The Most Overrated Books Showing 5,451-5,500 of 5,680

[Rodney]

But keep in mind that is a contemporary attitude. There were a lot of writers up to the 20th Century - many of them with IQs well above woodpecker - who wouldn't have dreamed of using graphic language in a work of fiction.

[Gary]

Rodney wrote: "But keep in mind that is a contemporary attitude. There were a lot of writers up to the 20th Century - many of them with IQs well above woodpecker - who wouldn't have dreamed of using graphic language in a work of fiction."

Ah, but that's not what I said, was it? The people I said didn't have the sense of a woodpecker were the ones complaining about the use of language by others, not those who actually wrote in some other way.

Further, I don't think writing talent and having the sense of a woodpecker are necessarily mutual traits. Hemingway, for instance, was by most reasonable standards a great writer who was a colossal dickhead by those same reasonable standards. I've read more than my share of Pappa H, and I'll give him his due credit as a writer... but he was a fool and an ass. Fun at parties? Sure. Bring him home so he can fuck your sister? Not so much.

Point being, the objection about the language in a book like Catcher is, at best, a misunderstanding of the nature of the novel. At worst, it's revelatory about the character of the person making the objection—and not in a good way.

[Rodney]

Not nearly as revelatory as judging a writer on whether or not you want him to fuck your sister.

[Gary]

Rodney wrote: "Not nearly as revelatory as judging a writer on whether or not you want him to fuck your sister."

...and utterly fails to comprehend the point again. Thanks for playing. There are no consolation prizes. Good luck to you.

[Rodney]

And good luck to your sister.

[Gary]

Rodney wrote: "And good luck to your sister."

^^^^ case in point ^^^^

[Rodney]

I'll say she is.

[Gary]

Rodney wrote: "I'll say she is."

It's funny, I just had this conversation with Myself. See, I wrote a response that went kind of like this:

Clearly we're talking past each other at this point.... Tell you what, I'll delete my posts in this thread in response to you if you delete your posts in response to me. Then we can all go along as if nothing had happened.

After all, I figured, everybody fails to read a few sentences properly from time to time, and makes a fool of themselves. It's the internet. I've done it; you've done it; we all do it. Nobody lives in a world of perfect rectitude and comprehension, so we should all live and let live. Forgive and...

But then a voice chimed in, "You can't make that offer, dude!" I knew the voice. It was Myself.

"What? Why not?" I asked Myself.

"This guy hasn't even been able to understand simple English sentences from the get-go. And that's on a website dedicated to reading English sentences! He failed to understand the post to which he was responding. I just went back and looked at it, dude. It was clear and comprehensible. How can you possibly expect him to understand a simple offer to delete a few posts? After you used the word "sister" in a metaphor, he's talking shit about your sister! This is not a person of decent character. He's exactly the kind of faux-moral narcissist you were describing to begin with. Did you see the pic the pathetic little worm put up as his AVI? Your sister is a research chemist and a blonde bombshell so far out of his league that there's no way the sad bastard could possibly express a rational thought in her presence! You want to try to deal with that kind of 'man' as if he were capable of mustering a shred of decency? These days? In the era of Gamergate? Trump is in the White House, dude...."

"Oh, shit! You're right," I said to Myself. (He's usually right, the cynical bastard. It's frustrating as fuck....)

I wracked my brains trying to come up with a solution. How do you try to convey a simple idea on the internet to someone who has demonstrated an inability to understand simple ideas and common English? How do you convey the basic decency that most of us learned from our mothers when we were twelve to someone who is, nominally, an adult, and do it through the medium of a website message board? It's a real quandary. I mean, I write well... I flatter myself that I write very well. The people reading this, right now, are entertained as hell.... (You're welcome.) But even with my powers of writing words in clear and comprehensible sentences that are also amusing, I lack the capacity to force the most elementary comprehension upon the mind of someone intellectually locked into a kind of "yer sister!" level of thinking. Is this how professional journalists feel at a Sarah Huckabee press conference?

