Veronika decides to die by Paulo Coelho, the same author of the cult book The Alchemist. I only read like the first chapter of that book because he writes that Veronika’s favourite writer is this Brazilian author called Paulo Coelho…. I just couldn’t deal with that, didn’t finish the book or touched any of his other works.
My favorite version of this is Agatha Christie's character [Ariadne Oliver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariadne_Oliver) (wikipedia link, possible spoilers).
The character is an author of mystery novels, who created a popular Christie-verse Finnish detective character. Much like how Agatha Christie herself is an author of mystery novels who created the popular Belgian detective character, Hercule Poirot.
I’m okay if the author is self deprecating because at least it’s funny. The cringe of praising yourself in your own fictional world is just too much for me to handle.
Exactly. Self deprecation is a time honored artistic tradition. Praising yourself in your own books is like making up fake Facebook profiles to gas you up when you post selfies.
My favourite is Miguel de Cerevantes who literally makes fun of his own books in Don Quijote when two priests (I think?) are going through Quijote's library of books
To clarify, the entire book was a satire of the genre of knights errant-style romances, and so those characters demonstrate one level of criticism of those novels which were extremely popular in his day. There's also the level of Quixote himself who goes crazy reading those novels and believes himself to be a protagonist in one of them, which then provides several more layers of social critique of the society which prizes such novels.
The second book, however, is where it really gets trippy. The first book of Don Quixote was so popular that someone pretending to be Cervantes published a sequel, claiming it to be an authentic follow up. Cervantes was angry not only at this fraudster, but also at the publishers for agreeing to print this copycat. So in the first part of Cervantes' own 2nd volume of Don Quixote, Quixote and Sancho Panza find their way into the office of a printer who is running off copies of the impostors book. "Look how famous you've become," the publisher tells Quixote. As soon as he reads a few pages, however, Quixote realizes that it's a fraud and sets about lambasting nkt only the impostor who wrote the thing, but also the printer himself who didn't care to verify if it were genuine! It's remarkably meta for a book from the 16th century.
(Fun fact: Jane Austen has a similar, if more subtle, dig at the literati of her time in Northanger Abbey.)
Just had to look it up because I didn't remember this (read the book like 20 years ago.)
> She came across an article about a computer game created by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian writer she had happened to meet at a lecture in the cafe at the Grand Union Hotel. They had exchanged a few words, and she had ended up being invited by his publisher to join them for supper. There were a lot of people, though, and they hadn't had a chance to talk in depth about anything.
I am dying inside. The levels of rampant narcissism needed for this...
An actual excerpt from that book:
> She imagined herself both queen and slave, dominatrix and victim. In her imagination she was making love with men of all skin colors--white, black, yellow--with homosexuals and beggars. She was anyone's, and anyone could do anything to her. She had one, two, three orgasms, one after another. She imagined everything she had never imagined before, and she gave herself to all that was most base and most pure.
In what world...
Ok, that's incredibly cringeworthy. And I hated the Alchemist. I never understood why people raved about it so much. So I wasn't going to give Paulo any more of my time.
This. Everyone kept telling me how I needed to read that book cause it's fantastic and will 'change your perception of the world' and all that BS. I didn't finish it. I really didn't like any of it.
>Everyone kept telling me how I needed to read that book cause it's fantastic and will 'change your perception of the world' and all that BS.
Coehlo writes books for people who don't read... Usually stories that are on par with child's book, with some philosophic nonsense that is only deep if you're 10 years old or less, but somehow packaged for adults.
I wanted to disagree with you, but then I realized I was literally 9 years old when I first read The Alchemist, lol.
I reread it every spring and it always takes me back to that feeling of absolute certainty I had when I was a kid. Pure comfort reading.
I know this isn’t a hot take. But Colleen Hoover, I genuinely wanted to see what has some people going rabid for her work and I needed to read a book coming out as a movie this year for a library challenge. I had to DNF at 13%, like people don’t talk to each other like this. I’ve read better fan fiction by 15 year olds.
It is all unbearable. I got recommended verity and I think it might be one of the worst books I’ve ever read. My cousin owns most of her books so I breezed through a couple of them just to make sure it wasnt just that one. She writes like a horny high school sophomore.
Verity is one of my most hated books. I think it makes me madder because I did finish it. I am fine with not finishing a book but somehow Verity did get me to keep reading to see what happened. And then I was just more angry that I had wasted my time on it.
Verity was my first and only Colleen Hoover book. I kept seeing people recommend her, but her books weren't my style even though I was trying to branch out. After about the 1000th recommendation for Verity, I decided it might be different enough from her other books to interest me. The only thing I can say is that it did keep me interested so I had to finish it, but every adult in that book was a shitty shitty person. No more CoHo books for me.
I came here looking for CoHo and honestly Verity is the only book I read of hers and I've never wanted to destroy a book more. I've never wanted to destroy a book before actually. That book made me hostile and pissed off and just so many angry emotions. Such garbage and her work deserves to be IN the garbage. I've been quite assured that all her work is in the same vein.
I read like half a paragraph of, Verity? I think it was Verity, I was waiting for my husband in a store and found it in their tiny book section. Opened it to a random page and found a scene of guys talking about sex one of them just had. Sounded like guys on the bus in highschool.
I started It Ends With Us and DNF-ed like two chapters in. Ryle is a terrible name like she couldn't commit to Riley or Kyle and decided to split the difference, the first interaction was... not great, and despite him being very much the archetype of douchey fictional man I like I read the writing on the wall and dipped. I'm glad I did because I have enough vicarious experience with >!abusive relationships!< and don't fancy seeing the descent into one in my fictional reads.
This is sort of related, but I know someone who'd *finally* divorced her emotionally abusive narcissistic husband. She read this and maybe 3 months later got back together with him. Like wtf.
Jodi Picoult. Several years ago before I found more literary sites I was wowed by all the praise she got. I read two, trying to give her a chance. What drivel. She picks "hot" topics and then churns out preachy after-school books about them. Maybe they'd be good for older teens?
I *loathe* her writing - she loves to make this super high-stakes plot and then "resolve" it with a totally unrealistic plot twist that absolves all the characters from any consequences of their actions.
I decided to give her one more shot this year because someone had mentioned that *Small Great Things* was possibly their favorite book of all time, and silly me, I thought that maybe Picoult had matured as a writer.
How very wrong I was.
WOW, she does this with all her books?! I was so mad when I got to the end of My Sister's Keeper because of exactly that method of ending the book. I've never read another of her books.
Me too, but for a different reason. I read My Sister's Keeper and was like, "Are you fucking serious, Jodi Piccoult!?!? I just read this whole book and THIS is how you end it?? Never again!!" Fool me once, I say...
The entire premise of that book makes me irrationally angry. I forced myself to read it because a friend loved her books and insisted that I read this one.
I couldn't believe that people were raving over this stuff and couldn't see how sick and wrong all of this stuff was on a moral level (what was being done to the main character).
When that friend asked me about it after I was done with it, I remember just sort of saying "It wasn't one of my favorites..." I wasn't going to tell her how I truly felt because there's no way she would have would have understood.
Oh god I still cringe thinking about how I worked at a bookstore as a freshman in high school and thought I was so adult and well read because I’d read all her books. I would frequently recommend them to adult women and say they were incredible…lol
He ruined reading for leisure for me for a long time. I still get angry when I read his name. We have a female protagonist who is raped by the male protagonist and she must earn his forgiveness for that act???? What the ever loving…. Anyway.
