Authors You Looked Forward to Reading, and then were Disappointed by?

Cafe Society
1

I don’t read a lot of fiction. I’d say my fiction reading percentage out of my reading total is about 15%.

But when I was young, Joseph Wambaugh was a big deal. They made TV shows and movies out of his stuff. Wikipedia calls him “The Grand Master of Police Novels”. Once on Barney Miller, Detective Harris wrote a novel, and then bragged that a critic said that his novel “…rivals Wambaugh’s best.”

So, I ran across a copy of Wambaugh’s The Blue Knight, the novel that they based the TV series starring George Kennedy on. I had never read any Wambaugh. I wasn’t avoiding his books, but I just never got around to them. I figured, hey, why not? He’s supposed to be so good.

Well…The Blue Knight is not good. It reads like an okay first draft. The place and movement descriptions are so poor, I had trouble visualising what was going on much of the time. The characters use each other’s names constantly when they speak, making the dialog unrealistic. And speaking of unrealistic dialog, Wambaugh seemed afraid to use swear words. Bumper Morgan calls his perps barf bags and pukepots. Oooooh. Edgy. I think it was okay to swear in novels in the seventies, Joe.

The worst though is that by Wambaugh’s own description Bumper Morgan is an old fat cop. Yet every woman in the book throws herself at him. Waitresses rub up against him. Showgirls undress and rub their tits on his face when he had just dropped by to say hi. His fiance, who’s a teacher, risks instant job loss by making out with him in a classroom while kids are watching in the hallway. A nineteen year old belly dancer rapes him. (Well, forces herself into his bed while he drunkenly protests because she’s too young for him. He bangs her anyway.)

And all of this is against Bumper’s wishes. He tries to get away from each one of them.

The only woman in the book who doesn’t sexually assault him is a post menopausal judge. And she quashes a perjury investigation against him when she knows he’s guilty of it. I guess there’s no resisting Bumper Morgan’s charms.

Um, I’m wondering if Wambaugh wasn’t Mary Sueing here just a little. I’m seeing a little female on male dom-fantasizing going on.

Anyway, the ending was a let-down too, but I’m not going into that.

So, anybody else less than thrilled with some author they wanted to read?

2

Allow me to be the first to mention Robert Heinlein. For one of the greats of science fiction, I found most of the stuff I read ranged from “okay” to “lame & creepy”. Although I thought “All You Zombies” was pretty good.

3

Patrick O’Brien. I love reading about that time period; have read all of Hornblower, most of Ramage, all of Austen; opened O’Brien with excitement.

Excitement fizzled quickly into boredom. Have tried several of his books, but haven’t finished one of them.

4

I should have loved Charles de Lint. I’ve tried a few of his books, and I just couldn’t get into them. I also should have loved Mists of Avalon, and again, I just don’t. There are more authors, but I can’t remember them right now.

5

I was very interested in reading Jim Butcher’s Dresden series. The idea of a wizard cop with everyday problems soudned great. And Butcher does a good job of storytellng, but his lead character was jsut so freaking annoying. I made it through the first book, but wne I started the second and he started doing the exact same stupid thing he did throughout the first book, I just gave up. A protagonist yhou want to bonk on the head and tell him to “Cut that shit out!” all the time gets tiresome fast.

6

I’ll see your “lame & creepy”, and raise you a “boring as hell” for Heinlein.

I always feel like I ought to like Terry Pratchett, but something about his writing style keeps me at arms length. I never really get into his stories.

7

I didn’t really care for the first book so much. I think that Dresden’s writing has improved, but his plotting seems to be more or less the same. Dresden just doesn’t seem to learn much, if anything, from his experiences. There are some things in the Dresden series that I like very, very much. Like the fact that the fairies (it is fairies, right) simply love pizza, and the fact that magic and technology mix like oil and water. I think that having fairies love pizza is a logical extension of the old belief that you should set out a dish of milk or cream for fairies or brownies. And at least Butcher is pretty consistent about having the magic/tech interactions always blowing up in Harry’s life. A lot of authors seem to use this theme, but only when the story needs it. Otherwise, the mages are able to use phones and cars like everyone else.

