What author do you detest?

[Sweetdeath]

I think I hate the romance genre in general, and this includes movies.

[Recusant]

Shakespeare, impenetrable gobbledygook.

Well some of it is and some of it isn't. I remember watching a film of a production of Macbeth when I was about 12 and had privately decided about a year earlier that I didn't believe in God. I found it easy to follow, and when Macbeth gives his speech on being informed of his wife's death, I was in awe.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

It really spoke to my prematurely pessimistic little self, and I went and found a volume of Shakespeare's tragedies and memorized that speech.

[Sweetdeath]

I always think of that simpsons halloween episode.

[Chronos]

I can't say that I detest a particular writer because I probably just stop reading his/her works. Like, I stopped reading a Dean Koontz novel because I just couldn't further put up with his style. I have 2-3 more chapters to read about some book involving fluorescent goo attacking a town ... and I may never finish it. I would like to find out what happens without having to subject myself to the remainder of his words. I just don't buy any more Koontz.

[Sandra Craft]

I would like to find out what happens without having to subject myself to the remainder of his words.

This is why I'm happy they made a TV series out of Game of Thrones.  I'm enjoying the story, and a number of the characters, but I don't have to put up with reading George R. R. Martin's writing, which I consider fan girlish.

[Sweetdeath]

A flouresent goo? Really?  XD

[Sandra Craft]

A flouresent goo? Really?  XD

Sounds like that movie, The Blob, which had only the performance of a young Steve McQueen to recommend it.

[Will]

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. 

I adore Shakespeare, but it took years of study to really put together the proper context with the adequate ability to understand his writings to really gain that appreciation. Very few people, I suspect, get Shakespeare right away. If you're going to be seeing Shakespeare, I suggest that you buy a book or take a class on his writings to glean more from them. Perhaps you'll not only be able to tolerate it, but come to enjoy it.

When I was in college, I was cast as Theseus in Midsummer Night's Dream, and I remember this passage coming to mind, as an atheist, regarding the behavior and words of religious people:

More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold—
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven.
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy.
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Theseus responds to the outrageous story he's heard with rational skepticism and it leads him to discuss the nature of these fantasies being treated as reality because of want or wild imagination or fear. Even though this was ultimately an unimportant part of the play, it struck an incredible philosophical cord with me and to this day it remains one of the few quotes from Shakespeare that I have memorized.

_______________________________

I always get a lot of heat for this, particularly from English and literature professors and teachers, but I cannot stand John Steinbeck. I've been an avid reader since I was a very young boy, and I'd like to think I've developed a sense of what does or does not constitute quality writing. I grew up on both science fiction and literary classics, from Dune and Foundation to Moby Dick and The Sun Also Rises. I was introduced to Steinbeck in high school when my class was assigned Grapes of Wrath as a reading assignment over the break between, I think, Sophomore and Junior year. The teacher who assigned it was beloved and respected as a fantastic English teacher, someone with a solid education and who could really connect with kids, and I'd been told that the teacher tends to assign particularly great books to read and study. I was excited. I read the book perhaps three times in a row, each time trying to 'get' what I was reading, to connect with it and appreciate it, but each time it came off like garbage. The use of metaphore was shallow and forced down the reader's throat, the socio-politics were equally shallow and, even though I'm a big supporter of labor, I found myself emotionally rejecting the message because of its poor delivery. The novel was like being promised an elegant, gourmet 5 course meal and being given a bag of Cheetos and a Diet Coke. There was no real subtlety or art, save for the art for the sake of art being done by an artist too high on the smell of his own farts. I was incredibly disappointed, so I went to the library and picked up Of Mice and Men and East of Eden, to better understand the context and style of Steinbeck. They were terrible.

I really gave Steinbeck an honest shot, but I simply cannot stand his writing. Give me Hemmingway or Joyce or Tolstoy any day of the week for classic, incredibly high-quality literature any day of the week over Steinbeck.

[Melmoth]

Sounds like that movie, The Blob, which had only the performance of a young Steve McQueen to recommend it.

Don't forget the opening theme song, explaining the nature of the film's key antagonist and forewarning us to be "careful," what with it being such a slippery customer. The 1980's remake decided to miss that out, which made the whole premise a lot more confusing, I felt.

[j.woodard24]

I almost said Stephanie Meyer, but actually I think it's James Patterson.
He has no sense of pacing (he runs through a hundred pages worth of so-called plot in about three), he uses the silliest, tritest metaphors I can imagine, and all of his stories are filled with laughable plotting and flat, cardboard characters.
Also, he sells more books annually than any other author alive. But then, he does put out about five a year.

[Sandra Craft]

I always get a lot of heat for this, particularly from English and literature professors and teachers, but I cannot stand John Steinbeck.

Steinbeck is like Tennessee Williams to me -- I can read a bit but a very little goes a very long way for me.  I find them both forced and affected.

[Fi]

Stephenie Meyer. What bothers me most is that young girls read her books and think that Edward Cullen's behavior is "romantic," when it is, in fact, incredibly freaky and abusive. If it were framed as a tragedy rather than a happy romance, I'd hate it a lot less.

Christopher Paolini, because he's a joke and his writing voice makes me feel like I'm bashing my head against a brick wall repeatedly.

Last but not least, and I know I'm probably going to get drawn and quartered for this: I can't read Tolkien. His writing is just so... dry. The dialogue is cardboard. For a short fairy tale I think his style would work, but at length, it's unbearable. Tolkien was a creative genius, and the world he created is mostly responsible for a hell of a lot of things I enjoy (namely Dungeons and Dragons and its video game descendants, and, oh, maybe the entirety of modern fantasy) but I just can't stomach his actual writing.

[Sandra Craft]

Last but not least, and I know I'm probably going to get drawn and quartered for this: I can't read Tolkien. His writing is just so... dry. The dialogue is cardboard. For a short fairy tale I think his style would work, but at length, it's unbearable. Tolkien was a creative genius, and the world he created is mostly responsible for a hell of a lot of things I enjoy (namely Dungeons and Dragons and its video game descendants, and, oh, maybe the entirety of modern fantasy) but I just can't stomach his actual writing.

My candidate in the category of acknowledged geniuses whose writing I can't stand is Virginia Woolf.  There are bits of her writing I love (a description of night in the novel The Voyage Out, for instance) but for the most part all I can say is it puts my teeth right on edge.  It's prissy and precious and manages the odd feat of being self-absorbed and scatter-brained at the same time.  I would think that much navel gazing would result in at least a few collected thoughts.

[Sweetdeath]

I gotta admit, it took me a while to go through the LOTR Trilogy, but I did enjoy them.
That's how I feel about all but two of Anne Rice's vampire chronicle books.

[NHOJ]

Ayn Rand. I tried reading Atlas Shrugged to find out what the Teabaggers see in her, but it is painfully bad.