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Books - Overrated

Both fiction and non-fiction books that are touted as classics or important that have left me wondering what all the fuss is about. (Top 10 Index)

Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

I personally prefer Tender is the Night - it is far stronger, to me - but this is the one that gets all the press.

It's not a bad book; just not one I'd read again. Nuff said?

There are some memorable quotations in the book, including the closing line "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past", and "her voice was full of money."

Fitzgerald writes well - not Hemingway or Joyce (comtemporaries), however. This book is just fluff to me.

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

Blech! How boring!

OK, it's been over a quarter century since I slogged through this book, but that was back at the time where there was no book I didn't finish and few that I couldn't enjoy.

Oh, I finished it, alright, but only because it was an assignment.

And I certainly didn't - and don't - see the value of it.

OK, the scene with the arsenic still resonates, but that's it. That's all I gots. What's the fuss?

Prisoner of Sex - Norman Mailer

I like Mailer (although his good work is well behind him, partly due to his ability [as a grand master] to ignore his editors), but there is only one reason I'm glad to have read this book:

1) So there is no reason to ever have to read it again: It was read, remembered, and revolting.

Any questions?