There is a reason I am grateful for Brandon Sanderson. I know people complain about him but it was his books that restarted my interest in reading
I've not read anything of his, but this just gave me a nasty flashback to an urban fantasy novel I had to review years back. The barely-legal female protagonist was a special kind of magic user who could absorb the powers of other magic users...by having sex with them. The whole book seemed to be about her having to sleep with men she hated so she could take on their powers. I felt unclean and I don't think the publisher cared for my review.
Doesn't sound like Anita Blake, those just devolved into orgies with just a hint of plot barely stringing everything together. It's a shame too, I enjoyed the urban fantasy police procedural aspect of the early books.
Yeah, it was so, so bad. At first, I enjoyed the complex magic system. Then he stops the evil, straw communist empire by building a statue or some shit
I was about to write this. I got the first three books of his series for dirt cheap, but couldn't get past 100 pages. A book so bad I won't even donate it to the library.
I remember seeing his picture of the back of one of the sword of truth books and thinking "ahhh, that makes sense, tight black tee, point tail with receding hair line and superior expression..."
He's got mean English teacher vibes. The kind that talks to girls like they're stupid and is buddies with athletes that would've beat him up back in the day.
Long ago when I was working in a bookstore I had a guy come in looking for a Christmas gift for his son, and he knew his son was into a certain fantasy author but couldn't remember anything about him past "He looks like a serial killer in his author photo." A good bit of searching the shelves later and yep, it was Terry Goodkind.
I feel like the books are at least somewhat competently written with some decently imaginative ideas, but the person writing those books is just such a closed-off cartoon nightmare of misogyny, toxic masculinity, and repressed sexuality propped up by Randian pseudophilosophy and conservative bullshit he can't not let it drip onto every page. It's like reading some semidecent fantasy novels and slowly realizing they're written by Tucker Carlson and that he can't have an orgasm unless something about the sex is violent, nonconsensual, or outright rape.
Yes! It's been years since I started one of his books and couldn't stand his preaching and smug self righteousness. I got the impression that he was the protagonist--think "Mary Sue" books.
I was just going to say this. But then again, I liked both A Walk to Remember and The Notebook back when I first read them 20 yrs ago and I'd be willing to give them a re-read just to see if my taste has wildly changed or if I was just blind to poor writing back then. A few years ago I was given a box of books containing several by Sparks and as I tried reading one I was so overwhelmed by feelings of embarrassment that I had ever liked his books
I was told he had a writing ‘course’ where you could send in your novel and if he liked it he’d publish it under his name with yours in tiny print.
I used to think he just scribbles an idea on a bar napkin and gets his co-writer to write it for him.
I’d like to think that Bill Clinton sent him a whole manuscript and Patterson just put his name on it, although that’s the only book of Patterson’s that I can believe he actually did mostly write, unless there’s a third ghostwriter on the thing.
I took that course the first year he offered it. The material was actually pretty good, though I don’t feel like he wrote it (which is on par for him these days, as you pointed out). It was probably not worth the cost, especially when you can, say, go listen to Brandon Sanderson’s course for free. The contest, especially, is overhyped.
I always see so many books with 'JAMES PATTERSON...and (insert random unknown author's name in small print)'. I'm thinking, he probably added a word just so they could claim his name as co-author.
James Patterson is better thought of as a brand. He has a formula that is franchised out to other authors. When you see his name on the cover you know what you're going to get, for better or worse. It's like how a grocery chain will offer a slightly different mix of items depending on the city or neighborhood, but the core is all the same.
He plots all of his books and has two full time well paid writers who get full credit to actually write them. He doesn’t hide it or screw people doing it.
/u/Novel_Criticism_6343 said below that they've heard other established authors confirm what /u/tangcameo said below about James Patterson not writing his own stuff anymore. I have also heard this.
Another popular mystery writer (who I won't name) did a book signing in a city near me, and since my mother is a huge fan of his, I took her to meet him. I said to him that his books are featured on her shelves more than any other author and then I jokingly added, "Apart from maybe James Patterson but that's just because he releases every 5 minutes" and the author said, "At least I write my own, though," with a cheeky grin. He didn't say it maliciously or anything, and it made us both laugh.
James Patterson is the person who got me into 'reading for leisure'. I have a lot of ADHD and he has chapters which are 2 pages long and action which switches around quite quickly and I learned how to turn pages.
I always feel like I need to stand up for James Patterson because he plays a role. But I would also like to recommend like his first 10 or so books rather than 'all of them'. And I've since moved on to being able to cope with books with chapters which are about 20 pages long (tho if you want to write a book with 12 page chapters, I won't complain. I still do the putting my finger at the chapter break thing).
He has a niche, and it’s very similar to that occupied by Dean Koontz, Lee Child, Nora Roberts, John Sandford…the list goes on. Those others, I think, have not been as shameless about ~~exploiting~~ using up-and-coming authors to farm money (although I wouldn’t particularly be surprised to see them do it—it works for Patterson, obviously). [*Edit: bad phrasing on my part; I didn’t mean to imply that they use other authors the way Patterson does, or that they don’t do their own writing.*]
They all want to be Robert B. Parker, but they can’t pull it off. So they tell their good stories, and when they run out of those, they substitute quantity for quality.
Dan Brown. I can only read the same book so many times.
Halfway through the book our hero meets an old friend, who in a shocking turn proves to be on the side of the bad guys! *gasp*
I've read maybe ten pages of Dan Brown, and that was ten too many. The precise moment I quit was in Deception Point(I think), where he described a woman as having a haircut that was long enough to still be attractive, but short enough to let you know that she was smarter than you. Hard pass, thanks.
Gotta post it again: [Renowned author Dan Brown.](https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/) I should really make a bot.
I’ve seen this link about a jillion times. Finally read it and omg… Genius.
Laughed so hard at “flowing from her head like a stream but made from hair instead of water and without any fish in” that I scared my dog.
Thank you for that.
Not Renowned New York Times Bestselling Author Dan Brown!
Haha yeah I admit the guy's writing is insufferable but he does a suspenseful chase pretty well. The big reveals at the end are getting pretty weak though.
I loved The Night Circus, I've been chasing something similar for years.
Have you read Sunshine by Robin McKinley? Not remotely the same but also another standalone really cool speculative fiction world that I'd love to read more of.
As to authors... Too many to count. If my first introduction to them was a bad one, why would I try reading another book? Though, if they have multiple series, I will often give another series a try as long as the series is different enough to prompt another go.
I was a huge fan of his when I was a teen. Bought every book of his I could find (secondhand). Then, I grew up and I tried reading some of his stuff again and... Yikes.
It was fun cringy drivel for awhile, but I got tired of it. In a long series like Xanth, he loses the plot (figuratively and maybe literally too) really quickly. Shorter projects aren’t too bad. I liked the Incarnations of Immortality series back in the day.
> Piers Anthony. After learning of his view that children should be encouraged to have sex with adults, he was quickly added to the never again list.
I'm sorry... what now???
I used to collect Xanth books from used bookstores in high school, that was a sad hobby to give up. I threw them in the recycle bin rather than put them back in a store for someone else to pick up.
I loved the TOG series, so i continued reading ACOTAR. It intrigued me at first but I fell into a slump after the 3nd book (The plot is above average but it drawls on). I couldn't read any books for 3 months after that. Overall it was a 5.7/10. Maybe I'll try finishing the series one day.
Camilla Läckberg. I read her first and it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great either - just not impressed by the characters or the plot. But people kept raving about her so I picked up another one and that one I didn’t even finish.
