Top 3 books you've read....? and the most overated?

Top 3 books you've read....? and the most overated?

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Discussion

Justin Cyder

12,624 posts

148 months

Wednesday 26th June 2013
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Goughie said:
Bible (old & new) and the Koran. Both filled with enough self contradictory clap trap to make a grown man weep...
Mind you, if you get the right one, it'll be worth a few bob... smile


Laurel Green

30,770 posts

231 months

Wednesday 26th June 2013
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Justin Cyder said:
Mind you, if you get the right one, it'll be worth a few bob... smile

God works in mysterious ways it would seem. hehe

ESOG

1,705 posts

157 months

Sunday 7th July 2013
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Overrated fiction: anything by Dean Koontz. I just cannot see what all the fuss is about. I have yet to make through one of his books. I am like a child with a.d.d when trying to read Koontz. Him and his g'damned labrador or whatever. Yeah buddy we get it, you love your dog! Good for you. I love tt but I don't feel the need to interject it into every piece of writing I scribble FFS!!

ESOG

1,705 posts

157 months

Sunday 7th July 2013
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Top 3 not an easy thing to narrow down; like trying to narrow my favorite films

Cross genres but here goes, all equal imo for first place;
1) Magical Thinking by Augusten Borroughs; an absolute hoot of a read! To be able to actually laugh out loud from reading is rare, and there are more than a few stories inside that had me in stitches. If any of you have read this book I'd be curious to know what your favorite story was. Mine was about the maid. Epic ending to that story! hehe

2) World War Z by Max Brooks: I aspire to be a published writer in the genre of horror anthology's, particularly focusing on zombies and I can honestly say that I am jealous of WWZ's brilliance. IMHO it is the epitome of the undead genre and I am jealous I didn't dream it up first. It's a shame the film strayed so far from the book. It was a horrible piece of cinema tbh.

3) Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill: I am big into the whole think positive and good things will happen for you culture/literature. If I had to recommend one book to someone that has the potential to change their life it would be Think and Grow Rich....

Which leads me into the most overrated category. TBH I haven't read a book that had so much social stigma/hype surrounding it I just HAD to read it, and no one single piece of literature pops into my head (although I am sure this would be easier somehow if I had actually read my middle to high school's required summer reading).

This is tough because its not like picking apart a film (which I nominate American Pie as the most overrated POS I've ever seen) but one book does come to mind now that I think about it; The Secret. I know, I know. Think and Grow Rich and The Secret and literature like it all say the same thing using different wording but I found nothing special or beyond the obvious within its pages. At least Think and Grow Rich gives great true back stories of men who pioneered many important inventions which revolutionized our lives.

shirt

22,508 posts

200 months

Sunday 7th July 2013
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best:

  1. 1 would have to be in cold blood by truman capote. read it before i knew the history and it amazed me even then.
  1. 2 is slaughterhouse 5 by kurt vonnegut. the only thing that bugs me is his [or his publisher's] penchant for referring to being in dresden in every other book preface since. he's an amazing writer who doesn't need that.
  1. 3 is hard to choose without my bookcase to guide me. i guess the last one i've read that stands out would be richard yates' eleven kinds of loneliness. that was over a year ago now and i still remember it.
overrated:

there's only one. kerouac. on the road. total bumf. didn't enjoy it at all but read on purely because its so iconic and i wsnted to see where the brilliance lay. i was sorely disappointed to find it lacking and haven't been able to bring myself to start big sur having had it on the shelf for years.

shirt

22,508 posts

200 months

Sunday 7th July 2013
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Xtriple129 said:
also sophies world
great choice. read it once through the easy way, cutting the philosophy, then tried again a few years later at the full thing. glad i did.

rumple

11,671 posts

150 months

Sunday 7th July 2013
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bearman68 said:
Best.

1) Stephan Donaldson trlogy re Thomas Covanant.
2) Animal Farm. George Orwell
3) Trinity Leon Uris. Maybe Stephen King It.

Over rated.
1) War & Peace.
2) Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
3) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (ooooo controversial).
If you liked Covernant you need to read the Gap series, Stephan Donaldson again, its five or six books and written in the same style but is sci fi.

Halb

53,012 posts

182 months

Monday 12th August 2013
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Best.
Terry Pratchett's works
Catch 22
Chris Moore's stuff
JRR Tolkien as well...and since I'm rereading his ASOIAF, might as well say GRR Martin.


Overated?
Difficult to say.
Bible?
THe Vampire Dairy things?

Edited by Halb on Monday 12th August 22:49

Nom de ploom

4,890 posts

173 months

Friday 23rd August 2013
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in terms of books that have dissapointed me I owuld say that I expected more from Keep the Aspadistra Flying - billed as a great wrok of english literature, i found it uninspiring and staid.

I've also tried to read The Moors Last Sigh three times and never got into it and on a similar vein The God of Small Things I thought was self indulgent and quite boring tbh...

