I searched through the print and art section and this topic hasn't popped up, so I decided to bring it up.

Are there any books or authors that you find are given a tad too much credit, or they just kinda bug you?

One book that seems overrated to me is "Interview with the Vampire" by Anne Rice. After I finally got through reading the book, I didn't get that heart-stopping feeling that made me think over and over about the book, making me really want to find out what happened next, if there was a sequel or not. I felt, relieved: relieved that I was finally done reading it.

I mean, the plot was good: just because something's overrated doesn't necessarily mean that it sucks. The problem was that she was so caught up in the detail that it made it really unbearable to get through. There were some parts that she would drag on about, I would just think, goddammit. Just get to the bloody point already. Other parts I didn't really understand. After one segment, it left me thinking, "What just happened?", but not in the did-what-I-think-just-happen-just-happen way; more like in the I-didn't-understand-what-the-hell-just-happened way. I'm not denouncing the use of good detail: I just prefer get-to-the-point good detail. If she did, I probably would have been done with the whole series instead of getting bored with the first book and going to watch TV or something and then picking up again a week later.

But apparently I hear that Anne Rice has an almighty attitude... She doesn't have an editor and she forbids her fans from writing fan fiction based on her work. Can't really do anything with the latter (and I wouldn't really want to write a fanfic of her work), but no writer should ever think themselves so highly that they don't need an editor. But I believe both tie into this emotional backdrop with her, so...

So I have the first four books of the Vampire Chronicles, so I'm going to read them out of consideration (because my sister bought the boxset when I really just asked for the first book), and maybe my opinion will change. Frankly, I'm kind of disappointed, because I've always heard how Anne Rice is so popular in the goth community, so I'm obliged to read her at some point. But then I find that it wasn't that great... to me at least.

Same thing happened with the second book I find overrated: Twilight. I got the book, along with a load of other books, as a graduation/birthday present. Now, I can't rightfully say anything about this book, considering that I only made it through half of the book... But at the same time, that says something.

If you thought Interview was tough to get through, Vampire Lestat will make you want to bang your head against the wall. She does that a lot, and its gets worse in her other books too. And while I actually do like Anne Rice a lot, I will have to echo you here and say she is horribly overrated. I like her characterization and the magic she conjures with her descriptions, but those same descriptions tend to bog her books down too and make them hard for even me to read them.

Plus I wish she hadn't opened up the door for all these "sensitive fop" vampires to take hold of the vampyric world. I want my vampires to shape shift into giant bat creatures and tear peasants apart, dag blasted!

Yeah. I really do miss classic vampires. The whole vampire genre has been getting a bit too out of hand. They're making it too "age appropriate" because now half of the novels are for tweenagers now, and selling to thirteen year olds always sells. Vampires use to be a cult, and that's what ruins a lot of great book series: when you make it for everybody.

I believe another book series that is overrated in mainstream media is The Lord of the Ring series. Barely no one knew about that series except for the hardcore followers, but then they made it into a successful, worldwide movie. Now it's Legalos this and Gandolf that. My friend was one of those original fans (even though we were in middle school when it came out) and he thinks that the movies weren't that great compared to the book.

-- Sat Mar 07, 2009 10:34 am --

Stephanie Meyer.
Tee-hee.

Moody Food- Ray Robertson

Overrated books or authors? I've had my ass kicked for this before, and I'm sure I will again, but Harry Potter. I enjoyed it well enough when I was seven and it first came out, but even then I didn't get what all the hype was about. The writing just isn't good at all and there wasn't enough substance to the plot or characters to make me over-look it. I couldn't even bring myself to finish the fifth book because I found it so hard to get through due to the writing style.

Eh, no sweat. I like these kind of threads in particular because you find that you are not alone.

Another author I would consider overrated is our old friend William Shakespeare. Not that his writing is bad or any of his plays were also: they are masterpieces. But I don't really want to give a writer whose authorship is questionable too much credit... *Anti-Stratfordian*

(In case anyone's wondering, I didn't quote myself in my previous message. I just edited a typo and it did that for some reason...)

I always find the authorship debate for Shakespeare interesting, but ultimately pointless. Son of a glove maker? Marlowe's pseudonym? Queen Elizabeth? The Earl of Sandwich? We're so far removed from the time of the writing that I don't think authorship actually matters in this case. I think that the writing is consistent enough to reasonably establish that there was one author. Beyond that, I only care that the were written, not who gets the credit.

Captain Nevarre
...big fan of Bill... or whomever

While the imagery is interesting, I do think that the books need a good deal of tightening up - I feel like I'm wading through a lot of extraneous detail that looks interesting but doesn't help the story flow well.

I personally like Shakespeare, but I prefer to study his plays as drama than literature. Almost all of them can be made interesting on the stage or screen, but a lot of them are mediocre reading, and some are downright boring. Still, I'm willing to read them because they are so widely referenced and sometimes not in immediately recognizable form.

Actually, I've put up with a lot of so-called classics for that reason. Plenty of "great" literature isn't really that interesting and, in many cases, the stories have been updated in much more entertaining versions several times. The literary snob in me says I have to torture myself by knowing the original versions, though.

Now when it comes to Shakespeare's works, the most overrated is - do I even have to say?

"Romeo, Romeo. Where for arte thou Romeo?"

I don't see what's the hoopla about Romeo and Juliet. It's not even the first teen drama.

I guess the thing about Shakespeare, it's the school curiculum. They always make us read the tragedies. Why not a comedy? With a Shakespearean tragedy, you know that half the cast - including the protagonist - is going to kick the bucket by the end. It's pretty predictable.

Ah, but it was funnier than hell to hear drama club students in my freshman English class ham it up on "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him..."

It would have been interesting to see how a high school class would have handled "Taming of the Shrew".

Stephen King - totally overrated in my opinion, but I still love him and have all his books.

Problem I have boils down to this: His story ideas are pretty good, the writing (for the most part) is engaging, but the man cannot end a story to save his life (with very few exceptions). I think "Cell" was the first book he's written where I actually liked the ending. Usually he tries so hard to tie up all the loose ends that he completely ruins the story for me ("Dark Tower" comes to mind). For the most part, though, his final imagry is so out-of-this-world-bizarre as to be completely ludicrous (giant eyeball at the end of "It", anyone?).

Oh yeah - and "Lord of the Rings". I mean, the story is a good story and it's the basis for fantasy as we know it, but why in the name of all that is good does Tolkien feel the need to spend 20 pages describing the rolling hillsides of Hobbiton? Do I really need to know what every blade of grass and flower look, smell and feel like in order to move the story forward? I wish someone would make a condensed LOTR book that removes all the chaff and just gets to the heart of the storyline (If they have and you have a link, feel free to share it).

~spidey

Agreed! I bought a huge collection of short stories written by him, and almost all of the endings were either confusing, or disappointing.

I could easily see someone putting Lovecraft in this sort of catagory as well, though I don't know if I would say he's overrated as I don't really hear as much about him as I do people like Tolkien (who I love for the very reasons spidey mentioned as his down points ). The other day while reading a few Lovecraft stories, I did find a few faults that I think I never mentioend before. It does take him too long to really go anywhere with his stories sometimes, and thats not good when most of your work is in short story form, as is the case with HP.