Authors you used to like, but don't now.

[elfkin477]

@Beastly_Rotter

Someone, can’t remember who, described her books as “Three generations of Chinese women argue in the kitchen.”

Awesome

[kaylasdad99]

Lawrence Sanders. I read a couple of his “Deadly Sins” potboilers, and liked them pretty well; I thought I would enjoy “The Tomorrow File.” I sorta enjoyed it, but found it a little dystopian for my taste at the time (I was in my early twenties, and preferred my protagonists to actually get through their novels at least at square one, if not ahead of the game).

A couple of years ago, I came across a couple of his titles in the lending library at work, and decided that maybe I had judged him too harshly. So I read McNally’s Luck and McNally’s Caper. Worst character I have ever read about. Sanders evidently thought he could be the second coming of Rex Stout and P.G. Wodehouse, with his Archie Goodwin/Bertie Wooster mashup, living in Southern California’s closest approximation to Blandings that will ever be conceived.

And I don’t particularly care that McNally struck me as being as gay as an explosion in a glitter factory; but his aggressive hyperheterosexuality* really grated. Overcompensate much, Reggie?

[Sister_Vigilante]

I’ll add Dean Koontz to my list too. He doesn’t need a golden retriever in every book. In one of them he even had a “half golden retriever that was white.”

They have white dogs you can use you know.

[kushiel]

Jacqueline Carey. Not that it’s a quality thing, but I fell in love with her first published fiction book, and nothing since then has quite interested me the same.

I actually find that with a lot of authors. I fall in love with some work of theirs, and as they evolve as writers and start new series and explore new ideas I stop reading them, because I just really want a certain thing over and over and over again. It doesn’t help that I get super attached to characters and don’t want the story to move away from them. Multigenerational stories frustrate me.

[Hershele_Ostropoler]

I used to think Peter De Vries was an underrated genius. I still think he’s good, but I’m not quite as enthusiastic.

And I’ll join the chorus for Ayn Rand here, though I never really got into her.

[Ulf_the_Unwashed]

@SCAdian

I was very happy when she killed off a certain character. I was very unhappy when she brought that character back.

Loved the first few books, but eventually gave up on her…

I still think that the first book in the series is one of the great mystery novels around. And like you, I thought the next few were pretty good as well.

And my reaction to the killing-off/unkilling-off of that character was again just like yours.

It was right around then that I realized that I was rooting for Cornwell to kill off all the other central characters as well, especially the one who was younger than the rest of 'em but the other “adults” too. That was when I decided I was done with the series. (Among other reasons, to be sure, but that was a good tip-off to me.)

[kbear]

I haven’t read a Cromwell novel in ages but the last one I remember thinking “when did Scarpetta turn into such a bitch?” IMaybe she was all along I don’t remember but suddenly she was completely unlikeable. f you grow to hate the main character what’s the point of continuing to read?

I also used to be a fan of the Inspector Lynley series by Elizabeth George…formulaic as most long running detective series are…but since she killed off the wife the quality has progressively declined. The last one was pretty much unreadable IMO.

[PunditLisa]

@kbear

I haven’t read a Cromwell novel in ages but the last one I remember thinking “when did Scarpetta turn into such a bitch?”

Exactly. I kept expecting Scarpetta to thaw out, to discover that being a workaholic in a dead-end relationship wasn’t bringing her any joy. Instead, two decades later, she’s still a humorless bitch, without even a freaky side to make her interesting or remotely likeable. It makes me wonder if Patricia Cornwell is such a cold fish in person.

[Seanette]

@Sister_Vigilante

I’ll add Dean Koontz to my list too. He doesn’t need a golden retriever in every book. In one of them he even had a “half golden retriever that was white.”

They have white dogs you can use you know.

Cold Fire lacks any canine character whatsoever, so does Velocity.

[Scumpup]

Another one where I changed: Philip Jose Farmer. As a high school lad and a bored young soldier, I read the World of Tiers series and the Riverworld series (courtesy of the Science Fiction Book Club) with great enthusiasm. In later years, when I tried re-reading them, Farmer got on my my nerves something awful. One thing in particular, from The World of Tiers, was his repetetive use of some colossally annoying onomotopoeia. Every time those arrows “slissed and kukked” I wanted to punch him right in the taint. Also from The World of Tiers, Kiickaha was such an especially irritating Mary Sue that any good editor should have suggested PJF confine him solely to wank sessions.
The Riverworld series still read okay until they actually got to the tower thing. Then it all turned to shit. All that shit with wathans and such…good Christ what a let down.

[Sicks_Ate]

@Seanette

Cold Fire lacks any canine character whatsoever, so does Velocity.

Was there a juke box?

I seem to remember running in to all kinds of those in Koontz books. Or was that a different author?

[Seanette]

@Sicks_Ate

Was there a juke box?

I seem to remember running in to all kinds of those in Koontz books. Or was that a different author?

The only Koontz book I remember with mention of jukeboxes was The Bad Place, although there might have been passing reference in Velocity, given that the protagonist of the latter is a bartender and several of his co-workers are significant characters as well.

