Worst Authors

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Melanie Fawn- her books are pretty trashy for the most part. I read her book The Dragon Prince and it makes 50 Shades look pretty damn tame in comparison
 
IJustWantToSeeAttachments said:
I agree with you on Steven King to an extent. The man is chock-full of interesting story ideas, but his writing process is what ends up killing most of his plots. King starts a novel without any plan as to how it will end. His method is to let the story develop as he's writing it. Now, there's a lot you can't plan for in the outlining stages, but a well-crafted story requires a sense of direction. The Dark Tower series became stuffed with filler by the second book because Steven let the plot meander at every opportunity. He didn't know how the series was going to end until he was forced to reach it after three decades of inconsistent installments.
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Ah, that explains why Damon Lindelof (head writer of LOST and garbage like Prometheus) loves The Dark Tower so much. Hell, sounds like he copied his writing process from Stephen King.

Someone mentioned Tolkien earlier. I wouldn't say Tolkien's a bad author - he can world build like no-one else and he certainly had talent and imagination. The trouble is, his prose can get incredibly slow and knotty because it's inspired by Anglo-Saxon epic poems which (contrary to what you might believe) are about the most boring you'll ever read. Not to mention the man was pretty much incapable of writing female characters. I love The Lord of the Rings but it's a tough read not helped by Tolkien's love of going off on long narrative tangents.

One author I've never liked is Sebastian Faulks. In fairness, I've only read one of his books (Birdsong) but that was enough to put me off altogether. It's an overlong, drawn-out snoozefest, lightly sprinkled with lurid sex scenes that add nothing to the story and are so decadently described you feel vaguely uncomfortable reading them.

I also think Cormac McCarthy sucks. No Country for Old Men is a load of pretentious, modernist drivel. Thankfully, when he decided to branch out into film with The Counsellor, he showed himself up to film critics for the talentless hack he is. Shame literary critics weren't quite as perceptive.
 
TheImportantFart said:
Too obvious.
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She has (had?) her own thread on the Lolcow section too. So that's kinda out of the question.

In all honestly, I haven't read much in the way of fiction (I read mostly non-fiction), so I can't really share my opinion all that much in regards to this topic. But I think I'll agree about James Patterson. For quite a while, I kept on seeing those book pop up in the bathroom of my house (and my mother's a fairly big fan), but I never paid much attention to him either. The one thing I can say though is that those who write similarly to him feel all... same-y.
 
To whomever said Stephen King is a bad author, I disagree. He's definitely not the most gifted, but he's certainly enthusiastic about writing itself, and that automatically puts him leagues ahead of many other "popular novelists" (Grisham, Cussler, etc.) I do think he needs to reassess his disinterest in plotting, but then again, there are plenty of writers who don't plot their work and come out with winners. Breaking Bad was written this way - each season, the writers had a rough idea of where it was heading, but didn't know the specifics. This can result in lousy reveals (the pool in Season 2) or amazing ones (the machine gun in Season 5.)

As for bad authors... Jesus, where to begin? Most of the stuff that is put out now is all about marketing first and quality second. "Queen of the Tearling" (heralded as a young adult Game of Thrones/Hunger Games/Twilight) is ABYSMAL. "The Bone Season," another example of the "Ohh young author, she's a genius"disease. I think Anne Rice is pretty terrible, despite her reputation among goths and horror fans. I think Chuck Palaniuk is a one trick pony, and Saint David Foster Wallace is worshipped by elitist punks who think dense writing is good writing.
 
Yeah, I'll second that, King isn't a bad author, but, his stuff was at least interesting to read, but I never got the scare factor out of it others did (or said they did). Ultimately, I just outgrew it, and some of it simply hasn't aged well, but that's not his fault.
 
I have mixed feelings about John Green, wherein I thought The Fault In Our Stars was decent but all of his other books (Paper Towns, An Abundance Of Katherines) were garbage.

I can't comment on any of Hossein Amini's other books, but I thought that The Kiterunner was trash.

I've always loved the idea of the Millennium books, but I hate Lisbeth as a character enough that I didn't really enjoy the books.

The Hunger Games always pissed me off just for being predictable, and much like The Fault In Our Stars, I went to see the movies solely for the performances of the older actors (Donald Sutherland and Willem Dafoe respectively).

Becca Fitzpatrick is probably the worst author I've ever read, and the Hush Hush series reads like a list of things to avoid when writing a fantasy novel. It isn't even entertaining in the way that something like 50 Shades or The Legend Of Rah and the Muggles is.
 
