Top 10 Most Overrated Books of All Time
Some books get a lot more fame and praise than they really deserve. That'a fact. If there are lists with best books ever, there should be this one as well. Feel free to add any book you consider overrated. I know there are lots and lots of them and I chose picking only the ones I've read, which basically means: the ones popular enough in my country for me to try them out. I'm missing the whole world's perspective, so please help me out there and don't get me wrong when you see books you've never heard of.
Why so low? Well, because I know many people who realize it's total crap but still enjoy reading it just for fun. The number of people claiming it's the best thing they've ever read or the most romantic story ever is just hilarious, and the commercial success is unbelievable. I wish some good authors would earn as much as Meyer does.
This story gives me secondhand embarrassment. I hope whoever wrote this story, Stephenie Meyer or someone, gets professional mental help. They need it.
If you're into BDSM, drawn-out sex scenes, and poorly written characters, then this book is for you. If you're not into any of the things I listed above, avoid this book. It's just a repulsive porno, but instead of a video, it's a novel.
The writing is terrible, which makes the book unreadable (at least in my case).
I have never in my life read a more overrated book.
This book was well-written, but I don't know why it is overrated. The Great Gatsby was published in 1925, and it's almost 90 years old. The characters in the book weren't really likable, but their personality traits and development were based on themes such as sexual relationships and upper-class entitlement.
It is well-written, but it was one of the most boring books I ever read. I felt no emotion for any of the characters, even after they died. The ending felt rushed, like the author was tired of writing it and wanted to tie up loose ends.
It is just so full of holes. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John never met Jesus. They lived after him by at least forty years. Jesus never wrote down his teachings. Most of his disciples were fishermen and couldn't write. There were numerous religions with virgin births and saviors who died on a cross.
Constantine, who kicked off Christianity (so it is said) 3 or 4 hundred years later, converted on his deathbed. Some say he was hedging his bet. He was a pretty high member in Sol Invictus, Sun worshippers. In the Northern Hemisphere, the sun reaches its lowest place on the horizon on the 21st or 22nd of December. Three days later on the 25th of December, "The Sun Rises."
I grew up in the late 60s and never could understand why some of my generation idolized this book so much. The ones who thought this was "the greatest" were usually the kids of upper-middle-class wealthy parents. I guess being the child of working stiffs, I found it hard to identify with a character that was a snooty rich boy, whining about how hard the world was. "Poor little rich boy" was what kept passing through my mind reading this book.
From things I've read elsewhere, it seems the author himself was a rather strange character with a huge ego.
I'm so sick of hearing that Harry Potter is one of the greatest books ever written. Sure, it's one of the most extravagant and creative, but there isn't anything deep, and the part about wizards and magic and dragons is the only realistic part! Almost everyone finds their true love, and I don't think I've heard of anyone there who's divorced.
Harry Potter is pretty good, but I personally think it got too much fame and praise. And I really hate the fact that to be a wizard, you have to be born into it even when you're a muggle, because when you're a muggle, it's because an ancestor was a wizard but the family had forgotten.
And probably one of the worst things about it: Harry Potter's parents were very gifted. The only thing that these books taught me is that instead of making this a book where you can realize you can be whoever you want to be regardless of your parents, the only way you'll be good is if your parents are as well.
It makes me sick whenever I think about it. Almost everyone gets wonderful love from their parents, which I don't, and everyone's lives were pretty good before that, except for Harry Potter. But even Harry Potter's life before he found out he was a wizard is better than mine. At least he knew that they weren't his real parents. My real mom is always insulting me, calling me fat and ugly, and she's always trying to change me.
My point is that this is clearly not a classic and never will be, and is way too overrated. The books aren't that good overall.
This book ruined The Hunger Games for me! Katniss starts a new Hunger Games and forces the Capitol children to fight. She doesn't name her kids. Gale disappears after Katniss loses it on him for accidentally killing Prim. She chooses Peeta, who is chemically induced by Snow to kill Katniss! Think about it! She fought to end the Hunger Games and then rebuilt it (albeit for one last time, but still...). And she doesn't name her own kids! That's not just depressing. It's utterly sinister, unrelatable, and sick! Nothing is resolved happily, and the plot holes (such as Gale's disappearance) left me more than dissatisfied!
I voted for this because it's just like all the other hyped books right now, like The Hunger Games and The Selection Trilogy. They all have a tomboy girl as the protagonist, live in the future, and have people divided into definitive groups. In all three book series, there is also a fight to overthrow the government. I could go on, but it's just to prove the point. You can say what you want about Isabella Swan, but at least she has a different personality from Katniss, America, and Beatrice.
It's cringe, and she shouldn't have chosen either of them. They are both toxic choices. I was team end this book before I get secondhand embarrassment.
Good grief, was this boring. I'm a fan of world-building, but the world of this book was so boring! And why does it have to be so long? I love long books. I generally dislike books if they're below 250 pages, but this book - you could read 50 pages and barely anything would happen!
Halfway through book 2, I don't even know the characters. Are Pippin and Merry brave or comic relief? Does Aragorn have a personality, or is he just I'm a brave king the whole time? Are Frodo and Sam even friends, because they hardly even tell us anything about them!
The plot is so boring. Reading this awful book was honestly one of the most boring things I ever did. 3.5/10. Worst book I've read to date.
The book was okay.
