post your unpopular literature opinions?

[MrShannon385]

Curly was the best character in mice an men

Love these. Literature is SO subjective.

Also found that things I found amazing in my 20s, The Unbearable Lightness of Being' are now unreadable in my 40s.

My favourite Bronte novel is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Charlotte Brontë's Villette is the dullest book ever

Can't stand the Harry Potter series of books

The Brontë sisters' books are universally awful and borderline unreadable.

Massively over rated writers:

William Boyd
Maggie O’Farrell
Thomas Mann
Martin Amis post ‘Money’
Rachel Cusk

Normal People is terrible.

Catcher in the Rye is shit.
The Da Vinci Code is shit

George Eliot is a better writer than Jane Austen or any of the Brontes...

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow totally agree re: Sebastian Faulks.... Charlotte Grey was unreadable.

See also Martin Amis.... terrible

I hate hate hate Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I don't normally persevere with a book I'm not enjoying but I read this to the end because my best friend said it was wonderful. I loathe that book.

I also read Remains of the Day when I was very ill in bed and had nothing else to do (this was years ago pre Netflix). Talk about depressing!

No more Kazuo for me!

Every single Jane Austen book is awful. Same with Dickens and Tolkien's fiction (but not his non-fiction).

Very unpopular opinion: Wuthering Heights is brilliant and is really the story of Nelly and Heathcliff - I bet they got it on a few times.

I thought that was quite a popular opinion! I'm always a bit embarrassed to admit I liked a couple of his novels in front of certain trendy intellectual friends! 😆

Hamnet. Three hundred odd pages of angst for a denouement that takes half a page.

Oh my god, Thomas Mann. Why did I slog through the Magic Mountain? I kept expecting some sort of plot or interest to develop. Nichts.

Dickens: Turgid

Hardy: Turgid

Wuthering Heights: not romantic at all, full of awful people

Catch-22: urgh

(I'm sure there's more I can add to this, potters off to ponder some more...)

Normal People - absolute crap. Nothing happens and the characters are irritating as fuck (especially Marrianne).

The Hobbit was not a great read either. I saw the film first and expected it to be a much more entertaining book. But it was incredibly dull.

Is this a controversial opinion?

Agatha Christie books are simplistic rubbish.
Only rescued by by dramatised versions on film or radio

Absolutely, although I would phrase that as "never read a book that's recently won an award". Prizes now are a joke.

Same. If a book has won an award or is featured in Reese Witherspoon's book club, I know it's wise to avoid

Never Let Me Go made me really angry. EVERYONE i know was all "you'll love it, it's fantastic" It. Is. Drivel.

yy to George Elliot. Silas Marner is a thing of beauty.

But all the "oh HP is so derivative" - well yes. Lots of books/literature is/are. Shakespeare recycled the good plots, as did Tolkien, Dickens, anyone else you care to mention. And everyone doesn't have to like everything. but "oh it's so derivative" isn't the put-down many people think it is.

Most literature is a biological drive and when fertility/virility finishes, it is not fit for purpose. Poetry especially shows this. Most poets would admit to this little known fact

@peppermintcrisp That's interesting. Can you expand on it, and/or point to any references, studies or articles?

If a book has won an award or is featured in Reese Witherspoon's book club, I know it's wise to avoid

Also - ignore all the glowing recommendations on the cover. In some sort of inverse ratio, the more glowing the recommendation, the worse the book (especially if one of those glowing recommendations comes from Stephen Fry 😀)

Shakespeare🥱

Hated it at school, hated it at A level. Hated it ever since. I know he’s a national obsession. But I find it all really really boring. And I love reading, so will read anything. But Shakespeare.

Of Mice and Men, and Lord of the Flies are both crap. I truly cannot understand why of all the incredible books that have been written in the English language these are the two that pretty much all school children are expected to read. I loved English at school but these 2 books were almost enough to put me off it completely.

I really enjoy watching Shakespeare plays but cannot understand why we make school children sit and read them in classrooms. I can only assume that it's intended to put most people right off in order to keep up the pretence that it is a high brow. If we really want teenagers to be interested in Shakespeare we should take them to watch it acted well and start the lessons by looking at all the dick jokes and crude bits.

Hilary Mantel's writing style gets in the way of a jolly good ripping yarn. Can't read any of her stuff