Silver

4,372 posts

225 months

Friday 23rd August 2013
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ESOG said:
Overrated fiction: anything by Dean Koontz. I just cannot see what all the fuss is about. I have yet to make through one of his books. I am like a child with a.d.d when trying to read Koontz. Him and his g'damned labrador or whatever. Yeah buddy we get it, you love your dog! Good for you. I love tt but I don't feel the need to interject it into every piece of writing I scribble FFS!!
The constant referral to dogs as 'pooch' is very grating.

imagineifyeswill

1,224 posts

165 months

Saturday 14th June 2014
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Ive read so many books I couldnt possibly pick out 3 favourites, as for worst I just couldnt finish Catcher in the Rye and also found anything by John Steinbeck very hard going.

Halmyre

11,148 posts

138 months

Wednesday 18th June 2014
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imagineifyeswill said:
Ive read so many books I couldnt possibly pick out 3 favourites, as for worst I just couldnt finish Catcher in the Rye and also found anything by John Steinbeck very hard going.
We did 'Of Mice And Men' and 'Cannery Row' at school. Both very good; and then we did 'The Grapes of Wrath'...

Voldemort

6,087 posts

277 months

Wednesday 18th June 2014
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Picking a top 3 is, of course, impossible. But these come to mind as being amongst that very select group of books I've read more than once:

Douglas Adams - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Cornelius Ryan - The Longest Day
Frederick Forsyth - The Odessa File

Overated? How about Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco? Got a lot of good reviews, followed 'The Name of the Rose', which was great, but was imo unreadable. One of only a handful of tomes I never finished.

Legend83

9,947 posts

221 months

Tuesday 24th June 2014
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Top 3:

- If This Is A Man (Primo Levi)
- The Pillar of the Earth (Ken Follett)
- The Hogfather (Terry Pratchett)

Most over-rated:

- The Sisters Brothers (Patrick De Witt)

Dull dull dull.

Leg End

3 posts

118 months

Wednesday 9th July 2014
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Voldemort said:
Overated? How about Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco? Got a lot of good reviews, followed 'The Name of the Rose', which was great, but was imo unreadable. One of only a handful of tomes I never finished.
“The Name of the Rose” – unreadable, not quite, I managed to complete the task on the second attempt, a good few years after the first. A challenging read? Most definitely, almost to the point of removing the enjoyment gained from reading. It helps if you know Latin and have a smattering of French & German (for the translation I had), also a knowledge of the historical events surrounding the novel helps. I never understood how such a difficult book became a worldwide best seller in the 1980s. It must have been a case of people posing on the beach, “Look at me, I’m intellectual, me - ‘cos I’m reading The Name of the Rose (well, I read the cover)”

I have read another of Umberto Eco’s novels “Baudolino” (bought because I liked the cover), set about 100 years earlier. The story is a mix of history, myth & fantasy, actually I enjoyed it, a very easy read, in comparison.

MacW

1,349 posts

175 months

Wednesday 9th July 2014
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Best:
1. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks.
2. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
3. Magician by Raymond E. Feist.

Worst:
1. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.
2. American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
3. Dracula by Bram Stoker.

Tango13

8,398 posts

175 months

Tuesday 15th July 2014
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Best,

The Crow Road

The Odessa File, Day of the Jackel, The Shepherd, in fact any of the FF books with an unpredictable ending.

The Art of Racing in the Rain, also for the ending which you think you've seen coming until the last chapter.


Overated,

The Godfather, full of over written details and unnecessary plot lines, could've been 2/3's the length and a better book for it.

Catcher in the Rye, proof that the end result of a million monkeys with typewriters isn't Shakespeare?

Anything by Jeffrey Archer or Dan Brown, the cage sweepings from the above monkeys and i'm not talking about the paper.


budfox

1,510 posts

128 months

Sunday 27th July 2014
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I just can't do fiction books. I'm not stupid but I just get confused. My level of such books therefore extends no further than Dan Brown

What I do read though is science books, particularly anything about the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo missions.

So I have a top three:

Carrying the Fire - Michael Collins
A Man on the Moon - Andrew Chaikin
Physics of the Impossible - Michio Kaku

...and for worst ? Anything Harry Potter. I read all of these to my son over a number of years, and how they ever sold millions is just beyond me.

roogi

245 posts

158 months

Tuesday 29th July 2014
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These threads are great, they always provide a list of books I can add to my reading list and ones to avoid.

My top 3 will change over time, but The World According to Garp will always be in there and possibly now Slaughterhouse 5. It took me a while to get through it and at first I didn't really get it, especially the sci-fi elements, but I couldn't stop thinking about the book after I finished it and it has now left a deep impression on me. So it goes.

Books to avoid? Most self help / self improvement guides I have attempted to read are rubbish. I've read some of them out of curiosity and it makes me realise that people who read these books and take them seriously seem to become platitude spouting drones. They're not all crap, I'm currently reading The Chimp Paradox and while the language and metaphors come across as patronising the psychology behind it seems valid as is quite interesting.

laam999

538 posts

168 months

Tuesday 29th July 2014
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Top three at the moment

Enders game - orson Scott card. Love all the books but that's where it starts.

Life in the fast lane - Steve machete. Great view on f1 from the view of a mechanic.

Changes (dresden files) - jim butcher. They started out nice and simple but slowly grow to become more epic and this was the peak I think.

Worst.

Moby dick - hermin melville. Simply dull, nothing happens, I don't care about anything that's going on, struggles to the end and wish I'd never bothered.

Don't really have others, maybe foundation by Isaacs asamov. Don't get the fuss but going to re read soon.