What books have you seen constantly recommended that were terrible or vastly overrated once you read them?
What books have you seen constantly recommended that were terrible or vastly overrated once you read them?
r/AskMen
What books have you seen constantly recommended that were terrible or vastly overrated once you read them?
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Not exactly a book… but anything by Shakespeare.
The Five Love Languages ain’t all that.
A Game of Thrones.
It’s horrible. I managed to get half way through Book 3 after forcing myself to finish the first two and just found that I couldn’t read any more of it.
The writing is trash, the characters I really didn’t care if they lived or died, the storylines are just thrown together with all the cohesion of a jigsaw puzzle in a blender and the sex is just meh (though if violent sex is your thing…). I was glad to finally put it down and even gladder when I dropped all four books into the recycle bin.
If you are wanting to get into some older sci-fi or fantasy…yeah some of those. Maybe I’m in a slump and the magic is sort of gone, but I guess I have been spoiled by Star Trek novels.
I just read The Stranger by Camus. Was super excited because I’d heard so much about it. I didn’t get it. Granted, it was an audio book and I only listened to the first half.
Narnia.
Grapes of Wrath was a slog. I fully admit Steinbeck was a genius and a great author, but the novel was bleak and just not very enjoyable to read. There are much more readable scathing indictments of capitalism out there.
The Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield is a miserable protagonist. There are TONS of great novels that deal with the death of innocence, response to trauma, self-discovery and coming of age, most of which have better protagonists and are generally just better reads. I disliked it when I read it in high school and I thought it was worse when I reread it in my 30’s, and I have always loved reading as far back as I can remember, including many of the books that got assigned during school.
Phone
The Subtle art of not giving a fuck
Atomic Habits
The Catcher in the Rye. The author’s intent was to make Holden Caulfield annoying, and he succeeded.
The Goblin Emporer was constantly recommended as a more light hearted fantasy book. I couldn’t get through it. Not everything in your fantasy world has to have its own special little name.
All self help/layman friendly philosophy & psychology books.
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The Road
It’s literally the worst book I’ve ever read, but you’d never know how bad it was if you believe what you read on Reddit.
That book is trash
Anything by Jordan Peterson is not worth the paper it’s printed on. The man is a complete brainlet. The only thing worth reading he’s ever written is the description of his dream of him being a child and eating out his grandma’s hairy muff, which is not something that wild horses would’ve been able to drag out of me, let alone read it out loud for the audiobook version.
“Come As You Are” – highly rated self help book by a sex educator. Except it’s not actually encouraging help, but coddles the readers by basically saying they are perfect the way they are and if there are any issues then the world will just have to change for you.
The 48 Laws of Power. For a while there people were acting like it’s the instruction manual of how to be some sort of Machiavellian nut job. It’s a decent history book with some very basic lessons that anyone with street smarts or has worked in a politically charged office could identify.
Pride and Prejudice is insufferable.
Dungeon Crawler Carl. I tried to get through it I swear.
We are Legion, we are Bob. It’s sci-fi for morons to feel smart.
I love Ursula LeGuin’s books, but found The Left Hand of Darkness and Earthsea (arguably the two most famous and most recommended ones) extremely underwhelming. Everything else by her that I read (which was a lot) I liked much, much better.
The Alchemist, absolute tripe.
The Great Gatsby. I still have no idea why that guy is ‘great’.
Rich Dad, Poor Dad – highly overrated.
Every book that “changed life” of one of my friends, which I was forced to read.
The stuff you can read in them is so basic, boring and obvious, and don’t tell me “it might be obvious to you, but not to everyone”, because no, it’s absolutely obvious to everyone.
No More Mr Nice Guy.
It’s helpful to a very select group of people who meet certain criteria of neglected childhood experiences. But the advice it gives is outdated and relies on traditional gender roles and expression. Not only that, it gives the impression that if you just make yourself happy then your relationship will magically resolve itself
I began reading Attached and I’m pretty sure someone could start a cult based around it especially seeing the honest to god deranged way people behave when it comes to the theory. All in all I found it so full of misinformation and manipulative that it left a bad taste in my mouth. Its praying on people who need external validation and enabling/selling just that.
The Thursday Murder Club; In the UK Richard Osman has had huge success with a series of crime novels that have been turned into a Netflix series. In my opinion they are absolute shit – poorly written and confusing/nonsensical plot points. He is a smart man and he’s basically pitched these books at the boomer generation as they read, and have disposable income. I like Osman as a rule but his books are utter cynical money making shit. The Netflix show is painful to watch too and just stuffed with quality actors who don’t give a shit about the subject.
Also, all Harry Potter books. They’re pale imitations of good fantasy and again, poorly written.
