The Most Overrated Books of 2007:

February 21, 2008

Welcome to the First Annual “MOBY” awards.

It’s award season, when Oscars, Emmys, Grammies and Pulitzers are handed out to gifted artists. But kudos don’t really tell the whole story, and it seems to me that we writers are missing one form of recognition that would prove cathartic for both our envious selves and the country’s readers: a prize for the Most Overrated Book of the Year.

Oh, a few intrepid bloggers explore this subject in a casual way, but I’d like to make it official, like the “Razzies,” that are awarded to really bad movies. Except this won’t be an award for the worst books (where’s the sport in that?) This will be an award for those books that leave a goodly percentage of their readers a few bucks poorer, wondering what all the fuss was about.

I’ll call it, “the MOBY.” (I find that acronym especially appropriate, as Moby Dick was probably the first overrated book I ever read.)

Here are my nominations for the 2007 MOBY awards:

The 2008 MOBY award for fiction: A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini. Yes, I know, this is a wildly politically incorrect choice. But read some of the less-than-stellar reader reviews on Amazon.com; I am not alone. The book tells a brutal tale of what conditions are like for women in conservative Muslim countries, and how in Afghanistan, under the Taliban, their lives became exponentially worse. But I won’t be guilted into liking a book. Hosseini may have had excellent intentions, but his characters are flat, the plot predictable, and the happy ending contrived; it’s as if he wanted to write a book that would be easier to turn into a Hollywood screenplay than The Kite Runner. Definitely overrated.

The 2008 MOBY award for nonfiction: Eat, pray, love, by Elizabeth Gilbert.
The author was paid in advance by her publisher to travel around the world so she could try to find God and heal herself after getting divorced and breaking up with her yummy younger boyfriend. Now, I have lots of sympathy for the broken-hearted, people suffering from depression, and people on spiritual journeys; I just couldn’t conjure up too much interest in a self-absorbed woman who thinks the answer to life is going to be revealed in a Balinese Ashram, but finds true happiness in the arms of a hot Brazilian lover. Gilbert writes a few entertaining vignettes, but the only real insights in this book are provided by “Richard from Texas,” who basically tells her to grow up and get a life. Supremely overrated.

Okay, quarterlifers—your nominations, please!

Discuss this article on our forums