What author do you detest?

[Sweetdeath]

It can be old or recent.
I think Stephanie meyers (?) who did Twilight is up there by default. *shakes fist*

Also, I can't stand Jane Austin. All that pride and prejudice is boring .  I don't find anything from that sexist time romantic.

[Sandra Craft]

It can be old or recent.
I think Stephanie meyers (?) who did Twilight is up there by default. *shakes fist*

Also, I can't stand Jane Austin. All that pride and prejudice is boring .  I don't find anything from that sexist time romantic.

Oh I love Jane Austen.  History was always my favorite subject in school, even tho the textbooks were beyond boring.  Jane Austen was history made as interesting as it could get for me.  True, she didn't deal with the big issues of her day but I could get books about those anywhere -- Austen dealt with the day-to-day lives of regular people, and I just ate that up.

I've never read Meyers (things I'd heard were enough to give me hives) but in the same genre I wish Anne Rice had never hit ink.  I have a very low tolerance for purple prose, but even without that I don't think I'd find Rice a good writer.

Stephen King I wish could be restricted to short stories and non-fiction.  I think he's quite good at those but his novels are just a mess.

[Sweetdeath]

Austen^ Excuse the typo.

I've only read snipets of Meyers' Twilight, and I swear it brought down my I.Q.

I also never considered Rice a great writer. I loved Tale of the body theif, but she loves to drag on for pages about one subject, and it gets quite inane.

I agree that King is best at short stories.  Skeleton crew is one of my favorite books.  He is great at horror though.  Misery, the stand...    I couldn't finish "it" because  it scared me too much.

[Sandra Craft]

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." -Flannery O'Connor

I was thinking of just that quote, but couldn't remember who said it.  Thanks, Run.  I've read so many bad authors in my life but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) their names don't stick with me.  I remember reading a book by some guy who claimed (among many, many other things) that people who wrote their "w"s rounded instead of pointed were sexual deviants for making a letter resemble a woman's bottom.  I was a teenager at the time but even then wondered how such a loon got published -- I should have checked to see if he was self-published.  

I agree that King is best at short stories. 

Not to get off-topic but have you read his "On Writing"?  It's a combination memoir and writing advice book and I think it's not only the best thing King's ever written, but one of the best books of its kind.  I was astonished when I read it because I was very much anti-King at the time.  Now I cut him some slack.

[Tank]

My wife used to read all the Steven King stuff, they were staple birthday and xmas presents, but went off them as the quality dropped. I only ever read The Stand and enjoyed that, but not enough to tackle another one.

[Sandra Craft]

OK, I'm going to throw a name out that some may consider sacrilegious, and that even I'm not completely certain belongs here.

Emily Bronte.  There, I've said it.  I'm not certain about putting her in this thread because I do think she had writing talent but I hated "Wuthering Heights" with a passion.  Whenever Heathcliff or Cathy turned up I just wanted to slap them -- I didn't find either one in the least bit romantic and had no sympathy for their situation.  Worse yet, the only characters in the story I liked were the ones I was apparently meant to despise.  That always makes me grumpy.

[Sweetdeath]

^ Not familiar with that person to comment.

Am I the only person who didn't give a crap about the books they forced us to read in grade school?  A raisin' in the sun and Lord of the flies?

[Sandra Craft]

^ Not familiar with that person to comment.

Am I the only person who didn't give a crap about the books they forced us to read in grade school?  A raisin' in the sun and Lord of the flies?

Only the textbooks, which I think were designed to put students to sleep and get them in trouble.  The rest of it they didn't have to force me to read, by the time it turned up on the school's reading list it was usually a re-read for me.

[fyv0h]

C'mon guys!!??!! It's common knowledge that the three worst poets in the universe are:

1) Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Sussex. She died, though.
2) Azgoths of Kria
3) Vogons

Unless we aren't including poetry, in which case, carry on...

[Sweetdeath]

We are discussing all forms of literacy! 
I am not a big poem reader though.

[fyv0h]

Well let's forget poetry. Author I detest...Bill O'Reilly. Someone really should kick him is his little puckered turd-cutter. 

[Xjeepguy]

Well let's forget poetry. Author I detest...Bill O'Reilly. Someone really should kick him is his little puckered turd-cutter. 

I second that!

[Sandra Craft]

I am not a big poem reader though.

Me either.  I wish I was but I can almost never figure out what they're going on about.

Author I detest...Bill O'Reilly. Someone really should kick him is his little puckered turd-cutter.  

I had completely forgotten he wrote.  Add Ann Coulter to the list.  I don't mind dissenting opinions, I just prefer the spreading light to spreading heat approaches to expressing them.  Of course, it's likely neither O'Reilly or Coulter is concerned about reaching across the aisle, just performing for the applause of the far right reactionaries.

[Sandra Craft]

I'm going to throw another one out that some may consider sacrilegious: Dickens

I consider myself a considerably well-read person. I majored in English in college. I have yet to finish a Dickens novel. I've tried numerous times to no avail.

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'm on the fence about suggesting Herman Melville.  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.

[fyv0h]

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.

Screw conformity. Fight the power!