Ulysses. That book was an absolute slog to get through. Just when you think you’ve started to understand Joyce’s writing style, he changes it. The book builds to the meeting of the two main characters, and when it finally occurs… nothing happens.
You make it through most of the book, and finally reach the last chapter… and you see it’s about 60 pages of text with no punctuation, sentence or paragraphs breaks. Almost like Joyce was saying “You think you’re smart because you got through the previous 400 pages, take this, asshole!”
“Pet Sematary” slow , boring, everything is heavily foreshadowed and the story wouldn’t exist if those moronic parents set up a fence.
The Prince by Machiavelli
So much irrelevant details about who knows who gives a fuck. Just get to the point ffs.
Kurt Vonnegut fan, I did not enjoy Slaughterhouse Five.
Fellowship of the Ring. I have to endure the pain of a book about walking just to get to the beauty of The Two Towers and Return of the King.
I struggled with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo…it really felt like a perverse fantasy due to her being quite sexualised in a lolita-esque way…
Stretching the parameters a bit here because it’s not a book but a 10-book series, but I found Malazan Book of the Fallen utterly insufferable, and I’m certainly not alone in that. I read the first two books (combined like 1500 pages), and I cared about what was happening for maybe 30 pages. I’ve literally never seen a more egregious deluge of storytelling errors garner such a rabid fanbase.
Catch 22. I’ve tried to read it so many times but it’s just not interesting.
A Tale of Two Cities. Couldn’t even finish it so I watched the movie and got an A on my paper.
The Hobbit. 2 pages to describe a chair etc. or someones lineage that makes no impact to the story.
I love that people love the book. I love that he created this super detailed world for his children’s bedtime stories. But the book was dull as hell. I give it a pass for being one of the founding novels in the genre so I would bump it’s score up to maybe 3/5 for me.
The Alchemist – it felt like I was reading a novel based off the book The Secret. Not inspiring at all and boring.
The Stand by Stephen King.
As a massive King fan I was so excited to read what many on Goodreads considered his finest work.
There are 500 pages of excellent story telling and world building. Unfortunately, there are over 1300 pages in total.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It’s great to read a chapter of or a few quotes from, dreadfully boring and repetitive if you actually read the entire thing.
The message of 1984 is probably truer today than ever before. But jesus the book is so boring. There’s a scene where they’re in a canteen for pages and pages… I really liked Animal Farm though 😉
Fahrenheit 451
Overlander. Or whatever that book about some lady being transported back to 1600s Scotland’s called.
The person recommending it presented it as a time-travel adventure. Maaybe 30-something me would feel differently, but 20 year old me did not want time-travel romance.
100 Years of Solitude
Any New York Times bestseller
The Art and Zen of Motorcycle Repair. Have been recommended this book by people numerous times. Made it half way through and had to stop. Was very boring and whiny.
Atlas Shrugged
White Fragility. I’m Latino and have never subscribed to identity politics but in 2020, when everyone (left leaning high school contacts and some college) where talking about the book. Well, I decided to give it a try and the overall impression of it was that it was bullshit. Not only that but in the book, Di Angelo even says that she had her epiphany in a party(?) where she was surrounded by non-white people and began thinking racist thoughts lmao. The book was all projection from her part but it was still hilarious how many self-hating white people or virtue-signalling whites swear by it.
Three Body Problem – thinly sketched characters are just expositionary devices for a physics lesson.
Everything by Dostoevsky. For the life of me, I don’t understand why he’s held up as an icon of literature. Tolstoy and Gogol are both far superior, just among his countrymen, and when you stack him against contemporary geniuses from Western Europe, it’s no contest.
Also, “Slaughterhouse Five,” by Vonnegut. You mean to tell me that, if you throw out cause and effect (as in the monologue about watching a bombing in reverse), you decontextualize the events and get nonsense? Wow, so profound.
Atlas Shrugged
I can’t say it’s been constantly recommended, but I remember reading Jane Eyre in high school as an assignment and it’s the only book I couldn’t force myself to finish. It was so dull.
Reading Harry Potter for the first time as an adult. So many plot holes and things that didn’t make sense.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.
Might be the worst thing I’ve ever read. Nothing happens.
Yet is often top of the lists for greatest modern books.
Handmaid’s tale, I saw so many feminists crying and comparing America in 2016 and now to the society in that novel so I gave it a shot. It’s a very mid dystopian novel that focuses on imo the least interesting characters in that society. Why focus on the handmaidens when there’s women outside the patriarchal societies fighting to survive in what is basically fallout + mad max rolled into one, I wanna hear their stories.
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
There’s good and bad to it… but mostly bad.
Meditations