean, Ludlum's books were entertaining...but they weren't going to change your life or way of thinking. You would have thought that "The DaVinci Code" was something you HAD to read, judging from some of the reactions of its fans.

[Mz Pip]

48. After I read it

I just couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. The plot line was so linear and predictable. And the end was a huge let down. Mrs. Jesus had a baby. Okay.

Two good books that deal with Jesus 'secrets' are "The Gospel of Judas" by Simon Mawer or "The Gemini Contenders" by Robert Ludlum.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[applegrove]

52. I disliked the book. Don't know why I finished it. The movie was better IMHO.

[RiffRandell]

75. That's my pick.

The movie was a tad less painful, on a hungover Saturday afternoon. The book completely sucked; I still can't believe the hype about it.

[GCP]

24. Anything by Hemingway IMHO

Never could get him.

[PassingFair]

135. 2nd that. And raise you Elmore Leonard.

I think you need testicles to appreciate
these authors.

My ovaries have rejected them as boring,
insightless tripe.

[Perry Logan]

27. Anything by Faulkner or Ezra Pound.

[MrScorpio]

30. Anything written by Ayn Rand

nuff said

[harmonicon]

74. yep, worst crap ever.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

123. What pisses me off about her is how goddamned TRANSPARENT her books are.

No subtlety or craft at all, just endless long monologues about how amazing living for Objectivism is. Those aren't novels--they're poorly-written "philosophy" dossiers posing as novels, and posing poorly at that.

[Fox Mulder]

32. All of the Harry Potter books.

[Bennyboy]

34. Anything by F Scott Fitzgerald.

Did he get paid by the word or what? Way too wordy for me. I tend more toward the ecomomy style of writing.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

51. Hunh? GATSBY, at least, is very short, barely a full-length novel.

:D

[Bennyboy]

61. Not something I read....

I tried a couple of his other books and just did not like them. So I gave up.Probably my loss...

[alphafemale]

69. Oh my god. I loved Gatsby. All my life I heard this was the "Great American Novel"

It wasn't until fairly recently that I actually picked the thing up.

I'm reading it thinking "Wow! They weren't fucking kidding."

It's completely engrossing. I became inexplicably enamored of those repulsive characters that populated that story.

[Bennyboy]

71. I'm convinced... Monday to the library!

For the Great Gatsby!

[alphafemale]

95. I had you at "repulsive?"

:P

:hi:

[WritingIsMyReligion]

122. I love that book, too.

:)

[TZ]

124. Me too. One of my all time faves...

And coincidentally Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald are buryed in a cemetary about 10 miles from my house...

[Jade Fox]

127. Fitzgerald's books seem.....

very "era-specific" to me, as in they probably made sense if you were alive during the 1920, but his characters aren't recognizable outside that context.

[Arkham House]

38. Moby Dick

...utterly unreadable...I've tried three times...life is too short, that's enough.

[catnhatnh]

40. It Does help if you've ever worked on a fishing boat.....

Though I find him a bit turgid he does show sailors and ships hierarchy fairly accurately....oh yeah-they ARE all superstitious...you kinda have to be.

[JVS]

49. It was awesome!

[rug]

50. From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

Philistine.

[DarkTirade]

80. Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!!!!!!

...


....


I'm sorry. I had to.

[krispos42]

111. Buried alive... buried alive.... buried alive...

Khaaaaaaaan!





Khaaaaaaaan!




Khaaaaaaaan!



http://www.khaaan.com/

:-)

[triguy46]

62. I've read it at least 10 times. Love it.

[BrotherBuzz]

99. Well, try reading 'In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex'

by Nathaniel Philbrick. It's kinda like Moby Dick, but it reads a little easier and is non-fiction. The event of a whale sinking a whaleship really happened and inspired Melville to write Moby Dick. Chicken Melville left the part about cannibalism out.

Good read.

[terrya]

39. "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace

When it came out, it was heralded as this "great novel". I bought it, I tried...I tried...to read that thing. But it was a big, incomprehensible load of crap.

[Richardo]

45. DF Wallace seems to go out of his way to use obscure anagrams

One book I read of his used w/r/t thoughout and he NEVER told you what it meant. Took me forever to figure out it was 'with regard to' and by then I didn't care anymore.

If he's legitimizing the 'text message' style of syntax and spelling for general lit I'll really have to hurt him.

[RetroLounge]

53. I believe Infinite jest is not a book

but rather a dare.

As in, I dare you to read this huge piece of overblown pretentious shit.

RL

[terrya]

70. That sounds about right.

I just couldn't go through with that dare.

[pitohui]

58. i comprehended it just fine, wonderful book

seemed perfectly clear to me, i guess you just weren't in on the jest :-)

[Critters2]

55. Fuckner.

err, I mean Faulkner. Anything by him. My God, man, use a period once in a while!!

