to think this is the most over-rated book ever

[SlightlyJaded]

'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things'

I love books. From big dramatic plotlines and epic storylines to subtle and beautfifully written prose with well drawn characters. I like quirky books, classic books, modern literature, poetry - anything well written or engaging.

I almost never have to 'force' myself to finish a book but always do finish a book if I've started (why do we do that? ) but thought 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things' was the dullest most over-rated dross I've ever read.

Or did I miss something?

And yes, this should be in books, but I prefer AIBU

I've never been able to finish 'Pride and Prejudice'. I hate it,though unlikely many people,I love Wuthering Heights.

Unlike.

I am reading the Slap at the moment and finding it only just OK (pulp junk but is readable, on my opinion). But tried before that to read John Irving's latest, Last Night at Twisted River, and could not even get a quarter of the way through (and I usually absolutely love John Irving). I rarely stop a book part way through because I always feel I am being unfair to the writer, but in that case, I just could not commit another moment of my life to it...

I love Time Travellers Wife! (so much that I did not see the film because I did not want to spoil my imagained characters). My stepdaughter (aged 17) has just finished her next book Her Fearful Symmetry and said it was "good but rather weird". Sounds good to me, I will try it next.

Oh yes, A Farewell To Arms-that really is tedious.

Eat Pray Love. One woman takes a paid year off to travel, stuff herself, navel gaze and romp. The surprise? She felt better afterwards. I would tolerate this tosh in the pages of a glossy magazine, but when it is graced by the covers of a book, it really riles me.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Forgot to mention that earlier.

I threw The Celestine Prophecy overboard from a Greek ferry, it was so dire. Sorry sea.

Eat Pray Love sounds like my worst nightmare, I don't have anymore time for such drivel.

I like Henry James and Milan Kundera.

PMSL "Sorry sea"

I wanted to love that book about the squawky voiced kid who thinks he is the Messiah. But it was...just a bit rubbish wasn't it?

???

can't remember what it was called! Not the bible before you ask :o

Am glad people are mentioning the Lovely Bones as I never worked out what the fuss was about that one.

I've not read 'The Slap' but just snorted at the first line of an Amazon review of it

"If Christos Tsiolkas had wanted to name his novel after its most prominent moment or topic, then he should have called it `unpleasant people having repetitive, unpleasant sex' rather than 'The Slap'."

It is rare that I give up on a book.

But The Slap... awful . I don't believe the author had ever met any women in his whole life, such was their bizarre portrayal in the book.

The Time Traveller's Wife - I finished that, but I felt I'd finished it ten pages in. Talk about repetitive. And what a miserable, whining pair.

If you haven't read The Hobbit/LoTR by the time you are 14 it's probably too late.

Alice Sebold's sequel was even worse!

Girl with the Pearl Earing was distilled tedium.

The author of 'The Slap' is openly gay ...

Frankenstein is dullsville too. I can't be doing with epistolatory novels.

To the Lighthouse.

Has no one mentioned Rachel Cusk. I did like a life's work, but the novels... ye gods, she evidently has some friends in the media because every time one comes out she has big full page interviews with big full page photos as if anybody actually likes the stuff. Maybe they do, I've just yet to meet one.
Brick Lane - god, how much crap will people forgive in desperate search for multiculturalism (written by posh oxbridge person).
Agree with UQD re. Jenny Colgan. OK, not exactly overrated as not very rated in the first place, but she gets big f.o. advances.
Anything by middle-aged man hankering after young flesh ie Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie's Ground Beneath Her Feet (dross), and Frantzen latest (completly unconvincing portrait of 20something Asian babe lusting over 50 year old earnest married man).

The Slap was just awful Every single character in that book deserved a slap of their own.

I liked The Slap, v good on the Griks. Bit rubbish on the ladies, but he is a homerseckshal after all.

Loved Unbearable Lightness 25 years ago, reread recently and was irritated by sexism. Shame.

H James The Golden Bowl