The Most Overrated Book Series Ever!

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We aren't rating the books on literary merit; we're rating them on how the content compared to the hype.

I chose Twilight simply because I have actually read the first book. I would have chosen 50 Shades of Gray, but I haven't read it, nor do I intend to.

I haven't read any of the Hunger Games books, though it's somewhere on the to-read list, but I have read both Rowling and Tolkien. Both are overrated to a certain degree (The Order of the Phoenix was crap, and Tolkien's writing is drier than the surface of the Moon), but are ultimately great works overall.

But the hypes are as well rather limited. You wont find many people beyond 30 being in any about Twilight. So there is no general hype about it. There is an hype among the peer group of that book, and I dont see anything strange about teenagers and tweens hyping about a book, that was written with the purpose of entertaining teenagers and tweens. If there WAS a general hype about it, then in comparison to the content, there was no reason to the hype, because in general the book is not that good, because most readers will be bored by it, because of the easy-reading style and the content. But its a youthbook series, that seems to match the interest of youths very well, so I see nothing wrong about youths having an hype, in comparison to the content of an youth book.

If Readers Digest started to recommend that book series to its readers, then i´d say its overhyped. ^^

I don't understand how you can call something a great work if you think that it's crap or that the writing is dry. What does it mean for a book to be a "great work"?

I think you need to separate personal liking from technical skill. Personally there are far more people, that like to have a poster of some pin-up girl on their wall, but that does not keep them from accepting that the "Mona Lisa" is a great picture, and that the artist were able to do an technical good painting on one side, while being able to carry smalles hints of emotion from his model into the picture as well.

So someone saying, that he thinks a certain authors wirting style is "dry as the sun" does not automatically keep you from accepting if something is done in general well.

I have my troubles as example with the famous bookwriter Dostojewski. I am able to recognize, that he manages to make the people in his book truly alive to the readers, their feelings, emotions, causes to act, ... As well that reading his books really lets you "spawn" into the time of the time of the old russian empire and gives you a great impression of how people lived around that time, what troubled them, what reasons caused them to think as it was normal for that time...

But reading his books is for me like trying to eat overcooked, wetty, oily spaghetti with a single chinese chopstick. So there are only two books, that I ever stopped reading in the middle of it, but one of Dostojewskis was one of it. -.- Even when I really would have liked to known how the story and plot goes on. The characters are well, the plot is well, the story is done well, the topic is interesting... its simply the personal authors way of writing it down and forming sentences that personally annoys. But personally disliking a writing style, that has no real technical flaws in it, does not make a book bad, its simply causes that writing style to be personally disliked by one. ^^

An example for an "bad book" would be: Characters without background, that are bad out of wanting to be bad and that are good out of wanting to be good, characters acting in certain ways, not out of reasons, but simply to get the plot on, an plot that matches an episode of an kids cartoon series... ^^ To give you an example, one of the stuff why I never managed to get into the Pokemon series, was simply that I missed the reason to be motivated to play it. So I am Ash and I do my journey, because I need to become the greatest pokemon master of them all. Ok, WHY do I need to become that? What exactly will happen horrible, if I dont manage to become that? Why is it so important for him to prove himself, to be better and being able to beat people, that have never done anything to him? ... O_o Until now I never had to treat to go to my neighbor and battle him, out of no reason, only to prove myself that I am stronger then my neighbor. So why is this boy doing this? O_o

Definitely LotR. Tolkien was dedicated and creative when it came to imagining new worlds and languages, but he was a terrible storyteller.

I say this as someone who's read LotR, The Hobbit, and more from start to finish.

OTHER:

All of the above pale in camparison to;

The Holy Bible.

People take this one so seriously, that it has been used to justify Slavery, Wars, and Genocide.

da vinci code series!! !! !!

Top shout.

I voted for 50 Shades relative to sales, but I don't think anyone actually rates it, everyone knows it is pretty bad.

A whole load could have been cut out of LOTR that would have made it better, but it is still very good.

Harry Potter is, if anything, underrated in places (specifically Prisoner Of Azkaban - sci fi perfection - and Deathly Hallows, because everyone overlooks the themes and imagery and Snape in favour of hysterical screaming).

The Hunger Games is overrated for sure. There were too many allusions to Romeo and Juliet in the first one, it just became too obvious what would happen. I liked the exploration of the dystopian side of the books, and they were addictive page-turners, but they were nothing special for teen fiction.

*she, the authors of all those books are female.

Anyway, I'd say Hunger Games, though admittedly I haven't actually read them.

The Left Behind series (LaHaye & Jenkins)

I am sorry if I offend anyone here but I absolutely hate Lord of the Rings. I tried reading it when I was fourteen years old and just found it the most tedious piece of work ever. All of the made up names, places, family relations and so forth- I can appreciate the dedication gone into it but it just seemed to lack any excitement. It also seems like fans of the books fetishize them to an almost ludicrous degree.

Not series, but Joyce, Woolf, and other modernist gibberish-writers. Complete garbage. The equivalent of modern "artists" who somehow get galleries to exhibit their vomit and urine.


Of the series listed, LOTR is highly regarded in literary circles, although there are those who spurn any kind of genre fiction. HP is considered good kid lit. Twilight and Fifty Shades certainly aren't "overrated"; it's almost a running joke how trashy they are.

For sure!

... Although I saw a copy of Twilight in the campus library.

It's a bit like saying what is, say, your favourite work, and what is the best. You might have a TV serial that you believe to be a good one, but there's also one that you prefer to watch time and time again.

Also, you missed my point about The Order of the Phoenix. It was the nadir of the franchise, and a very sharp one at that. But the other books were far more enjoyable.

As for Tolkien, his prose is dry, but it's still enjoyable. And without Tolkien, where would fantasy be today?

Out of my experience I really cant agree with that "dry" stuff. Its simply a personal oppinion, as I have with Dostojewski. I borrowed the first Lord of the Ring book in school library, when I was 12, read it in 2 days, and then borrowed the other two, which I read each in one day. I simply could not stop reading, or do anything else, until I was done with it, so it did not feel dry at all. ^^

I think the biggest problems about the books might be, that people who got in contact with Tolkien with the films the first time, simply might expect something similar - an action-phantasy series that focuses mainly on fast action. At least in the last two films, Peter Jackson sadly only focuses on the battle and fighting stuff. While in the books these battles do happen as well, but they are maybe 5% of them, and the rest is about the story.