Has your favourite author ever dissapointed you?

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 15 May 2014, 16:54

Good question... No. I'd read extensively of Joyce (I took a major in English lit, thesis was on Joyce) but I came to The Wake unbiased. I'd read both good and not about the book.

I must say that I've made it through the book twice and found it brilliant but a bit anal. By that I mean that Joyce was so immersed in playing word games that he forgot his audience and also forgot that a book is primarily meant to entertain, and in the final analysis, Finnegans Wake (no apostrophe) is too self-aggrandizing and self-satisfied, in love with itself.

Whereas, Ulysses is highly entertaining on its own and is a delightful read (although yes, a challenge at times). But with a bit of help from a guidebook or two, it becomes a wonderful, vibrant story. The Wake just spins on its own center and spends too much time gazing inward to the navel.

A rather fanciful analysis, but I think accurate.

vsc_vet_tech · Post by **vsc_vet_tech** » 15 May 2014, 17:54

Lately I have to say the Ted Dekker has fallen off. I think that he is writing too many books too fast. I love the circle series,green, black ,red, and white.,I also enjoyed a few of his earlier books. But I believe that Ted Dekker has gotten a little bit too big for his britches and things that he needs to write a lot more books to make more money. I'm still interested in reading his books but they're low on my list of books I want to buy. Another author I believe is doing the same thing is James Patterson.just a few series that he is getting a lot of writing about including the Alex Cross series and the Women's Murder Club series. Both of these series are good but they seem to have gotten a little worse in the writing style the longer the series has continued. Again I'm interested in reading most of Patterson's books but a lot of them are the same story with just different characters names. lastly another author that has a lot of the same storyline is Nicholas Sparks. He definitely knows the story line that he can get a lot of use out of. Girl find boy,they fall in love, something tragic happen, and there's even a deeper level of love in the end.

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 15 May 2014, 19:13

I'll give you another... Robert Parker and his Spenser novels. Toward the end they were far too formulaic and didn't have the lively spirit of his earlier novels.

Of course, prolific series authors have to essentially come up with a new book each year so that the fans (and publisher!) won't be disappointed, and it can become an effort and lead to a general cut-and-paste mentality.

I can understand, too. I'm writing a series of modern American private detective novels, and I'm now on the 3rd, and I have to constantly strive to not repeat myself. Were I to have 20-30 novels to the list, I can see how hard it would be.

Sarah1 · Post by **Sarah1** » 17 May 2014, 17:34

I have been disappointed that my favorite books didn't have sequels and had loose ends.

raindropwriter · Post by **raindropwriter** » 18 May 2014, 04:56

Yeah so much that I have almost given up on reading anything by that author.

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 18 May 2014, 11:07

raindropwriter wrote:Yeah so much that I have almost given up on reading anything by that author.

But who was this, pray tell...

klucey · Post by **klucey** » 18 May 2014, 11:33

This is a great topic. I am a diehard Stephen King fan and I have been reading his books since around age 10. Most of his books I find incredible!! so when I come upon one that isn't it is a huge letdown. Insomnia was horrible!! I plowed through it because I love him so much, but it was tough! I have always found his short stories compelling and I love that he still writes short stories! I find that few contemporary authors do anymore.

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 18 May 2014, 13:56

I was completely disenchanted by King's "Under the Dome" -- I thought it was a relentless diatribe against corporations and big business when such a mental image is essentially one-track jargon. If I want to read political commentary I'll stick to nonfiction books on politics today, thank you.

cioccolato · Post by **cioccolato** » 18 May 2014, 14:26

Isabel allende is one of my favourite author but her last book I read "El bosque de los pigmeos" disappointed me. As regards anglophones authors none of them have disappointed me until now.

David Dawson · Post by **David Dawson** » 18 May 2014, 14:37

moderntimes wrote:I was completely disenchanted by King's "Under the Dome" -- I thought it was a relentless diatribe against corporations and big business when such a mental image is essentially one-track jargon. If I want to read political commentary I'll stick to nonfiction books on politics today, thank you.

Surely that depends how it's done? I haven't read Under the Dome so will happily take your word that it is heavy-handed in its politics, but rejecting political fiction would seem to rule out an awful lot of writers?

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 18 May 2014, 16:29

Of course it depends on how it's done. Having an aside or two is fine -- I put such in my own novels all the time -- but the laying it on thick as King did in "Dome" was just way over the top. He beat an agenda and flogged it repeatedly until it was too tired to carry the franchise.

And during the read of the book, I sat back and took personal stock and ran that up the flagpole and thought a lot. King is a social liberal and I'm somewhat conservative. Therefore I'm not normally going to trash "big business" in my novels. I may rail a bit against excesses but to denigrate the entire wide sweep of corporations is puerile. It's adhering to a mantra that is faulty. But as I read on and on in the book, King took every opportunity to cast aspersions and also to emphasize parallels over and over between the big boss in the Dome and the Bush admin outside, and match that with sniping at corporations. A swipe or two, fine. But it soon became tiresome. And my central point: when an "agenda" is so blatant that it eats away at the main purpose of the book, to entertain the reader, it's been done and done too much.

Not that Stevie King is my fave author by any means -- he's among my top living writers of course, and I still think that "Pet Sematary" is the scariest thing he ever wrote. That sequence when the old neighbor is taking the doctor to un-bury the cat, and they have to pause because "something" is tramping through the woods nearby? Chilling. And in "The Stand" the first time we meet Randall Flagg, the "Walking Dude" and the narrative describing him is among the finest narratives ever.

I'd match that descriptive narrative (although shorter) with the section in Alex Haley's "Roots" when the young Kunta Kinte [sp?] and his father undertake this long journey in (I think) Kenya. Superb.

But writers are human and humans are nuanced if not anything else, and susceptible to all types of failings. Look at Hemingway, who wrote some of the finest prose of the 20th century and yet was a thug at heart, cruel and vindictive.

One of my favorite mystery writers, as I've said, Robert Parker (creator of "Spenser") got stuck in a narrative run toward the last, churned out a couple of very low-grade novels, just slapping words on the page to meet that annual deadline, you know. Met him a couple times, thought him rude and abrupt, too. Maybe he just was having a bad day?

David Dawson · Post by **David Dawson** » 18 May 2014, 17:16

moderntimes wrote: And my central point: when an "agenda" is so blatant that it eats away at the main purpose of the book, to entertain the reader, it's been done and done too much.

Yes, completely agree. And when it is overdone it doesn't matter whether you agree or not. I think a decent litmus test is whether or not it is irritating even to people who agree. It would seem my politics are considerably closer to those of King than yours, but if I get around to Under the Dome at some point then it will still be off-putting to me if it is as you portray.

More on topic, I'm a big Martin Amis fan/ defender and thought Lionel Asbo was horribly heavy-handed in parts. Amis has form in disappointing people though; I won't quote Tibor Fischer's famous review of Yellow Dog here (slightly inappropriate for this forum maybe), but it is very easy to find on the internet and viscerally encapsulates his anger at being let down by an author whom he admires.

Sally Balboa · Post by **Sally Balboa** » 23 May 2014, 14:45

Yes, Gregory Maguire continued to dazzle me with every book I'd read (Wicked series, and Confessions of an Ugly Step-sister), until I read Mirror, Mirror. That novel just left me feeling empty, and disappointed.

Fireball[1928] · Post by **Fireball[1928]** » 23 May 2014, 14:49

I have several authors that I enjoy reading. Of the ones that I enjoy, I've never been let down by anything they have written. There have been a couple of times when I tried a new author and I was disappointed with the book or just couldn't get into it. But despite that, I continue to try new ones.