The most overrated books you've ever read

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by lip

Maybe it's just me, but in general I don't like books that are written from the first-person perspective.

I would have to make an exception for Jane Eyre; IMHO one of the best novels ever written. It has its faults, but Charlotte Bronte invented magical realism over a hundred years before anyone was calling it that.

Other really top-notch first person narratives:
Great Expectations.
Lorna Doone
The Thirty Nine Steps
The Big Sleep
The Riddle of the Sands

To return to the topic, I am still less than halfway through Crime and Punishment, which I bought from a university bookshop in 1981. I also possess a copy of A Passage to India by EM Forster, which I was obliged to read and hated, and only after years of reflection do I appreciate that the reason why I hated it is because it is a pack of shit.

I also thought Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence was garbage, though in that case I realise I was not on the right wavelength. I quite like story, narrative, characters I can relate to. If I am being forced to share the inner life of the protagonist, I want the protagonist to be interesting; someone like Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice or, of course, like Jane Eyre. I want to care about the lead character and about what happens to him/her. DH Lawrence's novels are all about the personal obsessions of DH Lawrence, and frankly he was a self-absorbed and uninterestiung man who wrote uninteresting books. Paul Morrell could eat shit and die for all I care.