The Most Overrated Books · 1:45pm Apr 1st, 2015
I meant to do a follow-up to "Bad Writing Influences," defending my stance that 1980 was the beginning of a dark age of literature, but on my way to doing that I wound up finishing some books that have been on my "to do" list for some time.
And.... well.... the result is this post.
So screw me.
You wanna know what the worst books ever are, the ones that absolutely do nothing to earn their fame? Well, this may not be all of 'em, but these are three I happen to have read fairly recently:
One: The Chronicles of Narnia, the entire freaking series.
Two: Harry Potter (sorry, Broadway)
Three: The Neverending Story
Now that last one is interesting, because yes, I'm talking about the same Neverending Story with the Luck Dragon Falcor and the Childlike Empress who lives in the Ivory Tower who gets an Earth boy named Bastion interested in her world using a kid named Atreyu. Some of you might have seen that movie and loved it. You'd be right--the movie is good. In fact its one of the few times where I can unabashedly say that the movie took the basic concept of the book and improved it in every way, making the book irrelevent and obsolete.
Now, normally a list like this goes "List something, talk about why it sucks, then list the next thing and talk about why it sucks, move on until list over." The reason I didn't do that here is because (save with some very unique exceptions for that third one) all the above books tend to have pretty much the exact same problems.
I will make a few confessions now though: I enjoyed the first Harry Potter book and the second to an extent, but I only ever read the first four. By the time I got to Order of the Phoenix I just didn't give a damn anymore, and since this is a popular franchise naturally everyone and their dog already told me what happens in the later books. There were also two Narnia books I liked--The Magician's Nephew (which in the set I have is the sixth book, though modern prints call it the first) and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I also really like Jadis, because Jadis is awesome. Seriously she tosses a steel beam (which she tore right off a lamp-post) right between Aslan's eyes. She beats off an entire mob of cops single-handedly! Why can't these books be about her? So what if she's evil?
Anyway, like I said, all three of the above have a big shared problem.
That being they tend to be books where things just happen to the protagonists, but said protagonists have very little in the way of personal agency. They exist to react, not to proact.
This is probably the least true of of Harry Potter, as I've heard he's more proactive in the later books, and even in the earlier ones at least he (or his friends, anyway) are investigating and trying to do things. Even so though, he forms my first example: How does he defeat Voldemort in book one? He doesn't. Voldemort winds up being killed by some leftover magic from Harry's mom--the same magic which defeated him years before. Then in book four, Harry again confronts Voldemort... and winds up just standing back as random magic happens which solves all his problems for him.
Narnia of course is this in spades. We're told that the kids do some fighting, but for the most part they blunder around until Aslan comes by and fixes everything. You never have a chance to believe they're in any real danger or that there's any real situation going on because you have this constant reassurance that the Jesus Lion is gonna save their bacon at every opportunity. Even in the few times where the heroes do get to act of their own accord, they wind up being.... kind of stupid. Puddleglum's speech to the Emerald Witch after he broke her magic violin in The Silver Chair struck me as grasping at straws, and the heroes in The Last Battle had King Tirian, whose continued life and liberty would've cast doubt on Shift (who had claimed Tirian was killed by Aslan) if he had only thought to come forward and reveal himself... but does anyone think of this? Nope, they just place all their bets on the donkey (everything I'm saying makes sense if you've read the book) and when that turns out to be a bad idea, they just decide they're up sh-- creek without a paddle. All so the book can have Aslan save the day, again.
The Neverending Story goes even further, and tries to make this the entire point. Unlike in the movie, in the book Atreyu never actually does anything, never solves any riddles, never makes a conscious choice to move the story forward. Hell, even when he meets the G'mork, he doesn't get to battle it.... instead they have a conversation, each not realizing who the other is, then when they find out, the G'mork just falls over and dies! Then it goes into this stupid garbage where Bastion gets pulled into the book and has random, directionless adventures there in which even his mistakes are something that was "meant" to happen and... basically, the book comes off like one of those pretentious art pieces that is trying very hard to have some deeper meaning, but it really just comes off as face-palmingly stupid. I would almost recommend reading it just to see how bad it is. Just keep a copy of the first two movies on hand to wash the bad taste away afterward.
You know a book is bad when I, the guy who advocates reading, tells you the movie is better.
....... Actually, at this point I would expect people who know me are being like "Wait, dude. Aren't you a fan of The Hobbit? Isn't that just Bilbo getting lucky again and again?"
(I honestly expect people to say that. Something about anything Tolkien inclines the wise to be wiser and the fools to be more foolish. Look at how many fools honestly think the movies are equal to or greater than the books. By the way, in my house you are not allowed to say anything bad about Tolkien or anything nice about Peter Jackson's film adaptations. You do it and I will shove a cactus up your ass. Unless you actually get off on that, then I'll just have you pulled at the rack, burned at the stake, and beheaded)
But getting back to the question: No, The Hobbit isn't like that.... not all the way through, anyway. Yes, early on Gandalf saves everyone's rear... but by the halfway point, Bilbo is more than capable of looking out for himself, as he first proves during his meeting with Gollum, and he continues to prove again and again: Bilbo rescues the dwarves from the elves, flushes out Smaug (in so doing discovering Smaug's one weakness), and the book has a thing about Bilbo trying to bring peace between the men and the dwarves by stealing the Arkenstone (this may be in the live-action movie, but I will never ever watch the Hobbit trilogy, not after seeing how Jackson massacred Lord of the Rings). In other words, Bilbo is driving much of the action, he's very much trying to make a difference in the world at large. That's a far cry from the Pevensies, who pretty much just keep falling into their roles and being at the right place at the right time, and even then they don't so much solve problems as wait for a magical lion to do the major legwork for them and then follow some easy instructions.