I’ll probably continue to read the series, but they aren’t on my “must buy NOW” list.

8

I read this description about Mikhail Shishkin’s writing:

Holy smokes, does that not sound like the most amazing writer ever? I’m drooling here.

Then I got ~50 pages into his “masterpiece” Maidenhair and gave up. Maybe Shishkin would demonstrate those astounding superlatives later in the book, but up to that point, they were not apparent.

9

I wouldn’t say I looked forward to reading, as I learned very early on that I hated his style, but Dickens is my author like that. I loved the dickens (ha!) out of his actual plots, and every time a Dickens show comes up on Masterpiece Theater (or whereever) I get way into it. But I can’t read him. Too many words, too goofy writing style, I just can’t do it. Every couple year I try, but I can’t get through the first chapter.

10

Yeah. Lame, creepy and boring as hell about sums it up. They say he was one of the Big Three, and I love Clarke and Asimov so I was expecting to at least like Heinlein, but … no. I bought a stack of his paperbacks at a secondhand book sale and tried to read three of them, but each time I ended up throwing it aside in disgust before I was halfway through. I re-donated the stack and never looked back.

11

I submit that this is because neither de Lint nor Mists of Avalon was actually any good. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m going to be the odd one out here and say: George R.R. Martin. So much hype. So not impressed.

12

Oh my god, Terry Pratchett. This board has a humongous hard-on for him. I should’ve known that it would be just so fucking insufferable. I try to give authors a whole book, but I’ve forgotten which one of his I put aside halfway through.

13

For me it’s Neil Gaiman and Peter S. Beagle. Highly recommended by fantasy fans everywhere so I sought them out. I think they’re okay but they’re not as good as I was led to believe. It’s all subjective, of course. :slight_smile:

14

You gave up too soon. There’s a very large multi-book story arc dealing with how Dresden gains experience and matures as a person. Yes, in the first couple books he does some pretty stupid things–but that’s because he’s young and inexperienced. Knocking him for that is roughly equivalent to starting a biography of a real person and then throwing it away in disgust because he did stupid things as a teenager.

15

The late Carlos Castenada. His “Teachings of Don Juan” was total crap. It came out later that he made most of it up=the “Yaqui wise man-Don Juan” never existed.
William Faulkner-boring and tedious.
Hemingway (later works). He wrote most of them while in an alcoholic haze…and it shows.
Paul Theroux: his early travel books were pretty good-now he writes like a grouchy old man…which he is.

16

Last summer I read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The humor was incredibly lame, and I don’t think I laughed at all. The book I read right after that, Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain, was only supposed to be a little funny, but it was a hell of a lot funnier than Hitchhiker’s Guide.

17

Neil Gaiman is on my list, too. I liked American Gods a lot, and then was excited to go discover all his other stuff … and it turns out that American Gods fulfilled my lifetime Neil Gaiman quota very well, thank you.

18

Did you not like Faulkner Ralph? I would have thought from your posts that The Sound and the Fury might be right up your street.

Couple of let downs for me were Pale Fire by Nabakov and a Nixon satire by Roth called Our Gang. The former is the real disappointment as it’s considered a major work whereas Our Gang is not especially rated AFAIK, it was just the first book I’d read from Roth so I expected it to be good.

I guess satire can be really hit and miss with the reader, if you’re not on board with it then the whole book’s a write-off. I found Pale Fire just ball-achingly unfunny and clunky, but it’s the height of silver-prose magic for others.

19

Ditto on the Dresden series. I only barely forced myself to finish the first book, and had no desire to read any more. Too bad, because the idea had potential, and there were elements I liked. But Dresden himself? An idiot, and a whiner to boot.

20

Oh yeah, Neil Gaiman for me, too. I didn’t even like American Gods all that much. He seems so cool and has great ideas, but heck if I can get through one of his books. Booooring.

And Charles de Lint as well. Great ideas, good plot… dull books.

I do like Mists of Avalon, though. Haven’t read it in a long time but liked it enough to read several times in my 20s.