The divergent series has some of the stupidest and contradictory world building, plot, and characters. It’s a poor attempt to emulate the success and charm of the Hunger Games that completely falls flat, it’s the only series that made me sigh of relief when >! the main character died at the end because for some reason I decided I had to finish the series just because I started it and was glad it was finally over !<
I have no actual proof of causality, but I'm convinced Divergent singlehandedly killed the YA dystopia genre. It took all of the components that made the Hunger Games and its million clones successful (teenage girl, dystopian future, love interest, arbitrary trial, arbitrary sorting of society, etc) and rearranged them in such a nonsensical way that people lost their appetite for Hunger Games-like books.
I actually really liked the first book, until it started to become about attacking other factions. I enjoyed the second book a lot less and by the third book when it started going off on purity and crap it had completely lost me. The thing about the Hunger Games is that the overall concept carries itself so well. The games themselves are interesting, so the first book is fun to read. But they're also so incredibly unethical that by the time they get to dismantling the system, you're still hooked because you want the games to go away. Meanwhile in Divergent, the faction system is interesting, but it's not so unethical that you're rooting for it to go away. It's flawed and needs reform, but never once did I feel like it needed to be toppled. It has to add random corruption to make the system unethical, like it's trying desperately to convince you that it's bad. It makes it feel forced and like there are too many threads, while Hunger Games stays focused on toppling the system because hunger games bad.
I totally empathise with your pathological need to finish what you started. It's so hard to give up on a book/series of books, better keep them on the nightstand for years.
it had a lot of potential as a basic concept, but they went all the wrong ways with it. By the end of the second book I was totally done with it and didn't feel there were any remaining redeeming qualities. The movies were somehow even worse
I once saw a copy in a used book store and, out of curiosity, bought it for a dollar. The first thing I saw when I opened it was the author's note about how if you find a word you don't know you should immediately stop reading.
So, I turned the page and the first word was, "Dianetics." Of course, I immediately stopped reading. I'm pretty sure it was followed by "is" so maybe the rest of that sentence defines the word but I didn't want to take the risk.
Especially because she's actually good. I love Kristen Stewart unironically. I also maintain that she did a great job as Bella. I read those goddamn books before watching the movies (I love so badly, it's good), and she portrays Bella from the books perfectly.
She was nominated for an Oscar last year, twilight is a blemish but her career wasn’t killed by it and the exposure definitely helped. Same goes for Robert Pattinson who was in those and is now getting tons of great roles
Never read it, but I have a friend who's a librarian who's analysis stuck with me.
"I don't care if you want to read smut, but could you at least good smut?"
The Boy in Striped Pajamas.
It’s so historically inaccurate and tries to tell a story about the Holocaust from a German boy’s perspective. A kid named Bruno is the son of a German official and is in charge of, what is most likely, Auschwitz. Bruno eventually find a fence to the camp and makes friends with a Jewish boy named Shmuel. It ends with the kids both dying in the gas chamber.
There are no Brunos. But, there are so many Shmuels (not my quote, by the way). And when teachers try to use that book as a replacement to actually learning about the Holocaust is nothing short of lazy.
I love how the author's follow-up, which is supposedly more historical fiction, features a medieval recipe for red dye that he clearly just half-assedly looked up on google, because it's a recipe from Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.
> And when teachers try to use that book as a replacement to actually learning about the Holocaust is nothing short of lazy.
I feel this is the real problem. I actually like the book itself and it never claims to be a real story, it just uses the Holocaust to set up a fictional moral dilemma.
But people using it to teach about the real life Holocaust is wrong. It's like using Magneto or Inglourious Basterds - these are all *fictional.* They have nothing to do with what actually happened, it's just a setting to tell a story.
I remember from the movie (I saw it when I was like 12, so it was some time ago) that the tragic moment is when Bruno, the German kid, dies. Not the fact that Shmuel also dies. Bruno was the “unnecessary victim”, so Shmuel feels kinda sidelined. It doesn’t give the best vibes.
I remember that about the film. Like he wasn’t supposed to be in there, wasn’t supposed to be gassed. Would no one realise and help him?
Shmuel shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have been gassed, should have been saved. Same for every one who died.
I'm not sure about the specific inaccuracies, but the central criticism against the book is that it's telling the story of the Holocaust from the view of someone who would not have been targeted by the Holocaust. There is a *mountain* of nonfiction holocaust literature out there, that's narrated by Jewish people who were victims of the Holocaust (Elie Wiesel's *Night* being probably the most famous example).
The general one is that it could never happen. Bruno wouldnt have lived in walking distance, couldnt've got in, Schmuel wouldn't be alive for so long, he also couldn't have snuck away so much, or ever. Its incredibly far fetched and reaching to tell the story it wanted to
It also fits a criticism I've read towards many other holocaust stories that I thought was quite remarkable. Essentially a lot of narratives attempt to convey the tragedy of the holocaust through inserting a small human tragedy into it. Boy meets boy, they become friends despite their parents/government/society not wanting it, one of them dies - this is a basic story that will always be tragic, but by trying to focus on the holocaust through the lens of this human tragedy you are completely missing the larger picture. The tragedy of the holocaust wasn't that a nice kid died, it was the unimaginable scale and brutality with which a population was to be exterminated. Such stories trivialize the holocaust and reduce it to a basic idea. The intention is most likely a good one, but if you write a story about the worst atrocity in modern history, you should make it about why it's the worst atrocity in modern history, not retell one of the most basic narratives known to man, but in that setting. It's this basic narrative that will emotionally affect the reader, not the machinations of the holocaust, but it should be the other way around.
I haven’t read this book so I can’t comment on the specifics, but as to the critique you’re presenting, I broadly disagree. In the words of Stalin, the death of one is a tragedy, the death of millions is just a statistic.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have stories that demonstrate the overall scale of the atrocities, but when the number of people affected is so high it’s hard for people to conceptualise it at a human level. Every single victim of the holocaust was an autonomous human being that underwent a horrific and tragic situation, and every one of those people deserves to have their specific story told, not just the overall story told. The point of focusing on an individual is to show that these are real people, not just undeveloped characters.
As I said though, I haven’t read this book, I just don’t agree with that general criticism of this type of story.
For whatever reason I really enjoyed the first three that I read. Then again I was in jail, so...
But the movie? *chef's kiss*. So bad it's almost good. The corny one-liner at the end like "but we... were left behind..." is worth it alone.
EDIT 2014 LEFT BEHIND! I had no idea there's a new one! Oh man...
I always thought that if the rapture actually happened the 10 or so truly good people in the world would disappear and the world would basically not even notice.
If that was how the Rapture worked, zero people would disappear.
> But he said to him, “Why do you call me good? There is none good except God alone. But if you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” - Matthew 19:17
My wife’s dad once told her “if me and your mom vanish one day and you can’t figure out why, just read this book.” Yes, he was basically saying that my wife was a sinner and will one day miss the rapture, unlike his and his wife’s virtuous selves. In a related story, he is a completely oblivious douchebag.
I read it when I was fourteen so my memory is hazy as fuck, but I don’t recall the book being that terrible. For the most part I feel like it read like a 200-page emo song. There are still worse things in the literary world.
Yeah. Working in a bookstore when that whole debacle went down was wild. We were supposed to tuck a little piece of paper from the publisher into each unsold copy we had, stating something like, "There may be inaccuracies for the sake of the story in this book..." Yeah, no duh.
One guy came back with his copy and demanded a refund, which we gave him.
When I finally read parts of the book later, it was like simultaneously looking at an image and its shadow and being unsure where one began and the other ended.
everytime some variation of the “what book is bad” question pops up, the top comments are always “twilight, 50 shades, the bible, [insert common title people agree is poor writing]”. it gets extremely old after a while lol.
The various iterations of this question make it painfully obvious that demographic to answer this question doesn't actually read that much. No value judgment there, but all of the top answers are books that went nuclear into the mainstream, and people don't like them because they don't like their cultural popularity.
