Just Can't Stand

[mrissa]

One of the worst nausea days I've had with the vertigo, and a great many small things happening, none of which I feel like talking about. Instead, you get a poll! Here's the deal: I will be able to see your answer. No one else will. Tell me the science fiction or fantasy author whose work you like the least. After a few days -- let's say, around noon on Monday -- I will make a list of the answers with the lj names removed. This can be someone whose single offering you found staggeringly bad, or someone other people love and you just can't stand, or someone whose influence you think is pervasively odious, or whatever -- but it should be their work, not their person, inasmuch as those things are separable. I'm not looking for, "You would not believe what he said to my sister when he was GoH at InsertConHere!"

[Poll #1200426]

I will be interested to see if my theories about categories of response are correct.

The comments section to this post and Monday's post will be unscreened, so if you want to say, "Oh, that Marissa Lingen, I know she's just got short stories out, but I hate every one of them," in the comments, go right ahead, but it will be public.

Comments

[columbina.livejournal.com]

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer because I would hate to tar someone as overall bad on the basis of one book ... but if I read a book of theirs and thought it was bad, then I probably never read anything else of theirs. Get it? In other words, I have never really allowed myself to be exposed to bad-writer recidivism.

(In fact it is often difficult to get me to read even ONE book by a writer if I so much as suspect it might be bad. This, coupled with the death of the bookstore, is why my F/SF reading has gone to virtually nil. Traditionally, in the absence of personal recommendations, I'd go to the store and browse around until something seemed interesting. Cain't do that much these days. But I digress.)

I also think "bad" may have mitigating factors. I do not hold that the Adept series from Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris are good books. They are vrai fromage. But they're bad books whose badness I happen to LIKE. In fact, I've read a great deal of Kurtz' lifetime output and I don't consider her a fabulous writer, but it doesn't stop me from reading the books. I don't consider McCaffrey a fabulous writer and yet I adore the darned Talent series which critics love to bash on (the series starting with The Rowan). For counterpoint, the only books of hers I refuse to read are the dragonrider ones, which are the seminal ones for everybody else on the planet - there the material doesn't interest me enough to allow me to get past the essential woodenness of the work. See?

I do have an answer for your poll, though, and it is important because it's the last time I let someone else's opinions sway me into CONTINUING to read a series even though I knew it was bad. Three books in I got, because everyone else was telling me how good it was, and I was thinking, "OK, I'll get to the good part ANY MINUTE NOW I'm sure," and it never came.

I have glanced through his other works since then, off and on, enough to conclude that he is consistent, and that his popularity must be an extraordinary delusion and the madness of crowds.

No, I don't mind also giving his name out loud. Stephen Donaldson.

P.S. I'm glad you made explicit the distinction of not rejecting an author because you discovered you disliked him personally, because I have one in that category too, and that name I am NOT giving out loud, nay, not even with him dead for some years now.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I agree: if I haven't finished a book, the author is not going to make my "worst authors EVAR" list. I will view their other books with suspicion. Sometimes this is even unjustified, though; I can come up with a handful of examples without even really trying. So.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Wow, you made it through three? I finished Lord Foul's Bane so I could have more evidence to back up my assertions about it. And I don't see much sign of change since that book.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

One? Just One? UNpossible. I think I limited myself to four, but even that was sort of hard. There's just such a vast universe of suck out there.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The comma is our friend.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

It's funny. There are lots I dislike. Lots! A lot! I mean, lots that I dislike a lot.

That being so, it entertains me how immediately and unambiguously my response popped into my head. I think it's a synergistic combination of really bad writing, really offensive writing, autobiographical arrogance, popularity which I consider damaging to our nation's youth, and--

--the fact that I really liked his books when I was a teen. It's harder to forgive that than all the others, I think.