The characters were okay.
The plot was okay. It wasn't super exciting. I don't think there was even a climax.
The Fault in Our Stars is totally overrated in my opinion. I've read much better books than this. And also, you might think I'm heartless, but I didn't even cry at the ending. It was so predictable and cliche. I couldn't connect with the characters at all. It wasn't even that romantic.
This book is boring. The only reason I got to the end of this book was to see what everyone was praising on and on about. The plot was flat. And seriously, Augustus? You're gonna carry around a box of cigarettes just to be all like "it's a metaphor"? Wow.
Once again, this reminds us that Stephenie Meyer needs help. This is a mixture of pick me girl and the typical main character plot, but with more obsessive and possessive parts. It's a toxic story which is pretty nice, but still ew.
Wait! People actually like Twilight? No way!
Tedious and thin, filmmakers pretty much have to do a lot of the work to get something out of this when adapting it for cinema. A lot of purple prose and not much else.
I'm still not convinced this book is legit. Things only truly have resonance if you've read Mockingbird first. If it's legit, then it's best forgotten. It's just the first draft of a book that became something else. Either way, it's seriously overrated and incredibly disappointing. Potentially dubious.
What a truly cynical marketing con this book turned out to be. Harper Lee wrote one great novel, and that should have been the end of the story. Some literary lowlifes conspired to sully "Mockingbird" with this pathetic epilogue.
The entire book series was absolutely horrendous. It is so boring and not even a good topic. Anyone could have written it better, anyone.
I like the series, but I find this final book a bit of a mess.
I honestly only like the first book. That's just me.
Oh my jimmies, why isn't this at the top? All you ever hear from teenagers today is Hunger Games this, Catching Fire that, Katniss is my savior swag YOLO! UGH, what happened to the good old days with HP?
The writing in this book was lazy, the characters severely underdeveloped, and the premise is not a tenth as original as everybody says! Hasn't anybody ever read The Running Man by Stephen King? Or The Long Walk for that matter? It's all been DONE BEFORE, and MUCH better at that!
Why is Twilight number 1? It's definitely horrible, and I will grudgingly admit that even the crappy Hunger Games is better, but it's no secret that those books suck. Some people clearly don't know the meaning of "overrated" - it DOES NOT mean worst.
It's quite a shame because this book does teach important lessons on racism, but there's just one problem with this book that makes it pretty bad. That problem is the plot. For some reason, this book doesn't stay relevant to the plot.
Supposedly, the main plot of this book revolves around the trial of a black man named Tom Robinson. However, this book tends to go off topic with the lives of Jem and Scout. Also, the part where Tom Robinson's trial appears is at a very unusual time in the book.
I also feel that Atticus is the only character with an in-depth personality. The pacing of this book also feels slower than it should have been.
These YA dystopias make me lose my faith in humanity.
Bradbury spends so much time building the world that he forgets to write his characters. They're all boring, one-dimensional, and stupid. That would be fine if they became interesting, multifaceted, and intelligent over the course of the narrative, but they don't.
It was so boring. I was almost on board with the whole "burning books" thing.
This book is very dry, boring, and hard to read.
Never, ever have I seen a book more overrated. Kids are starting to call it "The Greatest Book of All Time." Obviously, they have never read another book because Diary of a Wimpy Kid is the WORST book of all time!
Now, I know what you're thinking: Why is it so bad? I'll list all the reasons:
1. It's so boring. There are no plot twists, no riddles, no action. Nothing.
2. The plot is weak. Almost nothing happens that's worth my time. All the books are exactly the same. I can't even differentiate them.
3. The characters are two-dimensional. I don't know why, but the characters never stuck with me. Never. They have no goals, traits, or deep backstories.
4. It's just pictures. There are barely any words. I can't believe certain kids find this hard to read!
5. When it tries to be funny, it fails miserably. Sure, Diary of a Wimpy Kid has its funny moments, but there's not too many. Once every two books, actually. It's mostly just mean-spirited humor and toilet talk.
6. It has no point. As I stated above, it has no plot, two-dimensional characters, and no meaningful words. Now, it doesn't even have a theme! Like, what is the theme? You can do way better than this book? True. That not all books are amazing works of art? Yep, and this is a perfect example. To stop reading meaningful books and read crap? Couldn't be any more true! So, what's its purpose? It doesn't have one.
7. Jeff Kinney is still making them. WHY?!
Jeff Kinney, if you ever see this (which I doubt you will), I'm not saying I hate YOU. I'm saying I hate Gregory "Greg" Heffley!
As for you kids, why do you read this? Don't you understand that, if you're in 3rd grade and up, you can read so many other, better things? The world is full of amazing, infamous, classical, beautifully written books out there. Why waste your time with THIS? Don't you understand you're incredibly intelligent? This book isn't going to make you any smarter.
The plot is simple - a journey in search of one's true self. But in fact, almost nothing that happens to the main character affects him in any way. All the people he meets just pop up and disappear, and even if they say something worth listening to, they get no mention later in the book. As a pack of quotes suitable for any occasion, it works. As a book, it fails.
Simple things are written in a complex way. Normal English-speaking people, with an average to slightly above-average vocabulary, also need to take a dictionary to understand some meanings. I had to reread paragraphs multiple times to understand their summary. The storyline is weak. I was able to complete it once, with a lot of effort.