Brown wrote “factual” novels? That’s news. I’m re-reading Angels & Demons, and the DaVinci Code right now; they’re rollicking good reads, but they’re fiction and never claim to be anything else.
I still read the Pendergast books, but I don’t buy them. And I agree 100% with koeeoaddi: A.X.L. has turned into a total Gary Stu. I loved Still Life with Crows. Now he’s practically a Marvel Comic. The next book is out Tuesday; that may decide whether I’ll ever read anything more. I’m dubious.
I’m still in with Ruth Rendell; I pick up Elizabeth George now and then, and I’ve never read anything by Peter Straub.
Hmmm. I first tried Heinlein when I was about… 25? Stranger in a Strange Land. I hated it. I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for the first time last year, at age 38-ish, and loved it! Different strokes…
The next book is the last of the trilogy about his wife, right? Or was that the most recent one? Just give me a good standalone story, goddammit!
Ditto on Laurel K. Hamilton. No plot, no character development, unless you count her vagina as a character. And it’s seen way too much development, if you know what I mean.
I used to love Diana Gabaldon, but I no longer recommend the books. I loved when they were presented as a double trilogy. Now Gabaldon is content to spend 600 pages writing about 6 months of mundane comings and goings. And her plot devices are starting to repeat. Wrap up the story already!
Janet Evanovich jumped the shark after about #6. She’s written herself into a corner because she won’t allow her main character (Stephanie Plum) to mature and grow. So she keeps regurgitating the same plot, including the love triangle, to the point where it’s beyond stale. It’s now moldy. One amateur reviewer suggested that her daughter is actually doing the writing now, and I wonder if there’s some grain of truth in that.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I agree that he would have been better off quitting while he was ahead and I disagree that I would be praising his (early) books now.
V. C. Andrews was a guilty pleasure when I was a teenager/college student, and I still sometimes go back and reread the “Flowers in the Attic” series. After that, though, except for “My Sweet Audrina” which was a one-off, I coudn’t get through any of her other series (I gave up after trying the first book of the next couple). I’m not sure exactly when Andrews died and somebody else started ghost-writing her stuff, but I could argue that the FitA series was at least a fresh idea, while every subsequent series seemed to just rehash old territory with different characters.
Douglas Preston said, in a Goodreads thread he participated in last year, that the upcoming book WILL be a stand alone, so …yay!
Yes! This is it, exactly. The exception is when she writes as Barbara Vine, for some reason. I thought The Minotaur was very good, but just about everything else since Sight for Sore Eyes has squicked me out mightily.
…and another vote for Stephen King, who I used to greatly enjoy but for years has churned out twice as many words for less than half the effect.
Plus all the detective fiction writers who’ve carried on well into the post-senility phase of their heroes (i.e. Robert Parker, Robert Crais, Dick Francis (deceased, but writing from the grave via the medium of his son) and their derivatives. Give it up, fellas, and especially you fans who need to move on to fresher stuff.
I really enjoy Ruth Rendell, but **salinqmind **makes a good point.
I used to love Ben Elton’s books - until the one with the graphic (oh so very graphic) fisting scene. The next book I picked up began with a graphic sex scene and I just put it to one side and haven’t finished it.
I struggled through a few Laurel Hamilton books, but must never had made it to the “good parts” sex versions of the series, since they had neither plot, character, or sex.
I loved Neal Stephenson up through The Diamond Age, after which he drifted quickly into less entertainment and more self-congratulatory narratives. His books now feel like a PBS William F Buckley style round-table discussion.
John Varley has slipped from all-time-favorite-must-reads-of-new-books-as-soon-as-they-hit-the-shelf to save-them-for-long-airplane-flights.
When Heinlein was good, he was great. But he did produce some less than great stories. And Stranger is not a good starting point for someone who is new to Heinlein. In addition, Stranger was a groundbreaking book that needed to be read for the first time in that era (the 60), as it has become fairly dated now. I used to love it, but nowadays I have issues with it.
Many of his stories are considered seminal. For instance, “By His Bootstraps” and “All You Zombies” are considered THE defining time travel stories, never mind H. G. Wells.
If you can find some of his books and collections in the library, check them out, especially the juveniles. Some are worth buying for your own collection.
Yikes. I may just stop reading it now if that’s coming up.
You got that right!
Robert B. Parker is also deceased, Just wanted to point out that he had a few different series of novels going on, branching out from Spencer. James Lee Burke writes novels with different protagonists from Dave Robichaux. And Robert Crais is writing novels starring new characters, too. There are probably more.
Alice Hoffman lost me with The River King, all the elements were there, but it simply didn’t gel and I disliked the characters. I think she’s writing young adult or kids stories now.
I loved Shibumi the first time I read it. I disliked it intensely the second time. The third time I found I could enjoy it and while at the same time notice all the things I didn’t like about it.
I went through the same cycle with Stranger In a Strange Land.
I enjoyed a lot of Michael Crichton’s books, but I couldn’t read him after this story broke (the article title ably sums up everything that disgusts me): Global Warming Denier Michael Crichton Fictionalizes Critic as Child Rapist
It’s funny, two of the frequent mentions here are Laurell K. Hamilton and Piers Anthony. I must have missed the window on them, because I picked up a novel by each of them within the last ten years, and I couldn’t read beyond a few chapters. I was like, “Why do people like these again?”
I’ll never forgive Thomas Harris for the execrable Hannibal. It’s one thing to go the Eddings or King route where you just start wearing thin, it’s a whole other level to deliberately shit on your fans.
John Grisham … thought his books were great legal thrillers, excellent popcorn books for the beach, but about the time I hit college the books got boring. I went back and read a couple of his earlier ones recently, and they feel like they hold up, so I’m going to go with “he’s changed”.
Tom Clancy+1 … I still enjoy the original Jack Ryan books up through Bear and the Dragon. I find them a lot shallower and more repeatative now, but as a whole they’re still worth a read. Basically after he sold out with “Tom Clancy’s Random Novel by Someone Else”, his own writing went to crap.
Orson Scott Card+1 … When his Homecoming Saga first 3 books came out, they were great books for me. After I grew up and realized they were an extremely thinly veiled rehashing of the Book of Mormon, I can’t really stand it too much. Also, by the time the 4th book came out, I think his writing got significantly, significantly less coherent or interesting.
I enjoyed her early stuff, stopped reading her for awhile, then picked up The River King for a quarter at a library sale. If it wouldn’t give me a reputation as the town cheapsake, I’d ask for my quarter back. That story made no sense at all.
Another author I’ve stopped reading is Toni Morrison. Her early stuff is miraculous, but Paradise was just hateful. I think that’s the title – it’s the one before A Mercy, which was fine, but too short.
No, I don’t think we would. While A Spell for Chameleon was better than many of the later Xanth novels, I’ve read plenty of other fantasy novels that were as good or better. If Anthony had given up on writing after Chameleon then I don’t think anyone would really miss him now. Lots of authors only publish a couple of books and never become particularly successful. Heck, if Terry Pratchett – a popular author here on the SDMB, a favorite of mine, and one who was capable of much more than the first two Discworld novels indicated – had quit after The Light Fantastic then I wouldn’t be thinking “I wish he’d stuck with it, that series had so much potential” now. He’d be just another fantasy author who’d written a couple of books that were reasonably entertaining but nothing really special.
The only Dan Brown novel I ever read was The DaVinci Code so I don’t know if he’s done this in other books, but right at the beginning of the book there’s a page that claims that while the plot and characters are fictional the secret societies and rituals are real.