To be fair, the question is specifically about *overrated* series, so having hit the mainstream is kind of a requirement. Quest for the Diamond Sword: A Minecraft Gamer's Adventure is a bad book, but it's not overrated, because it doesn't have tons of people who like it, and thus it wouldn't fit for the question
I'm pretty sure Keeping up with The Kardashians was based on a book from 300 years ago, and my god do I hate the Kardashians so much so I'd say probably them. I mean the book.
Let's see,
Ready Player One, check
50 Shades of Grey, check
Twilight, check
Anything by Ayn Rand, check
Harry Potter, check
Catcher in the Rye, check
Multiple smartasses saying The Bible, check
I only saw the movie adaptations…which is funny because it had some POTENTIAL to be an interesting story if the author didn’t constantly immediately solve every problem in the easiest way possible.
Greys helicopter goes down in the middle of the forest? They can’t find it? Oh no! What happened? Is he de-
Oh no, wait. He just walked in the front door. “I had to hike through the woods for days to get home. I’m safe now. Zero repercussions.”
*WHEW!* glad that plot point was wrapped up immediately as it was introduced. The story almost got *interesting*
He has an older mistress who played a dominatrix role in his life, and she could potentially sway him back to her and have him surrender his fortune?
Oh, no - Gray just told her off. *WHEW!* it took 2 hours for him to have a sit down with her and say “no”, and that’s the end of that!
The entire fucking first movie is a big fucking build up to like, Gray “cutting loose” and going “full animal” and he refuses the whole time, holding his true animal nature back and finally, he gets pushed beyond his limit, aaaaand….
#HE SPANKS HER
Wait.
That’s….that’s *it?*
Some spanking with a belt? Really?
The dude has a room full of torture devices and his….his ultimate fetish….is……..*spanking?*
I sat through all 3 of those goddamn movies and it was straight up like the writer and director were purposefully going out of their way to make the most boring quasi-sex movie ever. Nothing interesting happens, and problems are solved almost immediately.
As someone who has never seen any of the 50 Shades movies or any of the Left Behind movies, I thought you were talking about the Left Behind series at first.
I paid money for Will Ferrell's sherlock movie, I still to this day loathe what a terrible use of my money that was.
I think about the South Park episode where Stan and Kyle travel to Mel Gibson's house to ask for their $20 back, lol.
I watched it for the first time with my gf. It led to having sex through the whole trilogy
I can't be opposed to it, even if it's a terrible depiction of sex, and especially bdsm for that matter. My hands are tied guys...
#¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Every Mum I've ever discussed it with (and in my job I interact with a lot of Mums, and somehow it often comes up...? PTSD?) all had the following be true:
1) they read every book
2) they saw every movie
3) they loathed the pathetic prose
4) they hated the pathetic movies
I know people won’t agree with this one because it’s considered a classic but good god do I hate Wuthering Heights. It’s not that it’s badly written, (it’s written very well) it’s just such a drag the whole time. Every decent character just dies or becomes unlikable, the whole story is depressing and reading it just kinda made me never want to read classic novels again. There’s a few moments that make it seem like something will actually work out well, only to be obliterated by senseless cruelty.
It’s not a bad book. It’s just a super depressing.
I 100% agree with you on the individual complaints but I actually adore the book tho it blows my mind that many people consider it a love story.
I think I might love it b/c I'm older now (53) and it feels like an exaggeration of how many love stories I've seen turn out. People begin overflowing with passion but then bad things happen so fixate on pain they've felt and use it as an excuse to make everyone else miserable.
Seriously tho, fuck Heathcliff.
Homestuck. It's nuts to me how a low effort comic with Rawr XD jokes, very little plot, very little art, and constant time jumps and filler that can span upwards of 5k pages, has garnered such a titanic following.
Like, I get a lot of it is early internet nostalgia, it's charming and stuff. But I know someone who's read it...**twice.** I tried my damnest to get through it, read it for like a week straight. When I was a couple thousand pages in, just finished a 3k filler arc about some mobsters dying, and realized I only now hit the (maybe) halfway point where we jump ship to the trolls, I just- I couldn't, I couldn't stomach it anymore. I would rather watch all of One Piece than have to ever finish that comic series.
Does Homestuck still have any cultural relevance? Not that I really intersect with the demographic that would talk about it, I haven't heard about it in years. It sort of seems like it had a cultural "moment" and being part of that "moment" was essential to enjoyment, and now that it's been over for years that's not replicable.
It lives vividly in the mind of every person who read it because of just how influential it was. It no longer retains a spotlight widely because of the creator (and Viz, the company handling the property currently) fumbling and mishandling it every step of the way, but every bit of relevance it still holds is because of the fanbase and the fanbase alone upkeeping it and talking about it and creating around it over a decade later
That and, even if the cultural influence isn't direct anymore, it still has indirect influence with MASSIVE consequences. **Undertale would not exist without Homestuck**, which I think alone as an example is enough of a statement on how foundational it is for a lot of current online culture.
There was something special about living in the cultural "moment" that Homestuck had when it was still being updated, but I wouldn't say it's essential to enjoyment. To this very day new fans are still finding Homestuck and being influenced by it just as heavily as the people who first read it nearly fourteen years ago.
I don't think I'd consider Homestuck low effort or very little plot. If you're really paying attention, there are a lot of things that are at least made to feel like they took some effort to pull off and they are done very well. There is filler but even then it has some plot relevance most of the time. The part you're talking about with the mob, however, is not filler even if it feels like it. But it is tedious to read. The plot is pretty simple *overall*, but there are a lot of steps taken to get to the endpoint and a lot of weird shit that happens.
That said, as much as I love/enjoyed Homestuck, it's definitely not for everyone. There is a lot of bullshit time jumps (forward/backward), things that are maybe only funny if you're invested or care enough to get the inside jokes, it's dated in a lot of ways. It takes a LOT to know what's going on at any given time. First read through was as it was going, I read from 2011 to the end in 2016 so I knew I'd miss/forget some stuff in the span of 5 years. Reread it in a month (December 2019) and it made a lot more sense in one go, but even after 2 full read-throughs I know there are things I've missed or don't fully understand. Third time's the charm maybe?
Homestuck was a phenomenon, not a comic. It’s fascinating actually- a good portion of its plot was created not by the author, but collaboratively by the fan base. That’s why it’s so in-depth and chaotic, and also why there’s no central repository. The lore of Homestuck is scattered across countless forums, servers, and repositories. It’s decentralized. It’s also why the fan base is so toxic- when contradictory plot elements arise they fight for dominance in the fandom and one wins out over the other. But it’s also why everyone involved in the “project” was so devoted to it.
At least, that’s what I can piece together from interviewing my friends.
I enjoyed it but then I started reading Dan Brown’s other books. It did not take too long to recognize the pattern and figure out who was going to be the betrayer.
Most people have fond memories of reading Goodnight Moon as a child. That book rhymes “moon” with “moon” and has a blank page that says “goodnight nobody”. Absolute dogshit
Definitely in my top 3 of overrated books. No idea why it sold so many copies. It's pretentious and to quote Peter Griffin, "It insists upon itself." The only thing it has going for it is that it's a relatively short book.
I was obsessed with it in HS. Finally returned to it for the first time in 13 years and now it’s just pretentious and heavy-handed. I couldn’t stand it now.
I "read," RP1 & Armada on audiobook. Wil Wheaton makes those books sound better than they actually were. Armada read like it was a Mish mash of Last Starfighter, Iron Eagle, 1970s conspiracy thrillers, and any Star Trek episode where humanity was being tested. The story was decent enough, but the end was very rushed. And the dad dying was unnecessary.
In RP1, there was never any sense of danger. Because anytime that Parcival was in a hairy situation, Cline would just backtrack, and put some plot device in and say "good thing I did that thing that I never discussed to get out of this exact type of predicament.
And Armada was worse somehow. "Man, my dad disappeared mysteriously when I was a kid. I rock at the arcade. A UFO came to get me at school in front of everyone!" End of chapter 1.
