What classic books are the most overrated (book club, plot, novels)

[booklass]

I could never finish Catcher In The Rye, and I detested Lord of the Flies. Of course, it was hard to appreciate whether or not it was a well written book, because it was just one in the list of dark, dismal books read in my high school and early college years. And people wonder why teens are so depressed.

[booklass]

I have found out, though, that some classics are best listened to than read. I downloaded a few to my Ipod, and I appreciated them more, I think.

[Doll Eyes]

Well here's a few more, so bad I couldn't even finish them, yet they're raved about.

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (Pulitzer Prize winner, my as*)

Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

[Elle Oh Elle]

Well, there was a weird tale of Stepford Wives...

[TXRunner]

Originally Posted by Jess5

I agree with you regarding Russian authors. I tried several times to finish Anna Karenina, and couldn't. It was the first book I thought of for this thread.

I have to put The Sun Also Rises in there also. I never could finish it either.

I couldn't even make it through the Ana Karenina audiobook. It was just a big waste of time, like listening to white background noise.

[EnricoV]

I was never a big Hemingway fan. Or Dickens, much. Never even tackled the Russians. Maybe now that I'm older, I should give them another shot.

But way too many of you all are naming some of my favorite books. Overrated? Not by me.

[Gunluvver2]

With the exception of his The Naked and The Dead everything I have read by Norman Mailer was a waste of my time but I did love that one.
GL2

[Gunluvver2]

Originally Posted by AnnieA

I really liked this post though I did like Tale of Two Cities and Tolkien oh my. One of my brothers gave me a paperback set of Tolkien and I tried and tried to get started on it....finally, he found the Hobbit and that set me off. It was slow going though....LOL. I felt the same way about James Mitchner and the book he wrote where he described a mesa or maybe it was a grain of sand, for the first 100 pages or so......I skipped the next 100 and enjoyed the rest of the book....Centennial ? Texas ?

Several of James Micheners books start off slow but if you stick with it the rewards are fantastic. He must have been paid by the word for some of his novels.

GL2

[midge1021]

Originally Posted by Doll Eyes

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

It's always interesting to me to find out about everyone's varying tastes. I LOVED Brave New World. Maybe I just read it at the right time for me, but it was exactly what I needed when I read it.

[banjomike]

The Plainsman by James Fennimore Cooper.
it was required reading, back in the day, and it was pretty much fanciful junk. Cooper never got close to the Great Plains, and knew nothing of the people who actually lived there.