Books Loved by Critics Hated By You

[Toby Frost]

I've always felt that there are two sacred texts in older SFF fandom: The Lord of the Rings and Hitchhiker's, and woe betide he who does not love them enough. I did read Hitchhiker's a long time ago, and I saw the TV show, but I remember it as being about as good as one of the weaker Monty Python sketches. I was always careful not to re-read it while I was writing the Space Captain Smith books, as I didn't want Douglas Adams' sense of humour to rub off onto what I was writing. Perhaps I ought to give it another go sometime.

 

[Mon0Zer0]

I did read Hitchhiker's a long time ago, and I saw the TV show, but I remember it as being about as good as one of the weaker Monty Python sketches.

Heresy!

For me it's shaping up to be anything published by Tor, although I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. I fully suspect Tor's authors to be part of a clique that has something over the various critics, but that could just be perfectly normal paranoia.

 

[AllanR]

Snow Crash I did finish it, yet felt it was 2x longer than needed. Explained the same thing three four or five times. I mean it was redundant. It repeated it self too much. I got tired of the rehash. If I may reiterate, he needed an editer to trim away the fat. He just went on and on and on.
Lord of the Rings Loved the Hobbit and the beginning of the trilogy. Yet soon enough I was bored of the rings.
While the first was great, any novels past Dune set on that tourist trap Arakkis.

 

[Tanith]

Atlas Shrugged. The most excruciatingly boring book I've ever read in my life.

 

[Vladd67]

The BBC tv series was very good too (although the movie less) so. But as with any kind of humour, it will either enhance the story or get in the way.

Well the tv series was more or less the first series of the radio series.

 

[BAYLOR]

I've always felt that there are two sacred texts in older SFF fandom: The Lord of the Rings and Hitchhiker's, and woe betide he who does not love them enough. I did read Hitchhiker's a long time ago, and I saw the TV show, but I remember it as being about as good as one of the weaker Monty Python sketches. I was always careful not to re-read it while I was writing the Space Captain Smith books, as I didn't want Douglas Adams' sense of humour to rub off onto what I was writing. Perhaps I ought to give it another go sometime.

My biggest problem Douglass Adams Hitchhikers books is that underneath all the humor is bleak with no hope for humanity . Eoin Colfer And Another Thing corrects this problem.

 

[Vince W]

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway I don't see why this one is healed in such high regard.

Any Hemingway for me.

 

[BAYLOR]

Atlas Shrugged. The most excruciatingly boring book I've ever read in my life.

The RPG game wasn't very exciting either.

 

[Aurora Nights]

The Hunger Games trilogy can be classified as Young Adult (YA) material. With such material, it's only too easy for me to overlook outright corny story telling, provided the overall theme appeals to me.

A YA story, which vindicates my politics, is a guilty pleasure full of confirmation bias. The story tells me what I want to hear.

Regardless, when looked at objectively, most (all?) YA tends towards cringeworthy corniness.

I might have not read Brandon Sanderson if I'd been aware his work is classified as YA, you can't write off a whole classification is what I learnt, I'm currently reading the first in the StormLight Archives, a good, even great read.

 

[Guttersnipe]

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. Too confusing to interest me. The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany as well. No characterization, no dialogue, just one gigantic summary that dragged on far too long.

 

[Vladd67]

My biggest problem Douglass Adams Hitchhikers books is that underneath all the humor is bleak with no hope for humanity . Eoin Colfer And Another Thing corrects this problem.

Not if you listen to the last radio series he doesn't.

 

[hitmouse]

Not if you listen to the last radio series he doesn't.

Or the TV show, or the movie. I thought the Coifer sequel was poor.

just stick to the first 2 books, or even just the first one, and leave the rest.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Or the TV show, or the movie. I thought the Coifer sequel was poor.

just stick to the first 2 books, or even just the first one, and leave the rest.

Yes, the first two books are definitely the most entertaining, it all starts to get a bit weird after that.