"Focus, dude," Myself insists.

Right, right.

"What if I'm completely candid?" I asked Myself. "What if I make the offer to delete my posts after he deletes his, but also relate my concerns through the medium of this very inner mono-dialogue? I just say, 'Hey, Rodney, you've made a fool of yourself, and that's fine, but for reasons having to do with protecting my sister, and the kind of basic decency you probably wouldn't understand, I don't want to engage with you any more because I think you might be nuts. Plus, she's got kids, and sure it's a little paranoid of me to think a "yer sister!" guy is going to be an actual threat, but it's not like it hasn't happened before, and it's family so...'

"...Damn, that is meta as fuck..." Myself replied.

(Myself is cynical, but he has a weakness for literary techniques. I can sometimes use that to distract him from his better senses. But not for long.)

"Do you really want to do that, man? I mean, this is some good writing. Would you really just delete it after some internet fool deletes a few of his shitty posts?"

"Hell, yeah!" I told Myself. "I'll do it! If he deletes his shitty posts then I'll delete my responses, this one included! It doesn't matter if I'm right and he's wrong, or even that we're on a site dedicated to open, intellectual discussion of literature and he's gone completely 4chan on us!"

"OK, brother," Myself said. "But keep a copy, for our records/writing journal. And some screenshots. You never know when one of these maggots will come wriggling out of the muck again...."

"Deal!" I said, and hit "Post" on the screen.

[Carrie]

I happen to like/ love Catcher, and Holden. I would not introduce Hemingway to my sister.

[Gary]

Carrie wrote: "I happen to like/ love Catcher, and Holden. I would not introduce Hemingway to my sister."

Well, good luck to both you and your sister! I'm sure she'll be just fine despite not consorting with Papa's ghost.

[Rodney]

Gary, I don't like to interfere in family matters - especially ones that apparently take place in a shed out in the country - but I think you and yourself and your sister and Hemingway ought to just blow this whole silly matter out of your collective asses.

[Nick]

Carrie wrote: "I happen to like/ love Catcher, and Holden. I would not introduce Hemingway to my sister."

Your sister will find him, anyway.

[Petergiaquinta]

It's really hard to get sisters to get with the program some times...just ask Michael Corleone.

[Karen]

Rodney wrote: "And good luck to your sister."

LOL 😂

[Karen]

Rodney wrote: "I'll say she is."

Lol again! Thanks for the laugh 😂 Rodney

[Karen]

Rodney wrote: "Gary, I don't like to interfere in family matters - especially ones that apparently take place in a shed out in the country - but I think you and yourself and your sister and Hemingway ought to just blow this whole silly matter out of your collective asses."

Me too

[Karen]

Carrie wrote: "I happen to like/ love Catcher, and Holden. I would not introduce Hemingway to my sister."

Me neither, I don't like Hemmingway

[Rodney]

Hemingway seems to have this popular reputation as the greatest and most influential American writer of the 20th Century, although I never really cared for him. I value the work of his contemporaries Faulkner and Fitzgerald much more. I haven't even read that much of Hemingway, although year for year I promise myself to at least come up to speed.

[Kyla]

Akhil wrote: "Kyla wrote: "The Catcher in the Rye was the worst book I have read in my entire life. 50 Shades was too hyped up but it was so trashy that I liked it. The Book Thief was so extremely hyped up but I..."
The point of Goodreads is not to bash people for how they feel about certain books. You may have liked it, but I didn't, and that's okay! We're just here because we all like to read and that's all that matters. We all have to share our opinions in a respectful way because there are too many people in this world that don't like reading. With that said, I'm really glad you enjoyed The Catcher in the Rye! I always feel really happy when someone likes a book, even if I don't feel the same way.

[Karen]

Rodney wrote: "Hemingway seems to have this popular reputation as the greatest and most influential American writer of the 20th Century, although I never really cared for him. I value the work of his contemporari..."