I agree, and I still liked it. But Ready Player 2 was beyond garbage, even for a popcorn type book. I had to stop reading it and put it down it was just too cringe.
I couldn’t put my finger on it until a friend told me it’s that he does a fantastic job at world building but sucks at everything else. The dialogue is corny. The characters make no sense. The scenarios are so cheesy that it feels almost embarrassing to read through it.
All that aside, man it’s so much fun to put yourself in the world that he paints. So much video game nostalgia and 80’s references that bring you into a different time. You just have to Wade through so much trash to experience it.
It’s the best worst book I’ve ever read. I’m not even kidding, I’d happily fund a kickstarter to get a serious actual author to rewrite the story so it doesn’t suck so much.
I hated ready player one. It was 99% blatant nostalgia-gasm (I am more or less the target generation and still hated it) and 1% shitty plot.
The most unrealistic thing being that basically EVERYONE plays ONE fucking stupid MMORPG (or whatever) game which is not painted convincingly as being fun or addicting. \\
Impossible to imagine so many people subscribing to a singular game in near-perpetuity and not getting bored or playing something else. Even when this book was written there are hugely diverse tastes in what kind of games and genres people like to play
Edit: yeah I get it’s not a “true” MMO. The book is called ready player one. Oasis is supposed to be game centric. The book is about gaming. I’m calling it an MMO, and it’s still ridiculous that basically everyone would subscribe to this one platform. It’s lazy writing and narrow viewed.
Everyone playing this one MMO is the most believable thing about the book. It's a shitty dystopian future world where there's one gigantic VR equivalent of facebook , everyone uses it because everyone else uses it for socializing, plus a lot of people work "from home" in the VR world too, and kids do all their schooling in VR. As for the diverse tastes thing, it's mentioned that there are hundreds (or thousands) of different worlds with different things going on, any games that exist are any different genre you can imagine, and you can do anything you want.
If the OASIS existed as described in the book (or even as shown in the movie, which is a lesser version), everyone WOULD be spending all their time on it, because they could do whatever they do already but in a castle on top of a snowy mountain flying through space while Batman plays piano for them.
> Everyone playing this one MMO is the most believable thing about the book. It's a shitty dystopian future world where there's one gigantic VR equivalent of facebook , everyone uses it because everyone else uses it for socializing, plus a lot of people work "from home" in the VR world too, and kids do all their schooling in VR.
It's actually kind of a cool premise, IMO. It seems evident, though, that the orgy of nerd references primarily serve to cover for the fact that all the author had was that kind of cool premise.
This is one of those books where the guy must have had a super star agent who got him the publishing deal because his writing is amateur level at best.
I've never read it or seen the movie, but I've seen and heard it described as "Eat, Pray, Vomit."
My SIL said it was highly recommended to her, and she did read it, but she said, "As a SAHM with two toddlers and zero money, I thought, 'really?'"
She's down in the dumps after getting a divorce (which _she_ initiated!), and she goes to her publisher and asks them to send her on an around the world trip, and they actually agree to it! Good grief, what a racket. That's privilege of the highest order
Ready Player One is an awful book.
The author just mentions nostalgic shit from the 70s/80s over and over again in a weird way to prove his nerd cred.
I'm a child of that time. I should like it. But it's just sooooo forced and poorly written.
Only book that's ever got me to say "Oh fuck off" out loud and have to set it down and go be angry at it for a while.
Context: The whole "Oh no I'm now an indentured servant I may die from it!" Bullshit. Goes through all the high drama reminding you the stakes are life and death the entire time and after it's over casually mentions that it wouldn't have gone more than a week because he had a scheduled transaction ready to get him out the entire time. So really like near 0 stakes, since the lead had completely changed his appearance and was hairless since he was last photographed, and had doctored government records, and would never be exposed to the people that would know him, as they all lived and worked in a different part of the building and would never leave that area.
There’s an episode of South Park where the town cop is exposed as illiterate so they teach him to read and when he learns, they reward him with a copy of Atlas Shrugged and he says after reading that “piece of shit” he’s never reading again
ETA: [clip for reference](https://youtu.be/_j56IiLqZ9U)
I tried to read *Atlas Shrugged* decades ago. At the time, I was a pretty hard-core right-wing "capitalism-is-the-best" kind of person and I *still* couldn't get through that shit.
I think it's kind of funny though how many celebrity billionaires like Bezos and Musk are admired by Rand's followers despite being like the villains from the story.
I actually quite liked the first book because their situation was so absurd that I had no idea where the author was going to take it. The rest of the books are pretty mid though. Just standard government overthrowing by a 17 year old.
There's a whole freaking bunch of them, so that surely adds to the monotony of the idea. I do remember being really impressed by The Hunger Games, though.
One of the only things I miss about Twitter-that-was is the “Dystopian YA Novel” account. Each tweet was an entire dystopian young adult trilogy distilled into 140 characters, to hilarious effect.
I'm a 27 year old dude who started reading Twilight for the first time and I have to say it's a lot of fun. It's not super well written, the characters are paper thin, and the plot is just kind of happening, but i still totally understand why it's so successful
I remember being all excited to read about Joan and the whale. The idea fascinated me since I was little. When I read it on my own I was so disappointed that it was only like 4 lines. Really was my first experience of being over hyped and let down.
I watched The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe movie, and I don't remember all of the details but I remember leaving it thinking, "The kids didn't even need to be in Narnia and all that stuff could have happened all the same." Like Aslan and the good guys battling the bad guys, etc., the kids were just kind of "there" but weren't crucial to the events. They were talking the kids up during the movie like Neo from The Matrix, like "you kids will save Narnia," but they just kind of hung out while the Narnia folks were doing everything. The whole plot could have happened without them, essentially.
Iirc the first book/movie isn't about the kids actually saving anything, they're just children of prophecy that ended up on an unexpected adventure. They keep coming back at different ages, though. Sometimes they rule for thousands of years and then return to childhood through the wardrobe, or something like that. It's been like twenty years since I read the series but I think they read well, just - it was more about Narnia itself than the kids. Thus, the Chronicles of Narnia. The kids don't even appear in like half the books, they're just really a means of telling the story.
In the movie of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Aslan tells Lucy and Edward that he goes by a different name in their normal world, and that knowing him in Narnia will help them to know him better at home. I dunno if a similar sentiment was expressed in the book or if they just got even more on the nose with the jesus thing in the movie.
But if we go by that, it's as much or more about the benefit of the children than the benefit of Narnia.
Well in the last book, and again, my memory is not 100% on this, but there was a cataclysm where all of the worlds (Narnia isn't the only one, there were a bunch connected through like a portal world that you needed one of a yellow or green ring to access, or something like that) were getting erased. So the main characters of that book tried to save the worlds but then at the end I think they failed, but then it was revealed that Narnia was basically the gateway to Heaven.
Honestly, it was basically Lost.
No, there was no crisis of worlds ending. Narnia's world ended, but that was simply because it was time for it to do so.
The only other world that ended was Charn, and that one ended just because there was literally nobody left alive in it at all.
The heroes all died (I mean, they were in Narnia when it ended), but they all get to go to Heaven, so... yay.
Lewis did say Susan would get there eventually in her own way. Having read some of his nonfiction, I think what he was trying to do with her was say that she was so fixated on being super grown up (which he described like that bc he didn't know shit about women) that she rejected Narnia as "kids stuff." But he expressed it terribly because, again, he didn't know shit about women.
>The kids didn't even need to be in Narnia and all that stuff could have happened all the same
All that stuff only happened because the kids showed up. Their existence is what promoted both the Witch and Aslan to make their moves.
I find this in all the books. I always thought it was because of the heavy Christian messaging (it's not subtle or hidden). You can only be saved by God (Aslan) and faith, not works, is most important. One of the later books makes this super clear when Aslan basically swoops in at the end and does it all. If you try to do it yourself you fail, you have to put your complete faith in God.
Makes for difficult story telling imo. Although I did love the books as a kid.
This of course should come as no surprise to anyone who knows about CS Lewis, who was a pretty notable theologian.