[ismnotwasm]

56. Kill me now

"The Mists of Avalon" by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

[RadiationTherapy]

59. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Jesus. H. Christ. An Ayn Rand for the tech libertarians. ridiculous. My boss bought it for me for my b-day and can't WAIT til I am done so we can talk about it.

I am choking on it.

[Fire Walk With Me]

64. Stay away from Quicksilver and System of the World, then.

I enjoyed parts of Cryptonomicon but couldn't penetrate Quicksilver.

[Rob H.]

132. The only Stephenson book I was able to finish is "Snow Crash"

and it fell apart at its rather abrupt end, namely because the main character--named Hiro Protagonist, which Stephenson probably thought was clever--was telling the villain things that he couldn't possibly have known, and vice versa. (Toward the end Hiro also explains the entire plot of the book to three other characters, which was so bad it made me cringe. Thanks for treating your readers as if you think they're too stupid to have understood what you wrote, Neal.) Some cool cyberpunk ideas in it, though.

I tried to read The Diamond Age, too, but Stephenson went off on a snore-inducing tangent toward the middle of the book and, reflecting on how bad I thought the ending of Snow Crash was, I just pretended that everyone perished in a mass suicide and gave up on it.

[RadiationTherapy]

133. Now I find him all the more 'Randian'. SO many words

such an obvious and unrealistic agenda. Oh well, I suppose we all have agendas that color our art.

[triguy46]

63. Ulysses.

[BurtWorm]

107. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Sheer torture to read. Wow.

[TZ]

113. ugh..James Joyce

Maybe if I could understand what he was friggen talk about I would read it all the way through.As it is I think I read the first 10 pages and said..nope. Some people love Joyce but for the life of me I have never figured out why...

[BurtWorm]

126. I enjoyed Ulysses (what I read of it). There was a lot of energy in that book

that was totally lacking in Portrait of the Artist, which I think is maybe the most constipated, overrated novel of the 20th Century.

(Full disclosure: I stopped reading just on the point of Ulysses in Nighttown because life happened to interrupt my concentration. I intend to go back and reread the whole thing some day.)

[AZBlue]

67. A Million Little Pieces

Even before the truth came out and the Oprah flap occurred, I thought to myself "what a load of B.S."

[RiffRandell]

78. I thought the same thing but it was still entertaining.

I was reading it thinking "no fucking way!" but enjoyed the ride. Author should have had a disclaimer; now he's fucked. I liked his second book; that was probably BS as well.

[AZBlue]

134. I read somewhere that he's writing a book of fiction now and my first reaction was

didn't he do that twice already?! }(

[harmonicon]

72. any book with more page-space given to words than pictures

"ooohhh.... look at me, I know how to read!" fuckin' word snobs.

[alphafemale]

82. wrong spot

[mitchum]

77. "The Corrections" and any Pynchon, Barthelme, Coover

[harmonicon]

86. so.....

....Thomas Pynchon being the greatest author of the last 50 years is overrated? Is he rated by others as the greatest author ever? Then he'd be overrated.

[mitchum]

117. He's overrated by anyone who trumpets his genius...

he's clever, and there is nothing wrong with being clever, but his work just leaves me cold. It is literature for people who don't like literature.

[harmonicon]

120. It is literature for people who don't like literature

You might be spot on there. He's my favourite living author, but that could be because I admittedly do not like literature. I also really like Kafka, Sherwood Anderson, Lawrence Stern.... probably authors who aren't considered among the literary greats anyway.

[alphafemale]

84. And here's another. I have a signed copy of a book I will NEVER crack the spine of.

I Am Charlotte Simmons - by Thomas Wolfe.

I went to a lecture he was giving. I had the preconceived notion that we was a pretentious little prick.

Boy is he ever!

Still a signed copy is a signed copy.

Sigh.

[last_texas_dem]

131. You know, I actually found that book pretty enjoyable

Though from a couple of interviews and things I've read about him, I'd agree with your assessment of what Tom Wolfe is like as a person. I Am Charlotte Simmons was actually a pretty fun read, and I thought Wolfe did a pretty good job of writing about college-age kids for a guy in his seventies. I've never read anything else by him besides the nonfiction The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and a story collection called The Pump House Gang, but I think he's a pretty interesting writer, despite seeming pretty arrogant and pretentious in real life.

[GirlinContempt]

87. Seems like 99% of the people in this thread don't know the difference

between over-rated and "I didn't like it"

[BurtWorm]

108. I noticed that too.

Actually, it's more like 50%. But I know what you mean.

[RetroLounge]

129. Same thing...

If I didn't like it, then it's overrated shite...

