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Originally posted by The Lord of Nothings:

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Originally posted by fatpigeon:
I dislike most of Robert Heinlin's books. I'd say read "The moon is a harsh mistress", "Starship Troopers", and "Stranger in a strange land" and forego the rest.-Gal

"So, I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands."

Absolutism is the bane of freedom.
DOWN WITH THE AMII!!

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Then i'd find all your friends and tell them to read "Job: A Comedy of Justice" and his Future History stories.

And if they were perverted sex freaks, i'd recomend the rest of his stuff.

See you, space cowboy.

~~~~~~~~~
"Embracing death together. Now that's a day I'll wait for."-- Inuyasha

http:://lon.blogspot.com-- Its a slightly less eloquent me

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Job was alright, I'll concede that point. Don't know if I'd recommend it , but I certainly wouldn't tell anyone to avoid it.

Each consecutive future history book of his sucks worse than the last, though.

-Gal

"So, I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands."

Absolutism is the bane of freedom.
DOWN WITH THE AMII!!

I have to say, I rather liked AHWOSG. I related to the mentality, I guess. Admittedly, he second half is slow and the ending wasn't at all satisfying, but I found the book humorous.

Let's see...
Yeah, Terry Goodkind sucks, I bough one of her books on the recommendation of a pretty girl in Borders. She said they were "great. Like, life-changing."

Also, my friend made me read the Sndman books by Neil Gaiman. What a load of crap! Those damn things cost me two hndred dollars, and they're so pretentious and stupid! I wanted to throw them out the window.

See, your reactions to that last post are the same as my reactions to anyone dissing Admiral Bob or Chuck Palahniuk. Admittedly, invisible monsters was lame, but I love Chuck Palahniuk. And I'm the only person I know at my school (filled with football players and cheerleaders) who does. Including the other so-called countercultural, anti-consumerism types. (Who are really just buying into another form of consumerism don't get me started.)

I had a reaction to the last post? Whoa! Damn, I need to have my reaction meter checked, it's malfunctioning

Seriously though, different people have different tastes. It's interesting to see which authors we despise.

Apparently Terry Goodkind is despised by quite few, as is Robert Jordan. I think it's safe to say that derivative "epic" fantasy is not as popular here as it might be on other sci-fi/fantasy/spec fic sites.

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My baby's got a heart of stone,
Can't you people just leave her alone?
She never did nothing to hurt you
So just leave her alone - The White Stripes, "Truth Doesn't Make a Noise"

Some of quite like "epic" fantasy, if it's done well.

Take George R.R Martin's "Song of ice and fire" for example.

Goodkind just doesn't do it well.

-Gal

"So, I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands."

Absolutism is the bane of freedom.
DOWN WITH THE AMII!!

Yeah, Goodkind's writing sucks. I haven't tried to read that book in a while, but I recall it being very thick, as in no real description and no sense of characters.

Other things I wouldn't recommend? Hellblazer. Not because I don't like it, but because it is in short supply in Santa Barbara, and I don't want any competition finding copies of it.

john norman's 'books of gor'. there are about a hundred of them. they suck donkey's balls for bus money. if anyone out there has not read one, i urge you to high thee to the nearest second-hand book shop and buy one. and then set fire to it.
anne rice.
tanith lee.
dean koontz.
l ron hubbard.
vc andrews.

that's enough of this filthy language for one post.

curiouser and curiouser...

You know, much as I despise scientology and hubbards writing sucks, you have to have respect for a guy who managed to create a religion. Even a bullshit one. No offense to any scientologists, whatever floats your boat.

quote:

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Originally posted by phool2056:
Let's see...
Yeah, Terry Goodkind sucks, I bough one of her books on the recommendation of a pretty girl in Borders. She said they were "great. Like, life-changing."

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Funny quote from the pretty bookseller and I share your estimation of Goodkind's skill but Terry Goodkind is actually a guy.

Sorry. Good to see another Phil on the board, by the way. Spread the love!

Phils forever, man.

To get back to the topic, I'm not terribly elitist... I'll read anything once and won't presume to speak for someone else's tastes enough to black ball a given writer (or anti-recommend them).

However, I will recommend staying away from fiction written by more than one author (by commitee rather than individual... you get enough of that on television or popular film) or lines of fiction in which the author's byline is secondary (such as some gaming fiction) to the concept.

There are exceptions... collaborations (rather than the efforts of 'house writers') sometimes work well... but as a general rule, I try to avoid them.

In the SF/F category i always avoid:
Piers Anthony
Terry Brooks
Terry Goodkind
Robert Jordan


as these have been listed before. I agree

I kinda liked the "Running with the Demon" books, by Terry Brooks. But those Shannara things are just repetition and Tolkien-theft. As for collaborations, the only one's that I would argue for are Neil and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens and The Legacy of Heorot, by Larry Niven, Stephen Barnes, and Jerry Pournelle. I might have screwed up one of the names, there, but I thought the book was fun, adventuresome Science Fiction with some really cool ideas and good characters.

True, I've read some Niven/whoever collaborations that have been enjoyable.

I hate the Elric series. I've read the first five books and can't bring myself to read the sixth. I'm gonna sell 'em.

Other than the Elric books I've read the Bastable ones, and I thought those were wonderful. Now I'm just wondering whether to give The Cornelius Chronicles a try.

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. Probably the crappiest book I've ever read. I hated my literature teacher for a while for making me read it.

I think Lord of the Flies might be another case of assigned reading making a book seem worse than it is. I quite liked it when I first read it, although at that point I was at about the same age as the main characters, which might have helped. It terrified me. I became very suspicious of my fellow junior high school students. It seemed to me that they were all, as someone once said, two hot meals away from that same sort of savagery. And I still do, except now I'm bigger than most people, so THAT'S all right.

That brings up an interesting issue. How much does age and other factors (personal feelings, etc.) affect the liking (or not) of a book?. I too had more or less the same age of the characters when I read Lord of the flies. Maybe it was that fact that made me hate the book, I don't know. I suppose that I disliked it because I despised all the characters (and the plot too, I can't lie). On the other hand, it was more or less the same time I read Catcher in the Rye (I can't recall if it was before or after) so it may be a comparison thing after all.