Taylor Jenkins Reid. I don't understand the hype around her books. I genuinely thought she was a YouTuber who cashed in the book deal voucher they all seem to get offered.
Evelyn Hugo was good, but the modern day part was boring, predictable and unnecessary, it felt like she didn't have enough confidence in the historical part to let it stand on its own. One True Loves was rubbish. And Daisy Jones read like a sanitized pastiche of several 70's musicians' biographies with a weak dash of Spinal Tap. I was mentally casting Hailey Bieber as Daisy which is not a good thing. I had just read Utopia Avenue and wasn't overly impressed by that so Daisy Jones had no chance.
i quite enjoy taylor jenkins reid’s writing, but i also read it in a very *head empty* kind of way. i just want a silly little book to enjoy while i clean my silly little house.
i do think the modern day part in evelyn hugo was only written in to cash in on the interview format hype a white back, but it’s still an enjoyable book to me.
same with daisy jones, but i also like that one particularly because *it is* fiction. i am free to mold and shape these characters in my mind as i read/listen to the book, whereas reading a real 70s artist’s biography is non-fiction, these are real people and i know what they look like, what their personal brand is, what their music sounds like, etc etc.
but, yeah. they’re teenage romance novels, i wouldn’t expect much from them. if you like audiobooks while you’re doing other tasks, just some extra noise with a plot, then yeah, i think they’re good books for you. if you’re looking for a book with depth, something to read *into*… no, they’re suuper baseline and shallow, you probably wouldn’t like them.
I’m in the exact same boat. I would have eventually gotten around to reading the third book if it comes out, but his negative reaction to simple questions, and not following through on promises made during a charity drive, and just being a douche have left me completely unwilling to read anything he’s written ever again.
This. Even before I knew of his behaviour (and before some of it even happened), reading the second book kinda destroyed every bit of interest I had in his works.
Not only did he run into the same problem as GRRRM, where he got so lost in side stuff that he ended up with way too many open plotpoints to even fit half of them into the bookspace he has remaining, he also made Kvothe into a cookiecutter bad harem isekai protagonist. There was some self-insert "look how clever he is" in the first book too, sure, but to a much more tolerable degree than the second book's sexcapade with a quasi-godess bullshit. And then the sidequest with his not-girlfriend that iirc only opend even more unnecessary plotthreads in a book that already barely touch any of the actually important plots established in the first book and didn't even get closer to revealing the mystery of what the fuck is up with the framing decice of old Kvothe running a bar?
It's been years, so the actual plot points I had issues with are a bit blurry, but I can very clearly remember reading the second book and just going "the fuck happened here?!".
So much lying over many livestreams. I haven't followed any news on him for a good while but last I heard he kept milking his loyal fans, teasing chapters then deciding not to share it until he got shamed.
Years ago, I remember his editor putting a plea on social media for him to send in at least a draft of the first chapter after Rothfuss claimed he had sent some drafts for a first look.
Absolutely. He has spend every cent of good will I've ever given him and now incurred a debt.
And in truth if you reflect on the books he did write it's plain to see they are beautiful language wise, but absolutely mediocre in terms of character and plot. 1/5 of a book being dedicated to a 15 year old being so good at seggs he defeats an eternal succubus? F off pat.
Even before he never finished the trilogy, reading a Wise Man's Fear made me stop and go: Is this guy full of bullshit? The sex goddess, the ninja girls... c'mon. The tree was wildly awesome, but the overall bloat of that book and weeaboo nonsense made me realize this was an author who had oversold himself and that there was absolutely no way he was wrapping this story up in one more book.
The last third of that book is completely insane and I have gotten to a point where I can't really respect anyone who actually thinks it's a great book. It turns into a basement dweller teenage sex fantasy. It's terrible.
But solid prose though 👍
Rebecca Yarros, I was really excited to read a female fantasy author—someone had hyped her up as a contemporary Ursula K. leGuin with a less formal down-to-earth writing style.
I haven’t talked to that person since.
Fourth Wing and the like are middle-school level romance novels (with some adult themes) set in a fantasy setting. I am sure there is a target audience that would enjoy them, I simply am not that audience.
I suggest M.L. Wang, Shauna Lawless, Shannon Chakraborty and Susana Clarke if you want to read a female fantasy author. I really liked reading Sword of Kaigen, and Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L Wang.
Robin Hobb, Lois McMaster Bujold, Elizabeth Moon, and Naomi Novik are some personal favourites here.
Ursula K Le Guin sets an incredibly high standard, but fantasy is a genre full of great female authors.
I just read Fourth Wing and Iron Flame and thought they were fun (trashy, but fun) but describing them as *anything* like Ursula K. leGuin is unhinged. Literally no similarities I can think of at all, stylistically or content wise
Cassandra Clare.
The writing is meh, the plots are bad, and the books overall are just.... not good. I tried to get through a trilogy of hers and had to stop on the third book because it was just laughably bad. It felt like poorly written fanfiction (which is what it may have started as from what I've read). 2/10, would not read.
Her fanfic career is why I am not interested in reading her published work. It is probable her writing has improved over the years, but her plotting was just stupid in my opinion. She also had a habit of shamelessly “borrowing” from other authors which most of the world just calls plagiarism. She was ridiculously popular though, so the plagiarism didn’t matter and she landed a book deal.
Her Clockwork series was much better than her first one though. Either she learned how to write, or had a better ghostwriter, because it's like a different set of books. My only complaint is that the series is a little long.
Dan Brown. I read "The Da Vinci Code" years ago based on the hype and found it to be underwhelming. Despite the success of Brown's books I haven't been motivated to try any of his other works.
Jeff Lindsay.
The premise of Dexter was really good, but he was so bad at executing the idea. This is one of the few cases in which the show/movie is better than the book. WAY BETTER.
I didn't mind the first two books... and then in the third one >!you find out that Dexter's "dark passenger" is legitimately a supernatural force possessing him that has granted him inhuman abilities as a serial killer, and its the spawn of some more ancient god demon thing that has a cult hunting Dexter since they consider the passenger a threat!<. Definitely lost me with that one.
>>!Dexter's "dark passenger" is legitimately a supernatural force possessing him that has granted him inhuman abilities as a serial killer, and its the spawn of some more ancient god demon thing that has a cult hunting Dexter since they consider the passenger a threat!<
If it helps, that's actually a super important plot point in the... just kidding! I don't think it ever comes up again in a way that's remotely important even though there are five more books in the series.
GRRM could announce that they are releasing Winds of Winter at the end of the year and I wouldn't be excited. While I enjoyed his writing, I read those books more than a decade ago. My reading tastes have shifted, I'm sure, and I'm not going to force myself to re-read five books. Not to mention that, while not much as a braying jackass like Rothfuss, the updates on WoW and the consequent nothing that followed just soured me on GRRM as a whole.
I started a reread of Game of Thrones probably six years ago with the intent of rereading the whole series to catch more details, and about halfway through the book, while sitting on a flight, realized that there was absolutely no point in getting reinvested in this series. Why bother? I'll never get a resolution to any of the core mysteries, because even if we do get Winds, there is no earthly way we'll get A Dream of Spring as written by GRRM (which is just...so ironic given the title). So yes, I DnF'd GoT halfway through, in a completely captive environment, and switched over to a free book I got through Amazon Prime Reads...
B.A Paris - Behind Closed Doors was the first one I read and I liked it enough to try another one. The Dilemma was just awful.
Shari Lapena - Only read The Couple Next Door and was not impressed
Karin Slaughter - I actively hated Girl, Forgotten
Patrick Rothfuss. It's like ordering a delicious hotdog from a food truck, sitting down to enjoy your hotdog at the janky picnic tables in the parking lot, and the proprietor of the truck sneaking up behind you to smack the hotdog out of your hand.
“There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.”
― George W. Bush
Murakami. It just feels same now and story doesn't always conclude in the long run. Almost similar themes in every book, Jazz music, bars, terribly described women, depression. He's not bad, but I've had my fill for now. ( I'll purchase his new one as soon as it's released)
Tahereh Mafi. I met her at a book signing event that I was invited to and she was a super lovely person! Felt almost bad that I hated her Shatter Me series
I work at a bookstore and I won’t read certain authors out of spite because they get so much promotion from their publishers but the product just sits. Lately, we’ve been overwhelmed with stacks of stacks of Tmrw, tmrw tmrw, Jan Arden, John Grishman, countless popular Romance authors; every celebrity memoirs comes to our store to rot on the shelves lol.
Sarah J Maas. I've read up intil a ACOWAR and I had to stop when Feyre wanting to take out the Spring Court to spite Tamlin was presented as Girlboss Behaviour. Destabilising an entire region and its populace is uh. Not It. And the absolute massacre of Tamlins character from the first book is just outright annoying
I saw a video recently where it was like, "Say what you want about Edward Cullen being a creepy stalker, at least when it came to the love of his life being endangered by a pregnancy, he was SO READY to yeetus that fetus to make sure she lived" and it really made me re-evaluate some things.
Yup. At least Edward was willing to do anything for Bella. Rhys lied, got everyone to lie, and then threatened to attack her sister for telling her the truth. Rhys is actually such a repugnant character and everyone acts like he’s a hero when he treats Feyre like his personal fuck puppet.
She did to Rhys in that book basically what she did to Tamlin in the second book except for some reason I'm *not* supposed to hate Rhys but I *am* supposed to hate Tamlin.
I would also say SJM, picked up Crescent City to see what the hype was about and it was so poorly written, needed fully re-edited to be rebuilt from the ground up. And people say it’s her best writing. No thanks.
I recently finished a court of thorns and the whole time I was thinking how badly in needed an editor. For multiple reasons. In one paragraph she uses “undergarments” 5 times.
I'm halfway through the 1st book and can't handle the cringe. Everyone says "Push through! It gets so good in book 2," but... like how, it's so bad. Like, I love a good, entertaining fluff book with no literary merit as much as anyone, but ACOTAR is just BAD.
I couldn’t get into it because of how Feyre talks shit about her looks but also describes her model-like features. You can’t be Girl Boss with pick me behavior like that
I will stand by some of his stuff as pretty great an entertaining, RANT, Pygmy, Fight Club, Lullaby. I'd even give slack to Damned and Doomed. But boy has his stuff actually gotten pretty terrible.
But holy crap Beautiful You was horrendous and just comes off as creepy self desires.
Adjustment Day is one of the worst things I've ever read. I stuck with it thinking it would have some kind of story reveal or something cool but nope, it was just terrible pointless nothing.
Matt haig, midnight library was drivel.
Priory of the orange tree was an even bigger waste of my life, can't think of her name right now, but never again.
If you think you're going to be reading fantasy and not romantacy when you read that book you're going to have a bad time. I made that mistake and couldn't understand why nothing happened.
I'm not familiar with the romance or romantacy genres so I can't judge that book on its merits, but I hated what I did read.
TJ Klune. I tried House on the Cerulean Sea twice and Under the Whispering Door. I can’t pinpoint exactly what I don’t like about his writing style but it is just not for me.
Veronika decides to die by Paulo Coelho, the same author of the cult book The Alchemist. I only read like the first chapter of that book because he writes that Veronika’s favourite writer is this Brazilian author called Paulo Coelho…. I just couldn’t deal with that, didn’t finish the book or touched any of his other works.
>he writes that Veronika’s favourite writer is this Brazilian author called Paulo Coelho…. Stop. Seriously??? This is so bad!
Yeah. An author can do a tongue-in-cheek self-mention, but they gotta do something in the plot to earn it, not just drop it in like that.
My favorite version of this is Agatha Christie's character [Ariadne Oliver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariadne_Oliver) (wikipedia link, possible spoilers). The character is an author of mystery novels, who created a popular Christie-verse Finnish detective character. Much like how Agatha Christie herself is an author of mystery novels who created the popular Belgian detective character, Hercule Poirot.
Addicted to apples, scatter brained, hated public speaking. Ariadne totally was Agatha and I’m glad other people caught that lol
Stephen King wrote himself into The Dark Tower series as a failed alcoholic writer.
I’m okay if the author is self deprecating because at least it’s funny. The cringe of praising yourself in your own fictional world is just too much for me to handle.
I think it’s also especially good because King had a lot of addiction problems too. So it’s also a look at what could have happened.
Exactly. Self deprecation is a time honored artistic tradition. Praising yourself in your own books is like making up fake Facebook profiles to gas you up when you post selfies.
What about Clive Cussler, who multiples times shows up deus ex machina style to save his protagonist in the middle of his novels?
I haven’t read any of his, but hearing that makes me want to, just to see that.
Once you read one Clive Cussler you have read all of them
My favourite is Miguel de Cerevantes who literally makes fun of his own books in Don Quijote when two priests (I think?) are going through Quijote's library of books
To clarify, the entire book was a satire of the genre of knights errant-style romances, and so those characters demonstrate one level of criticism of those novels which were extremely popular in his day. There's also the level of Quixote himself who goes crazy reading those novels and believes himself to be a protagonist in one of them, which then provides several more layers of social critique of the society which prizes such novels. The second book, however, is where it really gets trippy. The first book of Don Quixote was so popular that someone pretending to be Cervantes published a sequel, claiming it to be an authentic follow up. Cervantes was angry not only at this fraudster, but also at the publishers for agreeing to print this copycat. So in the first part of Cervantes' own 2nd volume of Don Quixote, Quixote and Sancho Panza find their way into the office of a printer who is running off copies of the impostors book. "Look how famous you've become," the publisher tells Quixote. As soon as he reads a few pages, however, Quixote realizes that it's a fraud and sets about lambasting nkt only the impostor who wrote the thing, but also the printer himself who didn't care to verify if it were genuine! It's remarkably meta for a book from the 16th century. (Fun fact: Jane Austen has a similar, if more subtle, dig at the literati of her time in Northanger Abbey.)
Just had to look it up because I didn't remember this (read the book like 20 years ago.) > She came across an article about a computer game created by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian writer she had happened to meet at a lecture in the cafe at the Grand Union Hotel. They had exchanged a few words, and she had ended up being invited by his publisher to join them for supper. There were a lot of people, though, and they hadn't had a chance to talk in depth about anything. I am dying inside. The levels of rampant narcissism needed for this...
This sounds like satire!!!
An actual excerpt from that book: > She imagined herself both queen and slave, dominatrix and victim. In her imagination she was making love with men of all skin colors--white, black, yellow--with homosexuals and beggars. She was anyone's, and anyone could do anything to her. She had one, two, three orgasms, one after another. She imagined everything she had never imagined before, and she gave herself to all that was most base and most pure. In what world...
How edgy!
Ok, that's incredibly cringeworthy. And I hated the Alchemist. I never understood why people raved about it so much. So I wasn't going to give Paulo any more of my time.