I adore William Faulkner. I love Fitzgerald also. But I think William and I would have gotten along well- he is all over the place concerning time in his writing, and it makes perfect logical sense to me. I could talk about him forever if this was a Faulkner thread.

[Karen]

Kyla wrote: "Akhil wrote: "Kyla wrote: "The Catcher in the Rye was the worst book I have read in my entire life. 50 Shades was too hyped up but it was so trashy that I liked it. The Book Thief was so extremely ..."

You are right Kyla

[Kallie]

"so" is also defined as "with the result that"; which does not imply intent or control on anyone's part. Nitpicking, insults to intelligence, rude directives . . . I guess there's a history and can't say I'm innocent of this sort of thing but shit. I don't find it funny at all. Salinger, Hemingway, Faulkner, etc. Let's argue over which of them is worthy of praise. That'll be so conclusive.

[Karen]

Kallie wrote: ""so" is also defined as "with the result that"; which does not imply intent or control on anyone's part. Nitpicking, insults to intelligence, rude directives . . . I guess there's a history and can..."

I agree 👍

[Emmy]

I think some of those are definitely over rated, but the Great Gatsby is a classic that I think deserves the praise it gets. I read it with an advanced lit class in high school and the amount you can pull from it and analyse is amazing. It is set in such an interesting time, the characters, especially Jay, have such deep personalities that the reader gets to know over time. Its so full of irony and tragedy, I cant help but think anyone would get something out of reading it.

[Gary]

Emmy wrote: "I think some of those are definitely over rated, but the Great Gatsby is a classic that I think deserves the praise it gets. I read it with an advanced lit class in high school and the amount you c..."

Gatsby has a 3.89 overall rating here on GR. That is based 2.7m+ ratings, and we're living in the middle of the attention economy, so that's got to vitiate the "pain" a little bit, but even with that in mind the third Twilight book is 3.69 on 1.1m+ hits (weirdly a higher overall score than the previous two, which seems a little odd to me.)

I suspect Gatsby suffers from a lot of high school and post-high school level resentment. That is, many millions of people have been "forced" to read it in the same way they had to do laps around the track in PE class, and that just annoys them. Even after high school, they can't help but associate the book with a period in their lives in which walking down the hallway—wearing braces the size of the grill off a 70s Chevy, and covered in pimples—without tripping over their own gawky elbows was something of an effort, and they react to the book on that basis. It still can't really explain why The Da Vinci Code is somehow right there in the middle between TGG and Twilight3 at 3.79/1.5m+ ratings, which is kind of horrifying if you think about it.... Ratings aren't a particularly meaningful thing, of course, especially given the leveling effect that such a limited scale as "five stars" is going to lend itself to, but there is something else going on in a broad, cultural sense that such things are within a tenth of a point of one another.

[Lenka]

One wrote: "It's all very subjective. A few of them are obvious classics and certainly shouldn't be considered over rated. I think the modern works like Twilight and Hunger Games get to much attention, but mos..."

I couldn't agree more.

[Janis]

I did not like the book but each to his/her own opinion. If we all have the same opinion, life is pretty boring and hum-drum

[Stephen]

Forget the arguing about these over-rated books and tell about some of the books that excite you:

Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Shulz
A Natural History of the Senses - Diane Ackerman
Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

[Phil]

I loved Catcher in the Rye when I read it first at age 20. I tried to read it again in my 50s and could not finish it! I found Holden to be no more than a drunk whiner.

[Kallie]

Phil wrote: "I loved Catcher in the Rye when I read it first at age 20. I tried to read it again in my 50s and could not finish it! I found Holden to be no more than a drunk whiner."

So?

[Janis]

So agree. Can find nothing likable about Hemingway.



Gary wrote: "Rodney wrote: "I'll say she is."

It's funny, I just had this conversation with Myself. See, I wrote a response that went kind of like this:Clearly we're talking past each other at this point.... T..."