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

This sounds suspiciously like Piers Anthony, although he wasn't my pick.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The author I listed is one that I've read multiple books from, partly because as a teenager I liked the works but grew to hate them as I matured, and partly because they're the ones that I can guarantee that when I read them, I'll be inspired in that "You handled that so badly, I could do better than that!" way.

There are many others but, as you and others say above I've never managed to finish reading any of their books, or they miss that reverse-inspiration thing which sort of puts the cherry on the top for me.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

My choice wasn't for an offensive writer (that would probably go to Raymond Kaminski or, oh, John Norman) but rather to someone whose work I feel I should like. Someone popular, with what sound like interesting plots, but with a writing style I find impossible to wade through and characters I cannot help but dislike.

Piers Anthony's books offend me here and there, and his decisions grate on me, and I am still literally ashamed for reading more than the first two Xanth books, ... but he's entertaining while he does so.

I read fiction by Piers Anthony for the same reason I listen to talks by Harlan Ellison. I won't agree with him, and by the time it's all over, I may want to punch him, but it's fun getting there.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Oh, damn. Forgot Jim Butcher. I was reminded by telophase's remarks about inspirational badness.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to take a look at those, they get a fair amount of moderate pleased comment among people I've polled. Your remark will not, obviously, raise the priority of getting to them!

Commas? Or semicolons?

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Well, either way -- can I add Ian Banks to my vote?

Stephen Baxter is annoying, but doesn't really achieve the visceral hatred, so it'd be wrong to list him.

Re: Commas? Or semicolons?

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you for saying that. I haven't read enough Ian Banks to hate him, but I keep hearing from people who think he's god's gift to Hard Science Fiction, and it just makes me wince a bit.

Then there are people who shudder when they say they only read one of his books but are reticent about giving details. I say flat-footedly, without a great deal of interest, "The one with the chair?" And invariably they look startled and say, "Yeah..."

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

I limited myself to four: two contemporary authors whose works are just appallingly bad (which would be forgivable except that they keep getting nominated for awards), one celebrated semi-modern author whose charms escape me, and one of the classics whose basic philosophy drives me up the wall.

[mastadge.livejournal.com]

I don't know. There are a few truly bad writers I could name, but I haven't read enough of most of their work to loathe it particularly. Mostly I just find that I'm not interested and move on. Then there are the immensely popular ones whose work isn't good but isn't awful either, but the fact that they're so unjustly popular leaves a bad taste in my mouth. There are the ones whom once I loved but now can't stand. I'll have to think about it, as I didn't have a knee-jerk reaction to go with.

And I've somehow gone through a lifetime of reading sff without ever having read Donaldson or Anthony. With thanks to you all, I now may very well never will. Yes, I know that makes no sense. I'm leaving it anyway.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Creative verb tenses welcome here.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I could have listed more, but I stopped with my top two. And I disliked both of them for bad writing, bad characterization and lack of anything like a coherent/believable plot long before I knew anything about their personal beliefs or politics. I do my best to keep the writing and the politics/personal behavior separate.

I also try to remind myself that while other writers and people in the industry are very aware of all this stuff that goes on outside the actual writing, the average reader walking into a bookstore has no idea Harlen Ellison--leaves a lot to be desired in terms of personal behavior. It never crosses their radar.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

My problem with LKH (yes, I am admitting who I put!) is not just that she doesn't use question marks, or other punctuation, correctly, or at all. Comma abuse aside, her characters are shallow, and her plots are hokey. Then there's the whole "let's create a moderately interesting fictional universe and then use it to write porn!" thing.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I didn't list her because there actually used to be features of her books that I liked. (I wouldn't regret the direction the series has gone in if there weren't.)

[aedifica]

I had a hard time remembering an answer to this one, because so much of my reading is re-reading and of course I only re-read the ones I like. But I did eventually come up with one.

