Disappointing reads.

JunkMonkey

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Which (apparently) well-respected books have you finished and wondered why you bothered? Wondered what all the fuss was about?

I don't mean books you thought were bad or you just didn't like but books with reputations for profundity and wisdom that left you baffled as to why anyone would find any kind of deep meaning in their pathetic, puddle deep shallowness.

I've just finished Being There by Jerzy Kosinski. Let's look at the reviews on the back:

“Kosinski is one of the handful of important writers to arrive since the war... Being There is dense with enough images, complexities and ironies to keep scholars busy long past their graduation... the laughter he evokes from us is both a purgative - and a warning’
LIFE

“Being There is a reverse parable, highly polished and patterned to the last twitch of the nerves. It is a highly effective send-up of the metaphor world, where growth and seed-corn, are the familiar jargon of the concrete jungle”
THE GUARDIAN

“Not until you put the book down do you realize how chilling is the image of ourselves in Kosinski’s mirror... it will survive as a seminal work of the seventies?
SATURDAY REVIEW

I am very familiar with these reviews because I kept turning the book over to look at them them. I was trying to work out how they could possibly be about the same book I was reading.

Being There is a very thin book, just 110 pages in the Black Swan edition in front of me (and shortly to be available cheap on eBay). The text starts on page 9 and ends on page 106. There are 15 blank pages in between as each chapter gets a whole new leaf to separate it from the one before it. The thing is only 80 pages long. At a rough guess at 40 lines a page and 9 words a line (I'm being generous and assuming the text on every page reaches the bottom and is densely written with no dialogue) some 30k words. Hardly a novel.

Far from being dense with 'images, complexities and ironies' it's very thin story about a innocent abroad who, after a contrived meet cute, mingles with the rich and famous - all of whom, to a man, assume his limited repertoire of Forest Gump-like gardening banalities are deeply profound. No consequences of these misapprehensions lead anywhere other than that person introducing him to someone else to make the same mistake. And that's it. End of story.

So ****ing what?!

Other books that have done the same for me are:
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
 
Black House (Stephen King). Supposedly one of his. I got about a third through and gave up. Which is something I've done before or since with a SK story.
 
J.G.Ballard Kingdom Come
I generally love Ballard especially the earlier work but this was a turkey. Full of impossible scripted coincidence and repetitious description, the way old people with dementia keep telling you the same anecdote. I got two thirds of the way and couldn't take any more.
When ones literary gods falter it is hard to accept, but it happens.

(I left a bad but honest review elsewhere and picked up a clutch of followers when I expected to be pilloried. )
 
The later books by David and Leigh Eddings, especially The Dreamers trilogy.
There was definitely a feeling of diminishing returns as I grew up and the series rolled on.
First was
The Belgariad, was the story I needed when I needed it. And then
The Malloreon, which was fine but more of the same.
Then a reset/reboot with
The Elenium, a new grittier world that I really liked. It was followed by
The Tamuli, again more of the same and nothing really new added.

Still I was reasonably happy.

Then I got to The Dreamers trilogy.
Each book was basically the same story.
As it was about a cycle of events that were repeating, I thought it might work. A bit like a literary Rashomon [not that my hopes were that high].
Three books in and the trilogy ending I was waiting for the twist to pull it all together.
And that just didn't happen.
The last book just ended...
I had bought three copies of [all but] the same story with no pay-off.
That made me far more critical of all of Eddings work, such was the feeling it left me with.
Now I know that David Eddings may/did have dementia at the time of writing.
So there may be a reason, but it's not an excuse.
 
To be honest, @JunkMonkey , those reviews seem like the sort of thing that always attach themselves to that kind of book ("Shimmers with unspoken truth... both challenges and confounds... holds up a mirror to our..." etc). I remember when almost every fantasy novel with a sword in it was compared to Tolkien on the back cover.

The Road seemed like cod profundity to me: you could replace "carry the fire" with "be a nice guy" or "stay sane" and it would be no deeper. But you wouldn't win any awards for that.

Catch 22 didn't do much for me: the comedy and the deep stuff seemed forced when I read it (admittedly, a long time ago). The Little Prince was just... a nice story, really. I don't think there's anything clever in Starship Troopers, but then I think it's just plain bad, so I suppose it doesn't qualify.
 
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The later books by David and Leigh Eddings, especially The Dreamers trilogy.
There was definitely a feeling of diminishing returns as I grew up and the series rolled on.
First was
The Belgariad, was the story I needed when I needed it. And then
The Malloreon, which was fine but more of the same.
Then a reset/reboot with
The Elenium, a new grittier world that I really liked. It was followed by
The Tamuli, again more of the same and nothing really new added.

Still I was reasonably happy.

Then I got to The Dreamers trilogy.
Each book was basically the same story.
As it was about a cycle of events that were repeating, I thought it might work. A bit like a literary Rashomon [not that my hopes were that high].
Three books in and the trilogy ending I was waiting for the twist to pull it all together.
And that just didn't happen.
The last book just ended...
I had bought three copies of [all but] the same story with no pay-off.
That made me far more critical of all of Eddings work, such was the feeling it left me with.
Now I know that David Eddings may/did have dementia at the time of writing.
So there may be a reason, but it's not an excuse.

The Begariad was his best stuff , everything else I tried by him I disliked .
 
You monster.

Unless you read any translation apart from the Katherine Woods one, in which case, quite right.

I did read it in English, I have no idea which translation I read. I heard recently on a radio program that the The Little Prince is more popular abroad than in Francophone countries these days. The original is showing its age starting to look very stilted and archaic in its language. Translators, have the freedom to renew the text by using current phrasing and idiom. A luxury the French publishers don't have.
 
So many very recent books mentioned here; but there are so many not recent books that might not disappoint.
 
I also found The Three Body Problem to be basically unreadable.
 
Totally disagree, if the author was Frank Herbert: totally agree if the authors are Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson.

Half-way through it, I personally awarded Hunters of Dune the sudden and rare "Thrown Across The Room With Great Force" prize.
 
Underworld by Don DeLillo. Delirious reviews, but I found it to be dull, overlong, and a bit pompous. It was a book I had really looked forward to, and I was delighted when I chanced upon a copy in a Youth Hostel in New Zealand. Very disappointed.
 
Oh gosh, I forgot to mention The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. After reading Ellroy's LA novels, I thought this was going to be really good. It is almost literally unreadable. The style is so pared-down as to not exist. Honestly, the mocked-up FBI reports interspersed through the novel are an easier read than the awful non-prose. It has to be seen to be believed.
 
The Life Of Pi.
What on earth is all the fuss about with this one? I just don't see it.

Not much of a fan of The Three Body Problem either.
 

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