Agree with so many of these! To wit: Eat, Pray, Love; A Man Called Ove; Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and 50 Shades. All rubbish.

I liked Hillbilly Elegy, though. I think the problem with it was that it was over hyped. I think it was fine for what it was, but nothing particularly profound. It's just that it got these rave reviews that it was some ground-breaking work that was the voice of the working class, and it obviously wasn't.

My overrated book: The Life of Pi. What pretentious rubbish.

Anonymous wrote:The Goldfinch
Hillbilly Elegy
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
DaVinci Code


Thoughts on A Little Life? I am not sure I want to go down that path, but it shows up on so many Best Of lists...

A Little Life features a main character who is such a tortured soul. Honestly, it's like torture porn. Awful and I'm still not sure I shouldve read[url] it. But written beautifully, so there you go.

The magicians

The Goldfinch
Hillbilly Elegy
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
DaVinci Code


Thoughts on A Little Life? I am not sure I want to go down that path, but it shows up on so many Best Of lists...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Chosen by Chaim Potok.

Read it recently for a book club. It was a snooze. Have no idea why it was a best seller, other than perhaps every Jewish person in American felt compelled to buy a copy.

Really? I loved it, though I preferred another Potok book - My Name is Asher Lev. I am Jewish though.

I hated Catcher in the Rye. What a whiner.

I LOVE this book (I'm not Jewish). I have a copy, still read it over and over.

Previous mentions: I liked Secret Life of Bees, but just finished another of the author's books, The Mermaid Chair, and found it so boring. Eat Pray Snore- so pretentious and mindful of its image (just like the author!). I did like the movie though, so go figure. I generally like Jodi Picoult (and I like that she sets her stories in NH/VT).

Anonymous wrote:Franzen is genius.
Bardo is the most dreadful example of an Emperor's New Clothes this decade.

Lol. I posted both of these. Got Franzen's name wrong. We will have to disagree on genius. He's not even memorable.

Fates and Furies, The Nest, Happiness Project

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anything by Cormac McCarthy

I love him. Why don’t you like him? Who do you like?

I find the lack of punctuation in (some of?) his books affected and annoying, and his stories unnecessarily bleak and nihilistic, like certain "torture porn" style horror films. Admittedly i haven't read him since high school, though.

Anonymous wrote:The Secret Life of Bees

Like Water for Elephants

I realize different tastes/preferences, but I loved both these books--especially The Secret Life of Bees.

Anonymous wrote:The Chosen by Chaim Potok.

Read it recently for a book club. It was a snooze. Have no idea why it was a best seller, other than perhaps every Jewish person in American felt compelled to buy a copy.

Really? I loved it, though I preferred another Potok book - My Name is Asher Lev. I am Jewish though.

I hated Catcher in the Rye. What a whiner.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Many people call it one of their favorites, but I disliked so much about it. I hate books that make the future murder victim extra annoying, as if s/he has it coming, to mention just one of this book's sins.

Franzen is genius.
Bardo is the most dreadful example of an Emperor's New Clothes this decade.

A Man Called Ove
Agree with The Corrections and Everything I Never Told You

Anonymous wrote:Interview with the Vampire. Have never been able to get more than a chapter or two into it. Liked the movie though (and usually I like a book much more than its movie adaptation).

Blasphemer!

Hamilton--author made a lot of assumptions about Hamilton along the lines of "Hamilton must have thought..." This got annoying after a while