Comments on: Authors I’ve given up on

By: Authors I’ve Given Up On « Rivers Are Damp

Authors I’ve Given Up On « Rivers Are Damp — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 05:36:19 +0000

[...] This is a meme, of course (from Crooked Timber and Prettier Than Napoleon). [...]

By: indiyoda

indiyoda — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 05:00:18 +0000

#19: No matter what you think about the benefit of fiction as a whole, saying that Tolstoy, James, and Flaubert can tell you everything about human nature that can be found in fiction implies pretty strongly that women have nothing (certainly nothing unique) to share about human nature. Are you sure you want to make that claim?

By: Ian

Ian — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 20:30:03 +0000

Anybody who mentions Rushdie and Pynchon in the same sentence needs to live on a way tighter budget.

I seem to be the last person to have done that. I DO need to live on a tighter budget, now that you mention it, but the connection with Rushdie and Pynchon escapes me. (God, I’ve done it again!)

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 10:49:06 +0000

Robert Stone’s “Bear and His Daughter” is unimpeachable – free-climbing, honed, brilliant.
Anybody who mentions Rushdie and Pynchon in the same sentence needs to live on a way tighter budget.

By: roy belmont

roy belmont — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 10:41:58 +0000

Le Carre’s “Absolute Friends” justifies his entire career.

By: not max power

not max power — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 00:25:14 +0000

#135:
Glad someone else still reads Stephenson – I thought the Baroque cycle was amazing though agree with earlier commentators on Cryptonomicon: it pales in comparison to the latter three.

Iain M. Banks – haven’t got past 1st part of The Algebraist somewhere in the tangle of disemvowelled alien and Culture names, sarcastic drones and special-ops masturbation I just got bored. Banks’ regular fiction continues to be inventive though.

By: DaveL

DaveL — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 19:22:35 +0000

I haven’t given up on most of the authors repetitively listed here (Pynchon, Stephenson, Gaiman, LeGuin, etc.)

I have nearly given up on Card: I still (foolishly) hold out hope for the Alvin Maker series to actually end some day.

I have nearly given up on Iain (M.) Banks. “The Algebraist” is resisting all efforts to distinguish it from any of his other novels, alas.

I gave up on LeCarre somewhere between “The Night Manager” and “The Constant Gardener,” though momentum led me to read up to that point. His Smiley/Karla books are classic, though.

I gave up on P. D. James long ago, during a book I can no longer remember the title of, when I realized I had read the same story in her previous ten books and no longer cared who dunnit.

I have not been able to finish Mary Doria Russell’s “A Thread of Grace,” so I may be giving up on her.

By: Frowner

Frowner — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 18:52:18 +0000

132, LOTR: Well, for my family it’s a family-culture thing. My father read it to me when I was 11-12 and then, amazingly, read it to my brother when he reached the same age. (We could read, you know, perfectly well—maybe even morbidly well, considering how many perfect summer days we spent indoors with books—but we liked to share books. In fact, my father read me David Copperfield, Pickwick Papers and the Old Curiousity Shop starting when I was 8 or 9. I did fall asleep during quite a lot of it, but it gave me an enduring fondness for Dickens.) We all know the books well, and they serve as grounds for reminiscences (my father has an extremely memorable Ent voice, for example) and grounds for debate. We all hold very different views about how you read and think about literature, and we tend to lay things out using LOTR as an example.

In general, I bet lots of people return to the books simply because it’s nice to have a shared reading experience to talk about. I rarely meet anyone who reads the authors I like, and even when I push books on friends they don’t always feel as engaged with the books as I do.

By: Nicholas Mycroft

Nicholas Mycroft — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:30:27 +0000

back in college some of us creative writing types thought a better question was which writers ~~didn’t~~ steadily decline after reaching an early peak. I think sustained success is probably a bad thing for a writer. one counterexample is Melville. haven’t read ~~Pierre~~, but “Bartleby” and “Billy Budd” certainly are up to standard.

I’d propose Paul Auster. ~~The Invention of Solitude~~ is quite astonishing and ~~The New York Trilogy~~ is really good. Some decent stuff in the early 90s but of late I’ve given up.

By: not max power

not max power — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:11:47 +0000

“Loved “Lord of the Rings” when I was 12, but can’t understand why people keep going back.” (#125)

Reminds me of a Terry Pratchett quote: “If you don’t think Lord of the Rings is the greatest book ever when you’re 14, there’s probably something wrong with you. If you still think it’s the greatest book when you’re 40, there’s definitely something wrong with you.”

By: Dave Maier

Dave Maier — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:01:54 +0000

Okay, I was too quick to assume that's Stone's story was one of decline (I haven't read Dog Soldiers). I've only read three: A Flag for Sunrise, which I really liked, and then two later ones which I hated: Children of Light (yes, that's the one with the film) and Damascus Gate (apocalyptic self-indulgence). (For the record, the other one you read is called Outerbridge Reach, not "crossing".) 122 made me laugh - yes, there should be a warning on the first Dune book: Stop Here, They Go Downhill Fast. I didn't like the end of #3, so I skipped #4 and I thought I was done. But someone recommended #5 (Heretics), which takes place way in the future (w/r/t #4), and that one was fun (still no patch on #1 though). No interest in the others.

By: Jacob T. Levy

Jacob T. Levy — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 13:48:54 +0000

As much as I enjoy Neil Gaiman’s work, about a month ago it suddenly dawned on me that every novel is just a cookie cutter variation on the Hero’s Journey. Which is fine but it’s the same story every time, just change the character names and witty dialogue

Well, sure. Not only Neverwhere, Anansi Boys, American Gods, and Stardust, but also Black Orchid, Preludes and Nocturns, A Doll’s House, Books of Magic, and Brief Lives.

I think Gaiman’s openly a placeteller as much as a storyteller, though. Lots of those stories are barely about the Heroe’s Journey; they’re about the place being journeyed through. I think that’s part of the point of what he does.

By: rana

rana — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 13:15:20 +0000

#126 (Miriam),

I never worried too much about Reginald Hill’s plots, or lack of them; his charm always lay in the characters, their interplay, the literary allusions, etc. But the going has become a lot heavier in recent (oh, say 8) years. Is every new Hill book 50 pages longer than the previous one, or is that just my imagination?

By: Keith

Keith — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 03:03:11 +0000

I second (third, forth, whatever) Stephenson. Snow Crash and Diamond Age blew away. Quicksiilver just blew.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 00:37:36 +0000

Wow. I find myself agreeing with every author cited by others above (that I’ve read, which is most of them). I was a huge Card fan in my teens (A Planet Called Treason, Wyrms, EG and SFTD, particularly) and watching him self destruct has been particularly painful. As for Stephenson, I slogged through Quicksilver but have no real interest in going further. No interest in reading more Simmons, though I enjoyed his first trilogy at the time.

But beyond that, I have just recently realized that I’ve given up on ALL the writers that I have read. I still read a fair amount (http://www.webnesia.com/booksread.htm) and try to read pretty eclecticly, but it dawned on me the other day that while much of what I read might be rewarding enough while I’m reading it, virtually none of it sticks with me, none of it becomes something that I’d feel good about unequivocally recommending to someone else. Is it me? Has anyone else experienced this? I’ve been a reader my entire life and value books extremely highly…why aren’t they doing it for me anymore?