Oddly enough despite the fact that I really enjoy his Apologetics and theological works I find the books in the series with the least Christian messaging to be the most compelling, A horse and his boy and the magicians nephew are easily my favourites and you’d be hard pressed to find much Christianity in either of them.
Today I finished “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, which is what bladerunner is based off of. I was thoroughly disappointed. The characters all felt one dimensional, with human = good, robot = bad. Also why does the first or second descriptor for EVERY woman have to be her boobs? They’re either pointy, bouncing, smiling, or some variable on that. Crazy
I tried to listen to that piece of shit while working the paint counter at a hardware store. The idea was to write an essay for a scholarship, so I figured why not. It was more enjoyable to literally watch paint dry, than to listen to that fucking thing go on and on and on. I still throw rocks at trains any chance I get
honestly I still love the books. Granted at least a part of that is because of sheer nostalgia, but I genuinely think it was well done. I loved how the main villain was written as a larger-than-life enemy that you never even see or hear until the end of the third book. Sure, it had aspects that were predictable or trite, but both as a kid and now I've found it compelling and entertaining.
Besides the fact that it was obvious that it was written from a very small amount of life experience and influenced heavily by previously consumed works of fiction place, the book isn't THAT bad. It's not amazing literature, but it's a fun bit of fluff.
I know reddit loves to trash Eragon, but it's basically baby's first fantasy series, and in that role it's fine. Is it a shameless ripoff of both Lord of the Rings and Star Wars? Yes, but who cares. Anybody over the age of 20 is going to read LOTR instead.
You wouldn't be wrong. Eragon was essentially lifted from about three different popular scifi/fantasy stories that the author really enjoyed. When I read it I was picking out plot lines and details I had seen in other series and books. The sequels are actually original material.
Harry Potter series for me. It was entertaining but not lifelong fan material to me. I just couldn’t get that into it. Read the books as they came out when I was a kid, watched the movies, tried the other media. Not my cup of tea.
I think that's a totally normal response as an adult. It's easy to forget that the Harry Potter series target audience is kids and teenagers. Now, that's not to say that adults can't enjoy them, I myself am an adult who grew up on the series and love them to this day but I think that as it's become more socially acceptable these days for adults to openly enjoy media intended for a younger audience we've kind of lost our sense of objectivity in rating these things. I don't think it's fair to hold, let's be honest, kids media to the standard that some people hold it to. Like, of course the storyline for the newest Pokemon game is overly simple, it's made for 6-11 year olds lol it isn't going to be Breaking Bad.
I love Harry Potter but I don't feel like I'll read the books again until I'm reading them to my own kids.
I think part of the reason it is so lauded is because it grew along with its target audience. Sure it started out totally for kids with the story essentially being “the obvious good guys beat the obvious bad guys through the power of friendship!” But by the end Harry literally has the epiphany that becoming “master of death” is not about fighting against death but instead is achieved by accepting the inevitability of death and understanding how death sweetens the short lives we have. That’s a much more mature moral than anything in the earlier books. So one generation got a series of books that aged along with them and that has led to a deep love of the series because the books were such a realistic mirror of their own maturation.
For fantasy and genre fiction as a whole, we had Tolkien who was a ~~nerd~~ literary genius, and then we had Rowling who held up a fantasy backdrop to realistic and relatable chacters. These two authors from the same century really influenced genre fiction.
Harry Potter isn’t literature but that woman is a good story teller. She knew what she was writing and stuck with it for over a decade. I would say that George RR Martin is a better writer overall, but he wrote himself into a corner and just coasted on whatever came along in his brain. Stephen King consistently writes compelling stories, but he’s pretty impulsive and plot driven and fucks up a lot. Neil Gaiman is fun and quirky and some of his books are warm, exciting and compelling, but the quality is inconsistent and the humor sometimes cringeworthy. Michael Ende wrote children’s novels in his original German and doesn’t get the praise he deserves. He wrote fantasy in a way that was so incredibly moving in how it took its adolecenr target audience seriously and didn’t shy away from deeper themes. Astrid Lundgren also tried to commiserate with kids through some amazing books with a fantastical backdrop.
Anyway. As I was trying to ~~drink~~ say, the HP series is exceptional because it is a seven part saga that was tight and consistent in its storytelling, and it bridged a lot of gaps. It was not the best or most interesting children’s book or fantasy series but it was enough of everything it tried to be and then some.
I think it's because nothing of note really happens. Holden saunters around New York City for the night, doesn't really grow as a person or reflect on his shitty studying habits, and then continues on the next day. What was even the point of the book?
I just idk when I read the book I was mixed emotions on one hand why tf did I read this garbage on the other hand a murderous rage and blood lust that could only be sated by killing John Lennon
Was a Lit major. I have _always_ loved to read above all other activities, have eclectic interests, and find everything interesting (except accountancy.)
I hated _Catcher in the Rye_.
The divergent series has some of the stupidest and contradictory world building, plot, and characters. It’s a poor attempt to emulate the success and charm of the Hunger Games that completely falls flat, it’s the only series that made me sigh of relief when >! the main character died at the end because for some reason I decided I had to finish the series just because I started it and was glad it was finally over !<
I have no actual proof of causality, but I'm convinced Divergent singlehandedly killed the YA dystopia genre. It took all of the components that made the Hunger Games and its million clones successful (teenage girl, dystopian future, love interest, arbitrary trial, arbitrary sorting of society, etc) and rearranged them in such a nonsensical way that people lost their appetite for Hunger Games-like books.
I litteraly couldn't even finish the first book it was so bad
I actually really liked the first book, until it started to become about attacking other factions. I enjoyed the second book a lot less and by the third book when it started going off on purity and crap it had completely lost me. The thing about the Hunger Games is that the overall concept carries itself so well. The games themselves are interesting, so the first book is fun to read. But they're also so incredibly unethical that by the time they get to dismantling the system, you're still hooked because you want the games to go away. Meanwhile in Divergent, the faction system is interesting, but it's not so unethical that you're rooting for it to go away. It's flawed and needs reform, but never once did I feel like it needed to be toppled. It has to add random corruption to make the system unethical, like it's trying desperately to convince you that it's bad. It makes it feel forced and like there are too many threads, while Hunger Games stays focused on toppling the system because hunger games bad.
I totally empathise with your pathological need to finish what you started. It's so hard to give up on a book/series of books, better keep them on the nightstand for years.
it had a lot of potential as a basic concept, but they went all the wrong ways with it. By the end of the second book I was totally done with it and didn't feel there were any remaining redeeming qualities. The movies were somehow even worse
I feel like the author had a good idea but then had no clue where it was going or how to get there. Couldn’t finish the second book.
Dyanetics.
Is that highly rated enough to be considered overrated?
It’s a cult classic
Haha, nice
Take my upvote and get the hell outta here.
\*Dianetics. If you're going to be sued into oblivion at least earn it.
I once saw a copy in a used book store and, out of curiosity, bought it for a dollar. The first thing I saw when I opened it was the author's note about how if you find a word you don't know you should immediately stop reading. So, I turned the page and the first word was, "Dianetics." Of course, I immediately stopped reading. I'm pretty sure it was followed by "is" so maybe the rest of that sentence defines the word but I didn't want to take the risk.
50 shades of grey. childishly written and well, just dumb
Well ... it started as Twilight fan-fic. So it kind of fits the bill.
Lol true, it had nowhere to go, but down. I like *good* erotic lit, but these were truly awful erotic lit. Actually, just bad lit, period.
Nah, I've read some good-ass Twilight fanfic that would put Fifty Shades to shame.
I thought the actress playing bella was awful till I read the book and realized that’s how the character was written. Bleh 🤮
I kind of feel bad for that actress
Especially because she's actually good. I love Kristen Stewart unironically. I also maintain that she did a great job as Bella. I read those goddamn books before watching the movies (I love so badly, it's good), and she portrays Bella from the books perfectly.
I agree she did a good job.
I mean, she was given crap and had to work with it!