[Gary]

Janis wrote: "So agree. Can find nothing likable about Hemingway."

I think he had good taste in women who had bad taste in men. That's something at least.

[Chloe]

I loved The Catcher in the Rye, and wanted to re-read it, but made it only under first 5 pages or so..found it kinda annoying to read this time, don't know why.

[Janis]

I think because you get older and wiser. Thank god I do not curl up with Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew and have the same delight I had when I was 13. Although many books did continue to grow "Catcher in the Rye" did not.

Chloe wrote: "I loved The Catcher in the Rye, and wanted to re-read it, but made it only under first 5 pages or so..found it kinda annoying to read this time, don't know why."

Chloe wrote: "I loved The Catcher in the Rye, and wanted to re-read it, but made it only under first 5 pages or so..found it kinda annoying to read this time, don't know why."

[Jackie]

I agree with most of the list - love the girl w dragon tattoo series- and would add the Goldfinch. I pushed through this book waiting to see what others had but... nope, nothing! Talk about anticlimactic.

[Monty J]

Petergiaquinta wrote: "he's a pretty awful writer, and while he may be an expert on dicks in general, his opinion on Moby Dick is nothing but blubber. "

Well said.

[Gonzalo]

It depends on the age of the person and the mindset.

The Catcher in the Rye is for someone in their teens. The frustration and passion of a young person are not likely to stir up anyone more than twenty-five. Otherwise, the writing is somewhat lacking in the "art of the word," which would also deter an older person that has read a lot.

Moby Dick. Beautifully written, however much lacking in plot. It is a psychological work that requires a certain amount of inner thought to become immersed in it. If you usually read philosophy and things of that nature, you will probably enjoy it. It is not light reading.

The Great Gatsby. A piece of America, however, the characters are rather shallow and the details missing. I don't care for it.

The Stranger. A fabulous work of fiction, but meant only for people toying with the philosophical theories around existentialism. Again something lacking in a complex storyline. Definitely a philosophical work.

Ulysses. Another mental work. What is usually called "stream of consciousness." Too much for me, but if you enjoy delving into works of the subconscious mind . . .

Atlas Shrugged. This work has the failings common to sci-fi and fantasy. Anything with such a wide scope is bound to be tiresome. It is extremely political but lacking in character development and a tight storyline. If you are reading mostly for enjoyment, this is not for you.

The rest on the list I haven't read.

[Kallie]

Gonzalo wrote: ".The Great Gatsby. A piece of America, however, the characters are rather shallow and the details missing. I don't care for it."

For me, The Great Gatsby is about how wealth, especially combined with class acquired through wealth, prevails over real feeling and justice in the U.S. Also enjoyed the humorous observation of characters trying to impress. And . . . it's a perfect novel in so many ways. Oh, and I mustn't forget how well it satirizes the fact that winning at superficiality is very important here. You could win by having the biggest ass (as long as you have a lot of money), and you'd be famous. Is that not glaringly obvious NOW, with a reality tv wacko elected as our POTUS? (Who also has a pretty big ass; may in fact be all ass.)

[Taryn]

Many of the books listed are older classics and our tastes have changed - most notably we prefer fast moving stories!

[E.D.]

Kallie wrote: "Gonzalo wrote: ".The Great Gatsby. A piece of America, however, the characters are rather shallow and the details missing. I don't care for it."

For me, The Great Gatsby is about how wealth, espec..."

A tale from the ending of the first Gilded Age does, indeed, have a place here at the blossoming of The New Gilded Age and the death of The New Deal.

"The Biggest Ass".

Damn. That's pretty goddamned funny. :}

[Kallie]

Taryn wrote: "Many of the books listed are older classics and our tastes have changed - most notably we prefer fast moving stories!"

The Great Gatsby is pretty fast-moving. Not sure what you mean and I have to disagree with the implication that faster equals better.

[Petergiaquinta]

Maybe she means she likes books with heroes who don't get captured or end up dead in the end, floating in swimming pools like pathetic losers. She likes books with winners!

