Overrated Authors?

[newspeak]

Nicolas Sparks--His male characters are spineless.

[Walktherain]

I agree entirely. Nicholas Sparks sucks. All of his stories end up as depressing love stories and the last chapter tends to kill the novel itself.

[CassieXO]

John Grisham

JOHN GRISHAM .

I heartily dislike his books, and I am being forced to read one for my Catholic Social Justice class.

[canterbury]

I've just started reading Stephenie Meyer to make a friend of mine happy (she's been begging me to read them) and I can totally see how she is an international best seller. Her books are engaging, her characters delicious and you get totally caught up in the whole thing.

Plus they're as sexy as hell.

That doesn't mean I think they're great literature, but I still can see how they're so popular.

+1 on this! I'm with you!

[abi_bouw]

Personally I think that George Elliott spends too much time trying to show off her education and that her books could be a lot shorter and better if she just stuck to the story. IMHO

[sekai]

Wilbur Smith, I'm not sure how widely read he is in other parts of the globe but he's very popular here in Southern Africa. I find him poorly researched and his style patronising. Parricia Cornwall and Dan Brown also leave me cold.

[blue_doona32]

Stephen King- only because my creative writing teacher talks about him SOOO much and it really got annoying after awhile... didn't see much in King after his short stories and certain books

Danielle Steele- we had to do a project on the author that we loved/hated the most. One girl hated DS and then proceeded to read a segment from one of the books... most of us were screaming for mercy because it was the lousiest (is that a word? haha) sex scene ever. Needless to say, she's cliched and I'm pretty darn sure she has a ghost writer!

Nick Sparks- gaaaah! For the love of good writing! its so cliched and sappy and predictable... i really can't read it and the movie (the notebook) was lame... you know what i heard from a lot of my friends? "its their story and they died togeter in the end!" well duh!

that is all ^_^

[breakingthehabit]

Gregory David Roberts who wrote Shantaram, i think, is waaay over-rated. The book tells his experience in India at the time when he was a fugitive. without disregarding the fact that it's based on his true story, i found his style has a bit of "i'm-so-good-i-can-do-anything" feeling about it, for want of a better word.
Totally disagree about Stephen King being overrated, btw

[kamiek08]

Jodi Picoult - she seems to just follow a template for every book. Sure, she mixes it up by picking a new controversial topic in society, but otherwise its the same characters, facing the same problems, the same love story, and the same "surprise" twist at the end... except its not so much of a "surprise" anymore when it happens in all of her books.

ugh, where's the creativity! (because she really does have the potential for it.. except the more books i read by her, the more i lose hope!)

[freckles]

I completly agree about Stephen King, I know there are a lot of people who love his books, but I find that his books for the most part are super boring at some point in the story; the begining, middle, or end. That being said there have been Stephen King books that I've really liked such as Cell, and I do like his short stories.

[tylerdurden]

two words: stephen king

doesn't he have other people write his books now?

[crawford]

I agree with Dan Brown - I didn´t mind ¨The Da Vinci Code¨, but I hated Ängels and Demons¨ and I started ¨Digital Fortress and couldn´t read that book either.

[poppyeyes]

I'm yet to find an author who is over-rated. But I did read one book that I felt got way more thumbs up than I was willing to give (and this is not going to make me popular) I could not for the life of me get into "On the road" by Jack Kerouac.

On the Road is one of my favourite books, and Kerouac is definitely my favourite author. I've recommended him to a lot of different people, and they've all either really loved him or they just can't get into him at all. There wasn't really a middle ground.

[reader]

A lot of people won't like this but Jane Austen. I tried to read Pride and Prejudice and couldn't figure out what was going on half the time. Yes, it's a classic, and I probably just didn't appreciate it, but to be honest I couldn't really follow it.

[KJH]

two words: stephen king

doesn't he have other people write his books now?

wish he did they may be better!

I have to agree with most of the names coming up over and over again...Jodi Picoult, Dan Brown and particularly Patricia Cornwall - although her first few books were ok. Wilbur Smith leaves me cold, just no depth to the characters at all...I have just been persuaded to read the first of Stephanie Meyers Twilight series and so far I am far from impressed, was it written for 14 year olds? (I dont have a major problem with that, but I did enjoy the Harry Potter books and read them as a complete change!)