I often read books after people have told me that they are really good.. this has gone wrong twice for me..I read "Wicked: The life and times of the wicked witch of the west" by Gregory Maguire and 'The Lovely Bones' by Alice Sebold.. these books were really overrated and I don't how so many people could think that they were good.. any other books that people think are really overrated??
2007-03-05 14:27:43 · 16 answers · asked by eyenoura 3 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Books & Authors
The 1st book I thought of was "The Shipping News" by Annie Proulx (the one they made into a movie w/Kevin Spacey.) It won one of the big, fancy awards and I kept reading the darn thing because I kept thinking it was ABOUT to get good and justify the hype. I finally gave up about 50 pages before the end when I called my dad and it turned out he'd tried to read it and thought it was dead boring too.
I find a lot of the "literary" books that get a lot of attention lately are very dull. It's like a Merchant Ivory film where the pretty costumes and great cinematography distract you from the fact that essentially you are watching a 2.5 hr movie with no story. Shipping News seems to be a book like that... all the pretty sentence structure and lengthy, slow character development causes you to lose sight of the fact essentially the book is 400+ pages of extra words describing a life of nothing.
hm... interesting about your two books because I read "Wicked" before the buzz on the book started (and way before the musical) and I loved it, so I wonder if it's a victim of it's own hype - in other words if you knew nothing about it you'd like it, but when it's not a novelty and everyone is crowing about how fab it is, it really doesn't live up to expectations. With Lovely Bones, it's interesting because it's a book that I found so powerful at the beginning that I kept recommending it to people even though I thought the ending was unbelievably stupid.
The other book I've read recently that I thought was overrated was "The Da Vinci Code" but I suspected it was overrated when I started it, so I wasn't particularly disappointed!
2007-03-05 14:59:07 · answer #1 · answered by lalabee 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
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2016-12-23 21:23:18 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I agree with you about Wicked and The Lovely Bones. I also didn't really like The Alchemist, which I read after so many people here raved about it. Just not my style, I guess. I can see why younger people with the entire lives ahead of them might like it, but once you have lived a little, it seemed trite.
2007-03-06 00:41:38 · answer #3 · answered by suzykew70 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
a lot of people are flipping out over how "amazing eragon is, especially since the author was like 15 when he started" but that's just it, it is only good if you think of a highschool freshman writing it. other than that, it is just basically the entire storyarch of star wars put into a dragon/sword theme. i didn't actually read it, i got a few pages in and realized how badly it sucked and stopped. 5 people you meet in heaven was pretty overrated (and overpriced).
2007-03-05 14:54:16 · answer #4 · answered by infomonger 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The Plains of Passage by Jean Auel. In this book there were points where you had to flip several pages of background detail to get back to the story. It was a bestseller, but it certainly didn't deserve that status.
I use this book in my writing courses as an example of letting your background research run away with the story.
2007-03-05 15:11:33 · answer #5 · answered by loryntoo 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
"Who Moved My Cheese" by Spencer Johnson, MD.
This book has a point, I have to admit that. BUT...damnit...the author could have made his point in one paragraph. Yet, everyone kept on raving about this little book, and telling me I should get it. I never bought it. I did read it while I was in the bookstore. I felt it was way overrated. A ten year old could have written it.
2007-03-05 14:38:29 · answer #6 · answered by nitropit68 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The Historian. 50 million dollars worth of promoting a book that was a bad vampire story and mostly a travel guide.
2007-03-05 14:43:24 · answer #7 · answered by Persiphone_Hellecat 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
the Da Vinci Code
the Catcher in the Rye
2007-03-05 15:00:39 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Catcher in the Rye......I reread it a few weeks ago after having to read it years ago for school. I never finished it in school. I read it fast and it kept me entertained but I thought there was going to be more to it. Oh well. Atleast it's short!
2007-03-05 19:32:41 · answer #9 · answered by UntamableSmurf 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Ulysses by James Joyce--way too long and waaaaay too confusing, plus many of the classics that are depressing. I had to read too many of them in classes and now rarely read anything that could be considered "good literature."
2007-03-05 14:39:19 · answer #10 · answered by Lillian L 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