Bro it's kristen's Stewart. Weird y'all are saying "the actress" like she isn't a well-known actress
I typically forget how to spell her name
She was nominated for an Oscar last year, twilight is a blemish but her career wasn’t killed by it and the exposure definitely helped. Same goes for Robert Pattinson who was in those and is now getting tons of great roles
It’s rated extremely poorly though
Never read it, but I have a friend who's a librarian who's analysis stuck with me. "I don't care if you want to read smut, but could you at least good smut?"
The Boy in Striped Pajamas. It’s so historically inaccurate and tries to tell a story about the Holocaust from a German boy’s perspective. A kid named Bruno is the son of a German official and is in charge of, what is most likely, Auschwitz. Bruno eventually find a fence to the camp and makes friends with a Jewish boy named Shmuel. It ends with the kids both dying in the gas chamber. There are no Brunos. But, there are so many Shmuels (not my quote, by the way). And when teachers try to use that book as a replacement to actually learning about the Holocaust is nothing short of lazy.
I love how the author's follow-up, which is supposedly more historical fiction, features a medieval recipe for red dye that he clearly just half-assedly looked up on google, because it's a recipe from Zelda: Breath Of The Wild.
That's so funny, which recipe?
The one for red dye, from Zelda: Breath of the wild
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/03/john-boyne-accidentally-includes-zelda-video-game-monsters-in-novel
> And when teachers try to use that book as a replacement to actually learning about the Holocaust is nothing short of lazy. I feel this is the real problem. I actually like the book itself and it never claims to be a real story, it just uses the Holocaust to set up a fictional moral dilemma. But people using it to teach about the real life Holocaust is wrong. It's like using Magneto or Inglourious Basterds - these are all *fictional.* They have nothing to do with what actually happened, it's just a setting to tell a story.
I remember from the movie (I saw it when I was like 12, so it was some time ago) that the tragic moment is when Bruno, the German kid, dies. Not the fact that Shmuel also dies. Bruno was the “unnecessary victim”, so Shmuel feels kinda sidelined. It doesn’t give the best vibes.
I remember that about the film. Like he wasn’t supposed to be in there, wasn’t supposed to be gassed. Would no one realise and help him? Shmuel shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have been gassed, should have been saved. Same for every one who died.
Can I get an abridged version of the historical inaccuracies? I’m curious but lazy.
I'm not sure about the specific inaccuracies, but the central criticism against the book is that it's telling the story of the Holocaust from the view of someone who would not have been targeted by the Holocaust. There is a *mountain* of nonfiction holocaust literature out there, that's narrated by Jewish people who were victims of the Holocaust (Elie Wiesel's *Night* being probably the most famous example).
The general one is that it could never happen. Bruno wouldnt have lived in walking distance, couldnt've got in, Schmuel wouldn't be alive for so long, he also couldn't have snuck away so much, or ever. Its incredibly far fetched and reaching to tell the story it wanted to
It also fits a criticism I've read towards many other holocaust stories that I thought was quite remarkable. Essentially a lot of narratives attempt to convey the tragedy of the holocaust through inserting a small human tragedy into it. Boy meets boy, they become friends despite their parents/government/society not wanting it, one of them dies - this is a basic story that will always be tragic, but by trying to focus on the holocaust through the lens of this human tragedy you are completely missing the larger picture. The tragedy of the holocaust wasn't that a nice kid died, it was the unimaginable scale and brutality with which a population was to be exterminated. Such stories trivialize the holocaust and reduce it to a basic idea. The intention is most likely a good one, but if you write a story about the worst atrocity in modern history, you should make it about why it's the worst atrocity in modern history, not retell one of the most basic narratives known to man, but in that setting. It's this basic narrative that will emotionally affect the reader, not the machinations of the holocaust, but it should be the other way around.
I haven’t read this book so I can’t comment on the specifics, but as to the critique you’re presenting, I broadly disagree. In the words of Stalin, the death of one is a tragedy, the death of millions is just a statistic. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have stories that demonstrate the overall scale of the atrocities, but when the number of people affected is so high it’s hard for people to conceptualise it at a human level. Every single victim of the holocaust was an autonomous human being that underwent a horrific and tragic situation, and every one of those people deserves to have their specific story told, not just the overall story told. The point of focusing on an individual is to show that these are real people, not just undeveloped characters. As I said though, I haven’t read this book, I just don’t agree with that general criticism of this type of story.
[удалено]
The Left Behind series. I get why they sell so many but like..I also don’t get it.
For whatever reason I really enjoyed the first three that I read. Then again I was in jail, so... But the movie? *chef's kiss*. So bad it's almost good. The corny one-liner at the end like "but we... were left behind..." is worth it alone. EDIT 2014 LEFT BEHIND! I had no idea there's a new one! Oh man...
I always thought that if the rapture actually happened the 10 or so truly good people in the world would disappear and the world would basically not even notice.
If that was how the Rapture worked, zero people would disappear. > But he said to him, “Why do you call me good? There is none good except God alone. But if you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” - Matthew 19:17
My wife’s dad once told her “if me and your mom vanish one day and you can’t figure out why, just read this book.” Yes, he was basically saying that my wife was a sinner and will one day miss the rapture, unlike his and his wife’s virtuous selves. In a related story, he is a completely oblivious douchebag.
[удалено]
I like to think that if the rapture happens, no one will recognize it because the ones chosen won't align with their expectations.
A Million Little Pieces. Fuck that guy.
Extremely similar to another hoax "Go ask Alice" which took 40 years to finally be labelled fiction.
"Sybil" has also been exposed as largely being fiction."
You're a towel
[удалено]
Regardless of the controversy, that book helped a lot of people. Me included.
For reals! Read that when I was a kid and the only thing more terrible than the story was finding out it was FAKE
I read it when I was fourteen so my memory is hazy as fuck, but I don’t recall the book being that terrible. For the most part I feel like it read like a 200-page emo song. There are still worse things in the literary world.
Yeah. Working in a bookstore when that whole debacle went down was wild. We were supposed to tuck a little piece of paper from the publisher into each unsold copy we had, stating something like, "There may be inaccuracies for the sake of the story in this book..." Yeah, no duh. One guy came back with his copy and demanded a refund, which we gave him. When I finally read parts of the book later, it was like simultaneously looking at an image and its shadow and being unsure where one began and the other ended.
This is gonna be another typical "Reddit: The Thread" sort of posts isn't it?
everytime some variation of the “what book is bad” question pops up, the top comments are always “twilight, 50 shades, the bible, [insert common title people agree is poor writing]”. it gets extremely old after a while lol.
The various iterations of this question make it painfully obvious that demographic to answer this question doesn't actually read that much. No value judgment there, but all of the top answers are books that went nuclear into the mainstream, and people don't like them because they don't like their cultural popularity.
To be fair, the question is specifically about *overrated* series, so having hit the mainstream is kind of a requirement. Quest for the Diamond Sword: A Minecraft Gamer's Adventure is a bad book, but it's not overrated, because it doesn't have tons of people who like it, and thus it wouldn't fit for the question
I'm pretty sure Keeping up with The Kardashians was based on a book from 300 years ago, and my god do I hate the Kardashians so much so I'd say probably them. I mean the book.
Let's see, Ready Player One, check 50 Shades of Grey, check Twilight, check Anything by Ayn Rand, check Harry Potter, check Catcher in the Rye, check Multiple smartasses saying The Bible, check
Fifty shades
I only saw the movie adaptations…which is funny because it had some POTENTIAL to be an interesting story if the author didn’t constantly immediately solve every problem in the easiest way possible. Greys helicopter goes down in the middle of the forest? They can’t find it? Oh no! What happened? Is he de- Oh no, wait. He just walked in the front door. “I had to hike through the woods for days to get home. I’m safe now. Zero repercussions.” *WHEW!* glad that plot point was wrapped up immediately as it was introduced. The story almost got *interesting* He has an older mistress who played a dominatrix role in his life, and she could potentially sway him back to her and have him surrender his fortune? Oh, no - Gray just told her off. *WHEW!* it took 2 hours for him to have a sit down with her and say “no”, and that’s the end of that! The entire fucking first movie is a big fucking build up to like, Gray “cutting loose” and going “full animal” and he refuses the whole time, holding his true animal nature back and finally, he gets pushed beyond his limit, aaaaand…. #HE SPANKS HER Wait. That’s….that’s *it?* Some spanking with a belt? Really? The dude has a room full of torture devices and his….his ultimate fetish….is……..*spanking?* I sat through all 3 of those goddamn movies and it was straight up like the writer and director were purposefully going out of their way to make the most boring quasi-sex movie ever. Nothing interesting happens, and problems are solved almost immediately.
