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?
That same 40s/50s generation idolized Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) and praised his works to the skies. Nowadays he's forgotten and unreadable and people wonder what the fuss was about. Sometimes an artist becomes so enshrined in one generation -- Orwell, Camus -- that the next generation can't resist taking a swipe at the cultural icon.
Among contemporary writers, maybe Jonathan Franzen or Salman Rushdie. Maybe Toni Morrison or Zadie Smith. There's a feeling that there has to be a writer to fill a certain niche. Say, modern American condition of society novelist or post-colonial magic realist. Once the niche is established, Franzen or Rushdie gets forced into it and their works are praised whether they deserve it or not.
Morrison, like Fitzgerald, fits the American Studies niche (what's America all about then?). Like Faulkner she combines that with difficulty: books that have to be taught before they can be read. And she has race and sex covered as well. Zadie Smith can be marvelously imaginative, but she has trouble finishing what she starts, that's to say, trouble getting her novels beyond the initial set-up to a meaningful conclusion.
Supposedly a classic.
I tried several times to read it, but it puts me to sleep with its pompous prose.
You know who else wants to destroy society so it can be rebuilt as a magical perfect utopia? Communists, that who. Communist who are also atheist and have no national loyalties, just like objectivists. And just like the objectivists who want to "go Galt" and sabotage their own economy just to speed up the collapse, the Communists have a plan for doing exactly the same thing, the Cloward-Piven strategy.
So go ahead, join hands with the communists to help destroy society, I'll be on the other side, fighting them and fighting you.
I can’t remember the name of the author or the title of the book but the most overrated book I ever read was the one about the boy who ran away from home with his dog and lived in the woods for about a year. They made it into a TV movie I think or maybe it was a short-lived TV series. Anyway, I had to give up reading it about halfway through because the chapter that had the boy removing engorged ticks from the dog and them using them to catch fish in a pond just totally disgusted me.
My Side of the Mountain?
For a book to be great it has to be great both as a destination and a journey. At the end of the day the “message” is likely to be something simple like “we define ourselves through tragedy” or “the purpose of life is go give glory unto God” or ... whatever the ultimate take home is. But the means by which we get there - that’s where the magic happens.
I loved Catcher in the Rye, Madame Bovary, mostly anything by LeCarré because *for* me all these journeys made the trip not only worthwhile but memorable because the author could combine words, depict dialog, offer interesting asides, render everyday things in new and interesting ways. For my money nobody can write dialog better than LeCarré that is funny, realistic, and in a way you can actually hear the English accents. I know it’s hip these days to bash Catcher in the Rye but when I read it in high school I quite enjoyed it. Of course the main character is dysfunctional - so is Michael Corleone in his own way - that doesn’t keep us from enjoying the artistic work.
I enjoyed “Atlas Shrugged,” but fully a third of that book could’ve been edited out and it would’ve been just as powerful and well-spoken. Rand felt the need to say the same thing 24,438 times through each of her Adonis-like characters. By the time I got to Galt’s radio address, I had pretty well tuned out and was just skipping ahead to see the story’s conclusion.
I’d bet you’ve never heard of most of the 15, as I and the writer, who’s not on the list, and who sent me the link, haven’t heard of them. Well, I’ve heard of a couple and read just one, the godawful NYT book reviewer.
Oh I loved that book as a kid. Really found it fascinating that a kid could be so self sufficient for a year.
Dan Brown’s next book, that everybody’s going to buy anyway, and again defend their choice, just as they defended his last penny dreadful!
Aren’t wishing it and wanting it the same thing?
Try Elmore Leonard’s westerns. He’s known for his crime fiction but the westerns were fun.
I never liked that one either.
“Atlas Shrugged” is also rather feminist and quite hostile to men and traditional families. Ayn Rand was a pro-choice feminist and an enemy of traditional values.
I don’t know; she seemed rather enamored of her male protagonists, and they “got it” before Dagny did.
"The wise Huron is welcome," said the Delaware, in the language of the Maquas. "He is come to eat his succatash,* with his brothers of the lakes."
...
* A dish composed of cracked corn and beans. It is much used also by the whites. By corn is meant maize.
Canada used to have more than its fair share of overrated material, particularly prior to about the mid-1990s, when for some reason CanLit started to be not too bad. Amongst the Canadian novels not worth the ink used to gush about them: The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence (possibly the second most useless book I have ever read), and The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.
Everything they made me read in high school. I left mistakenly hating all novels.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull;
Moby Dick;
Hawaii; (due to its almost 1000 pages) 937 pages.
(I have not read the Koran or any of the Barack’s fables, or any of Gore Vidal’s books).
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