Have you ever read a book that everyone else loved but you found disappointing?

I started "Hitchhiker's Guide..." and while I am only halfway through the second book, I can tell it is likely I will never finish the series.

The author has a quirky sense of humor and I have had a few good laughs, but the characters are absolutely two-dimensional and the plot is obviously ad hoc.

It reminds me of a sci/fi comic for brainy thirteen-year-olds. I think I just might have missed my "Hitchhiker's Guide..." window and am now a bit too old.

So does anyone else have a classic they've regarded as a dud?

Don't be ashamed, I am sure you are not the only person who didn't enjoy "Title: Required Reading for the Cultured".

So lets hear what you really think...

Hitchhiker's Guide, definitely. I said as much after I finally got around to reading the whole series a few years back. The unpredictability of just about every turn of events in the books and the fitting ending are about the only redeeming features of it all, in my opinion. Oh, and Marvin.

I started "Hitchhiker's Guide..." and while I am only halfway through the second book, I can tell it is likely I will never finish the series.

The author has a quirky sense of humor and I have had a few good laughs, but the characters are absolutely two-dimensional and the plot is obviously ad hoc.

It reminds me of a sci/fi comic for brainy thirteen-year-olds. I think I just might have missed my "Hitchhiker's Guide..." window and am now a bit too old.Finally someone who understands me. *sigh*

I had the same feeling with this book. Read it first when I was 16, but could only laugh one or two times. The part with '42' is actually quite funny.

In addition to the characters and the plot, the style is awful. It seems that Adams could not hold onto one thought for more than two minutes. He is digressing all the time.

The title should say "Alledged great books that disappointed you".

Another one was the "Silmarillion". It is just to dry for me.

"Ringworld"
The idea was brilliant and the concept of the Ringworld simply blew my mind away... but I found the rest of the book too boring. I had to force myself to finish it, and that's not a good sign.

Let me think, Dune instantly comes to mind - probably because I posted about it fairly recently in the Dune thread. It wasn't bad but I didn't find it to be the "great novel" that everyone claims it to be.

The Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories - these "classics" of fantasy were very dull and poorly written.

War and Peace - I never managed to make it past the beginning. All I can remember of it is a huge string of character introductions that consisted of name, occupation and very little else.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. The thing just annoyed the hell out of me; especially the "grok" business... Ugh.

You need to really like a specific type of humor for the Hitchhikers Trilogy (all five books). I found them all a riot -- my wife just thinks they're stupid. Ah well, to each his or her own. The movie was good, too. The series was better -- did anyone else notice Marvin from the series in the movie?

Although I enjoyed Hitchhiker, I don't think I would call it a 'Great Book' by any definition.

I just couldn't read Crime and Punishment -- it was just a book about a petty coward, I never wanted to sympathize with the main character. I have a difficult time with books where the main character is a waste of space (Catcher in the Rye ranks in there too).

I can't recall the title (it might have been A Farewell to Arms), but there was a Hemmingway novel that had A LOT of dialog -- it was during that book I found dialog was not Hemmingway's strong point.

The Shannara books by Terry Brooks I always felt there was a great story trying to get out but nobody would let it out.

Tad Williams books every time I try to read them I'll see something else and read that instead.

Thomas Hardy hate his books, his style of writing just sets me on edge.

Farfhd and the Grey Mouser is utter crap, I really tried to read it and got quite a long way through but it was just boring and confusing.

Hithchhiker is awesome as is Crime and Punishment.

There are quite a few books I have been told are great but which I was sorely disapointed in. Cant remember any out of the top of my head.

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, so far!! Nearly 100 pages into it and still can't work out what's going on. It's doing my head in. Parts of it are really good, but other parts leave me scratching my head and I don't like that.
I'm going to go back and finish the Dragonlance series and maybe come back to it later.

Barmy! You're missing something awesome if you give up on Steven Erikson. We have all warned you that Gardens of the Moon is really hard to get into so you shouldn't be surprised by your reaction. But we've also all raved about what a brilliant series it is. So we've all been in your position. I think Joacquin summed it up when he said something like "when you're reading Erikson, you have no idea what's going on, but when you get to the end, you think what a fantastic book that was"

Dragonlance is kiddie fantasy in comparison.

The most disappointing "great" book I have ever read was "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens. Oliver is such a little whining weaner.

