Bookseller Chick made me snort-laugh with this entry about authors you know you should give up, but just can’t.
I have two:
- Stephen King – he started to suck the almighty hairy nut starting around Gerald’s Game, but I can’t stop buying his books. I don’t even read them. I just have them. Sometimes, I cave in and attempt to read one, like that time I tried to read Black House because I love The Talisman so damn much, but when I found out King and Straub had perverted it into yet another goddamn motherfucking Gunslinger-related book, the book dropped from my nerveless fingers and I had to break into my emergency stash of scientific non-fiction just to calm my nerves.
The books, they taunt me. I can hear them. And sometimes, I cry in the cold, unforgiving dark for the love that used to be.
- Robert Jordan – The less said about that habit, the better. No, really. I’ve stopped reading, but my heart stops and I pause dead in the bookstore every time I see a hardcover book with his name embossed on the dustjacket, and I pick it up, hope singing in my heart, and the refrain, it hums is this it, is this it, is this FINALLY it, will you finally find peace? only to find that no, the saga isn’t even close to coming to an end yet.
Deep in my heart, I know this to be true: they hurt me only because they love me. I can leave them any time. No, I swear it.
I can’t believe no one has metioned Her yet.
I so outtie on Her. How can that much sex be that boring? When it’s bland-goth-wanabe-pseudo-porn. I mean, I’d still be reading if only it was GOOD pseudo-porn, but when I’m flipping past 2/3 of the damn book cause I just don’t care how big Schlongo’s magic dick is or how much Anita/Merry likes to take it up the ass I start to feel cheated . . .
I’m also WAY over Amanda Quick, which really bums me out, cause I loved her books (and I still like her writing). I just can’t take the Varna crap ever again. Bad pseudo-history just chaps my (and not in a good way). If I want to read fantasy, I’ll buy a fucking fantasy book, ‘kay?
I’ve also fallen off the C.J. Cherryah wagon (heresy, I know!). I just don’t care what happens to Bren (though I’m still hooked on Banachi . . . maybe if she wrote a whole book about him?).
Amen on Patricia Cornwell. She needs to quit her pet projects (Jack the Ripper, the Hunley) and concentrate of writing a decent Scarpetta novel. I’ve finally broken myself of the habit of buying her books and wait for a library copy now. Every time I think about what she’s done to the Marino character I see red.
That said, I liked the last 100 pages of Predator a lot. Before that – uhhh, not so much LOL
Oh, I forgot Christine Feehan. And Patricia Cornwell. *sigh* This is making me sad.
But you know who still makes me happy? Charlaine Harris! Okay, I feel better. Then again, my favorite show Deadwood is ending soon. *sigh* Why do only the good die young?
Has anyone read the definition of “Jumping the Shark” at wikipedia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
I could never quite get the meaning until I read the origin. The accompanying explanation of “Growing the Beard” is even funnier.
Exactly! How can that much kinky sex with powerful/strange/midnight-blue/tentacled/silver-haired/blood-thirsty/lycanthroped/dead men be boring? I mean tentacles, people! Jesus, you got to work hard to make that a yawner. Good God, I wanted a piece of that pitch-black half-stallion muthafucka. *sigh* *weep*
I’ve yet to read Anita Blake, and I’m way behind on Amanda Quick, and I’m only up to number 8 of Evanovich, so I’m still living in fairy tale world, I guess. I’ve read maybe 4 Feehan books and loved them all – but may be prejudiced bcause she sat next to me at an RT booksigning – my first! – and I thought she was an amazing human being who was kindness and light and joy and I would read her grocery list. I confess, however, to resisting recent Laurens books.
Re: series books with one character…
You can always pray their house will chop the head right off the character by showing the author the door. Lotsa series Bombshell Babes runnin’ around headless right now. Although I don’t think any of them were around long enough to get annoying. I hope not anyway.