:hi:

:rofl:

RL

[pitohui]

138. i agree also

some of the books suggested, like "the da vinci code" were never highly rated as anything other than airplane books to begin with

other books, like "infinite jest" or pynchon, seem to be disliked because they are challenging -- when somebody says a book is pretentious, it's usually code for "not dumbed down enough to read on an airplane"

tough crowd here, seems like an author can't win!

[Broken_Hero]

91. hmm, I haven't really read any "overrated"

books yet...I've read a ton of books that suck, but those novels were never touted as being "super."

Most of the novels, I didn't care much for where ones shoved on me during HS(college, it wasn't as bad)....

[Fire Walk With Me]

137. It looks like DaVinci Code is showing up as over-rated, and some King as well.

If enough rabid legions scream the praises of something that is actually not up to the expected standards of either the author's other work or acceptable standards of literature, then it can likely be considered over-rated.

I've avoided The DaVinci Code and most King as a result. I DID read and really enjoy "It" and that one about the end of the world with Vegas being atom bombed. Otherwise, I'm definitely an "-I- didn't like it" kind of guy.

Yeah, having novels forced upon you thoroughly colors the experience, doesn't it? In school or as an adult..that's part of the empetus for this thread; I'd like to know if anyone has enjoyed as an adult, things that I had rejected as a child.

[alphafemale]

92. Interveiw with a Vampire

I'm sorry. But that is some seriously wretched prose.

I mean, I appreciate that it elevated the vampire into the psyche of American culture again...but still...

That was some seriously wretched prose.

[BlueIris]

106. Seriously. Even the over-the-top schmaltz in "The Vampire Lestat" is better. nt

[alphafemale]

110. I couldn't bear the thought of being captive to that woman's assault on fiction again.

Holy Jesus, Buddha, Chrishna, Zeus. That was was some bad writing.

Did I miss any Gods to take their name in vain?

[Donk Yore]

97. See Spot Run

Damn, I hated that book.

See Spot run. See Jane run after spot. See spot get pissed. See Jane fall down. See.......I can't go on. What a gruesome story.

[Fire Walk With Me]

112. That's CLASSIC. You have to re-read it as an adult to catch all of the layered imagery and metaphor!

[nemo137]

100. I'm going to qualify this, but

Catcher in the Rye.

I love Salinger's other stuff. Any of the Glass Family stories - brilliant! But catcher never got me. I had friends who thought it was absolutely transcendental, but I never got into it.

[BurtWorm]

103. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy comes immediately to mind

:boring:

[mitchum]

116. Burt, that's one of my most disappointing reads...

I had heard so much about the book's excellence and the premise sounded fascinating.
It...just...didn't...do...it...for...me
I even went back a few years later and gave it another try.

[BurtWorm]

125. I felt the same way. Didn't see what of any interest was in it.

And it did have such potential--New Orleans in the 1960s, moviegoing...

Come to think of it, what promise did it have besides that? Well, it certainly didn't live up to any expectations I had for it. Glad to see I'm not alone!

:toast:

[BlueIris]

105. "The Lovely Bones."

Most bizarrely over-rated book...ever.

[Catsbrains]

114. anything by Danielle Steele..she sucks.

[YankeyMCC]

115. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

I didn't read it until a couple of years back, prompted by the then forthcoming movie. My sister gave the book to my son with rave reviews, she had read it as a child, I read it with him at night before we went to see the movie.

I pushed my way through but boy was it horrible.

I'm a big Science Fiction fan but I could not even finish Dune.

I'll put Moby Dick as an honorable mention, it's just so difficult but the moments of dept and beauty that this humble reader can comprehend are enough for me to still appreciate the book and keep a copy in the house.

[TZ]

118. Awwww

I love the Narnia books. They are definitely children's books though.
I also love Dune, though I do see how some could dislike it. It is a bit slow at first. If you can get through the first 100 pages it does get much better

As for Moby Dick..I hated it too but fortunately I had an understanding English teacher who allowed us to skip the chapters that were just about the whaling per se. But you are right, there are some nice moments.

[alphafemale]

119. And I loved that story....I was right there. In that wardwobe..when the back opened up you see....

absolute.

magic.

[calico1]

136. "Gone With The Wind'

Not such a great book, imo. And after reading some of the explicitly racist remarks, I liked it even less. And I was 14 when I read it.

Also the entire Harry Potter series. I got through one book and halfway through the second before becoming bored out of my mind.

[Blue_Tires]

139. Bridges of Madison County

can't believe that hasn't earned a mention

[DeepBlueC]

140. Finnegan's Wake

and Ulysses for that matter.

[General Zod]

141. Ender's Game

By that Fascist dickwad, Orson Scott Card.

[sniffa]

142. The Feminine Mystique

Poor, upper-middle class to rich white, suburban wives finally having a voice.

[Mythsaje]

143. Any of mine...

Oh, wait. I thought you said "undderrated."

:evilgrin: