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Which Authors You Won't Read Again?

Meadow337

Meadow337

Former Moderator
In response to the 'Your Favourite Authors and Why' thread I thought I would create a thread about authors we dislike. I'm sure you have a few. I know I do, and as my list of author's I dislike is very very very much shorter than the almost infinitely long list of authors that I like, so it was easier to do a list.

1. John Steinbeck.

Reading The Red Pony at a far too tender age left a scar on my psyche that I won't easily forget. What a depressing author. I tried to read 'Of Mice and Men' once as well and got no more than a few pages in and realised it was more of the same depressing, life is awful, garbage. I don't read to be depressed out of my skull at the awfulness and futility of life. Nihilism can go jump in a lake and annihilate itself as far as I'm concerned.

2. Ernest Hemingway.

Again another person who just sucks the joy right out of life.

3. J. K. Rowling

Read a few pages of one Harry Potter to see what all the fuss was about. I still don't get what all the fuss is about. The prose is truly awful even, or especially, for a children's book. Reading it is like trying to wade through the thickest stinkiest blackest mud you can imagine. Yuck! Actually putting this one on this side of the list is a bit unfair, as I don't really dislike the prose - it just incredibly badly written and I truly don't get how they were even ever published let alone became best sellers. I put it here because I won't ever read any of them.

Then there are the authors I don't actively passionately dislike but have outgrown.

4. Dean Koontz/Stephen King

I lump those together because they are very similar in many ways and I read them for the same reasons and outgrew them for the same reasons. I don't particularly dislike either of them, but I have definitely outgrown them and won't be picking up either one of their novels any time soon.

5. Vampire books (ok not strictly an author)

Been there done that got the T-shirt. Read a few (two I think it was) Anne Rice years ago and that was enough vampires to last the rest of my life time. Don't get the fascination. Had no interest or compulsion to read a single other vampire book.

And that is pretty much it.
 
Sue Monk Kidd, I thoroughly enjoyed The Secret Life of Bees and started The Mermaid Chair, ugh, couldn't quit reading fast enough. Turned me off her writing.

Alexandera Ripley, started reading Scarlett, painful is all I can say.
 
Meadow , as regards Steinbeck , if you ever wish to give him another crack try Tortilla Flats , Sweet Thursday and Cannery Row , you will ( I think) be quite pleasantly surprised.

And Travels With Charlie is one of the quintessential " road" books of all time , easily on par with with William Least Heat Moon's 'Blue Highways' or Kerouac.


And to stay on topic............no Melville for me ever again...........and I avoid the terminally depressing tedium that is Dickens.
 
Hemingway was a romantic and his work has some definite highs(The sun also rises) and of course, he had some tremendous lows. I believe you can find any predominant emotion in a given work of his.
 
With all due respect but Hemingway was a depressive alcoholic who eventually blew his brains out and that comes out in ALL his writing. I read a lot of books about the hardships of life in various times and places but they must be redeemed by a thread of hope. Hopelessness makes one blow one's brains out and that is fundamentally wrong. There is always hope.
 
Vince Flynn and Brad Thor for injecting their politics into their main characters. Vince Flynn's main character was called in front of Congress to testify about the bad guys he had been torturing. The character then launched into some abortion diatribe.
 
I too am not enthusiastic about Hemingway.. I could not understand for 'whom the bell tolled'.

Henry James: I struggled and gave up on reading 'The turn of the screw', I always complete a book because incomplete stories bother me. This proves I did not find a story in 'The turn of the Screw'.

Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim put me off. I know it is ranked high among English novels but it did not work for me. I did not attempt Conrad after that. If anyone could suggest any other book of Conrad they liked, I would not mind trying it.

But John Stienbeck is among my favorite writers. Sweet Thursday, Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row, and a horde of other books by Stienbeck make up a chunk of my rereading.

As a genre, I too give horror a wide miss.
 
Sorry no can't suggest any Conrad that isn't dark and depressing.

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I completely forgot William Golding "Lord of the Flies" on my list. Another book and author I will not read for the completely depressing view of life.
 
After finishing The Daylight Gate, Jeannette Winterson's novels are not amongst those I would willingly read. What utter pish.
 
Polly Parrot said:
After finishing The Daylight Gate, Jeannette Winterson's novels are not amongst those I would willingly read. What utter pish.
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her books -

explore the boundaries of physicality and the imagination, gender polarities, and sexual identities, and have won several literary awards.
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see 'literary' does not mean 'good' or 'readable' ;)
 
Hugh said:
Vince Flynn and Brad Thor for injecting their politics into their main characters. Vince Flynn's main character was called in front of Congress to testify about the bad guys he had been torturing. The character then launched into some abortion diatribe.
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I like to think of those guys as belonging to the "techno-thriller" genre a la Tom Clancy and Stephen Coonts. they do tend to be further right than I am, but I still enjoy their books. The only one I was slightly annoyed with was Dean Koontz and his Dark rivers of the heart book which featured a lone wolf patriot evading the government. He had a post script page and mentioned how the government was trampling on certain rights. I could be wrong, but it was written shortly after the time the Branch Davidian stand off occurred and when the feds had a shootout at an Idaho cabin.
 