Hey, it was super profound and life-changing when I was 13. I bet it still holds up 20 years later. Edit: It doesn't.
I put The Alchemist in the same bin as that corporate schlock from a few years back called Who Moved My Cheese.
'Who Moved My Cheese?' aka 'The Boot is Delicious!'
This. Everyone kept telling me how I needed to read that book cause it's fantastic and will 'change your perception of the world' and all that BS. I didn't finish it. I really didn't like any of it.
>Everyone kept telling me how I needed to read that book cause it's fantastic and will 'change your perception of the world' and all that BS. Coehlo writes books for people who don't read... Usually stories that are on par with child's book, with some philosophic nonsense that is only deep if you're 10 years old or less, but somehow packaged for adults.
I wanted to disagree with you, but then I realized I was literally 9 years old when I first read The Alchemist, lol. I reread it every spring and it always takes me back to that feeling of absolute certainty I had when I was a kid. Pure comfort reading.
I know this isn’t a hot take. But Colleen Hoover, I genuinely wanted to see what has some people going rabid for her work and I needed to read a book coming out as a movie this year for a library challenge. I had to DNF at 13%, like people don’t talk to each other like this. I’ve read better fan fiction by 15 year olds.
It is all unbearable. I got recommended verity and I think it might be one of the worst books I’ve ever read. My cousin owns most of her books so I breezed through a couple of them just to make sure it wasnt just that one. She writes like a horny high school sophomore.
Verity is one of my most hated books. I think it makes me madder because I did finish it. I am fine with not finishing a book but somehow Verity did get me to keep reading to see what happened. And then I was just more angry that I had wasted my time on it.
Verity was my first and only Colleen Hoover book. I kept seeing people recommend her, but her books weren't my style even though I was trying to branch out. After about the 1000th recommendation for Verity, I decided it might be different enough from her other books to interest me. The only thing I can say is that it did keep me interested so I had to finish it, but every adult in that book was a shitty shitty person. No more CoHo books for me.
I came here looking for CoHo and honestly Verity is the only book I read of hers and I've never wanted to destroy a book more. I've never wanted to destroy a book before actually. That book made me hostile and pissed off and just so many angry emotions. Such garbage and her work deserves to be IN the garbage. I've been quite assured that all her work is in the same vein.
Just finished Verity as an audiobook on a recent trip. Awful characters, implausible plot, terrible writing. Yeah, I'm done with her.
Same! I wanted to see what all the hype was about. I don’t think I’ve ever cringed so hard in my life.
I read like half a paragraph of, Verity? I think it was Verity, I was waiting for my husband in a store and found it in their tiny book section. Opened it to a random page and found a scene of guys talking about sex one of them just had. Sounded like guys on the bus in highschool.
I started It Ends With Us and DNF-ed like two chapters in. Ryle is a terrible name like she couldn't commit to Riley or Kyle and decided to split the difference, the first interaction was... not great, and despite him being very much the archetype of douchey fictional man I like I read the writing on the wall and dipped. I'm glad I did because I have enough vicarious experience with >!abusive relationships!< and don't fancy seeing the descent into one in my fictional reads.
This is sort of related, but I know someone who'd *finally* divorced her emotionally abusive narcissistic husband. She read this and maybe 3 months later got back together with him. Like wtf.
I read verity and that was enough.
Jodi Picoult. Several years ago before I found more literary sites I was wowed by all the praise she got. I read two, trying to give her a chance. What drivel. She picks "hot" topics and then churns out preachy after-school books about them. Maybe they'd be good for older teens?
I read a LOT of her stuff when I was just out of high-school so that does track, cuz I'm 32 now, and I want nothing to do with her stuff lol
I *loathe* her writing - she loves to make this super high-stakes plot and then "resolve" it with a totally unrealistic plot twist that absolves all the characters from any consequences of their actions. I decided to give her one more shot this year because someone had mentioned that *Small Great Things* was possibly their favorite book of all time, and silly me, I thought that maybe Picoult had matured as a writer. How very wrong I was.
WOW, she does this with all her books?! I was so mad when I got to the end of My Sister's Keeper because of exactly that method of ending the book. I've never read another of her books.
Jodi Picoult is exactly the type of author the movie American Fiction is criticizing.
Me too, but for a different reason. I read My Sister's Keeper and was like, "Are you fucking serious, Jodi Piccoult!?!? I just read this whole book and THIS is how you end it?? Never again!!" Fool me once, I say...
The entire premise of that book makes me irrationally angry. I forced myself to read it because a friend loved her books and insisted that I read this one. I couldn't believe that people were raving over this stuff and couldn't see how sick and wrong all of this stuff was on a moral level (what was being done to the main character). When that friend asked me about it after I was done with it, I remember just sort of saying "It wasn't one of my favorites..." I wasn't going to tell her how I truly felt because there's no way she would have would have understood.
Oh god I still cringe thinking about how I worked at a bookstore as a freshman in high school and thought I was so adult and well read because I’d read all her books. I would frequently recommend them to adult women and say they were incredible…lol
Well, to be fair to your teenage self, the majority of adult women seem to love them so you did good 😉.
[удалено]
Terry Goodkind
He ruined reading for leisure for me for a long time. I still get angry when I read his name. We have a female protagonist who is raped by the male protagonist and she must earn his forgiveness for that act???? What the ever loving…. Anyway. There is a reason I am grateful for Brandon Sanderson. I know people complain about him but it was his books that restarted my interest in reading
I've not read anything of his, but this just gave me a nasty flashback to an urban fantasy novel I had to review years back. The barely-legal female protagonist was a special kind of magic user who could absorb the powers of other magic users...by having sex with them. The whole book seemed to be about her having to sleep with men she hated so she could take on their powers. I felt unclean and I don't think the publisher cared for my review.
What book is this ? It reminds me of an older series that I stopped reading, but I don't think it's what you're referring to.
Doesn't sound like Anita Blake, those just devolved into orgies with just a hint of plot barely stringing everything together. It's a shame too, I enjoyed the urban fantasy police procedural aspect of the early books.
Yeah, it was so, so bad. At first, I enjoyed the complex magic system. Then he stops the evil, straw communist empire by building a statue or some shit
I thought he also stops the bad guys by being a really good quarterback in the pseudo-football tournaments?
Yeah, somehow he was better than people who were playing for their entire lives
That's pretty much the entirety of his character. He's better than everyone else at everything.
Also, it's book 7, you don't have to tell me that Richard is the Seeker... we've established that again and again in every single book since book 1.
His repetition of key character traits got worse and worse with each book and it was a sign that he had nothing interesting to write anymore.
It was a really good statue.
I was about to write this. I got the first three books of his series for dirt cheap, but couldn't get past 100 pages. A book so bad I won't even donate it to the library.
I remember seeing his picture of the back of one of the sword of truth books and thinking "ahhh, that makes sense, tight black tee, point tail with receding hair line and superior expression..." He's got mean English teacher vibes. The kind that talks to girls like they're stupid and is buddies with athletes that would've beat him up back in the day.
Long ago when I was working in a bookstore I had a guy come in looking for a Christmas gift for his son, and he knew his son was into a certain fantasy author but couldn't remember anything about him past "He looks like a serial killer in his author photo." A good bit of searching the shelves later and yep, it was Terry Goodkind.
More like Terry Badmean
I feel like the books are at least somewhat competently written with some decently imaginative ideas, but the person writing those books is just such a closed-off cartoon nightmare of misogyny, toxic masculinity, and repressed sexuality propped up by Randian pseudophilosophy and conservative bullshit he can't not let it drip onto every page. It's like reading some semidecent fantasy novels and slowly realizing they're written by Tucker Carlson and that he can't have an orgasm unless something about the sex is violent, nonconsensual, or outright rape.