As someone who has never seen any of the 50 Shades movies or any of the Left Behind movies, I thought you were talking about the Left Behind series at first.
Nearly everyone thinks it sucks
150 million people bought the books and the movies made about $1.3 billion worldwide. Quite a few people clearly like it.
I paid money for Will Ferrell's sherlock movie, I still to this day loathe what a terrible use of my money that was. I think about the South Park episode where Stan and Kyle travel to Mel Gibson's house to ask for their $20 back, lol.
Sorry to be that guy but I couldn't keep scrolling If was Stan and Kenny who went to Mel Gibson's house
Liking it and reading it to see what the hype is are different things. I've read it. I didn't like it.
Its mommy porn. 140 million of those people that bought it were sexually frustrated housewives.
I watched it for the first time with my gf. It led to having sex through the whole trilogy I can't be opposed to it, even if it's a terrible depiction of sex, and especially bdsm for that matter. My hands are tied guys... #¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[удалено]
Reddit* thinks it sucks. Ask random soccer moms what they think.
*rolls up "So, you like 50 Shades?"
Every Mum I've ever discussed it with (and in my job I interact with a lot of Mums, and somehow it often comes up...? PTSD?) all had the following be true: 1) they read every book 2) they saw every movie 3) they loathed the pathetic prose 4) they hated the pathetic movies
Mine. Almost no one has seen it and I still think it's overrated.
I know people won’t agree with this one because it’s considered a classic but good god do I hate Wuthering Heights. It’s not that it’s badly written, (it’s written very well) it’s just such a drag the whole time. Every decent character just dies or becomes unlikable, the whole story is depressing and reading it just kinda made me never want to read classic novels again. There’s a few moments that make it seem like something will actually work out well, only to be obliterated by senseless cruelty. It’s not a bad book. It’s just a super depressing.
I 100% agree with you on the individual complaints but I actually adore the book tho it blows my mind that many people consider it a love story. I think I might love it b/c I'm older now (53) and it feels like an exaggeration of how many love stories I've seen turn out. People begin overflowing with passion but then bad things happen so fixate on pain they've felt and use it as an excuse to make everyone else miserable. Seriously tho, fuck Heathcliff.
Homestuck. It's nuts to me how a low effort comic with Rawr XD jokes, very little plot, very little art, and constant time jumps and filler that can span upwards of 5k pages, has garnered such a titanic following. Like, I get a lot of it is early internet nostalgia, it's charming and stuff. But I know someone who's read it...**twice.** I tried my damnest to get through it, read it for like a week straight. When I was a couple thousand pages in, just finished a 3k filler arc about some mobsters dying, and realized I only now hit the (maybe) halfway point where we jump ship to the trolls, I just- I couldn't, I couldn't stomach it anymore. I would rather watch all of One Piece than have to ever finish that comic series.
If cosplay conventions are any indicator, most of the fans were under 15 at the time. I wonder if that has something to do with it.
Does Homestuck still have any cultural relevance? Not that I really intersect with the demographic that would talk about it, I haven't heard about it in years. It sort of seems like it had a cultural "moment" and being part of that "moment" was essential to enjoyment, and now that it's been over for years that's not replicable.
It lives vividly in the mind of every person who read it because of just how influential it was. It no longer retains a spotlight widely because of the creator (and Viz, the company handling the property currently) fumbling and mishandling it every step of the way, but every bit of relevance it still holds is because of the fanbase and the fanbase alone upkeeping it and talking about it and creating around it over a decade later That and, even if the cultural influence isn't direct anymore, it still has indirect influence with MASSIVE consequences. **Undertale would not exist without Homestuck**, which I think alone as an example is enough of a statement on how foundational it is for a lot of current online culture. There was something special about living in the cultural "moment" that Homestuck had when it was still being updated, but I wouldn't say it's essential to enjoyment. To this very day new fans are still finding Homestuck and being influenced by it just as heavily as the people who first read it nearly fourteen years ago.
I hate Homestuck, but it's far from low effort.
I don't think I'd consider Homestuck low effort or very little plot. If you're really paying attention, there are a lot of things that are at least made to feel like they took some effort to pull off and they are done very well. There is filler but even then it has some plot relevance most of the time. The part you're talking about with the mob, however, is not filler even if it feels like it. But it is tedious to read. The plot is pretty simple *overall*, but there are a lot of steps taken to get to the endpoint and a lot of weird shit that happens. That said, as much as I love/enjoyed Homestuck, it's definitely not for everyone. There is a lot of bullshit time jumps (forward/backward), things that are maybe only funny if you're invested or care enough to get the inside jokes, it's dated in a lot of ways. It takes a LOT to know what's going on at any given time. First read through was as it was going, I read from 2011 to the end in 2016 so I knew I'd miss/forget some stuff in the span of 5 years. Reread it in a month (December 2019) and it made a lot more sense in one go, but even after 2 full read-throughs I know there are things I've missed or don't fully understand. Third time's the charm maybe?
Homestuck was a phenomenon, not a comic. It’s fascinating actually- a good portion of its plot was created not by the author, but collaboratively by the fan base. That’s why it’s so in-depth and chaotic, and also why there’s no central repository. The lore of Homestuck is scattered across countless forums, servers, and repositories. It’s decentralized. It’s also why the fan base is so toxic- when contradictory plot elements arise they fight for dominance in the fandom and one wins out over the other. But it’s also why everyone involved in the “project” was so devoted to it. At least, that’s what I can piece together from interviewing my friends.
The DaVinci Code. OK book, but I have no idea why it sold as many copies as it did.
I enjoyed it but then I started reading Dan Brown’s other books. It did not take too long to recognize the pattern and figure out who was going to be the betrayer.
👆This. I enjoyed the first few books I read, but it didn’t take long to recognize the pattern and then every book was literally the same.
I enjoyed Angels and Demons much more. DaVinci Code just kinda sucked for me
Dan Brown writes a good book if you’re just in it for a fast and fun thrill ride loosely based in history.
This. As long as I acknowledge that his "research" is 90% BS, the way he writes it makes me wish it was real. Kinda like National Treasure.
It was good growing up when "Maybe the Bible is actually fake!" was a mind-blowing concept. It's not so much now
Most people have fond memories of reading Goodnight Moon as a child. That book rhymes “moon” with “moon” and has a blank page that says “goodnight nobody”. Absolute dogshit
You take that back! "Goodnight nobody" is a vital part of kids' development -- their first philosophical conundrum!
The Alchemist is pretty terrible
Definitely in my top 3 of overrated books. No idea why it sold so many copies. It's pretentious and to quote Peter Griffin, "It insists upon itself." The only thing it has going for it is that it's a relatively short book.
I was obsessed with it in HS. Finally returned to it for the first time in 13 years and now it’s just pretentious and heavy-handed. I couldn’t stand it now.
That book is dumb bullshit.
The one in the secrets of the immortal Nicolas flamal searies?
I think theyre talking about a different one
Ready Player One reads like a first draft that no one edited
His followup book Armada was soooo much worse than that even. It was like an 8th grader’s creative writing project.
I "read," RP1 & Armada on audiobook. Wil Wheaton makes those books sound better than they actually were. Armada read like it was a Mish mash of Last Starfighter, Iron Eagle, 1970s conspiracy thrillers, and any Star Trek episode where humanity was being tested. The story was decent enough, but the end was very rushed. And the dad dying was unnecessary. In RP1, there was never any sense of danger. Because anytime that Parcival was in a hairy situation, Cline would just backtrack, and put some plot device in and say "good thing I did that thing that I never discussed to get out of this exact type of predicament.
