Top 10 Most Overrated Novels

[Jazzy]

There are many titles given to great literary works, and many awards to recognize truly great literature. This list wants to concentrate on the other side of the board: those books that are considered “classics,” but are in fact heavily overrated. These could be wildly popular books that were best sellers, but just weren’t that good, or books that are considered “among the best ever” by academics but fail as being readable or good literature beyond some fancy literary trick. In at least one case (see #10), this list also includes good books that are fun reads, but are rated way above the actual quality of writing. Here is the list of ten of the most overrated novels.



Questions:



Have you read any of these books?



If so, which ones?



Do you agree or disagree with this list and why?

 

[Sinon]

I was actually expecting a much more recent list. Out of the ones there, all I've read is the Lord of the Rings. It's a good series, but I wouldn't call it super-amazing or whatever. There are plenty of books (in my opinion) that surpass it, but that's because my tastes are different to most.

 

[The Dragon Master]

Read Lord of the Rings and Da Vinci Code, nothing overly special but I'd read them again. Some reason I was expecting 50 shades of Grey on that list.

 

[Raven]

What?! Lord of the Rings?!



Da Vinci Code was rubbish, I gave up with that half way

never read any of the others.

 

[Sinon]

The ones I expected to see on that list:



50 Shades/others of that series

Game of Thrones

Harry Potter series

Twilight series

 

[Evil Eye]

Read Lord of the Rings and Da Vinci Code

Same.

LotR has an interesting world, but the writing is just painful. It's like A Tale of Two Cities in that regard.

The ones I expected to see on that list:

Maybe they didn't want to deal with the fandom.

 

[DrLeftover]

I've read a few of them.



But they missed a Nobel Prize Winner from 1901 that is almost unreadable today- Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. Maybe it's better in the original German. It would have to be.



Then they could have included Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's exercise One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. That Soviet era thing that used to be on all of the assigned reading lists is pure agony.



And I would add to the list that tedious arc of All Creatures Great and Small and it's offspring that make going to a dentist seem like a better idea than turning the page. The author knew they were so awful he used a pen name. Face it, he wrote the book to give the Hallmark Channel something to do.