Funny thing.... I read recently that Tolkien himself didn't really like Narnia (though he never set down in writing what faults he found with it), despite being a personal buddy of C.S. Lewis. If the popular speculation--that Tolkien simply hated the mishmash of watered-down mythologies--is at all correct, then I get the feeling I would agree with Tolkien, for I prefer a more seriously thought out world rather than ones that just throw crap in there. Narnia, I think, always felt a little shallow to me for that very reason. There really was nothing to it. It was just a land where "it's magic, I ain't gotta explain sh--." And honestly, Narnia never really felt fantastic or wonderful to me. It felt barren and empty and stupid. I frankly would've been longing to return home, not wanting to stay and be king. Likewise, Harry Potter's universe doesn't strike me as magical--in fact its form of magic was something I hated right from the get-go: There's no sense of wonder about it, its just a simplistic "you say the word and a thing happens" kinda deal. Magic is literally just technology in that world, except for when it does random stuff just for the sake of conflict resolution.
But, okay, there, I got that off my chest.
Now, I must get back to writing that thing I actually planned to write. See ya!
Wait, if you think the '80s was the Dark Age of Literature, or at least the start of it, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!? The Discworld series started coming out then!
2931198 While we're mentioning good books post-1980, I'm surprised nobody mentions First Blood, The Hunt for Red October, Jurassic Park or, umm... oh, that science fiction series about the numbr 42 and a depressed android and which keeps having references to an e-text called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ;)
That said though, I have my reasons, and like I said I'm working on a post to explain them.
(And to be fair to the 1980s, what it lacked in literature it more than made up for in terms of what cartoons were on TV at the time. It's still probably the single highest point for cartoons that aren't from Japan--those ruled the 90s as far as I'm concerned)
2931198
The only thing I hate about the Discworld novels is the lack of chapters. I never know when to put in my bookmark and set the book down!
2931440
You should read Stephen King's IT just so we can both relish in bashing the feck out of it.
Concerning your picks, the only Harry Potter book I ever read was The Order of The Phoenix, and while I thought it was... okay, the showdown between Voldemort and Dumbledore was a letdown given how much emphasis there was on Voldemort being afraid of Dumbledore. Would Vader have seemed like such a badass if he was shown to be terrified of Obi-Wan?
Other overrated books include "Spot The Dog" and "The Hungry Caterpillar." Because my fanfic where the caterpillar turns into an ugly moth and then burns to death on a lightbulb is way better and has a much better moral.
2934407 Stephen King.... uuuugh. I actually tried to read IT (and several other SK novels) some time ago, and if there's anything I've decided, its this: the fact that Stephen King is a popular author proves that popular tastes are shit.
My problem somewhat varies on a book-by-book basis, but I do see two recurring problems every time I read King. First is his world is staffed with a sick, twisted version of humanity, where even "normal" people behave in ways that would be "normal" for, say, a serial killer. Seriously, compare his characters to the characters in the plays "Richard McBeef" and "Mr. Brownstone." I'd almost say King is a little bit worse--Cho Seung-Hoi's characters randomly flip out and get angry for the thinnest of reasons but at least the reasons kinda-sorta make sense (a mother thinks a dude hurt her son and becomes protective, for example), while King's characters all live in a world where all girls have abusive boyfriends, teenagers think nothing of mutilitating pigs so they can dump blood on an unpopular girl, or where (this example is from It) a bunch of pre-teens may spontaneously decide to have sex with the lone girl in order to "gain courage" or something. I'm not entirely sure that last event wasn't rape, either. These are usually the heroes, ladies and gentlemen.
The second recurring problem I have with Stephen King is the "how long it takes 'til we get to the part where I give a feck" issue. This is one recurring issue with post-1980 literature I mean to mention when that topic comes around, but its like, take Salem's Lot... its like 500 pages, but nothing really happens for the first 100. Its just a bunch of people I don't care about and have no reason to like living out their everyday lives (IE being douchebags). I'm not even sure when the vampires show up. Even when he has a book which starts with the ball rolling, like The Dead Zone, invariably at some point it will slow to a crawl and we'll be hammered with boring, needless stuff that happens only to pad out page count. That King likes to describe bodily functions does not endear me to him, either. Seriously, when I got to the part in Cujo where he stops to describe a little boy's piss, I stopped reading. This was very early into the book too.
It all just makes me appreciate H.P. Lovecraft all the more. Lovecraft is all about getting to the freaking point, and while his characters may be plot devices, that's better than them being assholes with "regular" lives that no sane person wants to read about. And he never writes about bodily functions, either!
... So yeah, there's my little rant on Stephen King. Hope you enjoy it!