With the delightful bloggers at The Broke and the Bookish moving on to other things, TTT is now hosted by just one of their contingent, That Artsy Reader Girl . If you want to quadruple the size of your TBR AND find a bunch of great book blogs to follow head on over and check it out!
The topic this week is:
At first I thought--well, that just means they don't really need a blog post. Then I considered that it IS interesting to see which titles work for which people. I'm sure that if we all did five books in this category and five books that we feel did NOT live up to the hype, some lists would be complete opposites.
And then I thought--okay, let's do that!
I'm going to give you a list of the popular books I love and a (shorter) list of those I really don't. I'm identifying popular as over 100,000 reviews on Goodreads, and I'm also going to limit it to books published in the last ten years, since "hype" is really a fleeting thing. At the end I'll run a survey to see which of my picks you do and don't agree with. I only included books I have strong opinions on, and unless I say "series," it's just that one title that wowed or annoyed me.
Ready? Whee!
POPULAR BOOKS I LOVE
The Hunger Games
The Fault in Our Stars
Divergent
Gone Girl
Clockwork Angel
Eleanor & Park
Lunar Chronicles series
The Nightingale
Graceling
Cloud Atlas
Saga series
Eleanor Olpihant is Completely Fine
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secret of the Universe
Six of Crows series
Visit from the Goon Squad
Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda
Girl with all the Gifts
Born a Crime
Chaos Walking series
Smile
Between Shades of Grey
Darker Shade of Magic (I love the series, but only this one cracked 100K reviews)
POPULAR BOOKS I PRETTY MUCH HATE
I'm feeling more need to explain or justify these, so I will. My list, my rules, right?
The Help--White savior complex much? Stereotypes much? Blech.
The Maze Runner--I got bored. It turns out Dashner is also a real tool, but honestly? I just didn't like the story.
Ready Player One--again, boring. As a child of the 80s, I was assured I'd love this, but, um, nothing was happening. I liked the setting though.
Allegient--for all the obvious reasons.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children--cool idea, meh execution
Shiver--I would just say Stiefvater's not my cup of tea, but Scorpio Races is my everything, so...? IDK.
The Underground Railroad--This avoided the obvious issues with The Help, being written by an #ownvoices author, but I just couldn't get into it. If you're going to write alternative history, go all out. This was just weird.
Shatter Me--I really wanted to like this one, I really, really did. But it was boring, and the insta-love annoyed the hell out of me.
Throne of Glass--I just don't get it. I tried it once, when I'd never heard of it and thought it looked interesting at the library. I tried it again, after I'd heard people raving about it. I couldn't make it past chapter 3 either time.
The Unbecoming of Martha Dyer--The love interest was all the bad tropes rolled into one rich asshole. The mystery was dull. Just--no.
The Summer I Turned Pretty/To All the Boys I've Loved Before--Definitely a case of it's not Jenny Han, it's me. I read a lot of YA, but every once in awhile I come across a book that makes me say, "Oh yeah, I'm not the target demographic, am I?" I don't mean that in a condescending way either--I think Han is a legit author writing "real" books. I just...don't care about boy trouble that much, and never did.
A Gentleman in Moscow--This one fell victim to my high expectations. I know a fair amount about Russia and the USSR, and the books seemed too pat to me.
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Okay, now you get to weigh in. I put a survey together with all these titles. For each, you can tell me if you loved it or hated it. If you didn't read it, or don't feel strongly either way, there's also a middle option. There are a bunch of titles, but only the first 3 are required--from there, you can choose how many or few you want to respond to. I'll leave it up a week and give you the results next week!
You hate The Maze Runner? Gulp. Can we still be friends? I loved the book. The movie, however was meh. My TTT hyped list
ReplyDeleteAw. I loved The Help. Life would be boring if we all liked the same books though! My TTT
ReplyDeleteOMG, we’re twins. I liked a lot of the books on your “love” list. I haven’t read most of the books on your “hate” list, but I didn’t like Maze Runner. I thought Peculiar Children, Ready Player One, and the Divergent books were overhyped. They’re fun, but not amazing.
ReplyDeleteAj @ Read All The Things!
Nice take on this week's topic! I loved Hunger Games and The Lunar Chronicles. Both made my list as well! I haven't read Six of Crows yet, but I'd like to. Here is my Top Ten Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteWay to put it out there Wendy! 🤔🤔🤔
ReplyDeleteI couldn't get into Miss Peregine either. Just not my type of book.
ReplyDeleteOut of all the Shadowhunters book, The Infernal Devices will always be my favorite.
Our TTT: https://thebookdutchesses.com/2018/07/31/ttt-38-popular-books-that-lived-up-to-the-hype/
I've tried Throne of Glass numerous times and couldn't get into it. And Allegiant was a big miss for me too, which was so disappointing because Divergent was awesome!
ReplyDeleteI read 10 of your "loves" and you know what? I loved them too. The Nightingale was a really different pick for me, but I kept hearing about it, and WOW! My heart! It was a beautiful sob-fest. Gone Girl was also out of my comfort zone, but the plot kept me flipping those pages. I DNFed both the Maze Runner book and movie. My daughter kept telling me it gets better, but I just couldn't keep reading/watching. Allegiant is a nope. Don't even get me started. Uh, I liked a lot of the books on the "not" list it seems.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how people never have to say why they didn't like Allegiant... you just know. Nevertheless, I actually liked it; I just pretend that chapter 50 never happened (90% of the book was good, I thought). That's how I got into fanfiction.
ReplyDeleteI hated Allegiant too, though not for the reasons most people seem too! I did love The Hunger Games, Between Shades of Grey, ADSOM and Six of Crows. I actually love Throne of Glass and enjoyed The Maze Runner, and hated TFIOS, but to each their own.
ReplyDeleteMy TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/top-ten-tuesday-170/
I think I'm the only person on the planet who actually really loved Allegiant, ending and all. I also loved Ready Player One (going to watch the movie sometime this week), but the rest of your selections I agree with. I also wasn't a fan of To All the Boys ... and I do like teen love stories. It wasn't horrible, just not for me.
ReplyDeleteNicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction
I feel the same way about Shatter Me.
ReplyDeleteI also loved Girl with all the Gifts and just put Elanor Oliphant on hold at the library! Hope I love that one too. :)
ReplyDeleteI liked your idea of only using books with 100,000+ reviews on Goodreads. I wish I'd thought of that...
ReplyDeleteI'm completely with you about The Maze Runner. I grudgingly finished the first book and then never bothered reading any more. And Shatter Me.
Not with you on The Fault in Our Stars though - I haaaaaaaated that book!
Oh, and I did really like Ready Player One, although when I reread it last year I could see a lot more of the faults I'd missed the first time around.