What author do you detest?

[Sweetdeath]

I couldn't finish anything by Dickens either.  He did Oliver twist?  Cuz tha t sucked too.
And a xmas carol is just an annoying story in general to me.


GET BACK ON TOPIC, MEOW.

J/k.
One of my fav authors is Poppy z. Brite. I have most of her novels.   She created some of my fav erotic  scenes. >>

[fyv0h]

   She created some of my fav erotic  scenes. >>

Well that took an unexpectedly fun turn. I must look into this Brite character of which you speak.

[Sandra Craft]

Screw conformity. Fight the power! 

See that, SweetDeath?  You're the power! 

[Sweetdeath]

   She created some of my fav erotic  scenes. >>

Well that took an unexpectedly fun turn. I must look into this Brite character of which you speak.

I would recommend Drawing Blood. It's a crazy book about a boy who's father murdered his entire family, and a computer hacker.

This was written back in early 2000 btw. When being a hacker was cool ;;

[Sweetdeath]

Screw conformity. Fight the power! 

See that, SweetDeath?  You're the power! 

The only power I have is a high pain tolerance, and the ability to fall asleep anywhere.

[Recusant]

One one hand I've spent 30 years trying, and failing, to finish Moby Dick and my kindest comment about the book is that Melville needs to get to the damn point, and on the other hand he also wrote "Bartleby the Scrivener", which I thought a brilliant story of a man's complete mental collapse.  Maybe, like King, Melville should have been restricted to short stories.

Moby Dick does kind of drag along sometimes, but I enjoy Melville's style. By far my favorite Melville book is his last, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade. It's not lengthy, and is a great satire on ante-bellum America. It's good to have an unabridged dictionary to hand while reading Melville; like many 19th century writers, he used a much larger vocabulary than one normally encounters when reading more modern authors.

[Tank]

Shakespeare, impenetrable gobbledygook. I've been to plays and gritted my teeth for my wife's benefit, but to be honest I just don't get it. Following complicated plot lines is difficult enough but add-on a semi-foreign language and I'm f***ed. I always wonder if Shakespeare is an example of 'The emperor's new clothes.' where it is all style and no substance, but nobody is prepared to admit it because everybody is scared of being ridiculed. 

[Sandra Craft]

Shakespeare, impenetrable gobbledygook.  

Well, that knocks my sniping at Emily Bronte into a cocked hat!  When I first started reading Shakespeare I did find the English difficult to follow, but once I got into the rythmn of his speech (not sure how else to describe it) I understood him quite well -- it was like talking to someone with a thick Irish accent.  As for how good the plays are, I think that's hit and miss, like any other author's work.  Richard III has got to be one of the funniest things I've ever read (not sure if that was intentional, but still) whereas Titus, I just wonder what he was snorting when he wrote that.

One of my fav authors is Poppy z. Brite. I have most of her novels.   She created some of my fav erotic  scenes. >>

Did you know that she's a he now?  Not sure when that happened, but it did and, unlike Pat Califia, Brite didn't bother changing his name.  

I'm going to be the little turd nugget that soils your underwear by going against the grain of the post and list a favorite. Douglas Adams. I've read the HHGTTG series numerous times and still find myself picking the book up for another read through. My inner monologue always reads it in a british accent, because it would be right any other way.

Love HHGTTG -- it kind of makes me wonder what Adams was on too when he wrote it, but in a good way.

[Davin]

Ann Coulter. I read one of her books once (I think it was Godless, I read it a few years ago), and it took me three months to get through it (it was only about 300 pages), because I spent most of the time looking up the things she said only to find out how blatently wrong almost everything she said was. I will not read another book with her name on it. Also, by association, I will not read any Fox Newbs books.

[Sweetdeath]

Well Tank, I think some people do say they like Shakespear just sounds smarter.  I do love his crazy, twisted plots and stories.
Dare I say Hamlet is my fav, then Othello.
I will agree its hard to follow the old dialog though.

@catbooks:
Wait, i'm on Brite's livejournal...   I'm pretty sure she's a woman.  Unless I missed something in the last decade? ??? 

[MariaEvri]

I've read "A Christmas Carol", but mostly because it seemed something I should tick off.  In any case, I didn't feel inspired to read anything else of Dickens.

I know this might be off topic, buy why do people use this story as a good one? scrooge obviously did not turn good because he suddenly started caring for others. He was frightened for HIMSELF when he saw he was being buried all alone.

[Sweetdeath]

I've read "A Christmas Carol", but mostly because it seemed something I should tick off.  In any case, I didn't feel inspired to read anything else of Dickens.

I know this might be off topic, buy why do people use this story as a good one? scrooge obviously did not turn good because he suddenly started caring for others. He was frightened for HIMSELF when he saw he was being buried all alone.

I really have no idea!!
And in all honestly, people ONLY change for the better when it benefits them.  This story is about that crap.

[Melmoth]

Ian McEwan. He used to be OK but now he knows his audience too well (pseudo-intellectual Guardian readers) and does nothing but mindlessly jerk them off. His fans are usually the sort who never tire of hearing and talking about Schrodinger's cat, because they think they understand it and like to be reminded of how clever they are. These are the same sort of people who'll believe that something is good purely because it's topical. They'll heap praise on "Saturday," for instance, because it uses brain-rotting diseases as a metaphor for terrorists and religious extremism. It won't matter to them that it's an utterly boring story that neither asks nor answers any interesting questions about said issue, so long as they deem it 'relevant'.

I've read "A Christmas Carol", but mostly because it seemed something I should tick off.  In any case, I didn't feel inspired to read anything else of Dickens.

I know this might be off topic, buy why do people use this story as a good one? scrooge obviously did not turn good because he suddenly started caring for others. He was frightened for HIMSELF when he saw he was being buried all alone.

I really have no idea!!
And in all honestly, people ONLY change for the better when it benefits them.  This story is about that crap.

So A Christmas Carol is bad because people only change for the better when it benefits them... and Scrooge accurately reflects that?

Dickens wasn't saying there's no self-interest in being good, he was saying the exact opposite: don't be a dick or you'll end up an outcast. I don't think anyone has ever misinterpreted this about him. Not that I'm a fan myself. I think he's like Rudyard Kipling or Studio Gibli films in that he's unbearably twee.

[Sandra Craft]

So A Christmas Carol is bad because people only change for the better when it benefits them... and Scrooge accurately reflects that?

Dickens wasn't saying there's no self-interest in being good, he was saying the exact opposite: don't be a dick or you'll end up an outcast. I don't think anyone has ever misinterpreted this about him. Not that I'm a fan myself. I think he's like Rudyard Kipling or Studio Gibli films in that he's unbearably twee.

I was also going to mention that that's a pretty standard way of convincing people, not just then but now altho many people have become less blatant about it.  I can't blame people for being the products of their time, mostly because I don't want to be blamed as the product of mine.  I prefer to think of it as enlightened self-interest.

[xSilverPhinx]

Practically every Romantic author I've read, with the exception of Alexander Dumas (the father, I never read anything by his son). I just don't like the style.