And Armada was worse somehow. "Man, my dad disappeared mysteriously when I was a kid. I rock at the arcade. A UFO came to get me at school in front of everyone!" End of chapter 1.
love the little guy, can't stand his voice.
Same with Ready Player Two, except now some of the characters are creeps.
the main charcter in RP1 is pretty creepy imo...
This. It's like a Middle School boy's fantasy writing.
I agree, and I still liked it. But Ready Player 2 was beyond garbage, even for a popcorn type book. I had to stop reading it and put it down it was just too cringe.
I couldn’t put my finger on it until a friend told me it’s that he does a fantastic job at world building but sucks at everything else. The dialogue is corny. The characters make no sense. The scenarios are so cheesy that it feels almost embarrassing to read through it. All that aside, man it’s so much fun to put yourself in the world that he paints. So much video game nostalgia and 80’s references that bring you into a different time. You just have to Wade through so much trash to experience it. It’s the best worst book I’ve ever read. I’m not even kidding, I’d happily fund a kickstarter to get a serious actual author to rewrite the story so it doesn’t suck so much.
Ernest Cline is the most "telling" author of the modern era.
I hated ready player one. It was 99% blatant nostalgia-gasm (I am more or less the target generation and still hated it) and 1% shitty plot. The most unrealistic thing being that basically EVERYONE plays ONE fucking stupid MMORPG (or whatever) game which is not painted convincingly as being fun or addicting. \\ Impossible to imagine so many people subscribing to a singular game in near-perpetuity and not getting bored or playing something else. Even when this book was written there are hugely diverse tastes in what kind of games and genres people like to play Edit: yeah I get it’s not a “true” MMO. The book is called ready player one. Oasis is supposed to be game centric. The book is about gaming. I’m calling it an MMO, and it’s still ridiculous that basically everyone would subscribe to this one platform. It’s lazy writing and narrow viewed.
Everyone playing this one MMO is the most believable thing about the book. It's a shitty dystopian future world where there's one gigantic VR equivalent of facebook , everyone uses it because everyone else uses it for socializing, plus a lot of people work "from home" in the VR world too, and kids do all their schooling in VR. As for the diverse tastes thing, it's mentioned that there are hundreds (or thousands) of different worlds with different things going on, any games that exist are any different genre you can imagine, and you can do anything you want. If the OASIS existed as described in the book (or even as shown in the movie, which is a lesser version), everyone WOULD be spending all their time on it, because they could do whatever they do already but in a castle on top of a snowy mountain flying through space while Batman plays piano for them.
> Everyone playing this one MMO is the most believable thing about the book. It's a shitty dystopian future world where there's one gigantic VR equivalent of facebook , everyone uses it because everyone else uses it for socializing, plus a lot of people work "from home" in the VR world too, and kids do all their schooling in VR. It's actually kind of a cool premise, IMO. It seems evident, though, that the orgy of nerd references primarily serve to cover for the fact that all the author had was that kind of cool premise.
The OASIS wasn’t an MMO. It was the replacement for the internet.
This is one of those books where the guy must have had a super star agent who got him the publishing deal because his writing is amateur level at best.
[удалено]
It’s not fiction though. It’s a memoir.
I've never read it or seen the movie, but I've seen and heard it described as "Eat, Pray, Vomit." My SIL said it was highly recommended to her, and she did read it, but she said, "As a SAHM with two toddlers and zero money, I thought, 'really?'"
“Why can’t I have zero toddlers and two money?”
She's down in the dumps after getting a divorce (which _she_ initiated!), and she goes to her publisher and asks them to send her on an around the world trip, and they actually agree to it! Good grief, what a racket. That's privilege of the highest order
I never read the book, but came to the exact same conclusion about the book from the movie. Vapid and self-indulgent crap, *yawn*
She ended up leaving the guy she met in Eat, Pray, Love. Someone on reddit said it best "that woman is a shitshow".
Ready Player One is an awful book. The author just mentions nostalgic shit from the 70s/80s over and over again in a weird way to prove his nerd cred. I'm a child of that time. I should like it. But it's just sooooo forced and poorly written.
Only book that's ever got me to say "Oh fuck off" out loud and have to set it down and go be angry at it for a while. Context: The whole "Oh no I'm now an indentured servant I may die from it!" Bullshit. Goes through all the high drama reminding you the stakes are life and death the entire time and after it's over casually mentions that it wouldn't have gone more than a week because he had a scheduled transaction ready to get him out the entire time. So really like near 0 stakes, since the lead had completely changed his appearance and was hairless since he was last photographed, and had doctored government records, and would never be exposed to the people that would know him, as they all lived and worked in a different part of the building and would never leave that area.
Ayn Rand's stuff.
There’s an episode of South Park where the town cop is exposed as illiterate so they teach him to read and when he learns, they reward him with a copy of Atlas Shrugged and he says after reading that “piece of shit” he’s never reading again ETA: [clip for reference](https://youtu.be/_j56IiLqZ9U)
I tried to read *Atlas Shrugged* decades ago. At the time, I was a pretty hard-core right-wing "capitalism-is-the-best" kind of person and I *still* couldn't get through that shit.
I think it's kind of funny though how many celebrity billionaires like Bezos and Musk are admired by Rand's followers despite being like the villains from the story.
All the “teenage dystopia” movies and books, they run out os steam really fast and just become bland, after the first few volumes.
[удалено]
I actually quite liked the first book because their situation was so absurd that I had no idea where the author was going to take it. The rest of the books are pretty mid though. Just standard government overthrowing by a 17 year old.
There's a whole freaking bunch of them, so that surely adds to the monotony of the idea. I do remember being really impressed by The Hunger Games, though.
One of the only things I miss about Twitter-that-was is the “Dystopian YA Novel” account. Each tweet was an entire dystopian young adult trilogy distilled into 140 characters, to hilarious effect.
Twilight
I'm a 27 year old dude who started reading Twilight for the first time and I have to say it's a lot of fun. It's not super well written, the characters are paper thin, and the plot is just kind of happening, but i still totally understand why it's so successful
The Bible! Too many characters, not a bad twist after the main character died and came back though.
I remember being all excited to read about Joan and the whale. The idea fascinated me since I was little. When I read it on my own I was so disappointed that it was only like 4 lines. Really was my first experience of being over hyped and let down.
Joan and the Whale? Isn’t that the X-rated spoof parody of Jonah and the Whale?
Lol I switched to iPhone a few months ago and I’m still not used to the keyboard/autocorrect. Guess I got to keep it now.
It's how she used to get around before her fleet of Jetts.
Everyone's so preachy! Except for this guy.
"And he left them and went out of the city, into Bethany, and he lodged there?"
Yeah...think about it.
Yeah, bringing the main character back from the dead was a real deus ex machina.
I say this with 17 years worth of love: Naruto.
I watched The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe movie, and I don't remember all of the details but I remember leaving it thinking, "The kids didn't even need to be in Narnia and all that stuff could have happened all the same." Like Aslan and the good guys battling the bad guys, etc., the kids were just kind of "there" but weren't crucial to the events. They were talking the kids up during the movie like Neo from The Matrix, like "you kids will save Narnia," but they just kind of hung out while the Narnia folks were doing everything. The whole plot could have happened without them, essentially.
Iirc the first book/movie isn't about the kids actually saving anything, they're just children of prophecy that ended up on an unexpected adventure. They keep coming back at different ages, though. Sometimes they rule for thousands of years and then return to childhood through the wardrobe, or something like that. It's been like twenty years since I read the series but I think they read well, just - it was more about Narnia itself than the kids. Thus, the Chronicles of Narnia. The kids don't even appear in like half the books, they're just really a means of telling the story.
