I'm glad to see the hate for The Catcher in the Rye. I read it when I was 23 and thought it was crap. I actually threw it across the room into the wastebasket when I finished. I always thought people loved it because they read it when they were 12.

Yeah, anything by Cooper. His horrible prose nearly brought me to tears in my Freshman College Lit Class.

anything by Shakespeare. most overrated author ever.

(shh... i really enjoyed Catcher in the Rye :P)

LOTR hands down.

That's just bizarre.



I think ANYTHING that one was forced to read in high school should be excluded (unless you are still in high school) Most of us were primates in high school and our evaluations about such things would be silly. When I was in high school I thought DOC SAVAGE books were masterpieces.

I'll say Fellowship of the Ring. I could never make it all the way through. Loved the Hobbit though.

Fantasy IS my favorite genre, but I do not like LOTR much and think as a book it is overrated. It's influence is a different story.

I liked LOTR a lot more on re-reading. When I was no anxious for something to happen, I enjoyed the atmosphere, gathering gloom, and dramatic tension a lot more. I also liked re-reading Borormir's dialogue, and realizing what a whiny git he was right from the start.

Put me down for hating Gatsby along with most Fitzgerald book, and about half of Hemingway's output. I'm not a huge fan of Dickens either - in fact, I've hated most of his shit.

Slop101--- should we just put you down for hating anything that is good and wonderful? hehe I cant disagree with you more about Fitzgeralds stuff and most of Hemingways, although the little Dickens I have read, I cant seem to get into that much.

'Tender Is The Night' is one of my favorite books of all time. Gatsby is fairly high up there as well. I actually just read Hemingway's 'A Farewell To Arms' last night, quite good as well.

As for me I think overrated is such a harsh comment, seeing as though different people get different things from books.

At any rate my choice would be... Faulkner's 'The Sound And The Fury'

I have tried to read it twice and both times I get turned off by his style of..."Jim Says.....",, Barry Says......Jim Says........"

Ok Ok I get it these people are talking, but I hate it when authors preface every sentence with "Jim Says" or something of the sort.

I don't even know if it reads that way all the way thru, but I couldnt take it.
Storywise, I'm sure its amazing though.

I always thought that Fellowship was a chore to get through, but really enjoyed the last two books.

It has been a few years since I read Cather in the Rye, but it never really did speak to me. My two most hated books were Great Expectations and The Scarlet Letter, though A Separate Peace is up there too. I actually didn't mind Tale of Two Cities.

Shakespeare has some work that is very low in quality, but I definitely wouldn't say anything by him is overrated. Some of the wordplay and rhythm still blow me away.

Kind of, but not really. As far as "classics" go, I love pretty much anything by Steinbeck and especially Dostoyevsky. Oh, and anyone who doesn't appreciate Shakespeare, doesn't appreciate good stories with good characters with good dialog...

really? i really enjoy Steinbeck and Dostoyevsky. does that mean their books contain no characters w/ good dialog? maybe you should keep the judgmental comments to yourself.

perhaps it's because english isn't my first language, perhaps b/c i find iambic pentameter to be just another arbitrary technique w/ no inherent artistic merit, perhaps b/c i don't like soap operas, perhaps b/c i don't like olde english except in a historic context, i find Shakespeare to be overrated. glad others enjoy his works and i do think there are gems within his works, but i don't think he's the greatest english author. i'd take ishiguro's remains of the day over hamlet.

--
just to clarify, i'm not saying Shakespear sucks - just that there's a lot of tedium to get to the gems. similarly, i'd put Dickens in a that category - some classics, but also some that are very tedious to read.

Shakespeare didn't write in "Olde English."

Gotta jump on the Catcher in the Rye bandwagon. Somehow I avoided having to read it in school. Then a few years back I got into this kick of willingly reading the classics for fun (that phase didn't last long!), and decided to finally read CITR. I was underwhelmed, to say the least. I kept thinking, "Well, this is all just set-up; the plot will kick in soon" and before I knew it I was at the end of the book. I just didn't get it. Perhaps I was too old when I read it? Maybe it needs to be read by teens. Whatever the reason, it didn't speak to me. I didn't pitch the book across the room like others here did, but I came close.

As for Lord of the Rings, I dearly love the books, but I can certainly understand the dislike for them expressed here. Tolkein can be particularly maddening when you have to slog through 50 pages of travelogue, as he describes literally every twig and branch the Fellowship step over, and then lavishly devotes a full 1/4 of a page to the entire Gandalf vs Balrog battle. I'm not a fan of the pages full of Elven lyrics either, and usually skip over them when I read the books. That said, there's still a lot for me to enjoy in the books; enough to outweigh any negatives.

Gatsby put me to sleep. repeatedly.

I totally LOVED Catcher In The Rye. I've only read a book twice two times in my life... Catcher In The Rye and The Giver.

I'm not really into the classics, although I did enjoy The Sound And The Fury.

If I don't like a book I don't finish so most of my reading (outside of school) is pleasurable.

I also enjoy LOTR and agree with your criticisms here. Also, there are two words in LOTR which are almost coma-inducing: Tom Bombadil

The only classic I remember reading in HS and actively hating because I thought it was stupidly boring was "The Scarlet Letter"... I guess I must have not read anything else memorable because it's all a blur otherwise.
My HS English teacher Junior year was big into symbolism, and we had to do line by line analasies (sp?) of stuff like Paradise Lost. I think I'd rather gouge out my eyes than do that again.

Ha ha! Totally agree! Thank God they didn't put him in the movie!

I think you have a point here. I hated reading in high school, which was only compounded by the fact that we were forced to read "classics" which I had a hard time appreciating back then.

And while I won't say Shakespeare's writing is overrated, I do not like it at all. I just don't like to read it, and think it's so much better when experienced the way it was meant to be experienced: on the stage.

I, for one, really enjoyed The Catcher in the Rye. I don't find it overrated whatsoever.

For a book that I can say is overrated without a doubt would have to be The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Pure BS. An absolute waste of paper that is highly touted and plagued upon us by spurned feminists.

Also, while I can concede that Ayn Rand is a pretty good author, I must say that find her novels to be somewhat overrated.

Snow Falling on Cedars. I still weep at how i had to waste my eyes reading through this pretentsious vomit. Morbid bleak "did he commit murder or not" tale with a bunch of boring WW2 flashbacks (how'd that happen?) and all neatly gets resolved with it being a misunderstanding. It was like seeing the Matrix when i looked in the text and swear I could see a giant middle finger pointed at me. Fuck it and fuck my skank of a teacher for shoving this shit down our throats.

Crapper in the Rye as well.