BookTalk.org

What do you think are some of the most overrated books ever written??
jarviscity.com/2014/05/31/most-overrate ... r-written/

Of the 10 listed, I have only read three; "Catcher in the Rye," "The DaVinci Code" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." I read "Catcher" about 50 years ago, while in college. No, it was not an assignment, but many of my classmates were assigned to read it, and one of them recommended it to me. Said it was great. I read it, and hated it. I rather enjoyed "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" but hated the sequels. So go figure.

I was intrigued by the list. While I never read "Gatsby," I have tried to read some of Fitzgerald's works; found them boring.

50 Shades of Grey has to be well up there. Pure jealousy on my part to be fair

Anything by Bill O'Reilly. "Killing Lincoln," "Killing Kennedy," and "Killing Jesus" are literary disasters.

DEAR JOHN by Nicholas Sparks. I was flying back from Vegas seated next to a lawyer. He said, "My wife reads him." We were laughing at the way the lead character talked about sex in the story because it was, what shall I say, not authentic.

Yeah, I pretty much just walk in a store, look at the best seller list, and then beeline to the back of the store. Yup.

Yeah Brooks, I don't care for Sparks either. For one thing, he has a tendency to kill off his main characters.

You're right, Cattleman. He did. You know, this brings up a good point about writers. There's a lot of hype around writers themselves. Take William S. Burroughs. His breakthrough novel was Queer. It's a good read, very interesting, and sort of in the style of Jack London's, The Road. However, that's about the only book by Burroughs I can get through. He was a great writer, some called him the Pope of Dope, but that formed a mystic around his name and no doubt helped him sell books that otherwise would have had sparse readership. I have a documentary about junkies where guy argues that the mystic around Burroughs led him to try heroin. As a writer myself, I won't blame an author for the actions of others; they tried to do that with The Turner Diaries after Waco, but I will say that hype can propel a career that otherwise would fall flat, but a good story will survive fancy cover and criticism.

As I've gotten older I've learned you don't have to get a tattoo to wear one.

I read Catcher in the Rye in high school and loved it. I've been meaning to read it again (along with several other faves) to see if they hold up. I remember the line about his teacher handling his English paper "as if it was some sort of turd".

I agree Atlas Shrugged is over-rated. Dagny Taggart would get down in the dumps over some problem and magically Francisco D'Anconia would show up at that moment and deliver the perfect lines to draw her back to glory. I think that happened about four times. I slogged through the whole thing with a lot of difficulty.

O come on, The DaVinci Code is a heckuva lot of fun and quite a page turner. Oh well, guess that doesn't count.

I tend to agree about The Great Gatsby. Gatsby repeats the phrase "hey ol' sport!" about 35 times in the book. At the end I just kind of went "Huh?". Perhaps it all went over my head...

Speaking of Fitzgerald, I'm a bigger fan of his short stories. Anybody read his short, "Porcelain and Pink?" Talk about a hidden message.

If you do read a novel of his, I recommend Beautiful and Damned. I read they had planned to film it, but chose Gatsby instead. My personal opinion is they made a mistake. Beautiful and Damned is perfect for the time in which we find ourselves.

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Hands down. Those who love it fawn over it as some spiritual quest, thinking it gives them special insight into the slums of Bombay. The author was a convicted heroin dealer and bank robber. He escaped from prison in Australia and fled to India where he lived in Bombay's underworld for ten years.

The book is presented in the first person like memoir and Roberts insists he's out to atone for his wrongs. But many of the events just reek of Hollywood pandering, as striving for a movie deal. Roberts seems to get into one life-threatening situation after another making sure to humbly kick-ass all the way through.

At one point he's getting beaten up by some thugs in a Bombay prison and he writes such cliches like "all through the beating, I never screamed, I never once gave them that satisfaction."

If you take it as a memoir, (which Roberts has apparently said that there is a liberal sprinkling of fiction in there), then he comes off as such a narcissist to the point where the book, for me anyway, has become unreadable.

Warner Bros. now own the rights to the book. So it looks like he's riding his checkered past all the way to the bank.