Stef, dressed in black, mourning Pink, eyeing vodka while questioning decision to give up alcohol…..
Sara, that is beautiful. If I swear to make it my mantra I may just recover from this abusive relationship she and I have! I’m glad I found the support I need here. Terry Pratchet lost me for awhile, but I feel like he finally got back on track…for now.
(Okay, to be truthful she hasn’t done the tentacled guy yet, which is why I’m still hooked on Merry Gentry! HA!)
Beware then, it seems very likely that she’ll get to him in Merry 5. But maybe not? No, it’s the addiction speaking, it’s not me!
The Stand is far and away my favorite King book. Lisey’s Stort (I did a review at the request of Amazon—and that is Hard Work)and it jumped straight to second place.
Just saying.
Now you guys will probably hate it, and blame me.
Uneasy lays the head of a book pimp.
I’m still enjoying Cherryah’s series enough to be curious as to how it all comes out (I love the alien cultural background tapestry she’s created), but I have to admit that my addiction to Stephanie Plum’s repeating nightmare of a life is almost to the point of eating that last slice of pizza, even though you’re sick stuffed and you don’t like black olive/pepper anyway, just because, like, it’s there sitting out on the counter. that and the teasingly danced-around potential for hot Ranger sex.
I gave up on Kathleen Woodiwiss, even though I love A Rose in Winter.
I too gave up on Anne Rice, but her Cry to Heaven is one of my favorites.
Robert Jordan is on my TBR pile but I don’t want to start them till I know the series is finished.
I tried to read a LKH story in a J.D. Robb anthology (go Nora!), but just couldn’t get into it-now I am glad after reading all the comments about her books.
Now to pimp a great fantasy author check out Lynn Flewelling- her Nightrunner series stars a bisexual hero, and her Tamir trilogy deals with some serious gender issues. Great reads.
J. Deveraux went the way of the Dodo, for me, with the Forever books.
C. Feehan went way back when.
I’m done with Brockmann, C. Coulter, S. Drake, J. Garwood, (with a caevet, because if the news about the newest historical is true…) K. Hooper, I. Johansen, S. Johnson, S. Kenyon, and J. Quinn.
The biggest surprise to me is I’m waffling over Linda Howard’s books. Didn’t ever think I’d want to give up on reading those.
I know there are more, but I’d be here forever.
As for LKH…No rocks, if you please. I’ll hang my head in shame, and, sure, I’m enabling her to continue to write books, but…Yes, I bought DM. Yes, I bought Micah. Yes, I will buy Mistral’s Kiss. I Can’t. Help. It. It’s a habit. I’ve got to find out what happens. *sob* *wail* *moan* *whimper* *etc.* I’m just not ready to give up yet. Sick, I know. But truth.
Great topic, ladies.
I think that whenever people who have read Robert Jordan meet each other they need to rant. The frustration is unbelievable. Add him to the growing pile of fantasy authors that started out good and then realized they could make more money off the epic franchise. Goodkind has too much goddamn rape. Brooks went down the tube after the Children of Shannara series. Feist killed it for me after the first few books of the Serpent War Saga. Rice jumped the shark with all the spinoff vampire books.
I can’t believe Stephen R. Donaldson has revived the Thomas Covenant series.
I suppose I’ve never really been that much of a groupie. Once an author starts to suck I drop him/her immediately. Nora Roberts under her Robb psuedonym is perhaps the only exception. I still enjoy her In Death series but they’re not quite good enough for hardcover. However I can’t resisit the urge to buy it immediately so I usually buy it, read it, then return it. 🙂 If I really enjoyed it I can then patiently wait for the paperback.
I’ve been reading LKH since Blue Moon came out and I glommed the backlist. These days I don’t buy hardcovers anymore, so I only borrowed Danse Macabre. But it was my last LKH. Anita pretty much spends the whole book on her back. The books have turned into Anita getting pimped out to all the supernaturals that come through St. Louis. Can’t she take care of the ardeur with a vibrator and get back to interesting things?
