Howdy, Stranger!
Categories
Most overrated book?
The materials in this website are in no way intended to replace the professional medical care, advice, diagnosis or treatment of a doctor, qualified personal trainer, therapist, dietitian or nutritionist Runners's World, Part of the Hearst UK well-being network © Copyright 2017
Comments
All non-fiction genre books;
Sci Fi, Romance, Fantasy, Historical, Crime, etc etc
"I know what I like and I like what i know...."
Jesus wept*
*well actually he didnt but thats another sorry
sorry...story
haha see what i did there...
no?
ok
The Davinci Code's another pretty empty read, but like a lot of that type of book (Robert Ludlum's for example), they engage while you are reading, but when you've finished you realise that it was all a load of bollocks. The Davinci code is the second worst movie adaptation of a book I ever seen. The worst is Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of The Vanities, also starring Tom Hanks! but great book.
I've just finished reading the three Martin Cruz Smith, Arcady Renko novels (Gorky Park, Polar Star and Red Square) which are all excellent. I also read the source novel for the movie "The Prestige", which was really good - it's very different from the movie, though it does explore the same themes.
Don't think much of the Harry Potter books either, those themes are far better explored by the likes of Neil Gaimen and the late Diana Wynne Jones.
Oh I see an experiment coming
I have always planned to read the books in Swedish, might compare by reading a bit in English the English books afterwards.
Lord of the Rings
Oh my Lord is that book a pile of steaming...!?!
Read it when i was 17/18 ( which is the only ages you should read it) and as I was going along it was "your kidding ?"..."no please"...."WTF?" ( well it would have been if we had said things like that in 1986/7)
As for the ending well . He just chucked it in the fire!!!??? Thats it thats it!!??? Over 1000 pages and we dont get to see Sauron!??
Only seen one of the movies at the cinema the last one I think. I laughed at the elves. I got glared at for that.
20+ years from now all the teenagers who read Harry Potter will feel the same....as for the adults they are beyond help and hopefully the Zombie plague of 2018 will take care of them.
Catcher in the Rye - good point. Dull and oddly pointless.
On Lord Of The Rings, agree that the books are bafflingly poorly structured, very uneven in style, have whole characters who just seem to drift off, and have a weak ending. Still a gripping read though, and I sort of liked the fact that he clearly didn't know how it was going to end.
Interesting to see all the obligatory sneering comments about the bible. Ahhhh internet forums, eh? Kind of agree with Phil's comment on the Koran, although not having read it in the original it seems churlish to comment - plenty of other favourites do not translate well to English either, Kafka being a good example.
I read them years ago, and enjoyed them, but I didn't see the tv versions.
I started a Harry Potter book - the first one, I think, and didn't get very far.
Same with Labyrinth.
Another was the Girl with the Pearl Earring.
Moby Dick - now there's an interesting one. I've tried twice to read that, and while I enjoyed some passages (often startlingly homoerotic too), I've never managed to get right the way through.
On foreign language stuff, I find quite a lot of Guenter Grass is horribly over-rated, after The Tin Drum. And even the Tin Drum is unreadable nonsense in the last third of it. And that's even trying to forget the loathsome hypocrisy that's come to light in recent years of what he really did in his wartime years.
Mrs Tmap has read the Larson books in French and says they're better than the English versions. That's odd, given the linguistic similarities of Swedish and English. I think it might be that non-English speakers have more exacting standards for translations as they read more of them - I had to read The Good Soldier Schweik in French because the English translation was unreadably poor.
Robinson Crusoe must be the most mind boring book I have ever read. I only read it as it was the book we were reading at the book club I went to at the time and after struggling to the end I discovered that I was the only one that had bothered!
Human Remains by Sebastian Faulks dragged on as well until the last 1/8th where it sudeenly came to life.
Has anyone mentioned Catch 22? One of the few books I could not finish, that and Dice Man. I actually hated Dice Man.
Read the Finkler Question while on holiday and wasn't that impressed. I guess it got the Booker last year because it was Jacobson's 'turn'.
you didn't like that?
i saw a review which gave it 22/7.
A bit too subtle for you anon?
Lol, in Swedish. But if you' re cute, single and in my age I can read the English one for you in a Swedish accent