Popularly, unpopular

Have you made the cardinal mistake of picking up a book - from the best sellers section, or with 4+ stars and raving reviews or must read recommendation from a dearest book buddy. It happens to all of us readers. We all have been bitten by the popularity blog and succumbed to the mass hysteria. 

For me it happens  often a lot with non fiction. I technically hate this genre. But my FoMo makes me try the popular non fiction thinking what if this will transform me and give me a life lesson that every one is raving about. May be this book would build the well needed financial acumen, or make me the entrepreneur that we all must be, may be this motivational Guru will give me the inner peace or mindfulness 🧘‍♀️ that is the purpose of life. 

Especially auto biographies or just biographies of self righteous people who keep teaching the world about their greatness. Thank you, no thank you as Shania Twain would say, you don’t impress me much. 

I have my favourite types of books and in no way I am free of bias. I have found that when ever a book is overly popular my expectation are super high and then they fail.. something about my own psychology! So here is some rant, only to share the pain of going thru some of these books which their verbose authors never thought of keeping it short.  

Shantaram

This one in particular gets my goat. A fat, expensive and heavy book, you buy it because everyone is telling you to read it. The number of people I have argued about justifies this books blind fan following. 

Imagine a white man knows India so well and even though he is corrupt and down in the dumps we respect his opinion for whatever reasons. Like most westerners the man comes to India for the salvation, instead of going to the Ganges he gets his from the underbelly of Mumbai slums. Anyways I wouldn’t say more because I left it midway and I am sure it wouldn’t improve later. 

 

A man called Ove 

4 rating and darling of the book lovers on good reads, book forums and just about everywhere. Living in Scandinavia, I assumed reading a book on Scandinavian will help me understand the culture better. I could very well be watching a Bollywood movie based in the Parsee colony of old Bombay. 

The fact that I listened to the book rather than reading it just killed my entire experience. No thanks to the narrator 

Angels and Demons 

Da Vinci Code was popular for the right reasons. Riding on the wave of its success and genre, the author has been churning one book after another followed by the movie makes of the same. In short it was a bad copy of the first, like when you take the leftovers and try to make something new. The taste is the same with an added flavour of stale. 

The cuckoo’s calling  

Miss Rowling, the mystical creator and writer of Harry Potter should have stuck to fantasy. Her bad attempt at being Canon Doyle by creating a down in the dumps clueless yet lucky crime solver was in bad taste. The protagonist was like a bitter Severus Snape stripped off his wizardry trying to find little success in crime detection. 

Mrs Dalloway 

If you ever thought of being a literary critic, blogger or even close to LIT. Then.  classic from Virginia Woolf is a must. Her books, her personality, her life has inspired many a authors, literary personalities, films and art. In fact I liked the movie with her name in the title ‘Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ than her entire body of work.

Her weird way of suicide was something terribly sad but gave her the eternal image of the mysterious genius whom the world never understood. So some of them decided that they will just talk about their own convoluted understanding of her and make those who don’t feel bad and idiots for not understanding her.  

Love story

Let me start with some appreciation, the only saving grace that the book was a short read. So even if you don’t like it you don’t feel so bad about a total utter waste of time. Other than it was mush, as mush can be. It’s not like I don’t like a romance. I have read many a  chiclit like Pride and Prejudice, even a tragic one like Wuthering Heights. But I couldn’t live with such a terribly sad ending, I am not that kind of romantic! 

Half a life 

VS Naipaul, the big time favourite of intellectuals, literary circles and winner of Nobel prize. I honestly decided to explore the reason for his fame and as you would have it, it was completely over hyped. Probably his books on third world oddness helped the westerners claim that they knew how it is. The books were not any classic masterpieces but a confirmation of the age old notion of India being the country of snake charmers, and Africa being poor and illiterate. You don’t have to live something to write about it, but if you write from your imagination then pls call it the fantasy genre. 

A fine balance 

Rohinton Mistry is a famous Indian authors and many readers have spoken big about him. But just like Amitav Ghosh he has gone completely OTH (over the head) for me. It was slow and draggy, I am glad I left it mid way than torture myself with a bibliophile’s guilt. 

Alchemist 

Pauli Coelho is a Best selling author by all  parameters. I read alchemist hoping to really find some gold as in gyaan which will uplift my life to the next level. But my 25 year self remained clueless and untouched by his great wisdom. Sorry no sorry, I debunked all his books which were being recommended or gifted to me. However now my 40 year old self has discovered that gold which was always right there! 

Illusions 

So illusions and other titles of abstract motivational books don’t inspire me. My roommate who in my contrast was way ahead on her spiritual journey, could not stop praising the book. I just decided to live in my ‘delusions’, that it wasn’t my cup of tea! 

As they don’t say, ‘Owners envy, Neighbours pride! ‘ We live with the heart burn that what did others find in such and such book which you couldn’t. Tell me some of the books you read and disliked, but they continue to be extremely popular!