# What famous works of fiction, popular with readers and critics both, do you not care for? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 22, 2019, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659 "2019-09-22T20:28:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2019, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/21 "2019-09-22T23:55:26Z")
I tried to read Journey to the Center of the Earth, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, sorry Jules Verne, you suck H.G. Wells is so much better and more prescient of the future. I quite enjoyed The Hobbit and made it like a book and a half into the Lord of the Rings trilogy or book or whatever I don’t remember. I know The Hobbit was more of a children’s book, but damnit it was entertaining. I couldn’t take all the random songs when someone stubs their toe or takes a shit in the Lord of the Rings books! Too much fucking singing!!! ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/22 "2019-09-23T00:07:33Z")
Count me among those unimpressed by Salinger’s most famous piece. Read it in HS and my reaction was: “huh… big f’n deal”. ---
**Author:** ![GESancMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gesancman/32/2923_2.png) [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/23 "2019-09-23T00:22:05Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > _Dune_. All talk, and the action all occurs “off-screen” so to speak. I read it in my early twenties, and whenever I told anyone I didn’t care for it, they said Oh, you were too young; read it again. So I read it again in my late thirties. Still didn’t like it. This is what I came in to say. I tried reading it twice and put it down out of boredom, and the third time (in my 30s) I forced myself to finish it. I can’t understand, at all, what all the fuss is about. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/24 "2019-09-23T00:26:18Z")
Another vote against Catcher in the Rye. Seriously, dude. Don’t be so self-obsessed. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/25 "2019-09-23T00:39:33Z")
A dear friend (a college reading teacher, yet) loathes Shakespeare. And has paragraphs of insightful reasons why. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/26 "2019-09-23T00:39:57Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Wouldn’t you? I’m doing it right now. ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/27 "2019-09-23T00:45:35Z")
Not a book, but _ **Citizen Kane** _ bores the crap outta me. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/28 "2019-09-23T00:47:08Z")
> [@pool](#): > > I tried to read Journey to the Center of the Earth, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, sorry Jules Verne, you suck H.G. Wells is so much better and more prescient of the future. Yes, Wells is much more entertaining. But I read through tons of Verne as an adolescent and adored it. Make sure you get the later un-Bowlderized translations (the early English versions stayed in print forever and should all be burned). Get hold of some of the lesser known novels… **Doctor Ox’s Experiment, Robur the Conqueror, The Steam House, Hector Servadac, The Begum’s Fortune** …they are a helluva lot of fun. **Around the World in Eighty Days** is very good, too. I also love **The Great Gatsby** and **Moby-Dick,** but I shouldn’t second-guess other folks’s opinions here. Any more. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/29 "2019-09-23T00:53:26Z")
as a kid, I couldn’t stand Roald dahl or Beverly clearly…or 90 percent of the “writers for kids” ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/30 "2019-09-23T00:57:53Z")
Shakespeare sucks. Roald Dahl sucks. _Catcher in the Rye_ was shite. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/31 "2019-09-23T01:09:03Z")
\*\*Catcher in the Rye A Separate Peace Gaslight The Manchurian Candidate Lord of the Flies Tom Sawyer \*\* (and I really like most of Twain’s works) I LIKE the works of Jules Verne, and have been working my way through them for several years now. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/32 "2019-09-23T01:22:23Z")
The King James Bible. I had daily readings from it as a schoolboy, and I studied it as literature under literary theorist, literary critic and ordained minister [Northrop Frye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Frye). I recognize the skill of the translators, and I appreciate the phrasing of some of the passages, but quite simply, I find it abhorrent because it was and is taught as truth to generations of people. Even now, the head of state of my country is the head of the church that commissioned this book, and it is still being preached as being truth. I’m for using fiction, including speculative fiction such as the Bible, to open up minds – not to be taken as universal truth to be followed in obedience to the people who commissioned it. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/33 "2019-09-23T01:24:02Z")
The King James Bible. I had daily readings from it as a schoolboy, and I studied it as literature under literary theorist, literary critic and ordained minister [Northrop Frye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Frye). I recognize the skill of the translators, and I appreciate the phrasing of some of the passages, but quite simply, I find it abhorrent because it was and is taught as truth to generations of people. Even now, the head of state of my country is the head of the church that commissioned this book, and it is still being preached as being truth. I’m for using fiction, including speculative fiction such as the Bible, to open up minds – not to be taken as universal truth to be followed in obedience to the people who commissioned it. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/34 "2019-09-23T01:27:47Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > I read _The Three Musketeers_ a few years ago – in part because I’d enjoyed various movie adaptations, and in part because I decided that I wanted to expand my horizons, and read some classic literature. > > It was…OK. Ohhhhh! That reminds me, now that you bring up a 19th century classic, I absolutely hated _Last of the Mohicans_. The protagonist was a bore and the writing was clunky. I vaguely recall a chapter beginning with something like words very close to “Meanwhile, on the other side of the forest.” Who writes like that? ---
**Author:** ![Llama\_Llogophile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/35 "2019-09-23T01:32:31Z")
I actually liked a lot of what we read in high school, with the exception of Gatsby. I’m from Long Island originally, and I had the same reaction to Gatsby as I did to Seinfeld - I grew up around some of these people and they weren’t funny or interesting, they were assholes. I made very good faith efforts with Moby Dick and Don Quixote, ended up putting them down. But for shear awfulness you can’t beat **Last of the Mohicans**. Utterly impenetrable and unreadable. Edit: Ooh, scooped at the last second! ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/36 "2019-09-23T01:45:54Z")
**CalMeacham:**. Really? What didn’t you like about **The Manchurian Candidate?** I thought it was better than the movie (the first movie), and I LOVE the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/37 "2019-09-23T02:11:45Z")
I \*\*loathed \*\*_Tom Jones_ (which I never finished) and barely made it through _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_. The few things I’ve read by Hemingway have not enticed me to read further. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/38 "2019-09-23T02:17:14Z")
I \*\*loathed \*\*_Tom Jones_ (which I never finished) and barely made it through _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_. The few things I’ve read by Hemingway have not enticed me to read further. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/39 "2019-09-23T02:58:30Z")
If I can wander out of fine literature to more pop-oriented stuff… Crisis on Infinite Earths from DC is simply terribly written. Horrible dialogue and plotting just ruin the thing for me. ---
**Author:** ![Stowed\_Bob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stowed_bob/32/3312_2.png) [@Stowed\_Bob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stowed_Bob)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2019, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659/40 "2019-09-23T03:22:59Z")
I’ll chime in for **Lord of the Rings** , and I made myself read it all. Only good part was imagining Sam and Frodo in a sub/dom relationship. It better explains Sam’s jealousy of Frodo giving Gollum any attention, even when berating or beating him. Recent one I read is **Legend of Sleepy Hollow**. Ichibod and Van Brunt are both detestable in their own ways, Katrina flitters to anyone who gives her attention, and the only way I could have enjoyed the story was if no one came out ahead. Thankfully it had the decency to be short. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-famous-works-of-fiction-popular-with-readers-and-critics-both-do-you-not-care-for/840659.md?page=3)