I won't be giving up on the bloke. It's just that the book is hard for me to read properly. I like to know what's happening and what's going on. His characters are incredibly rich and individual, but he doesn't describe their locations or situations very well at all. I mean, what is this 'Moons Spawn' thing I just read about. At first, I thought it was some kind of fortress under siege, but then it seemed to move and change shape, by the way he was describing it?!
All a bit too strange and wierd for me right now. I don't like things that bosh my head out. I'll come back to it later!

Catcher in the Rhye, which I hated, and which is one of the VERY few books I've started and couldn't get myself to finish.

I'm going to go back and finish the Dragonlance series and maybe come back to it later. Dragonlance. There you go. One of the worst series of fantasy books I have ever read.

i'll second, er, third that motion chandos :sick:

for me it's (hold the eggs and vegetables) Narnia. yup, I'm reading it at the first time at the age of 21 and I can't get into it. And it's not because I can't enjoy fantasy that's supposed to "make you feel like a kid again" because Stardust by Neil Gaiman is one of my favorites.

To a certain extent, Lord of the Rings. The hype probably killed it. Tolkein was a mastermind, and brilliant at creating new worlds. Fantasy owes him a *lot* but his stories had a way of dragging on and/or going at a snails pace.

Hitchhikers Guide I agree with - the humour good in places but it became apparent that Adams started trying too hard to be silly/funny.

I enjoyed the first two books of Dragonlance, but haven't read any further - I can see what someone said when they said it was sort of "kiddie fantasy"

Catcher in the Rye. So overrated.

Cattcher in the Rye, good choice. Anything by Ludlum. Hitchhikers. Goodkind. Pride and Prejudice -- in fact, pretty well anything written by Austen or any of the Bronte sisters. Solid writing, maybe. Earth-shattering, life changing literature? No way.

What's wrong with Dragonlance? It's easy to read and get on with. I can't put it down me when I get reading it a bit.

Well, I dont reckon Dragonlance is reckoned as a great piece of literature but many people love it, people I respect and I cant just understand it. It is utter tripe, it is basically some DnD adventure written out, poorly.

Oh and Barmy, Moon' Spawn is a floating fortress, a "spawn" of the Moon so to speak. A big floating piece of rock.

There's nothing wrong with Dragonlance. It's not high fantasy, but then, it doesn't aspire to be. It's aimed at the young adult population, but it has plenty of fans even among older readers. There's way more bad fantasy out there that's miles below Dragonlance. And anyway, speaking about "Dragonlance" in general is pretty pointless, considering it's a shared fiction world with dozens of different writers contributing to it besides Weis & Hickman.

I will most likely get smacked for mine. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again and Lord of the Rings were too boring. I could not wrap my head around what J.R.R. was writing. I didn't get beyond the first chapter in either. :sleep:

Pride and Prejudice was equally as boring. It read like a diary without the juicy details, imo. I still don't see why Mr. Darcy was so sigh worthy. :confused: Though I did struggle through Mayfair, which really turned me off Jane Austin.

The Grapes of Wrath, the book with bipolar disorder. An intercalary chapter would be good, but the chapters between were drawn out and tedious.

Awww...

I'm surprised that _Catchers in the Rye_ seems to be so disappointing to many here. I blubbered like a baby at the end of that book! This is completely my own interpretation, but I felt the book illuminated how it is mankinds' innate predisposition to love one another, and then throughout childhood and youth we learn why we should not love one another. Yes, the main character is completely unlovable, but try to view him through his little sister's eyes.

Oh well.

But then again, I always found Shakespeare to be absolutely unbearable, so possibly my taste is somewhat suspect.

The Hobbit bored me so much I put it down halfway through and never went back. Ditto for Dune, though seeing the (older) film before reading it may have contributed to that. Terry Goodkind's fantasy series, or at least the first book in it, as I didn't get any further than that. It struck me as a book featuring 2D characters moving around in a 2D world.

I totally agree with you Kuemper. Even though I finished it I found LoTR quite boring to be honost.

The Grapes of Wrath, the book with bipolar disorder. An intercalary chapter would be good, but the chapters between were drawn out and tedious. You make me cry.

I'm jumping on the Hitchhiker's bandwagon - my brother-in-law swears by it, and has read it about ten thousand times. I read it, and while I chuckled a few spots, as a whole, it was fairly inane. I'll probably include Dune with this - it's good, but I don't see it as quite the masterpiece it's heralded to be.