There are several other authors I considered, because I have issues with some aspects of their writing, but in each case it's balanced out by something else I really like about their writing.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

OH GOD YES.
I have never heard of this Chalker person, but Stephanie Meyer is... okay, I am one of those people whose negative reactions are in part proportional to the popularity of what I don't like, as if I must balance the positive reaction of the entire world by myself.
But it bothers me that Twilight is the book my sister's college roommates passed around until it was in tatters. It bothers me that she couldn't see why I would have a problem with it. It bothers me that I liked it so much even while screaming at it to grow a spine already.
I gave Baby Sister Robin McKinley's Sunshine to read after that. After I reread it, of course. Had to get the taste out of my brain.

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

I'm probably a heretic.

But Tolkien. Awful. Not words to express it.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Burn him! Burn him!

(Actually, I wish you no harm; but it's the required response to a heretic.)

[scyophra.livejournal.com]

I used to not like Orson Scott Card. His Speaker for the Dead was better off as a stand alone book, not as a part of the Ender series, and Xenocide just made me angry, as it seemed to be a mash up of another non-spin-off with sprinkles of Ender mixed in.

However, he has since redeemed himself with his later pure Ender additions.

peace,

-=T=-

[aedifica]

Speaker is far and away my favorite in that series (the original series) but it's true, I have been really enjoying the Bean books. Ender's Game itself was spoiled for me (to be fair, the person who told me about it didn't realize he had said enough to give away the ending) and so it lost a lot of the impact I think it would otherwise have had. It's still a pleasant re-read, but I never got that "Wow!" moment that most people get from it the first time.

[redbird]

This may be tricky: if I dislike stuff, I tend to stop reading, and "I read 50 pages of J. Random Author's third novel and it was just extruded fantasy product, and zie can't write a simple declarative sentence," well, it might be true, but I won't remember it a year later.

And "I liked this when I was 14 and ye gods, why?!" feels orthogonal.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Are you of the "horror counts" or "horror doesn't count" school of SF?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm inclined to consider horror vs. not-horror as an independent axis from speculative vs. not-speculative. Which is to say, there is horror I would count as speculative, but not all horror is speculative. If there's a fantasy or science fiction element, then yes. If it's a book where really creepy horrific things with contemporary natural explanations happen and you are horrified by them, it's still horror but not SF horror or fantasy horror.

Clear as mud?

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I had to think about this a lot, but finally I settled on the person who wrote the books I most wish I could un-read. They have stuck, years later, I still remember almost everything that happened and I wish I didn't.

Oddly enough, I have, before and since, read other things by the same author and liked them very much. It was just that one trilogy that was so spectacularly awful, and, hm, wallowing in its own awfulness, that it casts a shadow over their entire oeuvre.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Wow. That was not who I guessed you were talking about at all.

Random Hopefulness

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ti-winfield060408&prov=yhoo&type=lgns


:)

Re: Random Hopefulness

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Dave Winfield is a hell of a guy.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

...wow. I find myself surprisingly lacking in hate.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There's a huggy rainbow hippie in every crowd.

Or, with landofnowhere, two.

[landofnowhere]

I think I'm also rather lacking in hate... probably I'm just an unpicky and uncritical young thing. (My answer was probably not all that good; I listed the author of the first book I could think of that I disliked, but I liked some of his other stuff... I may come up with a better answer later.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You are certainly allowed.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

It took me a bit. Then it took me quite a bit longer to actually, um, post anything public.

I suspect at least one of the three I listed is a bog-standard option.

One is probably not that unusual and the last is doing some violence to category boundaries, but such is the working of my mind.

I could've come up with some more, but like many others here, I tend to just avoid bad books, so no real animosity builds up.

(Though, I must say, based on the first sentence of Da Vinci Code Dan Brown is pretty bad.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I read the entire prologue of The Da Vinci Code, and then I fled screaming into the night.

[keilexandra]

Pah, I can't think of any authors that I both hate and have read at least one book in its entirety. Somehow I don't feel like four pages of crap is enough to judge a writer on, even if it's horrendous crap.