Mungo said:
I can't comment on any of Hossein Amini's other books, but I thought that The Kiterunner was trash.
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I thought The Kiterunner was a good book but I'll admit that it was built on cliches. I can see why someone might be turned off but it. I read A Thousands Splendid Suns as well but one of the characters was such a blatant Mary Sue that to me, it ruined what could be a rather profound story. It's been years since I read both books so I might have a different opinions if I read them now.
 
Mungo said:
How so?
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Well, "blatant" is a strong term now that I think about it but when she first appears, the narrative goes on and on about how amazing she is. Oh, she has blonde hair! Which is rare in Afghanistan! She was born on the day the Russians invaded Afghanistan! How special! She's the smartest girl in her class and her best friend (who is male, of course) has the obvious hots for her! Although she goes through hell throughout the book, she the one who gets the happy ending while the other main female character, who was much more interesting and complex, gets the short end of the stick.

It's still a good book though but Amini's weakspot is definitely characterization.
 
TheMightyMonarch said:
the narrative goes on and on about how amazing she is
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This is why I hated Lisbeth in the Millennium books. There's NOTHING she can't do and she's never wrong about anything, just misguided. Any time, especially in the first book, there could be any tension, Lisbeth pulls an until-then unseen skill out of her ass and solves the problem. I really want to like the Millennium books, but I can't when the main character is such a self-righteous, impossibly skilled asshole who
gets away with rape both morally and practically because she was only raping the guy because he raped her first.

Amir (of The Kiterunner) also pissed me off for the opposite reason. We're supposed to sympathize with him, but he spends the entire book whining about how shitty a person he is for not stopping a horrific crime that he couldn't have realistically stopped. Even after he morally redeems himself at the end, he STILL shits on himself through the epilogue. The fact that the book is presented from his perspective pissed me off more.
 
I read a book called Hominids by Robert Sawyer a few years ago. The premise seemed intriguing to me, it was about a parallel universe where neanderthals became the dominant species on Earth instead of homo sapiens. Leaving aside the massive logical problems in the plot, Sawyer constantly went on bizarre tangents about women's periods and Canadian supremacy.
 
James Joyce certainly was not the worst author, but in my opinion he was an author who was unable to write intelligible prose. I have resd through "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and "Dubliners", but could not bring myself to finish "Ulysses". It just seems like a jumbled mess of incoherent thoughts to me with no discernible structure. No more "stream of consciousness" for me, please.
 
Abethedemon said:
I don't like Orson Scott Card. Ender's Game was terribly boring and the protagonist was super unlikeable.
Surprised no one mentioned Gloria Tesch yet.
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I'm gonna disagree with you on OSC. He's a kinda shitty person in some ways, but I thought a lot of his works were really good, before he decided to put his own personal political aesops in everything. I will admit, the brother/sister team taking over the world by blogging was pretty hilarious though.

My personal pick is Christopher Paloni. I picked his stuff up first way back when it came out. Everyone was lauding him as this amazing child auther, and like the naïve preteen I was, I got on the hype train. Until I couldn't make it more than four or five chapters in. The whole think he had published was just Star Wars set in Lord of the Rings. If his parents hadn't owned a publishing company it would have been stuck on fanfiction.net
 
Mungo said:
This is why I hated Lisbeth in the Millennium books. There's NOTHING she can't do and she's never wrong about anything, just misguided. Any time, especially in the first book, there could be any tension, Lisbeth pulls an until-then unseen skill out of her ass and solves the problem. I really want to like the Millennium books, but I can't when the main character is such a self-righteous, impossibly skilled asshole who
gets away with rape both morally and practically because she was only raping the guy because he raped her first.

Amir (of The Kiterunner) also pissed me off for the opposite reason. We're supposed to sympathize with him, but he spends the entire book whining about how shitty a person he is for not stopping a horrific crime that he couldn't have realistically stopped. Even after he morally redeems himself at the end, he STILL shits on himself through the epilogue. The fact that the book is presented from his perspective pissed me off more.
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I only read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and some parts of The Girl Who Played With Fire, I don't remember Lisebeth being THAT bad but it's been a couple of years since I read it (Been meaning to go back). My opinion might change if I read it now. Blomkimvist felt like a total Gary Stu to me though. Especially around other female characters. He's not described as being particularly attractive but he bangs pretty much every woman in the series, including
the missing chick from the first book
In the second book, his girlfriend gets a whole chapter devoted to how she had A LOT of sex but Blomkimvist was the BEST partner she ever had. It felt really wish fulfillment esque on the author's part, especially since he had the same profession.

Amir was really a wet blanket. I can forgive some of the stuff he did, since he was a kid dealing with some heavy shit but some of the stuff he did as an adult was just retarded. Yeah, tell the sexually abused kid who probably has severe PSTD from growing up in an orphanage that he might need to go back to the orphanage for a bit. Oh shit! He slit his wrists!
 
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