Sooo, for an LKH Anita Blake virgin, what’s the recommend? Should I go get the first book, or spare myself the frustration I’m reading here? She clearly got something right, at least in the beginning – her fans are legion.
I always feel so clueless.
(if anyone snarks on that, I’ll killya, see?)
Oh, you think we don’t want to get you hooked on the junk too, Stef? Come on. There’s good people here. Join us. Look. . . everyone’s doing it.
You should definitely start with the first Anita Blake book. The first few were GREAT. Hell, I loved the first half-dozen. You’ll do fine, because you are fully informed of what’s ahead. No wide-eyed innocence for you, my girl! There’s bears in them thar woods. And giant crowing cocks too.
Not having read LKH, I wouldn’t recommend anyone else start. I mean, say the first few books are awesome, you fall in love with the character and then she crashes and burns. I’d be pissed.
As a sidenote, I think I’ve got my blog just about ready for public habitation and I’m looking to increase my blogrolling blingage. If anyone wants to exchange links, feel free to get in touch with me.
It’s probably bad karma for me to say this, but Stephen King hasn’t been Stephen King since he got sober. As a person, I’m happy for him, but as a fangirl…well, I still have to be happy for him, but the books really started sucking.
Ditto many of the authors you’ve mentioned above, and after the ultimate bad experience—
Dara Joy gets added to my “dropped author” list.
I’m sheepishly admitting that I bought That Familiar Touch with hopes of catching a glimpse of the Dara I knew and loved,
but I’m downright ashamed to admit that after reading that trainwreck I somehow found myself clicking the keys to order Wildcat Arrows. And the computer must’ve been laughing at me because for once it didn’t crash during a purchase.
What an utter waste of my money & a smidgen of my time (I flipped through a few random pages and decided that wasting money was bad enough without turning it into wasting time AND money). My sympathies go out to those who ordered, paid and never received their books.
It’s bad enough when an author betrays you with poor writing, it’s quite another when you have to beg and beg and you may or may not see the book you paid for.
Oh yes, the first six were incredible, back when Anita was a kick-ass heroine who had her own life, made her own decisions, and bore some semblance to a realistic heroine. Now she’s a big ol’ walking orifice. I gave up on LKH too…
It’s always saddest to watch the good ones crash and burn.
I still buy Amanda Quick, but wait till paperback, but I’ve dropped Suzanne Brockmann, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Stephanie Laurens.
Oh Robert Jordan, but I only made it to book 6.
I’ve given up on John Irving. I worshipped A Prayer for Owen Meaney and The World According to Garp, but the Fourth Hand was terrible, and I haven’t been tempted since…
This comment made me snort herbal tea out my nose…quite painful. I don’t recommend it. But I remember thinking exactly the same thing about Scott Weiland and the Stone Temple Pilots. Gee, I’m happy you’re off the smack, but your songs really suck, now!
You also listed some writers I stopped buying a long time ago.
So here’s my question to EVERYONE—
What makes you give up?
I give up when the author starts phoning it in, watering it down, or regurgitating semi-liquid servings of the same old mush for brand new high prices.
I give up when authors start thinking of themselves as artistes, and of their editors as enemies. I give up when writers believe their own hype – or, worse yet, the ass-licking sycophancies of their most rabid fans.
Conversely, I also give up when authors lose their joy in writing, but type on anyway, hungry for a royalty check and frightened of their deadline.
To be blunt, I give up when the author gives up. Why stay on the line when there’s no one at the other end of it?
Lynn Kurland. I loved her books so much, but she’s written so many in the same pair of families now that each new one lately seems like a by-the-numbers parody of her own style. She’s also developed so much history that she can’t keep her continuity straight between books, which is not helpful when she constantly references time travel and ghosts.
