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Post by beth on Mar 31, 2010 21:46:26 GMT
A few years ago when The De Vinci Code hit the book stores, the subject sounded intriguing and I looked forward to reading it. I bought a hard backed copy and settled in for a cozy weekend read . . . that lasted a couple or three chapters until I put it down without marking the page . . . and walked away. I'm not qualified to be a critic EXCEPT by virtue of the many, many books I've read and IMO Dan Brown is a terrible writer. Others, off the top of my head - Robin Cook, Anne Rice, Stuart Woods and Jonathan Franzan. How on earth do these people become best selling authors? Please add to this list or start one for writers who are not considered great authors, but write popular fiction very well.
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Post by riotgrrl on Mar 31, 2010 21:57:16 GMT
Had a very similar experience with the Da Vinci Code. Rubbish! The first few pages were so ludicrously overwritten and overwrought that I soon lost patience.
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Post by june on Mar 31, 2010 21:57:33 GMT
Stephen King induces coma in me ;D
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Post by beth on Apr 1, 2010 1:22:31 GMT
Stephen King induces coma in me ;D I think King creates wonderful, often unforgettable, characters. He seems to have trouble "closing" - not just the books, but various sections of the books. I've wondered whether he blocks out his stories and skips around filling them in. The one that frustrated me most was Insomnia. I had to force myself to trudge along through the long long long long mid-section until the plot picked up. But, looking back, the book has more good than not . . . just would have been better with abt. 100 pages cut out. I guess he does that to fill pages and it shows. A couple more writers with ups and downs - Jonathon Kellerman and Dean Koontz. Some very good books - some almost unreadable. What causes this, I wonder.
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Post by june on Apr 1, 2010 6:25:01 GMT
I agree about kellerman, I usually enjoy his books but always at some point I think to myself: my you are more than a little self satisfied aren't you mr K!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2010 6:43:14 GMT
The da Vinci Code bored me too. It reminded me of those films that are all action and no characterisation or plot. I got about half way through before ditching it.
I haven't read any of the other authors but have been disappointed in Robert Harris' recent stuff, even though I can't complain about bad writing. His first three novels were really grippig, but now he's started churning them out at the rate of about one a year, they seem to have lost their impact.
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Post by mouse on Apr 1, 2010 8:33:11 GMT
patterson...the same old same old story geritson is another one same old linda fairstien is a little better
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Post by beth on Apr 1, 2010 13:23:33 GMT
James Patterson - he of the 2 page chapters. His Alex Cross character was very winning for awhile, then it seems to me he just got lazy. Didn't need the money so much and had to keep on fulfilling his contract anyway. I notice he now has a co-writer. Wonder why? I have not bought or read anything by him for about 3 years. I think he could write at one time, but, whether he lost his ability or gave it up, he does not write well now.
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Post by aubrey on Aug 3, 2010 16:18:25 GMT
James Patterson.
Very poor. Alex Cross tells us how good he is at things, though we never see him being especially good at anything.
The procedural bits are laughable. The adventure bits are pathetic. His knowledge of law is scanty - he knows it's against the law to kill someone, and that's about it.
He can't write coherantly. He misreads other writers greater than him (Kurt Vonnogut's "So it goes" was not a hippy not caring line, but just the opposite), and doesn't understand that the stations on the Underground railway were not places of despair.
He's a right tit. The worst writer I have ever read. And his eyes are too close together.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2010 17:27:44 GMT
Now for something a little more upmarket. Or so I am told
I have tried to read a s byatt's Possession three times. People keep telling me how wonderful it is so I keep trying. My copy has a bookmark half way through, so I must have struggled that far.
But how? It may be terribly well written but boring. No plot, no intrigue, uninteresting characters and pretentious poetry (which, incidentally, is clearly written by the same person even though it is meant to come from two).
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Post by aubrey on Aug 3, 2010 20:22:02 GMT
Oh, Possession is terrible. Pages and pages of bad victorian prose (very accurate pastiche; but bad prose is bad prose), a ridiculous climax in a Yorks graveyard (it would take two people a lot longer than she gives them to dig up an old grave in the middle of a storm, at night), people introduced just to describe them, oh, all sorts; and the only way she could explain the puzzle was to have a third person flashback to olden days - Ruth Rendell does that kind of thing much better. I once saw her (or someone very much like her) walking along Lancaster road. IHow I longed to kick her up the bum. Of course, I did not. (It might not have been her.)