I'm glad that they didn't make another tv series , as the ending is just about the perfect way to finish things off.

It surprises me with the above post saying that the humour is bleak. The message for me that if you think that nothing in your life makes sense, then don't panic; everyone else feels the same way. There is a reason for things being the way that they are, just don't expect it to be a rational one.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Snow Crash I did finish it, yet felt it was 2x longer than needed. Explained the same thing three four or five times. I mean it was redundant. It repeated it self too much.

Yeah, I finished it. Wasn't impressed with it. But then over the years the title kept getting mentioned like it was this really great book, and I'm thinking WTF?

 

[BAYLOR]

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I picked this up in a bookstore in the early 80s or maybe late 70s. Alzheimer's you know. My spidey sense for SF told me it wasn't my style. As time went on I heard it mentioned more and more and would pick it up to check out the psychic vibes and it always radiated negative waves.

I finally decided to get it anyway in the early naughts and forced my way through. It occasionally provoked a weak chuckle but mostly not fun or interesting.

Now I can wonder why I am so strange compared to HHGttG fans. Are they more or less bizarre than Star Wars fans? LOL

It's a bizarre book but worth the read.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

"Hate" is probably a bit strong for describing my feelings on some of these. "Apathetic" or "ambivalent" might be closer.

Heinlein novels. I enjoy his short stories still, but SF fans and quite a few critics love at least a portion of Heinlein's novels and the three I've read didn't work for me. Podkayne of Mars was fun but not great, Starship Troopers has a debatable premise, and Friday, which was supposed to be a return to form, I found very nearly reprehensible for its shallow portrayal of a competent woman.

Cold Mountain by Charles Frasier. I stopped 50 pages into it and have not gone back. I rarely, rarely do this. I read Faulkner, I admire Eudora Welty, I respect if not exactly like Flannery O'Connor, and William Gay was a major find for me about 8-9 years ago, so it's not like I don't enjoy Southern story-telling. But Frazier's writing struck me as willfully dense and turgid rather than necessarily so, straining to provide that feeling of epic that Faulkner achieved with apparent effortlessness. (Well, effortlessness on Faulkner's part though maybe not always on the reader's part.)

The Natural by Saul Bellow. Not bad, but not as powerful as I'd have guessed from what I've read about it. Can't say that I've enjoyed what little I've read by Bellow, the other thing being the short novel Seize the Day which was a very long short novel. (See also, William Styron's The Long March, which seemed like a long, long, long slog.)

The Heart of the Affair by Graham Greene. I kept wanting to yell at the main male character, "Get over yourself!!!!" He was depressive with a martyr complex.


Randy M.

Interesting. I found The End of the Affair sublime, like almost every novel Graham Greene wrote. Close to perfection in style and substance. He is one of the writers I would confess to trying to emulate (in style if not genre).

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I picked this up in a bookstore in the early 80s or maybe late 70s. Alzheimer's you know. My spidey sense for SF told me it wasn't my style. As time went on I heard it mentioned more and more and would pick it up to check out the psychic vibes and it always radiated negative waves.

I finally decided to get it anyway in the early naughts and forced my way through. It occasionally provoked a weak chuckle but mostly not fun or interesting.

Now I can wonder why I am so strange compared to HHGttG fans. Are they more or less bizarre than Star Wars fans? LOL

For that opinion, you deserve to have Vogon poetry read to you as a suitable punishment!

 

[psikeyhackr]

It's a bizarre book but worth the read.

Like the Bible.
Gotta know it to disrupt the believers.
Evolution produced a fish that translates languages. Maybe it was genetically engineered.

 

[Rodders]

Although I enjoyed the Wool trilogy, I felt it was overlong and didn’t deserve the praise lavished on it.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Although I enjoyed the Wool trilogy, I felt it was overlong and didn’t deserve the praise lavished on it.

I never finished the first book.