Already a member?
Sign in
Welcome! Wikis are websites that everyone can build together. It's easy!
Location:
BookFace
Discussion: book reputations
Watch
|
FriarTuck FriarTuck |
book reputations
Apr 16 2008, 8:40 AM EDT Last week's Guardian review gave me an idea for a new topic for discussion - books that attract lavish recommendation or hype, but which personally we can't get on with. In The Guardian last week was an advertisement for "The Time Traveller's Wife" which was lent to me amidst much gushing acclaim and I must admit the blurb seemed intriguing. After 100 pages I began to suspect that it was repetitious claptrap. After 150, I was sure and dropped it. In the same issue was an adulatory review of Salman Rushdie's latest book. His first, "Midnight's Children" , was so widely praised that I couldn't wait to read it. I managed a page and a half and even less than that with his second, "Shame". I have read that the scene in "Satanic Verses" which got him into so much trouble occurs on about page 187. How did anybody get to page 187 in a book by Salman Rushdie? I could have cheerfully strangled him after three paragraphs. I also include in this category anything by Martin Amis ecxept "Night Train", which he's virtually disowned, and anything by Melvyn Bragg except "The Maid of Buttermere". So come on fellow philistines, which books have you started with eager anticipation only to be let down? Which hot reads have left you cold? Which literary emperors do you think have no clothes? Do you find this valuable? |
Sign in to be the first to reply.