[Kallie]

Petergiaquinta wrote: "Maybe she means she likes books with heroes who don't get captured or end up dead in the end, floating in swimming pools like pathetic losers. She likes books with winners!"

Ohhhhhh. And they move really fast, "like a b***ch!"

[Gary]

Kallie wrote: "The Great Gatsby is pretty fast-moving. Not sure what you mean and I have to disagree with the implication that faster equals better."

The pace of a book is intriguing in this context. Of the books listed in the original (deleted user) post:

The Catcher in the Rye
Moby Dick
The Great Gatsby
Waiting for Godot
The Stranger
Ulysses
Atlas Shrugged
The Da Vinci Code
Twilight

I'd say that The Great Gatsby, The Da Vinci Code and Twilight are fast-paced with at least one or two of those (The Da Vinci Code and Twilight) being definitively so. Moby Dick, Waiting for Godot, The Stranger, and Ulysses are pretty definitively not fast-paced. Opinions can vary about the others and, of course, like anything people will have their own assessment as to what "fast-paced" means. Personally, I find The Catcher in the Rye pretty sensibly and middlingly paced, but I'm sure many folks who found it a bore would disagree. Then there's the fact that all 800 (or so) pages of Ulysses take place in a single day, which either makes it very fast paced or very slow paced depending on how one wants to interpret that term....

Many other books have been nominated for "most over-rated" but overall, it looks like that's a fairly even split, so I don't think pace has much of an effect on a general "over-rated" assessment. Rather, it seems to me, off the cuff, that a book has to be "consistently paced" to be good. So, even though I'm not a huge fan of Moby Dick, and I have criticized the book on the basis of its length, I don't know if that's particularly a pacing problem per se. The book has weird inserts and elaborations, but it has them consistently, and that consistency is part of the point. It's meant to be elaborate...

[Kallie]

Gary wrote: "The pace of a book is intriguing in this context..."

I doubt novelists had a concept of fast-paced as 'good' before people started writing books on 'how to publish your novel.' You could call Melville's 'Pierre' and 'The Confidence Man' as fast-paced, but both would also be dissed as too weird. I think Twain's narratives were of the sort modern readers favor; but wasn't that a matter of style? 'War and Peace' is not fast-paced; I remember reading that Tolstoy expressed annoyance about people calling W&P a novel. Anyway. This fast-paced requirement is recent. I'm not saying it's bad but I don't find that rules like this about writing anything -- novel, short story, memoir -- are very meaningful, or result in good work.

[Gary]

Kallie wrote: "I doubt novelists had a concept of fast-paced as 'good' before people started writing books on 'how to publish your novel.'"

I want to attribute its origins to the rise of the penny dreadfuls and books of that ilk: dime novels, pulp fiction and sci-fi mass market paperbacks. The real rise of "fast-paced" novel probably has some connection to the advent of film & television, making action oriented text more marketable in response to those media. At least, that's the argument I'd make were I penning a grad school thesis on the subject....

[Kallie]

Gary wrote: "I want to attribute its origins to the rise of the penny..."

Yeah, probably did begin as you say; I was thinking of this as a marketing concept anyone who went to fiction writers' workshops probably heard.

[[deleted user]]

Madison wrote: "Being overrated is definitely a matter of opinion, but I guess everyone has one... my "most overrated book" would be...Harry Potter. I know I seem to be the resident HP hater (even though I don't h..."
I agree, the books are in my opinion " just OK", plenty of better children's literature around.

[[deleted user]]

Stephen wrote: "Forget the arguing about these over-rated books and tell about some of the books that excite you:

Street of Crocodiles - Bruno Shulz
A Natural History of the Senses - Diane Ackerman
Wasp Factory ..."

Oh Wasp Factory, so wonderfully weird! I loved it.

[Anne]

I'd say The Girl on the Train is overrated; left me completely cold.