SFG75 said:
I like to think of those guys as belonging to the "techno-thriller" genre a la Tom Clancy and Stephen Coonts. they do tend to be further right than I am, but I still enjoy their books. The only one I was slightly annoyed with was Dean Koontz and his Dark rivers of the heart book which featured a lone wolf patriot evading the government. He had a post script page and mentioned how the government was trampling on certain rights. I could be wrong, but it was written shortly after the time the Branch Davidian stand off occurred and when the feds had a shootout at an Idaho cabin.
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Would you put forth an opinion that the government *isn't* trampling all over certain rights gauranteed within the Constitution and Bill of Rights?

And Ruby Ridge was far more than just a " shootout at an Idaho cabin" , it's a given that Weaver was a Berk , that said the Feds were well out of control and provided quite adequate demonstration of jackbooted thuggery and basic disregard for basic rights , operational procedures under the law and the lives of citizens.

Vernon Howell ( Koresh) was a psychotic megalomaniac who exploited religion in a highly abusive manner , but again the Feds were completely and totally out of control at Waco/mt Carmel and a whole slew of 'em should have been indicted.
 
no argument from me on that subject. I'm by no means, how shall we say, paranoid about it, nor do I think it happens quite as much, or to as much of an excess as some would say it is, but I do think there are worrying signs of a slow erosion of freedom.

Some loss of individual freedom is the price of safety in a bigger society but there is a line at which individual freedom also needs to protected despite perceived threats.
 
Meadow337 said:
no argument from me on that subject. I'm by no means, how shall we say, paranoid about it, nor do I think it happens quite as much, or to as much of an excess as some would say it is, but I do think there are worrying signs of a slow erosion of freedom.

Some loss of individual freedom is the price of safety in a bigger society but there is a line at which individual freedom also needs to protected despite perceived threats.
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Unfortunately that erosion is accelerating , exacerbated by the increasingly corrupt and ethically and morally bereft cadre resident inside the Beltway.

There will come a time ( and it's rapidly approaching) wherein what resides on your bookshelves may well get you incarcerated or worse.

A close friend of mine's son was recently suspended because he got caught with two books I gave him , keep in mind that he is an honors student who will be going to a certain prestigious West Coast university on a full ride poly-sci scholarship.

The "crime"? Subversive literature.

The books?..........R.M. Hare's " Freedom and Reason" and Thomas Paine's " Common Sense".........

Our alleged educational system has turned into more correctly an eduindoctrinational system. Geared towards producing march in lockstep drones rather than thinking members of society.

Find me a course in logic and/or critical thought below the advanced university levels nowadays.
 
Bluenote said:
Unfortunately that erosion is accelerating , exacerbated by the increasingly corrupt and ethically and morally bereft cadre resident inside the Beltway.

There will come a time ( and it's rapidly approaching) wherein what resides on your bookshelves may well get you incarcerated or worse.

A close friend of mine's son was recently suspended because he got caught with two books I gave him , keep in mind that he is an honors student who will be going to a certain prestigious West Coast university on a full ride poly-sci scholarship.

The "crime"? Subversive literature.

The books?..........R.M. Hare's " Freedom and Reason" and Thomas Paine's " Common Sense".........

Our alleged educational system has turned into more correctly an eduindoctrinational system. Geared towards producing march in lockstep drones rather than thinking members of society.

Find me a course in logic and/or critical thought below the advanced university levels nowadays.
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Well to make it worse people who object to the state controlled indoctrination of their children to the party line are facing increasing opposition to choices such as home schooling.

All of course in the guise of ensuring 'equality' of education. Not that there is such a thing, but we may not disagree with that either.
 
Bluenote said:
Would you put forth an opinion that the government *isn't* trampling all over certain rights gauranteed within the Constitution and Bill of Rights?
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Slightly annoyed doesn't mean unwilling to read the book. I went through a big Koontz phase about twelve years ago. Intensity is hist best imho.

And Ruby Ridge was far more than just a " shootout at an Idaho cabin" , it's a given that Weaver was a Berk , that said the Feds were well out of control and provided quite adequate demonstration of jackbooted thuggery and basic disregard for basic rights , operational procedures under the law and the lives of citizens.
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Why do I want to say that his wife was shot holding a child in the cabin? For some reason, I remember that particular incident.
 
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