your three crappest authors
- Thread starter DotCommunist
- Start date
DrRingDing
'anti-human wanker'
chin dildo said:
Don't get ruffled it's only an opinion.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
An opinion based on stupidity or ignorance though
DrRingDing
'anti-human wanker'
chin dildo said:
Calm your inner ginger tiger.
When did you last read Frankenstein?
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
About 10 years agoDrRingDing said:
Stigmata
sexual tyrannosaurus
There's a particularly dire (an rightfully obscure) fantasy author called Vance Moore. Very stilted, repetitive stuff.
Terry Goodkind's Naked Empire was both badly written and quite offensive, like Ayn Rand but even less well thought-out.
I can understand why people might not like Pratchett's Discworld stories, but Only You Can Save Mankind/Johnny And The Dead were two of the best children's books I ever read.
Terry Goodkind's Naked Empire was both badly written and quite offensive, like Ayn Rand but even less well thought-out.
I can understand why people might not like Pratchett's Discworld stories, but Only You Can Save Mankind/Johnny And The Dead were two of the best children's books I ever read.
havanawoods
New Member
worst authors
james patterson
stephen king
danielle steel
they all write with a formula and how the #$%$ do they always end up on the bestsellers list is beyond me!!!!
james patterson
stephen king
danielle steel
they all write with a formula and how the #$%$ do they always end up on the bestsellers list is beyond me!!!!
spanglechick
High Empress of Dressing Up
see, i've read most of the authors above, and by and large i agree - formulaic, lazy and unoriginal crud - but leagues beneath them all is India Knight. I one bought a magazine with a free copy of one of her books on the cover.
now i've read chick lit - good stuff, bad stuff - and most of it is pretty shite - but man alive, India Knight managed to halve a half arsed first draft published. Characters disappear two thirds of the way through. Major plot points are worked in for three or four chapters and then forgotten.
Unlike most, if not all of the writers above - India Knight isn't just dull, she's a fucking incompetant novelist. God knows how she got published in the first place.
now i've read chick lit - good stuff, bad stuff - and most of it is pretty shite - but man alive, India Knight managed to halve a half arsed first draft published. Characters disappear two thirds of the way through. Major plot points are worked in for three or four chapters and then forgotten.
Unlike most, if not all of the writers above - India Knight isn't just dull, she's a fucking incompetant novelist. God knows how she got published in the first place.
Fez909
toilet expert
I hate threads like this because people invariably put down authors who they don't particularly care for*, but who aren't the 'crappest' by a country mile. Mary Shelly? Irvine Welsh? Stephen King? Terry Pratchett? Even the likes of Jeffrey Archer or Andy McNabb, as terrible as they are, do not come anywhere near being the 'crappest'.
*And there's always a bit of iconoclasm or posturing of some sort thrown in for good measure (as noted already).
Even the likes of Jeffrey Archer or Andy McNabb, as terrible as they are, do not come anywhere near being the 'crappest'.*And there's always a bit of iconoclasm or posturing of some sort thrown in for good measure (as noted already).
Fez909 said:I hate threads like this because people invariably put down authors who they don't particularly care for*, but who aren't the 'crappest' by a country mile. Mary Shelly? Irvine Welsh? Stephen King? Terry Pratchett?
*And there's always a bit of iconoclasm or posturing of some sort thrown in for good measure (as noted already).
The OP was fairly indistinct, so it is likely that interpretation is going to be equally slippery.
Literary movement: Postmodern
Influences: Ernest Hemingway, Margaret Drabble, Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Andy Warhol
Never heard of Coupland. I think the above says it all for me.
Influences: Ernest Hemingway, Margaret Drabble, Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, Joan Didion, Andy Warhol
Never heard of Coupland. I think the above says it all for me.
Brainaddict
slight system overdrive
Agree with Dan Brown, but the other two simply suggest that you have had very limited contact with *truly* low quality writing. The same to all those people slagging off Irvine Welsh. I assume that they mean he doesn't live up to the hype, but that isn't the question - if I understand it correctly.Neva said:
Top three just from reading what people have written here:
David Eddings
Dan Brown
Jeffrey Archer
But I'm sure others will come to mind. Actually it seems a bit unfair to target David Eddings particularly out of all the truly appalling fantasy authors but you've got to start somewhere I guess
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Brainaddict said:Agree with Dan Brown, but the other two simply suggest that you have had very limited contact with *truly* low quality writing. The same to all those people slagging off Irvine Welsh. I assume that they mean he doesn't live up to the hype, but that isn't the question - if I understand it correctly.