I give up…
when I find myself skipping ahead in a book by an author whose every word I used to devour.
when I keep reading the author’s catch phrases over & over again. “Been there, done thatâ€. Right now I seem to be encountering the word “hissed†a lot in what I’m reading. I still haven’t met any “part snake†people IRL who hiss while doing it.
when the author’s “world†becomes a burden to keep up with. I don’t want to have to go back & re-read every other book the author published just so I can get the “inside jokes†and references to the past.
on authors who take too long between books. I really dislike having to wait over a year to read part 2 of a trilogy knowing that part 3 isn’t coming out for another year AFTER that. (If I really want to read it, I’ll jot a note and once all three parts are out I’ll take another look & see if I’m still interested).
on author’s who started out in one genre and are now writing in an area that doesn’t interest me.
Um, yeah, so Monday? I got a package from Amazon.com. In it were both Brockmann and Kenyon’s newest hardbacks. So far I’ve read Into the Storm and I have to say, I did like it. It’s not what she used to write and it won’t make my all time favorites but it was good in a different way. Though IMHO Jules’s only appearance being in that shit-ass excuse for a short story at the end was a goddamned cop-out. I’m currently praying she hasn’t bowed under the anti-gay pressure.
As for what makes me give up on authors, I’d have to say boredom. I can normally hang through a shift in genre or even having the characters change behaviour but if I ever get bored I’m done.
Nicci French has made it onto my clean-break list after the most recent release. Well, perhaps not a clean break. But I refuse to spend any more money on buying the books. “Catch me…” was just… ugh. And I can smell almost all plot twists from miles away.
Maeve Binchy is walking a very fine line. But not fine enough to stop me from buying her most recent release. Perhaps she will redeem herself. She will, won’t she? I mean, this HAS to be true love.
For some reason I got hooked on Iris Johansen even though her writing style is like a series of dot points. No more.
Amanda Quick no more either, even though I find my hand reaching out for her latest then pulling back.
And I am reading a Stephanie Laurens now. What can I say? I like them. But I’ve always found Kay Scarpetta irritating.
And the lastest series from Robyn Hobb? Unreadable.
I’ve given up on LKH…I’m still wavering on Cornwell but haven’t read Predator yet…and I don’t think I will ever forgive Elizabeth George for the ending of With No One As Witness. The very idea of making readers wait five years for the birth of a particular baby only to have…that…happen…urgh!
LKH, I can only echo what everyone else has said. Some people believe their hype a little too much. Some people think we want to read the dullest sex scenes with the most same-y, insipid dialogue ever. Some people base their characters on their husbands and so make them idealized, irritating yes-men. And then, some people implement the craziest rules ever on their message boards—you’re forbidden to say “Mary Sue” in any context, or to say you hate a certain character, or whatever. Arrogance like that doesn’t deserve my continued loyalty.
Cornwell…ugh. They used to be so good! So exciting and involving, and I even believed the crazy conspiracies and stuff because she made me believe it. Then she wrote that completely unconvincing Ripper book, and changed POVs, and everything just fell apart. And Lucy is one of the most irritating characters ever.
Funny how, in my opinion, JK Rowling seems to get better from book to book and now uses ideas I’ve rarely encountered to ideas I’d read dozens of times before.
Why does Janet Daily keep writing? Why does Janet Daily keep getting published? Why have I ignored her since the early eighties?
One of my favorite writers is Robin McKinley but she wrote Sunshine three years ago and it begs, begs, begs for a sequel! Are you reading, Robin! cause I want another book.
Like Stephen Kings short stories. Books not very good. He grew up reading Lovecraft. Explains a lot.
I read and was fascinated by Patricia Cornwell’s Jack the ripper book, because like Jack stories, but I’ve never read anything else she’s written and don’t plan to.
I “discovered” Amanda Quick just like Columbus “discovered” America, thousands of years after everyone else did. As I read her books I was delighted by her characters, at first, especially one where the woman thinks the man is drop dead beautiful and is jealous of every woman around him, but the plot points and quirks she hits over and over began to grow too frequent. She had a passion for certain words that were inconsequential but became glaring the more I read her books, so I quit reading them and feel better for it.