I have to agree with the nay-sayers on "Hitchhiker's Guide" and "Dune". Perhaps I expected too much from my friends' recommendations, but they just didn't spark. And I think "Stranger in a Strange Land" just plain falls apart in the second half; the beginning of Heinlein's decline. A problem that also afflict Farmer's Riverworld novels: brilliant beginning, limp ending. Tolkien's writing at its worst is stilted, and some scenes are embarassingly overwritten, but only a few, and the magnificence of his conception saves him, at least for me.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, or to be more precise Northern Lights - the first part. I managed to slug through the first book, and then had to give up. It was sooo boring, it took me nearly three months to read because I could only read about a page at a time. What is the appeal?

Don Quixote.

Yes, this makes me an idiot. Right? But I'm totally willing to admit that I was an idiot back then when I was seventeen.

But since I read the Thousand and One Nights as a kid, I found that Don Quixote wasn't as good as my recollections of those stories, although it had a little bit the same kind of way of storytelling.

IMO, Don Quixote is over-interpreted. Any book would be a masterpiece of great cultural significance, if it would be interpreted so much as it has been.

It might be a great book, but I know I'll never read it again. Shame on me.

EDIT: I found nothing amusing, or of great value in the way Don Quixote gets beaten over and over, because he's a little nutty. Failing to see other meanings here, or what?

I found Don Quixote to have a few sporadic good chapters among a truck load of boredom. The second book was actually worse than the first one that way.

Yeah - Don Quixote. I have it sitting on my bookshelf with a boomark halfway through it where I finally gave up in boredom.

Other than that, I'm quite happy with the 'great' books I've read.

Hmmm...probably Harry Potter *shudder* I still can't believe I actually read it :aaa: (especially since I hate it), but everyone was going on about it so I decided I'd have a read and see if it was any good or not.

Nothing wrong with a bit of Barry Trotter!

Ah wait! That reminds me - I hated Bored of the Rings. It was just lame gag after lame gag - nothing clever or witty or even really very funny.

Terry Brooks and his Shannara Legend thingy...all my friends said it ruled, but it never got to me...just to straightforward and outright bad descritions just bored the hell out of me...the first book I've ever not finished.

I couldn't agree more, Rekesalat. Those Shannara books were rubbish, given how popular they are supposed to be.

Terry Brooks and his Shannara Legend thingy...all my friends said it ruled, but it never got to me...just to straightforward and outright bad descritions just bored the hell out of me...the first book I've ever not finished.I... third that. ;)

I've always had problems with the Shannara series. I managed to get through - and even to a certain extent enjoy the first book, but 3 chapters into the second and I was dazed and confused.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else here found that after going back to a series you previously enjoyed, you found the flavour gone, and storyline tough to get through (much like an old piece of gum)
I'd been a big fan of David Eddings since Year 8 when a friend introduced me - I followed it through the Belgariad, the Mallorian, The Chronicals, The Elenium and the Tamuli, but after going back to them, I couldnt help but notice the re-used plotlines, characters and general childishness scattered throughout. I could digress, but I'm sure I've seen more than one thread dedicated to this :p

Anyway, just a point of interest. Anybody?

Sure, Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit springs to mind...the plot just moves so slowly ... bAAAAHHH

I loved them at first, but the second readthrough got a little boring...(speaking heresy, I know...)but I can't say I'm going to read them again in the near future

Well, you have to look at things in perspective. Both LotR and Dune were fairly impressive at the time they were written (in terms of quality, if not necessarily the ideas). Now, if somebody grew up with modern fantasy/sci-fi, I can understand them not seeing so much in these books (ditto for the Jane Austen novels).

The amount of hype one hears probably matters, too. Is much easier to be disappointed if you start a book with great expectations.

Myself, I think both LotR and Dune are great. Hitchhiker's I did not like.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone else here found that after going back to a series you previously enjoyed, you found the flavour gone, and storyline tough to get through (much like an old piece of gum)
I'd been a big fan of David Eddings since Year 8 when a friend introduced me - I followed it through the Belgariad, the Mallorian, The Chronicals, The Elenium and the Tamuli, but after going back to them, I couldnt help but notice the re-used plotlines, characters and general childishness scattered throughout. I could digress, but I'm sure I've seen more than one thread dedicated to thisEddings gets boring, indeed. I liked the Elenium at first, because of the darker atmosphere. The Crystal Rose was a letdown (A blue magic stone? Again?), and the Tamuli are just ridiculous.

