Books you feel were overrated

[ClearSky456]

Just finished Lessons in Chemistry and kind of wondering what all the fuss was about?! Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it but given so many people had told me I HAD to read it, I was left feeling a bit underwhelmed.

Anyone else felt the same, or anyone felt like this about another book recently? I had the same feeling with Daisy Jones and the Six too.

Oh, another one, though not in anyone’s library of greats: Blood Orange.

A decent enough book to read on check the plane. But why the hype? Poor stuff.

The Handmaid's Tale is IMO one of the most overrated books of the 20th century.

Likewise 1984. Octavia Butler churned out a far better dystopia.

Agree with a lot of the ones posted on here. I'd be amazed if many women truly appreciated Fowles' 'The Magus'. His 'Collector' is a lot worse. I've rarely read such creepy, sinister, misogynistic tripe.

Dickens: hit and miss but I do love Great Expectations and Bleak House.

Brontes: mostly wonderful (but Anne is undersung). I find Villette a far better novel than Jane Eyre.

I'm also not sharing the Austen love. I do 'get' the irony but I find her depictions of those cloistered societies and the woeful lot of the women profoundly depressing. Charlotte Bronte agreed, calling her books akin to a carefully fenced, finely cultivated garden. Which is OK I suppose if you like that sort of thing.

'The Book Thief' is a YA book and should probably be read with that in mind. I find it OK: enjoyed it but haven't rushed to reread.

As for The God of Small Things, I have to disagree there. Absolutely beautiful novel.

A lot of it can be around your stage of life. I read the 5 people you meet in heaven when I was quite young and it did make me think. Reading it now it seems trite

i I didn’t mean CCM but I remember seeing a scene from the film with Penelope Cruz running down the road with flat feet flipping along and I couldn’t take it seriously after that

the book I have despised most and regretted reading was Jemima J but I don’t think that was ever widely rated!!

Eleanor Oliphant

”Dickens: hit and miss”…

You can only be an academic.

@SerafinasGoose I totally agree Anne Bronte is undersung.

@EthelMcUnready I love Catcher In The Rye too but dislike all the others on your list. Catcher has a special place in my heart, I don't know why. I first read it at 15 and became absolutely obsessed with it, I bought copies of it for everyone I knew that Xmas and re-re-re-re-read it multiple times over the next few years, to the point where it was just part of my life, I'd always have it with me, I took it everywhere and dipped into different passages throughout the day (and night!) according to my mood. I have never done that with any other book before or since.

Pleased to say that gradually tailed off and I have a more normal relationship with it now but due to all of that nonsense I feel it's part of my history. (I don't tell people all of this in everyday conversations, I just say that I like it.)

The Power - Naomi Alderman, who, I was amazed to read, was a protege
of Margaret Atwood
I had to leave a book group when declaring that I would not read it, diligently
or otherwise.
I’ve read a few sanitised auto/biographies recently, no goss, plenty self-aggrandisement though, or sterile facts, figures, theories, dry as dust.

I really disliked the Salt Path too, I so wanted to love it but they seemed quite irresponsible and also as you say, judgemental. The descriptions of the surroundings were ok and issues explored interesting, but I couldn’t imagine enjoying their company. I think you need to feel an affinity to them to enjoy it.

(now I sound like a mentalist. I probably am.)

The girl with the dragon tattoo series. It’s just one huge technology advert.

nothing happens during the majority of the books and then it leaves you on a cliff hanger

I loved the Star of the Sea too! Mystery and history! Also didn't like Lincoln in the Bardo or The Lovely Bones. Maybe you and I have the same taste? Have you read A Gentleman In Moscow? Cos I loved it, and you might too!

Girls of 15 loved it! I didn't.

Love Wolf Hall and Owen Meany and Madame Bovary and so many others mentioned. I haven't read many of the over hyped ones, probably for that reason, though I think I have many of them queued up somewhere on my kindle. The Book Thief I have managed about 2 chapters. Crime and Punishment I was encouraged to read as a teen by my French/Russian teacher. Time I will never get back. She was also well into Sartre. Decided at an early age I don't give a hit about navel gazing men. 😂

Absolutely agree. A load of boring rubbish. How it became a best seller is anybody's guess. But I bought it because of the hype.

Same! Really love it and re-read it often.

I loved Catcher as an angst ridden teenager! I must read it again at some point and see if the intervening 40 years has changed my view of it.

@Pocketfullofdogtreats Gentleman in Moscow is brilliant, isn’t it? I also loved All the Light We Cannot See, it’s well worth a read.

Absolutely, The Tennant of Wildfell Hall is an exceptional novel

@baileybrosbuildingandloan I enjoyed the first two Thursday Murder Clubs as read them in traditional format.
I tried the third on Audible and it's also the only one I've ever returned. I will have a go at reading it but could not get on with the narrator. Made me hate characters I liked! Just too much.

The first two have a different narrator, who is much better, not sure why they replaced her.

I had the exact same experience with "The Heart's Invisible Furies" and I really wanted to love it

I’m reading A Gentleman in Moscow now- love it. Heard on the radio the other day that it’s going to be a series on Paramount + with Ewan McGregor as Count Rostov

I love this book and read it each time I visit Kefalonia 🌞
Though agree about the length, especially the chapters about Mussolini 😴
However, the ending was so rushed! It was as though he was on a deadline and raced through it in an afternoon, or even, went off on his Jolies and asked someone else to finish it for him. Someone who hadn't even read the book.

So weird.

Omg I first came across Our Mutual Friend about 45 years ago when it was on tv. But that bit you quoted, I really did just get goosebumps!

For me

Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - particularly where the story stops and there's an awkward bit of explaining to a character

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Dark Matter - really just (not very good) a kids book

Birdsong - felt very manipulative of emotions, sex thrown in for cheap middle brow thrills

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - very derivative chick lit but with a war setting to make it seem "deep"

Birdsong (mawkish and sentimental)
Daisy Jones and the six (what a load of nonsense, cliche, slow, no soul or heart; and boring!!!)
Penance (got a quarter of the way in and that was enough; was it written by a child?!)
Prophet Song (subject matter fascinating but writing style infuriating, why not use normal grammar/paragraphs?!)