I got tired of the word “lush” a long time ago. It seems to pop up in every romance novel. I will call it the “lush law”, passed by the publishing industry after an exhaustive double blind study to determine what word can be used to describe the entire anatomy of a woman and all her non physical attributes as well. Please stop with the lush! unless you are describing a drunk because every time I come across it I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face, again. I can get pretty bruised up by some writers.
What makes me stop reading a writer’s work? Complicated, cloying dynasties, complete with children who belong on the Disney Channel. I like picking up a book without a legacy. A trilogy is fine but when it gets beyond two digits…stop, drop, and roll even though the fire went out about seven books ago. I know people fall in love with an idea or a family but sometimes you’ve got to move on or you run the risk of getting maudlin, boring, and lazy.
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I’ve read and own every single LKH book (tho only paperback in the Anita series – Merry is still good enough for HC).
If Feehan would ever come up with a new story, I’d read her again.
Piers Anthony has gotten absolutely silly!
I’m wary of Charlaine Harris at the moment as well – all her characters have run together in my head and I have a hard time keeping them straight when I’m reading.
Orson Scott Card has gone the way of the dodo (looney toons, I mean)-NO MORE ENDER’s BOOKS PLEASE!!!!!!
John Saul used to be really good then he became a Scientologist, and well… what more can I say.
Jayne Anne Krentz/Amanda Quick/Jayne Castle, and what ever else she calls herself, I can’t even look at her books any more.
Elizabeth Peters… love the characters but what something besides egyptology (I know she’s getting old, but I really want another Barbara Michaels).
And last on my current list, Michael Crichton. I think he’s finally loosin it.
I find it hard to make a clean break with once favourite authors. I went cold turkey on Janet Evanovich – I was so addicted I was buying US hardcover editions but increasingly I just got frustrated waiting for Stephanie to make up her mind. Hadn’t read the last few until I was stuck at Atlanta airport and the latest one called to me. In my case absence has made the heart grow fonder…And now of course I’m going to have to go back and read the few I missed…
I have a love-hate thing going on with Patricia Cornwell – love the early books, think things went wrong when she ‘killed’ off a major character and then spent the next few books trying to bring that character back. And with every book I retain that glimmer of hope that she’ll recapture the glory of the early years…
Oh, James Patterson is another on my list. I used to love the Alex Cross books and would buy one every holiday – this year I ended up donating my copy to the hotel library. (And usually I find it very hard to let books go…)
Love Bytes at Piatkus
I’ve been on the SK Sucks bandwagon since whatever book came after Pet Sematary—his last great read, as far as I’m concerned. All the subsequent ridiculous monsters, precocious kids, bloodied neighbors yadayadayada caused me major hair loss by my own hands. Anne Rice, who had potential for true greatness, should have quit or gone on to a variety of offerings after Interview and Cry to Heaven, both genuine masterpieces.
BLAME THE PUBLISHERS. BLAME THE EDITORS. They’re the ones who keep the same old same-old assembly line running. They’re the ones who, once an author becomes a cash cow, refuse to say, “Listen up, Steve. You’re beginning to plagiarize from yourself. That means you’re pushing my yawn button. Plus, this fucker is so rambling and discursive it makes Gulliver look provincial. Shave off two-thirds of that rancid fat, and we might just have us a digestible hunk of meat here.”
Read Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House if you want a good case of the creeps. And when it comes to romance? Hell, I’d rather revisit The Great Gatsby over and over again than take a chance on more recent stuff. Oh, and The Madness of a Seduced Woman by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, which came out in the early 1980s. Not THAT is a true modern classic. There are many used copies to be had; read one!
I don’t think I will ever forgive Elizabeth George for the ending of With No One As Witness. The very idea of making readers wait five years for the birth of a particular baby only to have…that…happen…urgh!
