What in your opinion are the most overrated books?
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Half of War and Peace.
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Harry Potter. I went into it expecting the story to progress, but over the course of the first three books all I learned was that the Communist government of Russia would be more effective than the wizards at ruling anyone.
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The Bionicle series by Greg Farstey
gets shot by the community
OK, fine, I’m joking.
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The Crucible. It’s a fine story, but I don’t find it very literary engaging myself.
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The majority of Stephen King novels. Guy has made a handful of good or even great novels but the vast majority are just nonsense.
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This is not a new opinion here but Harry Potter is seriously overrated. I will say that it’s an entertaining and well-written series, and I did enjoy reading it, but I feel that it’s just not the most in-depth story that I’ve seen. The characters feel a bit fake at times, and, while the love story between Ron and Hermione (didn’t know if I should blur spoilers, so I decided to be safe) felt somewhat genuine, the one with Harry and Ginny was incredibly forced. She and Harry had interacted maybe once or twice before book 6 and even then they never had any major feelings displayed..
I also didn’t like the shebang in book 2 with the polyjuice potion. It was unnecessary, accomplished nothing, and it appeared to me that it was there to fill up pages. The one thing that came out of it, a “confession” from Draco that he wasn’t the heir, could have been accomplished with an overheard conversation in the halls.
Oh and Greek mythology as a whole. Instead of a nice neat “family tree” of the gods Zeus kind of turned it into a mycelium network that made my head spin.
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Agreed. Also, I find the last book of the Inheritance cycle to be a rather overrated book. The plot just kind of crashes because in it, the final ending basically undoes the whole point of the series previously, which was the main character going out and becoming experienced and mature. Instead, he becomes jaded and cynical, a fact that no one seems to address in the book. It really starts showing up when an obviously supernatural event happens in front of him, where he can use his powers to sense a, quote, “alien mind” causing it, but then he refuses to acknowledge it at all because he thinks it’s just a massive illusion despite even the narrator pointing towards it being a real person of some kind. That and the ending where he becomes basically a good version of the main villain.
On a different note, I really have a love-hate relationship with Roald Dahl. His WWII stories are entertaining, but his children’s books are rather disturbing at times and rely heavily on crude humor. In some, like The BFG, he doesn’t even attempt humor above the level of a young kid, which gets quite annoying after a while. The title character ends up coming off as an extremely immature giant for most of the start of the story.
And I have the same gripe with all of Rick Riordan’s books. Many of these children’s/ young adult authors seem to rely too much on a quick gag rather than actual storytelling. And Riordan spends an inordinate amount of time in his retellings of myths on some subjects that kind of aren’t appropriate for his audience.
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I’ve never been much of a reader myself, so while there are a small handful of books that I do enjoy (The Book Thief comes to mind), most of the ones I can remember reading were for school assignments. Of those, The Hunger Games is the one I remember finding incredibly overrated. I didn’t care for it then (I was the odd one out in my class) and I don’t care for it now.
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The Hunger Games was a decent story but I agree it was very overrated, and I think the number of copycats that came after it didn’t help its situation either.
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I think most of us can agree that books you were required to read always feel overrated when compared to a book you chose to read of your own volition. The power of choice is an amazing thing…
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