Ironic Contradictions

8. Most Overrated Book


I have three I see as exceptionally overrated. However, first is The Road by Cormac McCarthy - I just cannot accept that it's meant to be brilliant when it's so simplistically written and it's the same across his novels. I've discovered that perhaps this praise is due to the recent modernist and postmodernist movements in literature (hence why I'm coming to see such movements as pretentious trash) which are all about 'making it new and newer' and there being no truth. Both sentiments which I disagree with in a way - I agree with making it new but I don't see there as being a lot 'new' in the postmodern and modern writings. Cormac McCarthy's The Road  is basically the same post-apocalypse story you can find in most post-apocalypse novels, only with the removal of grammar and so on - which he does in all his books hence it is not 'new'.

Secondly is Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, which I'm actually looking forward to seeing on the big screen. Take away OSC's ridiculous opinions, Ender's Game has interesting themes about acceptance and learning to view things from a wider perspective. However when I read it it read like most other sci-fi novels and also read as having a stifling and patronising tone which I did not like.

Thirdly is The Giver by Lois Lowry. I can accept this as a work of stortelling, however I do not get the praise heaped on it. It reads as a very simple fable with some nice concepts, but it's hardly revolutionary enough, nor is it particularly well written compared to similar dystopian concepts. It had too much mysticism in it for me ultimately...

I guess the concept of making it new is all about redecorating the old then...
Oh and tricking the audience in the process.