When I'd finished Possession, I went to the library and got out Flashman, for some flesh and blood, living characters. God, it was like sinking into a warm bath.
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Post by june on Aug 3, 2010 20:38:30 GMT
I read the 'award winning' Atonement and it left me cold , bored and annoyed. I actually begrudged the time I spent reading it.
Classics - modern and older are just books with better publicists
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Post by aubrey on Aug 3, 2010 21:08:47 GMT
Whereas HP Lovecraft, a known bad writer, is actually very effective. And I think S King is good as well. Even his bad books - It, Insomnia, The Tommyknockers (there are more) - are enjoyable to read; they just don't hold together that well. At his best - The Shining, Salem's Lot, Misery, Dolores Claibourne, The Dead Zone, Gerald's Game Pet Semetary - he is amazingly good.
Generally, genre fiction lasts better than "Literary" fiction. (I will argue this if you like.)
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Post by beth on Aug 4, 2010 0:27:20 GMT
I think it's hard to declare a particular writer "can't write well", except for Patterson and Robin Cook - both dismal. A lot of writers blow warm and cold. I really liked Ian McEwan's Amsterdam, but Atonement was terrible. Pat Conroy's Prince of Tides and Beach Music were wonderful, but the new one, South of Broad, left a lot to be desired and could have easily been 100 pages shorter without losing anything the least bit important. Stephen King definitely has his ups and downs. Insomnia is one of his worst (at least 150 pages too long), but if the reader can fight through the first two-thirds, he starts to tie it in with all his other Derry books and it turns into a good read. Dean Koontz is another who has some really terrible - ill written - books, and a few gems like From The Corner of His Eye, One Door Away From Heaven and the Christopher Snow books. I guess the writer of popular fiction who has never really disappointed me is Nelson DeMille. His new one, The Lion, a sequel to The Lions Game, is just out and on order. Looking forward to it.
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Post by Big Lin on Aug 4, 2010 12:57:15 GMT
J K Rowling. How on earth anyone can find the Harry Potter books entertaining is beyond me!
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Post by aubrey on Aug 4, 2010 17:47:23 GMT
Mainstream - "Literary" - writers who try to write genre fiction, to make some quick money.
Julian Barnes (as Dan Kavanagh): Duffy, a piss-poor private eye novel. So bad that I can't read his "serious" books: if he can't manage an easy private eye book, his literature, which is supposed to be harder, must be terrible.
Maureen Duffy (as C M Cayer): Scarborough Fear. I quite like what M Duffy I've read, but this is terrible - a horror novel (about Kelpies) which is just irritating - no atmosphere, or believability, either in the characters or the supernatural stuff. I got to about two pages from the end, and then (like the Long Distance Runner) stopped.
Caroline Blackwood: The Fate of Mary Rose. A kind of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine plot, but incredibly stiffly written. Also not believable, in story or character.
Literary writers seem to think that genre fiction is really easy - well, it looks easy - and imagine that, with them being proper writers and all, they will be able to do it without really trying. They can't.
Norman Mailer was once going to write a science fiction book. He read some science fiction to see what it was like, and realised that it was far beyond anything he could do. So he gave up the idea. That's a real writer.
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Post by aubrey on Aug 4, 2010 17:53:01 GMT
Kingsley Amis and Anthony Burgess are literary writers who have written genre books; but the difference is, they put as much into their genre works as they put into their regular stuff; just because it's SF or a Ghost story (The Green Man is one of Amis's best) does not mean that you can slacken off.
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Post by beth on Aug 4, 2010 18:50:15 GMT
Another interesting crossover is when journalists change career to fiction writing. Some of them seem to do very well .. thinking Hemingway and Tom Wolfe. Others I've read and enjoyed are John Camp, Pulitzer prise winning journalist who writes crime thrillers (Prey series) as John Sandford, and Jeffery Deaver who writes the Lincoln Rhyme chiller thrillers (The Bone Collector, etc.) and is under contract to write the next James Bond novel. Both these guys are very good writers and their page-turners are a pleasure to read. It's surprising the change works so well because journalism is far different from fiction writing.
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Post by aubrey on Aug 4, 2010 18:57:05 GMT
Up to a point. (heh heh)
There's Orwell, as well. Though he wanted to be a novelist from the first, and some of his best stuff is his journalism.
And Ruth Rendell (though I seem to remember her saying that she was a very bad journalist).
I think there's probably a lot of journalists who have tried to write fiction but discovered they couldn't.
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