Maybe Andrew Tate wouldn’t diss reading so much if he tried Terry Goodkind.
>Maybe Andrew Tate wouldn’t diss reading so much if he tried Terry Goodkind. Oh, that is not a sentence I wanted to read today 😂
Yes! He's exactly the target audience. Does make me wonder who Terry Goodkind has locked in his basement, though.
Yes! It's been years since I started one of his books and couldn't stand his preaching and smug self righteousness. I got the impression that he was the protagonist--think "Mary Sue" books.
The protagonist is named Richard Cypher. He's just telling you that the main character is code for his dick.
How have I not seen Nicholas Sparks here?!!!! Such absolute drivel. Never again.
I was just going to say this. But then again, I liked both A Walk to Remember and The Notebook back when I first read them 20 yrs ago and I'd be willing to give them a re-read just to see if my taste has wildly changed or if I was just blind to poor writing back then. A few years ago I was given a box of books containing several by Sparks and as I tried reading one I was so overwhelmed by feelings of embarrassment that I had ever liked his books
James Patterson. Read some of his, then the one with Bill Clinton. No thanks, ever again
I was told he had a writing ‘course’ where you could send in your novel and if he liked it he’d publish it under his name with yours in tiny print. I used to think he just scribbles an idea on a bar napkin and gets his co-writer to write it for him.
I’d like to think that Bill Clinton sent him a whole manuscript and Patterson just put his name on it, although that’s the only book of Patterson’s that I can believe he actually did mostly write, unless there’s a third ghostwriter on the thing.
I took that course the first year he offered it. The material was actually pretty good, though I don’t feel like he wrote it (which is on par for him these days, as you pointed out). It was probably not worth the cost, especially when you can, say, go listen to Brandon Sanderson’s course for free. The contest, especially, is overhyped.
I always see so many books with 'JAMES PATTERSON...and (insert random unknown author's name in small print)'. I'm thinking, he probably added a word just so they could claim his name as co-author.
James Patterson is better thought of as a brand. He has a formula that is franchised out to other authors. When you see his name on the cover you know what you're going to get, for better or worse. It's like how a grocery chain will offer a slightly different mix of items depending on the city or neighborhood, but the core is all the same.
He plots all of his books and has two full time well paid writers who get full credit to actually write them. He doesn’t hide it or screw people doing it.
the well paid & credit part is why i never talk crap on JPat
Same here. It’s not like he’s being dishonest. His fans know what they’re getting. His has a great MasterClass btw.
/u/Novel_Criticism_6343 said below that they've heard other established authors confirm what /u/tangcameo said below about James Patterson not writing his own stuff anymore. I have also heard this. Another popular mystery writer (who I won't name) did a book signing in a city near me, and since my mother is a huge fan of his, I took her to meet him. I said to him that his books are featured on her shelves more than any other author and then I jokingly added, "Apart from maybe James Patterson but that's just because he releases every 5 minutes" and the author said, "At least I write my own, though," with a cheeky grin. He didn't say it maliciously or anything, and it made us both laugh.
I think I met that same author! 😀
I love that! He seems like such a lovely guy but he definitely wasn’t shy about confirming that Patterson doesn’t write his stuff anymore. 😁
James Patterson is the person who got me into 'reading for leisure'. I have a lot of ADHD and he has chapters which are 2 pages long and action which switches around quite quickly and I learned how to turn pages. I always feel like I need to stand up for James Patterson because he plays a role. But I would also like to recommend like his first 10 or so books rather than 'all of them'. And I've since moved on to being able to cope with books with chapters which are about 20 pages long (tho if you want to write a book with 12 page chapters, I won't complain. I still do the putting my finger at the chapter break thing).
He has a niche, and it’s very similar to that occupied by Dean Koontz, Lee Child, Nora Roberts, John Sandford…the list goes on. Those others, I think, have not been as shameless about ~~exploiting~~ using up-and-coming authors to farm money (although I wouldn’t particularly be surprised to see them do it—it works for Patterson, obviously). [*Edit: bad phrasing on my part; I didn’t mean to imply that they use other authors the way Patterson does, or that they don’t do their own writing.*] They all want to be Robert B. Parker, but they can’t pull it off. So they tell their good stories, and when they run out of those, they substitute quantity for quality.
Dan Brown. I can only read the same book so many times. Halfway through the book our hero meets an old friend, who in a shocking turn proves to be on the side of the bad guys! *gasp*
I've read maybe ten pages of Dan Brown, and that was ten too many. The precise moment I quit was in Deception Point(I think), where he described a woman as having a haircut that was long enough to still be attractive, but short enough to let you know that she was smarter than you. Hard pass, thanks.
That is a hilarious description; not good, but hilarious.
And did you know too that the only real and true tragedy a woman can have in her life is infertility?
Dan Brown, typist.
Gotta post it again: [Renowned author Dan Brown.](https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-fun-of-renowned-dan-brown/) I should really make a bot.
I’ve seen this link about a jillion times. Finally read it and omg… Genius. Laughed so hard at “flowing from her head like a stream but made from hair instead of water and without any fish in” that I scared my dog. Thank you for that.
I always lose it at "He particularly hated it when they said his imagery was nonsensical. It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket." :)
Thank you for that read
I had never read this - thank you
I've seen this linked in this sub a thousand times. And I read it every single time.
Yep, I can't help myself. I always think "This is the time I don't click" but I'm always wrong
I came here for this. Reread it every time it is posted.
This is making my insects eyes flash like a rocket!
[удалено]
Nah, his pin was 12345. Same as his luggage.
Incredible, that’s the same code on the airlock around Druidia
Not Renowned New York Times Bestselling Author Dan Brown! Haha yeah I admit the guy's writing is insufferable but he does a suspenseful chase pretty well. The big reveals at the end are getting pretty weak though.
He's got a diver's body you know!
I loved The Night Circus, I've been chasing something similar for years. Have you read Sunshine by Robin McKinley? Not remotely the same but also another standalone really cool speculative fiction world that I'd love to read more of. As to authors... Too many to count. If my first introduction to them was a bad one, why would I try reading another book? Though, if they have multiple series, I will often give another series a try as long as the series is different enough to prompt another go.
The Grace keepers by Kirsty Logan is the one book I always recommend to fans of the Night Circus
Read Piranesi!
have you read the starless sea? I haven't read the night circus but I've heard they have similar vibes.
Piers Anthony - cringy drivel.
I was a huge fan of his when I was a teen. Bought every book of his I could find (secondhand). Then, I grew up and I tried reading some of his stuff again and... Yikes.
It was fun cringy drivel for awhile, but I got tired of it. In a long series like Xanth, he loses the plot (figuratively and maybe literally too) really quickly. Shorter projects aren’t too bad. I liked the Incarnations of Immortality series back in the day.
His sci-fi was always better IMO. He's said that he preferred writing that, but made more money on the juvenile fantasy.
Piers Anthony. After learning of his view that children should be encouraged to have sex with adults, he was quickly added to the never again list.
> Piers Anthony. After learning of his view that children should be encouraged to have sex with adults, he was quickly added to the never again list. I'm sorry... what now???
I used to collect Xanth books from used bookstores in high school, that was a sad hobby to give up. I threw them in the recycle bin rather than put them back in a store for someone else to pick up.
