Giving up on authors

[John Lee Pettimore III]

We've all done it, hit that point where we just say enough's enough and give up on a favorite author. Sometimes it's just age, sometimes our views change, sometimes the author begins to suck, or sometimes it takes us a while to realize the author has always sucked. I can think of three for me.

Tom Clancy - read them all until the one after Executive Order. I'm not exactly liberal, but I just got sick of the right-wing slant.

Dean R. Koontz - when you've read eight books where a lonely man with a troubled past, a retarded male relative, and a golden retriever meets an equally lonely woman with a troubled past and they face a faceless evil threat, you've read them all. I still like Lightning and the one that was made into a crappy movie with Ben Affleck, but I gave up a long, long time ago.

Lee Child (the Jack Reacher series) - they're a good sort of popcorn read. But Make Me, the latest one was so incredibly unrealistic but I still trudged through it. (Just as an example, a couple goes to a strange town but need guns and money. So they hail a cab and within two hours manage to find the ghetto, find a main drug dealer, rob him and get hundreds of thousands of dollars and some weapons) Then I tried an older one Bad Trouble and Luck, which somehow managed to be dumber than the title.

Any examples from your own experience? Or should I give Koontz another shot?

 

[Grand Potentate]

Any examples from your own experience? Or should I give Koontz another shot?

I was never a fan of his so I say move on.

Since I read a lot of fantasy/sci-fi its not so much giving up on authors but giving up on series or trilogies, etc.. I recently read The Magicians and gave up half way through the second book because it was just so tedious.

You know my tortured history with Dan Simmons, so I suppose that's another in the 'give up' column.

 

[John Lee Pettimore III]

I was never a fan of his so I say move on.

Since I read a lot of fantasy/sci-fi its not so much giving up on authors but giving up on series or trilogies, etc.. I recently read The Magicians and gave up half way through the second book because it was just so tedious.

You know my tortured history with Dan Simmons, so I suppose that's another in the 'give up' column.

Have you read Peter Watts yet? You really need to. The Firefall series (Blindsight and Echopraxia) is fucking excellent. Very bleak but really good.

 

[Grand Potentate]

Have you read Peter Watts yet? You really need to. The Firefall series (Blindsight and Echopraxia) is fucking excellent. Very bleak but really good.

No never heard of him. Are we talking Cormac McCarthy bleak? Speaking of, that's another guy who I gave up on.

 

[Fwiffo]

The good thing about giving up on Tom Clancy is he's dead so you're not going to miss much. I stopped after Debt of Honor. At that point some of the Tom Clancy video games came out and it seemed he was more interested in growing a media empire with his namesake than writing semi-plausible near future fiction. (Yes I'm fully aware he later disavowed the games, but I'm sure he was compensated for it).

I gave up on Jim Collins. I first read him in Good to Great - that was poignant after Sept 11 and the dot com crash. Around that time, I went back and read Built to Last. I haven't read any of his books since. If you compare his first publication to his latest one, his picks of successful firms is like throwing darts in the stock market. Some of the highly successful firms he cited turned into absolute shambles by his next book.

 

[doghouse]

We've all done it, hit that point where we just say enough's enough and give up on a favorite author. Sometimes it's just age, sometimes our views change, sometimes the author begins to suck, or sometimes it takes us a while to realize the author has always sucked. I can think of three for me.

Tom Clancy - read them all until the one after Executive Order. I'm not exactly liberal, but I just got sick of the right-wing slant.

Dean R. Koontz - when you've read eight books where a lonely man with a troubled past, a retarded male relative, and a golden retriever meets an equally lonely woman with a troubled past and they face a faceless evil threat, you've read them all. I still like Lightning and the one that was made into a crappy movie with Ben Affleck, but I gave up a long, long time ago.

Lee Child (the Jack Reacher series) - they're a good sort of popcorn read. But Make Me, the latest one was so incredibly unrealistic but I still trudged through it. (Just as an example, a couple goes to a strange town but need guns and money. So they hail a cab and within two hours manage to find the ghetto, find a main drug dealer, rob him and get hundreds of thousands of dollars and some weapons) Then I tried an older one Bad Trouble and Luck, which somehow managed to be dumber than the title.

Any examples from your own experience? Or should I give Koontz another shot?

I loved Clancy, but he became a certified right wing nutter. Ironically, his last book while still alive, co-wrote with Mark Greasy was probably his best in 20 years. The stuff with Grant Blackwood was just utter tripe.

I have everything first edition Clancy up to Threat Vector, but my favorites were in the Cardinal of the Kremlin era.


One guy who I loved and now despise is Bill Bryson. He basically plagiarized an entire novel and I think it's a joke. Can't look at him the same again.

 

[Journeyman]

One guy who I loved and now despise is Bill Bryson. He basically plagiarized an entire novel and I think it's a joke. Can't look at him the same again.

Really? I hadn't heard about that - what did Bryson plagiarise?

I really, really enjoyed Bill Bryson's earlier works - both the travel and linguistic works - but his later books haven't really interested me as much. I haven't looked at his last couple of books - another one about travelling around Britain and one about the year 1927 (why 1927, I wonder?).

Anyway, one author that I gave up on is Thomas Pynchon. I really enjoyed "The Crying of Lot 49" and "Vineland" but attempted "Gravity's Rainbow" about ten years back, got 100 or so pages into it, and just couldn't get any further. I tried reading it again another couple of times over the next few years but couldn't make any progress and so I gave up and haven't opened another Pynchon book since that time.

 

[Monkeyface]

Terry Goodkind. I liked the sword of truth series even though I got a bit repetitive, but the new novels set in the same world just aren't very good. It's follows the same trope of the hero losing his magical powers and trying to regain them over and over again.

 

[John Lee Pettimore III]

No never heard of him. Are we talking Cormac McCarthy bleak? Speaking of, that's another guy who I gave up on.

Not that bleak and bleak in a very different way. Just a very nihilistic view of humanity.

 

[COG]

I give up on columnists when they start being wrong. See George Will.

 

[doghouse]

one about the year 1927 (why 1927, I wonder?).

This is the one. There was literally the exact same book written by Charles Shindo in 2010, just four years earlier. It's a farce.

1927 was a huge year in America though, Lindebergh, Babe Ruth, Anarchists, all kinds of stuff.

 

[Kingstonian]

We've all done it, hit that point where we just say enough's enough and give up on a favorite author.

Lee Child (the Jack Reacher series) - they're a good sort of popcorn read.

'Reacher said nothing'.

On Reachers behalf, I would say that he is an interesting role model for people on internet clothing fora.

Just wear the clothes you stand up in. When they get a bit smelly buy a whole new set and throw the old ones in the trash can at the store where you buy them. Have one good pair of English shoes from Cheaney.

It will save you time and money in the long run.

Need a good suit? Just take one from a similar-sized villain.

It should be standard advice on Ask Andy:-

Q. I am travelling from Florida to North Dakota in January and I am not used to harsh winters. Any advice please ?

AAAC. When you get off the Greyhound bus just go a local mom and pop store and buy a set of clothes suitable for their weather. Throw your old stuff in the bin. I hope this helps.