post your unpopular literature opinions?

[MrShannon385]

Curly was the best character in mice an men

Haven't been able to read it. Page after page of tedious narrative about what colour belt/trousers/shirt each dwarf was wearing, how he had his beard, etc. GET ON WITH THE STORY!!

Too late now, obviously, but you can just skip all the Jewish mysticism stuff in Daniel Deronda, without losing anything from the main story. Ditto the battle scenes in War & Peace.

Austen is just Mills and Boon for midwits

@hwaclanhdead thank you! I've ordered Defiant Courage.

I LOVE the Lord of the Rings. There is something so medidative and calm, yet also grand about it. It's homey yet heroic, slow yet epic, all at once. And the descriptions! You gotta embrace them. Go on Tolkein, tell me more about the rocks surrounding Mordor! What colour were they, exactly what colour? How did they feel underfoot? How did they feel underfoot to all of the different characters, given all their different types of feet and quality of shoes, which you must now also describe to me in excellent detail? Tell me again Tolkein, please, please explain, were the rocks surrounding Mordor the same or different to the rocks just a little further outside of Mordor? How about the rocks INSIDE of Mordor, yes Tolkein, now we're talking.

American literature is better than English.

The first book group meeting I went to was discussing a Jodie Picoult book. They were going through a set of suggested book group questions about it, and without having read the book I could answer them all, it was just so formulaic .

I haven’t read any John Saul in years @SerafinasGoose . From what I remember they satisfied a gloomy teenage interest in the dark and nasty. James Herbert was interesting. Always a shower sex scene, freely admitted his marketing/ad background led him to provide what the public wanted, which in those days was gore, horror and shower sex. When he tried milder stuff it wasn’t the same. Rats devouring people fine, traditional ghost stories not so good.

Lol so true! I think that this is the only time the film was better than the book!!!
ETA: or maybe because of the insane level of detail in the book the set makers for the film just did a colour by numbers job. Lol

The Goldfinch was really two or three good books all crammed into one book that went on too long.

Moby Dick is a piece of boring crap and the only reason it's famous is because Americans like to think they can write good books and always have been able to.

It's boring. In the Heart of the Sea, which is about the 'real' story, is much better.

Emma is funny and very perceptive. I prefer Northanger Abbey though.

To people who compare Cold Comfort Farm to I Capture the Castle, maybe on eccentricity but I couldn’t stomach the Starkadders or Brother of the More Famous Jack.

DM used to dislike me reading Enid Blyton as a child (she says the opposite now!) but I loved them all.

I couldn’t get on with Wolf Hall either and find some of Mantel’s books to be readable and others, dross.

I’ve never really got on with Dickens either.

Another classic I’ve tried and failed to read is Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, must’ve tried 3 times.

Anyone who thinks Austen is a romantic needs to re-read the books. She is a stone-cold realist - far less of a romantic than her male contemporaries or the Brontes (Austen would never have married Jane Eyre to Rochester - a disaster in the making).

I think the reason it's famous is because it made a good film.

Eleanor Oliphant was dreadful old rubbish. Why so many people rave about it is beyond me.

Marian Keyes is very overrated.

I adore Jane Austen but think she should have written Mrs Norris with a bit more compassion.

Bronte only marries Jane Eyre to Rochester after he’s been blinded and maimed and turned into a recluse, though, while Jane has found herself a family, an home, and an inheritance.

I mean, I don’t disagree that Rochester is an utter bastard (people often forget that he isn’t even going to marry Jane bigamously initially, but is just planning to seduce his powerless teenage employee), but I think CB isn’t blind to the problematics and very obviously weakens the Gothic rake and strengthens the friendless orphan governess.

But no, JA definitely wouldn’t have married them! The idea!

Chaucer is very entertaining.

Both Margaret Atwooc and The Handmaid's Tale are massively overrated.

As is Hilary Mantel, some of her earlier books are just dreadful

I really dislike Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching. It was disjointed and annoying, and I gave up after a few chapters. No idea if her other books are equally muddled, but I am not tempted to read them. 😝

If you read very early McEwan, the short stories (In Between the Sheets collection, I think) then you will understand that comment.

Noooo!!! It's my favourite Charlotte Brontë book especially when you discover that it's semi-autobiographical

Some films are actually better than the books they're based on