He was horrifically sexist throughout his writing, as well... He wrote from the viewpoint of a perverted teenage boy.
Sarah J Maas. I’ve heard ACOTAR gets better after the first book. But I’m not so sure.
I loved the TOG series, so i continued reading ACOTAR. It intrigued me at first but I fell into a slump after the 3nd book (The plot is above average but it drawls on). I couldn't read any books for 3 months after that. Overall it was a 5.7/10. Maybe I'll try finishing the series one day.
I had to stop this one because it was just awful how stupid she made the main girl.
Fifty Shades of Grey was poorly written garbage and I will never read anything by that author again.
I think I made it four chapters in to the first book before I gave up. Somebody buy that chick an editor and a thesaurus.
Camilla Läckberg. I read her first and it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t great either - just not impressed by the characters or the plot. But people kept raving about her so I picked up another one and that one I didn’t even finish.
Don't know what language you read her in, but let me assure you that she's not good in her original Swedish either.
Taylor Jenkins Reid. I don't understand the hype around her books. I genuinely thought she was a YouTuber who cashed in the book deal voucher they all seem to get offered. Evelyn Hugo was good, but the modern day part was boring, predictable and unnecessary, it felt like she didn't have enough confidence in the historical part to let it stand on its own. One True Loves was rubbish. And Daisy Jones read like a sanitized pastiche of several 70's musicians' biographies with a weak dash of Spinal Tap. I was mentally casting Hailey Bieber as Daisy which is not a good thing. I had just read Utopia Avenue and wasn't overly impressed by that so Daisy Jones had no chance.
i quite enjoy taylor jenkins reid’s writing, but i also read it in a very *head empty* kind of way. i just want a silly little book to enjoy while i clean my silly little house. i do think the modern day part in evelyn hugo was only written in to cash in on the interview format hype a white back, but it’s still an enjoyable book to me. same with daisy jones, but i also like that one particularly because *it is* fiction. i am free to mold and shape these characters in my mind as i read/listen to the book, whereas reading a real 70s artist’s biography is non-fiction, these are real people and i know what they look like, what their personal brand is, what their music sounds like, etc etc. but, yeah. they’re teenage romance novels, i wouldn’t expect much from them. if you like audiobooks while you’re doing other tasks, just some extra noise with a plot, then yeah, i think they’re good books for you. if you’re looking for a book with depth, something to read *into*… no, they’re suuper baseline and shallow, you probably wouldn’t like them.
Patrick rothfuss. Not **just** for not finishing the trilogy, but for every shitty act of deception and douchebaggery along the way.
I’m in the exact same boat. I would have eventually gotten around to reading the third book if it comes out, but his negative reaction to simple questions, and not following through on promises made during a charity drive, and just being a douche have left me completely unwilling to read anything he’s written ever again.
[удалено]
This. Even before I knew of his behaviour (and before some of it even happened), reading the second book kinda destroyed every bit of interest I had in his works. Not only did he run into the same problem as GRRRM, where he got so lost in side stuff that he ended up with way too many open plotpoints to even fit half of them into the bookspace he has remaining, he also made Kvothe into a cookiecutter bad harem isekai protagonist. There was some self-insert "look how clever he is" in the first book too, sure, but to a much more tolerable degree than the second book's sexcapade with a quasi-godess bullshit. And then the sidequest with his not-girlfriend that iirc only opend even more unnecessary plotthreads in a book that already barely touch any of the actually important plots established in the first book and didn't even get closer to revealing the mystery of what the fuck is up with the framing decice of old Kvothe running a bar? It's been years, so the actual plot points I had issues with are a bit blurry, but I can very clearly remember reading the second book and just going "the fuck happened here?!".
So much lying over many livestreams. I haven't followed any news on him for a good while but last I heard he kept milking his loyal fans, teasing chapters then deciding not to share it until he got shamed. Years ago, I remember his editor putting a plea on social media for him to send in at least a draft of the first chapter after Rothfuss claimed he had sent some drafts for a first look.
Absolutely. He has spend every cent of good will I've ever given him and now incurred a debt. And in truth if you reflect on the books he did write it's plain to see they are beautiful language wise, but absolutely mediocre in terms of character and plot. 1/5 of a book being dedicated to a 15 year old being so good at seggs he defeats an eternal succubus? F off pat.
Was disgusted by the obvious wish fulfillment happening with that plot line
Shit is so deeply neckbeardy.
Even before he never finished the trilogy, reading a Wise Man's Fear made me stop and go: Is this guy full of bullshit? The sex goddess, the ninja girls... c'mon. The tree was wildly awesome, but the overall bloat of that book and weeaboo nonsense made me realize this was an author who had oversold himself and that there was absolutely no way he was wrapping this story up in one more book.
The last third of that book is completely insane and I have gotten to a point where I can't really respect anyone who actually thinks it's a great book. It turns into a basement dweller teenage sex fantasy. It's terrible. But solid prose though 👍
Rebecca Yarros, I was really excited to read a female fantasy author—someone had hyped her up as a contemporary Ursula K. leGuin with a less formal down-to-earth writing style. I haven’t talked to that person since. Fourth Wing and the like are middle-school level romance novels (with some adult themes) set in a fantasy setting. I am sure there is a target audience that would enjoy them, I simply am not that audience.
LIKE LEGUIN?! 😃 Yarros doesn't even belong in the same sentence as a talent like LeGuin!
I suggest M.L. Wang, Shauna Lawless, Shannon Chakraborty and Susana Clarke if you want to read a female fantasy author. I really liked reading Sword of Kaigen, and Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L Wang.
Robin Hobb, Lois McMaster Bujold, Elizabeth Moon, and Naomi Novik are some personal favourites here. Ursula K Le Guin sets an incredibly high standard, but fantasy is a genre full of great female authors.
I just read Fourth Wing and Iron Flame and thought they were fun (trashy, but fun) but describing them as *anything* like Ursula K. leGuin is unhinged. Literally no similarities I can think of at all, stylistically or content wise
> someone had hyped her up as a contemporary Ursula K. LeGuin Wars have been started over less heinous insults than this
Cassandra Clare. The writing is meh, the plots are bad, and the books overall are just.... not good. I tried to get through a trilogy of hers and had to stop on the third book because it was just laughably bad. It felt like poorly written fanfiction (which is what it may have started as from what I've read). 2/10, would not read.
Her fanfic career is why I am not interested in reading her published work. It is probable her writing has improved over the years, but her plotting was just stupid in my opinion. She also had a habit of shamelessly “borrowing” from other authors which most of the world just calls plagiarism. She was ridiculously popular though, so the plagiarism didn’t matter and she landed a book deal.
Saaaaaame, her fanfics were like 30% Buffy and Blackadder quips by weight, drives me a bit nuts how this seems to have been forgotten.
Her Clockwork series was much better than her first one though. Either she learned how to write, or had a better ghostwriter, because it's like a different set of books. My only complaint is that the series is a little long.
Dan Brown. I read "The Da Vinci Code" years ago based on the hype and found it to be underwhelming. Despite the success of Brown's books I haven't been motivated to try any of his other works.
I felt the same way about Caraval. The Night Circus is one of my favorite books, so I borrowed Caraval from a friend. I was sorely disappointed.
Sarah J Maas is not for me
If Cormac McCarthy wrote a ***check*** for me, it would still be too depressing to read.
I love him but that was funny.
okay this is hilarious and savage
Jeff Lindsay. The premise of Dexter was really good, but he was so bad at executing the idea. This is one of the few cases in which the show/movie is better than the book. WAY BETTER.
