In general, 20th-century literature that uses any lyric phrasing, or that trifles even mildly with Purple Prose. Hemingway was a genius, but because of him a generation of literary critics decided that terseness was the only acceptable option for serious prose.
Depending on where you go, I think The Inheritance Cycle gets a fair bit of this. Also, Twilight. The books aren't very good, but the amount of hatred they get is disproportionate.
Likes many underrated webcomicsTwilight is a terrible series, but it's overhated in that just about no one has anything new to say about it. Das_Sporking has some original insights (Meyer mistakes internal monologue about how Edward Sure Couldn't Like A Girl Like Me for misdirection; characters repeatedly infer that they get to do a stupid thing as long as they acknowledge it's stupid), but they're the only ones I've seen since Cleolinda.
Hail Martin Septim!- I think Twilight is okay at best, but haters seem to hold it as the worst thing ever written (which it is not; that would be My Immortal).
- I didn't expect Eragon to be a masterpiece, and when I read it, I got a pretty decent novel. But Chris Paolini was pretty young when he wrote it, and there aren't too many people in the world who would write a Doorstopper fantasy for their debut novel, especially at that age.
edited 7th Mar '12 6:14:56 PM by mcb01932
I'm getting sick of the Twilight-bashing, mainly because, as Doma Doma pointed out, everyone is just reiterating the old talking-points: "Lol, it's about SPARKLY VAMPIRES! OMFG, the message is ABSTINENCE!" But I haven't read the books myself, so I can't say whether it's undeserved. (In fact, the few pages I read were about as clumsy and creepy as any of the haters claim.)
Wasn't Paolini over 20 when he got published? Still young, but not that young.
I agree with what you're saying - Paolini's not a great writer but nor is he the worst writer ever - but, just saying, lots of people try to write doorstopper fantasy for their first novel. Many of them can be found on these forums.
Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence DarrowI wrote a doorstopper fantasy when I was 15. I had the good sense not to try to publish it.
At the other end of the scale, it annoys me when people dismiss "difficult" or experimental authors as "I don't understand this therefore it sucks." Sure, because you're the ultimate judge of such things...
no one will notice that I changed thisWell, keep in mind that hype is usually a deciding cause in those things. The same with overloved literature. Mainstream things tend to attract a lot of one or the other, and you're always going to get people who react violently when they don't match up.
Read my stories!The first few books of Discworld. Many people seem to feel that they're a fair bit worse than the later novels, but I think it's largely a difference in tone that doesn't affect the quality overly much. The Colour of Magic was the first Discworld book I read, and obviously I liked it enough to continue reading the series. It's hilarious, but a lot more specific in its parody and very light-hearted compared to some of the later books. If nothing else, it puts the rest of the series into perspective, when you consider the elements that were there from the start, and how Discworld has evolved. On a side note, Mort, which is the fourth novel, is one of my favourites.
Waiting for Godot is stereotyped as a completely nonsensical, utterly boring piece of pretentious post-modernist theatre. It's actually quite funny and can provoke fascinating discussions. There's a surprising amount of sense in the play - so long as you're not looking for the usual plot sense. The one label you could still stick on it is pretentious Absurdist theatre.
My examples aren't really about "overhated literature", but "hate" is too strong a word for most books. Really, I'm just trying to interject some examples that aren't part of the tired Dan Brown/Twilight/Eragon cycle.
"Doctor Who means never having to say you're kidding." - BocajThis.
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.Can I get away with defending Kevin J Anderson here? At the very least, I thought Hopscotch was an interesting example of how to write a readable story while violating almost every rule of proper narrative organization.
That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something AwfulAny book that's assigned for English class will probably be automatically hated.
The Joy Luck Club is one of my all time favorite books and my entire English class bitches about all the "pointless" symbolism. I also really loved To Kill A Mocking Bird, Of Mice And Men, and The House On Mango Street, but because they were assigned and we had to think about them, almost everyone hates them.
The last battle's curtains will open on stage!

A spin-off of these
two
threads. What works of literature do you think get more hate than they deserve?
edited 7th Mar '12 7:59:46 AM by mcb01932