Two of his books, I like to re-read, though: 'The Redemption of Althalus', which has nothing to do with the previous series, and 'Belgarath the Sorcerer', because it is the most witty book Eddings ever wrote.

I can't believe that anyone could say they were disappointed by The Lord of the Rings. That is still the greatest book ever written (in my ever so humble opinion).

What about Wuthering Heights? There's a supposedly great book that I could not make any sense of (but maybe that's my limitation and not the book's).

I'm not sure about Wuthering Heights. Is it anything like Withering Heights? In either case, I haven't read it.
You didn't like it because you couldn't understand it? Where have I heard that before and got lambasted for saying it *COUGH* Erikson! *COUGH* :p .

Ah, touche, Barmy. Nice one. That is why I commented that the limitation was probably my intellect rather than the book, which may well actually be brilliant.

But I would also add that I don't understand half of what Erikson writes either.

Moby Dick: The complete and unabridged version was perhaps the most boring book I've ever laid my eyes on. Even now whenever I try to reread it I am amazed that I managed to get as far as the cows that gave fish tasting milk.

Silmarillion: I think I got to the world/earth being created or something. By then I was so bored to tears that I've never gone back.

Dune: By the time the lead's sister got into the act the series already looked irredeamable. Once his kids came into the picture I threw the book away.

The Silmarillion rules, but Moby Dick looks far too daunting for me to ever attempt it. Sorry, Falstaff.

I liked Wuthering Heights. Did I grasp the deeper meaning? How I am supposed to know ! But I definitely liked it, who can not fall in love with Cathy. Besides as I bought Wuthering Heights, there were several editions on the shelf and I took the one who's cover pleased my aesthetic sense the most. Which was great, because I dropped the book accidently on the train and it's cover woke the interest of the girl that was so nice to pick it up. From there to the actual book and it's content and she got the chance to realize that I actually am the sensitive and romantic person that, funnily enough, a cursory superficial glance wouldn't reveal me to be. Lucky me, even luckier her.

Wuthering Heights is a ****ing great book!

I really disliked the LoTR series... so unbelievably boring. You don't need pages upon pages describing a person's nose. Just tell the story...

I dropped it halfway through Two Towers, because I couldn't take it anymore.

You don't need pages upon pages describing a person's nose I think you must have been reading some sort of fake pirated edition of The Lord of the Rings because I don't remember that part at all.

hobbit was slow at the start but it got good towards the end, Ian Irvine, A Tale of the three worlds draggs and the plot gose around in circles.

was it just me or did anyone else find Stephen Donaldson's covenant books underwhelming to the point of tedium?

or how about War and Peace? - or anything by Tolstoy for that matter...

I like Tolstoi, Dostroijevski on the otherhand I don't get at all. Other dissapointments, Terry Brooks, Terry Pratchet, Stephen Donaldson. Love the Hitchiker tough, it's hillarious.

Funnily enough, I've never read a book or series of books that dissapointed me. Although these days I stay out of Harry Potter on principle.
Although I did read about a page of Catcher in the Rye before I put it bak on the shelf, never to so much as look at it again.

Hmmm...I seem to disagree with everyone in here except regarding Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

I adore Lord of the Rings, all of Jane Austen, The Bronte sisters, and love Catcher in the Rye.

And the Sillmarillion isn't really literature. It's a collection of Tolkiens many 'myths' forming Middle Earth that together were published posthumously. It's not a novel.
Oh, and I love the Harry Potter books- how unique of me.

I should read Dune eventually, when I finish a few other books.

The Mabinogion.
Ancient welsh tales of legend & myth, supposedly relating to King Arthur. Alas, they didn't know how to tell a tale in those days, and the stories tend to be long lists of quests or names. (A begat B, begat C, begat D) - stretching to 4 or 5 pages.
I guess this is what bards were actually about, keeping lists so rich people could brag about them.

I have to echo BTA, "Stranger in a strange land". I loathe that book. I generally finish every book that I start. I tried. I really tried. It was painful. Two thirds of the way through I couldn't take it any more. Only my respect for books has kept me from throwing it in the garbage.