Could have been mentions I missed, or in books I haven’t read.

[Yorikke]

@Scumpup

Every time those arrows “slissed and kukked” I wanted to punch him right in the taint.

“Slissed and kukked?”

crosses PJF off the list

Yeah, I wanna gooch-punch him as well.

[Chronos]

Quoth CalMeacham:

…and I haven’t read anythi ng but old Piers Anthony in years.

I really hope the “but” there was a typo for “by”.

And I, too, went through a Piers Anthony phase as a teenager (in fact, that’s the proximate source of my username). Now, I realize that all of his work is dreck, and the best that can be said is that at least some of it is fun dreck.

[Zsofia]

@Beastly_Rotter

Someone, can’t remember who, described her books as “Three generations of Chinese women argue in the kitchen.”

No, no, it’s “My husband, he bad man.”

ETA - That doesn’t mean I haven’t quite enjoyed several Amy Tan novels, mind.

[chargerrich]

Piers Anthony

I grew up on his novels at a time when the puns were genuinely funny and seemed smart. Now that I am older I see how simplistic most of the narrative is and the whole “Country of Florida” got old.

[hogarth]

Another series I lurrrrved when I was a kid was “The People’s Almanac” and “The Book of Lists” (by Wallechinsky, Wallace and Wallace). But now that I realise that the stuff in there is sub-sub-sub-Wikipedia quality in terms of reliability, it takes a lot of the enjoyment away. They might as well be called “The Book of Stuff I Heard Once From This Guy”.

[JohnT]

@Krokodil

90 posts in and no mention of Harlan Ellison or JD Salinger?

Your post made me realize I started a thread like this a while ago, using Harlan as my example… let me dig it up and requote myself:

We all have books/music/TV shows/etc that we used to listen to as kids/teenagers that, upon looking back, are not as… totally awesome… as we once thought. But how about stuff that we got into in our 20s, 30s, and beyond that, looking back now, you wonder “Did I really like that? Why?”

To me, the #1 example of this (currently) is Harlan Ellison. I got into him when I was 21, 22 or so which started a good 5-10 year period where I would try to find and read everything the man wrote (especially his non-fiction essays), all of it read with the knowledge that I was reading one of the Greatest Living American Writers EVAH. I’d go to conventions and get him to sign books, making sure to attend every workshop/conference/lecture that he was scheduled for.

And, as you know, life happens. I caught up with most of his stuff so that the backlog shrank (meaning I read less and less Ellison viz other authors). I got into different authors, different mediums… also got married and had a kid. So the Ellison books were picked up less and less often, to the point where year(s) would pass before my picking up a Harlan Ellison book.

So about a year ago, I decided to revisit Mr. Ellison and recapture the love by reading through the more than 25 novels/collections/essays, spanning 4 decades, that were on my shelf. And while he is an amazingly talented author, I frankly got bored with his histrionics, the way that any and everything that he didn’t like/care for was A Threat To Liberal Civilization As We Know It. Star Wars (making people stupid). Video games (teaching kids that there’s no winning in life (huh?)). People he disagreed with politically. Child beauty pageants. Jerry Falwell. Illiterate criminals. Kitty Genovese. The list goes on and on and on and… on.

It was wearying. It was tiring. It was like listening to a perpetually angry 24-year old rant about whatever he happens to be looking at. And I realized: I had outgrown Harlan Ellison; that whatever he offered to me 15 years ago… well, that was 15 years ago. I’m different now, but he’s still the same. (If you want my opinion, it was my kid that did it. For over 4 decades Ellison wrote like he’s still 24 years old, responsible for and to nobody but himself. It would be interesting to see how having the responsibility for another life would’ve modified Ellison’s writing (as far as I know he never had children. Sure never referenced them in his writing, and Ellison loves nothing more than talking about the World of Ellison.))

[hogarth]

@JohnT

Your post made me realize I started a thread like this a while ago, using Harlan as my example… let me dig it up and requote myself:

From that thread, I’ll have to agree with Michael Moorcock. I used to love the Elric series, for instance, but the most recent time I went back and reread it, it just seemed kind of overwrought and formulaic. The most recent book of his that I read (The Dreamthief’s Daughter) didn’t impress me, either.

[astorian]

So, if you no longer like an author you used to love, is it because…

1. When you were much younger, his/her work seemed profound and/or inspirational… but now that you’re older and wiser, it seems kinda, well, sophomoric and stupid (former Ayn Rand, Kurt Vonnegut and JRR Tolkien fans often fall into this category.

2. The books he/she was writing 10, 20, 30 years ago were great… but the last few books have been lousy. A once-great artist ran out of creative gas, and is just going through the motions now (former Stephen King and Tom Clancy fans often fall into this category.

3. I found out some things about an author I used to love, and that’s completely changed what I once thought about him/her.

4. It’s not really the author- I’ve completely changed my lifestyle and beliefs, and people who used to inspire me now don’t (fans of assorted Christian authors may fall into this category).

Basically, it comes down to this question: did the writer change, or did you?