I so agree with you on this! My mother told me after she’d read it that she wouldn’t have if she had known what was going to happen at the end. I immediately knew what that meant and the book still sits, unread, on my shelf. I refuse to read it and won’t.
On another topic, I have liked every book of Tony Hillerman’s I ever read until this last one (Skeleton Man). Very disappointing. I haven’t given up on him yet, but he’ll have to win me back with his next one.
I finally am cured of the LKH thing. I used to have it with Christing Feehan, too, but that one is cured as well. I haven’t even looked at either one of them in two years.
But I keep buying Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books even though I could basically tell you what happens before reading (the wackiness changes but everything else is always the same).
I keep reading Sandra Brown even though I always end up throwing the book at the wall. And Linda Howard. And I haven’t enjoyed a Heather Graham book since before Dead on the Dance Floor but I keep reading those too.
With regard to Dan Brown: Did anyone else think Angels and Demons was, like, 100 times better than DaVinci Code? I read A&D first (in preparation for a trip to Rome) and thought it strained credibility but had such a wonderful sense of place. DVC was such a letdown after that!
Wry Hag I was JUST wondering why writers let themselves go the way those mentioned have.
I suppose editors/publishers are the problem, but I’m not sure Laurell K. Hamilton can make that excuse. A recent offering of hers, not Danse Macabre or poor, poor GINORMOUS penis Micah (I didn’t read it, heard about it from some majorly disgruntled folks. I gave up on LKH after Obsidian Butterfly), but an Anita novel before them had so many errors—I’m talking misspellings/typos/grammatical issues due to laziness—that I kept thinking to myself, “okay wait, at the very least most books get line edits, don’t they? What the hell kind of kerfuffle went on here that they/she couldn’t take the time to run a spell?”
I know editors can be relentless, i.e. a certain formula makes money so they want the author to stick with it, but isn’t there something an author can do, some bit of magic or a quick commune with the devil, to make the dreck they’re forced to write be less dreck like?
I mean, most of the books mentioned here are part of a series which once was good.
I guess I’m wondering why an author would just give up. Baring time constraints, rabid editors, and chronic poverty, why do some writers just let themselves go?
Oh and I may need an intervention for John Irving. The last two I read were the Hotel New Hampshire and the Fourth Hand, and I HATED them. Now I’m coveting Until I Find You…please please let it be good!
I generally give up when I can skim the back of the book and tell you everything that happens. Or when the writing degenerates to the point of being ridiculous. When the author gets too repetitive like LKH or Sandra Brown. Essentially, when it gets boring.
John Irving is different- I hated Hotel New Hampshire for some basically ridiculous squickiness. The Fourth Hand was just depressing and there seemed to be no point (and yet it dragged on and on…)
I see it the other way; the paperbacks are, IMO, just better books—edgier (and I’m not talking about Eve getting a little softer, either), fresher, cleaner in terms of the writing and the editing. The hardcovers are a scandal in the copyediting area, too, IMO.
Otherwise, I guess I don’t read enough books of enough authors to really get to the point where I’ll suffer bad books. I actually still do enjoy the Evanovich series, but I only started it last year, so maybe no time yet for burnout. Oh, and I’m fascinated by the fact that I think Evanovich has written herself into a corner where Joe and Ranger are concerned; it’s become a perverse pleasure to watch her try to work her way out of the dilemma without pissing off a whole bunch of readers (and FWIW, I think she’s on Joe’s side, but no one will heed the warnings about Ranger; she may need to actually get Stephanie involved with him to show how much more controlling he would be than Joe).
I can’t imagine giving up on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse series, but you never know. I prefer to remember a series and an author fondly than have a bad taste in my mouth after too many spoiled experiences.
The most interesting answer to this question on Bookseller Chick’s blog, though, was, IMO, Nathaniel Hawthorne.