Yet another vote for Henry James. Er, well, actually I don’t really want to like him. After reading the first line of one of his short stories a total of ten times and still not understanding even slightly what it was trying to say, I came to the conclusion that the man simply - cannot - write.
I’m with Orange Skinner on Tolkien. I like his books, I loved the Hobbit when I was a kid, but now I am just trying to get through RotK before the next movie comes out. Maybe I just need to go back and re-read it from the beginning, I know some books that I hated the first time around but I ‘got’ the second time around.
Phillip Pullman. I read the whole His Dark Materials series, and I really did like it. But something about it put my teeth on edge. I read the whole thing because I just couldn’t put it down but after I was like… What???
Anne Rice: I love the movie Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned… but I could never get through it. Maybe if I tried reading Queen…? I do love her sister’s books though. Alice Borchardt. (Unless I’m just duped and they actually are Anne’s only under a pen name :p)
Robert Jordan: I’m sorry but no matter what anyone says, though his books are OK, I can’t stand them. They drive me up the wall. I’m still trying to finish The Great Hunt as my roomie insists I must read them all.
Terry Pratchett. I know I should like him. I know he’s clever. I really do enjoy his books–once I’m not reading them any more. His prose style just lacks something that I need. It drives me mad. I’ve read five or six of his books and I just can’t get them to take.
James Michener…
I’ve tried…really I have.
Zsofia, you took the words right out of my mouth; I knew there was someone else besides Pynchon that fell into this category.
The problem I have with Vonnegutt is that he’s kind of a one trick pony – all his books can be fairly easily summarized as: “Life sucks, and we can’t do anything about it because we’re all just biological automatons hard-wired to screw up.” This may or may not be true, but I tire of slogging through entire books to hear the same thing over and over and over . . .
BTW, note to Triss: Pynchon didn’t write House of the Seven Gables – Hawthorne did. You were probably confusing the author with the characters. Pynchon wrote Gravity’s Rainbow, V., etc.
Personally, I like Hawthorne. 
Faulkner because of his writing style.
ray bradbury. Farenheit 451 is a classic, but i just can’t stand THAT or anything else he’s writtten.
and douglas addams…because my friends absolutely WORSHIP him, but frankly i think the whole “hitchhiker’s guide” series is disjointed, episodic, plot-less, and only semi-amusing.
maybe i just don’t like sci-fi.
Cecil.
Piers Anthony.
Stephen King.
Lynn Margulis.
I misread at first as actors. Squint Eastwood.Larry Niven. Supposedly one of the true greats of scifi, but I find him almost unreadable. Sure, he comes up with some interesting ideas for unusual settings or planets or what have you, but he’s annoying gleeful in his own inventiveness, and, quite frankly, he’s so bad at describing his oh-so-clever settings that I end up unable to follow much of the plot. Of course, the plot is a minor component of his books, but still.
Charles Bukowski. Mr. Pug is a big Bukowski fan, and has collected all of his books. I’ve tried to read him, and I acknowledge that he is a skilled writer and good at describing gritty reality, but I just don’t like him. It seems like the point of all his stories is that there is some kind of moral superiority to being an alcoholic misanthrope. Yuck.
I really want to contribute to this thread (it’s one of the literary ones, and that alone makes me want to contribute)–but I am hard pressed to come up with a notable author I don’t like…I am such a book slut.
OK, OK, Dean Koontz - although I don’t really dislike his work. It’s just that I feel that once I have read about three of them, the rest are kind of repetitive. I suppose I would say the same about Grisham.
And maybe Thomas Pynchon - but I do enjoy the way he uses words. It’s just that I don’t find he ever gets any where I find interesting.
Wait a minute…I’ve got one: Kinky Freidman. I have bought four of his books and never managed to finish or enjoy one. I want to. I truly do…The discription on the dust jackets or on the backs of the books sound so great, but I just can’t get through them.
TV
Cormac McCarthy – he was a favorite for awhile, but lately it’s been a chore to read him. I think he’s writing just for himself.
I have a feeling I should like Jane Austin…but I really, really don’t.
I’m pretty sure Hawthorne write that.
As an English teacher, I hang my head in shame as I admit that I have tried hard and failed to like:
James Joyce: Sometimes I think he was just having us all on
Ernest Hemingway: The machismo can be awfully repellent
Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Like nails on a chalkboard
Herman Melville: I am still trying to like him. Someday I WILL get through Moby Dick, if it kills me
Ezra Pound: Give me TS Eliot any day
Henril Ibsen: The Dollhouse seems especially corny to me
However, I love William Faulkner with a burning passion, so that should count for something.
James Joyce. Tremendously talented, great stylist, revolutionary, etc. etc. But except for some of Dubliners and smallish bits of Ulysses, I don’t actually like him.
I confess to a certain amount of smug, self-satisfied pleasure at the number of authors other people have listed that I love. “Couldn’t handle Melville, eh? Amateur.”
However, I do want to put up a third vote for “Father Kurt.” I’ll grant that there’s something to him that I’m just not getting. Too many people whose opinions I respect like him for me to dismiss him out of hand. But to me, he’s just this pedantic, lecturing asshole who’s not half as clever as he pretends to be.
Also, I’d like to amend Obsidian Flutterby’s nomination of Robert Jordan. There’s nothing wrong with disliking Robert Jordan. He’s a legitimatly awful writer. Feel free to look down your nose on Jordan fans and sniff disdainfully.
Michael Chabon. I read all of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and every other page I would tell myself “it won a pulitzer prize; it’s going to get good at some point.” It never did. I tried reading Wonder Boys (loved the movie) but his prose is just so staid and dry and god-awful. Incredibly boring.
I have to go with Emily Dickinson on this one, too. I mean, yeah, being a reclusive spinister will leave you little melodramatic but it wont’ neccesarily make you a good poet.
–greenphan
Well, just briefly OT: a note on politics and writing. Yes, I am fairly ultra-liberal and disagree strongly with Chesterton’s ultra-conservatism. But it’s his tone, not his politics that annoys me so. I find Iain Banks’ smug liberalism just as annoying (oh, yes, put him down on the list of authors I’d like to like too ;)).
Back on topic: Twungtister; why do you want to like Piers Anthony? Almost everyone over the age of fourteen dislikes him.
I’ll second greenphan’s vote for Emily Dickinson – all those freakin’ dashes – they annoy the hell out of me – really.
I stand corrected. 