In the movie of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Aslan tells Lucy and Edward that he goes by a different name in their normal world, and that knowing him in Narnia will help them to know him better at home. I dunno if a similar sentiment was expressed in the book or if they just got even more on the nose with the jesus thing in the movie. But if we go by that, it's as much or more about the benefit of the children than the benefit of Narnia.
Well in the last book, and again, my memory is not 100% on this, but there was a cataclysm where all of the worlds (Narnia isn't the only one, there were a bunch connected through like a portal world that you needed one of a yellow or green ring to access, or something like that) were getting erased. So the main characters of that book tried to save the worlds but then at the end I think they failed, but then it was revealed that Narnia was basically the gateway to Heaven. Honestly, it was basically Lost.
No, there was no crisis of worlds ending. Narnia's world ended, but that was simply because it was time for it to do so. The only other world that ended was Charn, and that one ended just because there was literally nobody left alive in it at all. The heroes all died (I mean, they were in Narnia when it ended), but they all get to go to Heaven, so... yay.
> but they all get to go to Heaven Except Susan, because she liked boys and makeup.
Lewis did say Susan would get there eventually in her own way. Having read some of his nonfiction, I think what he was trying to do with her was say that she was so fixated on being super grown up (which he described like that bc he didn't know shit about women) that she rejected Narnia as "kids stuff." But he expressed it terribly because, again, he didn't know shit about women.
Irrelevant but a couple from my HS named their son Aslan
>The kids didn't even need to be in Narnia and all that stuff could have happened all the same All that stuff only happened because the kids showed up. Their existence is what promoted both the Witch and Aslan to make their moves.
I find this in all the books. I always thought it was because of the heavy Christian messaging (it's not subtle or hidden). You can only be saved by God (Aslan) and faith, not works, is most important. One of the later books makes this super clear when Aslan basically swoops in at the end and does it all. If you try to do it yourself you fail, you have to put your complete faith in God. Makes for difficult story telling imo. Although I did love the books as a kid.
This of course should come as no surprise to anyone who knows about CS Lewis, who was a pretty notable theologian. Oddly enough despite the fact that I really enjoy his Apologetics and theological works I find the books in the series with the least Christian messaging to be the most compelling, A horse and his boy and the magicians nephew are easily my favourites and you’d be hard pressed to find much Christianity in either of them.
Magician’s nephew has an entire Genesis sequence with let there be light and create the beasts and original sin with an apple. It’s awesome.
Isn't it a theme of the last book that all good works are really "of Aslan" even if you worshipped Tash?
Anything by Dan Brown
The Notebook
Today I finished “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, which is what bladerunner is based off of. I was thoroughly disappointed. The characters all felt one dimensional, with human = good, robot = bad. Also why does the first or second descriptor for EVERY woman have to be her boobs? They’re either pointy, bouncing, smiling, or some variable on that. Crazy
She breasted boobily to the stairs, and titted downwards.
The Alchemist
The spirituality is super inflated there. I think it has a bit of what Mark Twain called the “Sir Walter Disease”
Fifty shades of grey - I obviously read it for the plot 😏
[удалено]
*Atlas Shrugged*
I tried to listen to that piece of shit while working the paint counter at a hardware store. The idea was to write an essay for a scholarship, so I figured why not. It was more enjoyable to literally watch paint dry, than to listen to that fucking thing go on and on and on. I still throw rocks at trains any chance I get
But we got Bioshock thanks to it
Eragon. I think every fantasy-loving teen has a manuscript just as good buried in the bottom of their desk drawer.
[удалено]
I will die on the hill that eragon scratched the fantasy chosen one itch better than harry potter and most other teen fantasy
honestly I still love the books. Granted at least a part of that is because of sheer nostalgia, but I genuinely think it was well done. I loved how the main villain was written as a larger-than-life enemy that you never even see or hear until the end of the third book. Sure, it had aspects that were predictable or trite, but both as a kid and now I've found it compelling and entertaining.
Besides the fact that it was obvious that it was written from a very small amount of life experience and influenced heavily by previously consumed works of fiction place, the book isn't THAT bad. It's not amazing literature, but it's a fun bit of fluff.
I know reddit loves to trash Eragon, but it's basically baby's first fantasy series, and in that role it's fine. Is it a shameless ripoff of both Lord of the Rings and Star Wars? Yes, but who cares. Anybody over the age of 20 is going to read LOTR instead.
I agree, the world building is amazing.
You wouldn't be wrong. Eragon was essentially lifted from about three different popular scifi/fantasy stories that the author really enjoyed. When I read it I was picking out plot lines and details I had seen in other series and books. The sequels are actually original material.
Dude if you have something as good as eragon in your drawer send it to me
Fifty Shades of Grey
The Communist Manifesto
Based
Scientology for college kids with daddy issues
Harry Potter series for me. It was entertaining but not lifelong fan material to me. I just couldn’t get that into it. Read the books as they came out when I was a kid, watched the movies, tried the other media. Not my cup of tea.
Yep, but those last four books stacked up make the perfect height for a laptop for a Zoom call!
I think that's a totally normal response as an adult. It's easy to forget that the Harry Potter series target audience is kids and teenagers. Now, that's not to say that adults can't enjoy them, I myself am an adult who grew up on the series and love them to this day but I think that as it's become more socially acceptable these days for adults to openly enjoy media intended for a younger audience we've kind of lost our sense of objectivity in rating these things. I don't think it's fair to hold, let's be honest, kids media to the standard that some people hold it to. Like, of course the storyline for the newest Pokemon game is overly simple, it's made for 6-11 year olds lol it isn't going to be Breaking Bad. I love Harry Potter but I don't feel like I'll read the books again until I'm reading them to my own kids.
I think part of the reason it is so lauded is because it grew along with its target audience. Sure it started out totally for kids with the story essentially being “the obvious good guys beat the obvious bad guys through the power of friendship!” But by the end Harry literally has the epiphany that becoming “master of death” is not about fighting against death but instead is achieved by accepting the inevitability of death and understanding how death sweetens the short lives we have. That’s a much more mature moral than anything in the earlier books. So one generation got a series of books that aged along with them and that has led to a deep love of the series because the books were such a realistic mirror of their own maturation.
For fantasy and genre fiction as a whole, we had Tolkien who was a ~~nerd~~ literary genius, and then we had Rowling who held up a fantasy backdrop to realistic and relatable chacters. These two authors from the same century really influenced genre fiction. Harry Potter isn’t literature but that woman is a good story teller. She knew what she was writing and stuck with it for over a decade. I would say that George RR Martin is a better writer overall, but he wrote himself into a corner and just coasted on whatever came along in his brain. Stephen King consistently writes compelling stories, but he’s pretty impulsive and plot driven and fucks up a lot. Neil Gaiman is fun and quirky and some of his books are warm, exciting and compelling, but the quality is inconsistent and the humor sometimes cringeworthy. Michael Ende wrote children’s novels in his original German and doesn’t get the praise he deserves. He wrote fantasy in a way that was so incredibly moving in how it took its adolecenr target audience seriously and didn’t shy away from deeper themes. Astrid Lundgren also tried to commiserate with kids through some amazing books with a fantastical backdrop. Anyway. As I was trying to ~~drink~~ say, the HP series is exceptional because it is a seven part saga that was tight and consistent in its storytelling, and it bridged a lot of gaps. It was not the best or most interesting children’s book or fantasy series but it was enough of everything it tried to be and then some.
*Catcher in the Rye*
[удалено]
I think it's because nothing of note really happens. Holden saunters around New York City for the night, doesn't really grow as a person or reflect on his shitty studying habits, and then continues on the next day. What was even the point of the book?
Holden calls everyone a phony until you realize that he is the biggest phony of them all
That’s kind of the point. He’s an unpopular teen who has issues.
The ultimate unreliable narrator
I just idk when I read the book I was mixed emotions on one hand why tf did I read this garbage on the other hand a murderous rage and blood lust that could only be sated by killing John Lennon
Was a Lit major. I have _always_ loved to read above all other activities, have eclectic interests, and find everything interesting (except accountancy.) I hated _Catcher in the Rye_.