Top three just from reading what people have written here:
David Eddings
Dan Brown
Jeffrey Archer
But I'm sure others will come to mind. Actually it seems a bit unfair to target David Eddings particularly out of all the truly appalling fantasy authors but you've got to start somewhere I guess
you do. I'm not asking who you don't like. I'm asking who you think is a bad writer. There is a difference. I've hated many a book while admiring the writing style and wordplay.
Brainaddict said:
Dan Brown was the one I was least sure of putting in actually because while he is the worst writer of the three he is also the one with the lowest aspirations. He writes crappy best sellers where every chapter ends in a hook, the villains are cartoon characters and the women are bond girls and he knows it, he aims to write crap and succeeds.
Hornby and Palahniuk, each in their own way, have delusions of being literary and actually try to write books with merit and they fail so completely and utterly that I consider them crapper than Brown who never even tries.
Brainaddict said:
no, i think he's a truly appalling writer, thanks
Fez909 said:I hate threads like this because people invariably put down authors who they don't particularly care for*, but who aren't the 'crappest' by a country mile. Mary Shelly? Irvine Welsh? Stephen King? Terry Pratchett?
*And there's always a bit of iconoclasm or posturing of some sort thrown in for good measure (as noted already).
and here's this thread's
"now i'm going to tell you why you don't like the things you don't like. It's not that you don't like them, it's that you're being cool / iconoclastic / fashionable / awkward / you just haven't listened to the right album".
christ i HATE this shit
Idaho
continuity character
I can't really remember crap books. I ditch them as soon as I realise they are crap. However this takes longer for writers who are crap because they are very boring than writers who are crap because they can't write for toffee, as you wait and wait for things to pick up, only to realise 80% of the way through that this is it.
The traits I can't tolerate in an author:
The traits I can't tolerate in an author:
- characters I don't care about
- embarrassingly poor writing
- droning on about some bollocks
- flowery yet mediocre over-descriptiveness
- authors trying to torture you too much with 'isn't is just awful and there is nothing you or the protagonist can do about it
Poor traits I can forgive providing there are other redeeming features: - Scrappy use of language
- Low to moderate levels of cliche
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Dubversion said:
Yeah, but you only hate it because you're an iconoclast!
Soz, but you left an opening as wide as a politicians' cowardly streak there!
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Difficult, because there are few authors that I've read that I think are totally irredeemable, so I'll have to explain why I think the authors I'm listing are crap:
William Wharton, because he wrote a fantastic book (Birdy) in amongst a load of self-indulgent shit (Tidings or Franky Furbo for example).
Paul Theroux, because his habit of whining spoils what he's relating.
P.J. O'Rourke, for flogging the dead horse of his republicanism over and over and over and over and over again.
William Wharton, because he wrote a fantastic book (Birdy) in amongst a load of self-indulgent shit (Tidings or Franky Furbo for example).
Paul Theroux, because his habit of whining spoils what he's relating.
P.J. O'Rourke, for flogging the dead horse of his republicanism over and over and over and over and over again.
mattie
missing in inaction
I've tried to read Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow' about 5 times, I've got no further than about 50 pages in and given up.
The missus seems to like Mike Gayle. I don't.
For my final choice, there was one I read a while ago about an American prison by some up-and-coming (At the time) British author for which I can't (thankfully) remember any details, but as that's no use to anyone I'll go for that American clown who writes about cold wars going hot and seems to have swallowed a copy of Janes' defence and whose name I can't remember.
Honourable mentions to Kerouac, Crichton and Truss, if she's allowed in here.
The missus seems to like Mike Gayle. I don't.
For my final choice, there was one I read a while ago about an American prison by some up-and-coming (At the time) British author for which I can't (thankfully) remember any details, but as that's no use to anyone I'll go for that American clown who writes about cold wars going hot and seems to have swallowed a copy of Janes' defence and whose name I can't remember.
Honourable mentions to Kerouac, Crichton and Truss, if she's allowed in here.
Great thing about these threads is that you can see people hating things you like, and adoring things that send you pubwards faster than 'Imminent attack from the air'- And often the same people that you broadly agree with on politics, music, Urban Cuntishness and all sorts of guff.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
Tim Willocks and Tom Clancy?mattie said:
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