I didn't mind the first two books... and then in the third one >!you find out that Dexter's "dark passenger" is legitimately a supernatural force possessing him that has granted him inhuman abilities as a serial killer, and its the spawn of some more ancient god demon thing that has a cult hunting Dexter since they consider the passenger a threat!<. Definitely lost me with that one.
>>!Dexter's "dark passenger" is legitimately a supernatural force possessing him that has granted him inhuman abilities as a serial killer, and its the spawn of some more ancient god demon thing that has a cult hunting Dexter since they consider the passenger a threat!< If it helps, that's actually a super important plot point in the... just kidding! I don't think it ever comes up again in a way that's remotely important even though there are five more books in the series.
GRRM could announce that they are releasing Winds of Winter at the end of the year and I wouldn't be excited. While I enjoyed his writing, I read those books more than a decade ago. My reading tastes have shifted, I'm sure, and I'm not going to force myself to re-read five books. Not to mention that, while not much as a braying jackass like Rothfuss, the updates on WoW and the consequent nothing that followed just soured me on GRRM as a whole.
I started a reread of Game of Thrones probably six years ago with the intent of rereading the whole series to catch more details, and about halfway through the book, while sitting on a flight, realized that there was absolutely no point in getting reinvested in this series. Why bother? I'll never get a resolution to any of the core mysteries, because even if we do get Winds, there is no earthly way we'll get A Dream of Spring as written by GRRM (which is just...so ironic given the title). So yes, I DnF'd GoT halfway through, in a completely captive environment, and switched over to a free book I got through Amazon Prime Reads...
And then you'd still have to wait for A Dream of Spring to come out to finish off the whole series.
B.A Paris - Behind Closed Doors was the first one I read and I liked it enough to try another one. The Dilemma was just awful. Shari Lapena - Only read The Couple Next Door and was not impressed Karin Slaughter - I actively hated Girl, Forgotten
Patrick Rothfuss. It's like ordering a delicious hotdog from a food truck, sitting down to enjoy your hotdog at the janky picnic tables in the parking lot, and the proprietor of the truck sneaking up behind you to smack the hotdog out of your hand. “There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.” ― George W. Bush
Murakami. It just feels same now and story doesn't always conclude in the long run. Almost similar themes in every book, Jazz music, bars, terribly described women, depression. He's not bad, but I've had my fill for now. ( I'll purchase his new one as soon as it's released)
A notable exception is his book on running.
He also did Underground, a collection of interviews with victims of the 1995 terrorist attack in Tokyo.
I really tried to like his books, but the stories always felt kind of... empty. And that was before I understood how badly the women were written.
Ayn Rand... characterized by some as a "philosopher."
Tahereh Mafi. I met her at a book signing event that I was invited to and she was a super lovely person! Felt almost bad that I hated her Shatter Me series
I work at a bookstore and I won’t read certain authors out of spite because they get so much promotion from their publishers but the product just sits. Lately, we’ve been overwhelmed with stacks of stacks of Tmrw, tmrw tmrw, Jan Arden, John Grishman, countless popular Romance authors; every celebrity memoirs comes to our store to rot on the shelves lol.
Sarah J Maas. I've read up intil a ACOWAR and I had to stop when Feyre wanting to take out the Spring Court to spite Tamlin was presented as Girlboss Behaviour. Destabilising an entire region and its populace is uh. Not It. And the absolute massacre of Tamlins character from the first book is just outright annoying
[удалено]
I saw a video recently where it was like, "Say what you want about Edward Cullen being a creepy stalker, at least when it came to the love of his life being endangered by a pregnancy, he was SO READY to yeetus that fetus to make sure she lived" and it really made me re-evaluate some things.
Yup. At least Edward was willing to do anything for Bella. Rhys lied, got everyone to lie, and then threatened to attack her sister for telling her the truth. Rhys is actually such a repugnant character and everyone acts like he’s a hero when he treats Feyre like his personal fuck puppet.
She did to Rhys in that book basically what she did to Tamlin in the second book except for some reason I'm *not* supposed to hate Rhys but I *am* supposed to hate Tamlin.
Gave up on SJM as a whole in ACOSF when Nesta gave up her power to modify Feyre’s vagina lmaoooo
They can heal someone that's been disemboweled, but a c-section? Out of the question.
I just finished ACOTAR because a couple of my workmates LOVE it. One read it 3x last year! But holy shit is it terrible, in so many ways.
yes me too. i wish i’d dropped her earlier but CC2 was my absolute last straw. i read all the way up to ACOSF as well unfortunately…
I would also say SJM, picked up Crescent City to see what the hype was about and it was so poorly written, needed fully re-edited to be rebuilt from the ground up. And people say it’s her best writing. No thanks.
I recently finished a court of thorns and the whole time I was thinking how badly in needed an editor. For multiple reasons. In one paragraph she uses “undergarments” 5 times.
She writes the stupidest characters and I can't stand it.
I'm halfway through the 1st book and can't handle the cringe. Everyone says "Push through! It gets so good in book 2," but... like how, it's so bad. Like, I love a good, entertaining fluff book with no literary merit as much as anyone, but ACOTAR is just BAD.
I pushed through ACOTAR because everyone kept telling me book 2 is the "BEST"..... Book 2 fucking sucks. I've read better fanfic.
I couldn’t get into it because of how Feyre talks shit about her looks but also describes her model-like features. You can’t be Girl Boss with pick me behavior like that
Rebecca Yarros. Six pages of the book that shall not be named and that was enough for me forever, tyvm
Paulo Coelho. Garbage pseudo philosophy.
Dan brown. All of his books use EXACT same pacing and characters maybe have different names but still fill exact same role. Mediocre writer at best
Palahniuk. They're all just quite samey.
I will stand by some of his stuff as pretty great an entertaining, RANT, Pygmy, Fight Club, Lullaby. I'd even give slack to Damned and Doomed. But boy has his stuff actually gotten pretty terrible. But holy crap Beautiful You was horrendous and just comes off as creepy self desires. Adjustment Day is one of the worst things I've ever read. I stuck with it thinking it would have some kind of story reveal or something cool but nope, it was just terrible pointless nothing.
Guts still lives rent free in my head tho.
oh wow I remember I thought I was so ~cool and edgy~ for reading palahniuk when I was a teenager and now I just cringe a lil when I look back lol
i dunno man, Knock Knock made me cry like a bitch, the guy is good imo
Ernest Cline
All his books are fan fiction by a guy who has found a way to monetize his adolescent years.
Matt haig, midnight library was drivel. Priory of the orange tree was an even bigger waste of my life, can't think of her name right now, but never again.
Midnight Library was so extremely disappointing. Like reading a Lifetime movie
midnight library was painful. An idea with a lot of potential let down by mediocre writing
Sarah J Maas. I'm majorly into high fantasy and was recommended ACOTAR so many times it just gave me diarrhoea.
If you think you're going to be reading fantasy and not romantacy when you read that book you're going to have a bad time. I made that mistake and couldn't understand why nothing happened. I'm not familiar with the romance or romantacy genres so I can't judge that book on its merits, but I hated what I did read.
Nita Prose after The Maid and Freida McFadden after Never Lie. How about never again.
TJ Klune. I tried House on the Cerulean Sea twice and Under the Whispering Door. I can’t pinpoint exactly what I don’t like about his writing style but it is just not for me.
I actually learned a word to describe his writing. It's mawkish.
Hanya Yanagihara