The converse of this thread. Ever figure “What the hell, I’ll try reading this author” and been surprised?
I saw Andrew Vachss on Oprah, picked up his first book, and never opened it until 7 years later during a boring Sunday morning. Man oh man oh man. I was totally enthralled.
I knew that Maya Angelou was a poet praised by Oprah. I happened upon a couple of her nonfiction memoirs at a library book sale. Let me tell you, the lady can write!
Lastly, I picked up The Girl in Blue by P.G. Woodhouse four years ago, and read it last week. Five chapters in, I wanted to run out and buy everything he ever wrote.
I don’t know Andrew Vachss, but I agree about Maya Angelou, and I’ve loved Wodehouse since I was a teen. I’m not sure i remember, The Girl In Blue though.
I was pleasantly surprised by Moby-Dick, Vanity Fair and Great Expectations (among other classics of literature). I thought they would be more plodding and turgid, but they turned out to be real page-turners. For me, anyways.
A friend gave me a copy of Christpopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel for Christmas a few years ago. I’d never heard of Moore before, but he blew me away. I was reading aloud excerpts from every other page to my wife. We’ve since read all his books
I was amazed at how good a read The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mister Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson was, and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. In junior high I was blown away by Robert Fitzgerald’s translation of The Odyssey by Homer. I tried reading Richmond Lattimore’s Iliad afterwards, and discovered I hatedc him. But when Fitzgerald translated the Iliad a few years later, I eagerly read it and loved it.
An old friend who reads mostly history loaned me a book by Norman Maclean called Young Men And Fire. I accepted it as a courtesy but really had no interest in reading about a forest fire in 1949. I picked it up when I was short on things to read and was totally captivated by the story and how he told it. When I finished, I was sad to learn that Maclean had only written one other book, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories.
The same friend loaned me The Survival of The Bark Canoe by John McPhee, and I had the same lack of interest. Luckily, when I finished the canoe book I found that McPhee has written lots of books about an amazing array of subjects. He has become my favorite non-fiction writer.
When I was a young 'un, my mom went on and on about Georgette Heyer’s “Regency romances”. It got to the point I rolled my eyes any time she brought them up (along with her other artistic obsession, Victorian architecture).
Many years later, while visiting the old parental homestead, I found myself bored out of my mind. I wandered into the “library”, saw my mom’s collection of Heyer and thought, “Oh, what the heck! What do I have to lose?” They were a lot of fun and intelligently written. I later read some of her other works (not set during the Regency) and liked them as well.
A downside Heyer’s Regency romances share with Wodehouse’s “Jeeves & Wooster” series is that, after one reads about seven of them, one notices how repetitive the plot construction is. IOW, they become formulaic.
I grudgingly started Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora even though it didn’t really seem like my thing (too much fantasy and much too twee) because people kept recommending it. It turned out to be amazing.
Heinlein. I tried Stranger In A Strange Land When I was about 25, and hated it. Incomprehensible ramblings. I reluctantly tried The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress a few years ago, at about 37, and absolutely loved it. I’ve already re-read it once, and dammit, I might just go dig it up…
A friend in college introduced me to the Jeeves and Wooster stories. Just the descriptions on the back of the books made me want to vomit - I do not generally enjoy stories and movies set in that sort of milieu. But the characters are not at all what I expected, the stories are so well-crafted, and the words on the page are so pleasing to read, that I utterly fell in love.
Middlemarch by George Eliot. Decided to try the book after watching the miniseries. The book does have a slow start, but I knew stuff was going to happen so I persevered and was rewarded.
Same with Therese Raquin by Emile Zola. Watched the movie first, read the book, then went on to read a bunch of Zola’s other work and enjoyed all of it.
I’ve had good luck with a lot of 19th century/early 20th century authors. I think I assumed that since people didn’t have the myriad entertainment choices we have, they settled. That’s not true. Readers have always appreciated good books, and there’s a reason those authors were popular.
Somehow I managed to escape Dickens all through school. For decades I’ve been hearing what a turgid slog it was getting through his books. I guess somewhere along the way I’ve picked up enough other 19th century books and watched enough Dickens adaptations that when I finally picked up my first real Dickens novel, I loved it, found it gripping, and could hardly put it down until my arms got tired of holding it up (Little Dorritt is a pretty lengthy tome, and Bleak House the same). I think it is easier because the really good adaptations give me enough of a road map that I do not lose the story thread in the lengthy digressions. And I really like the long prosy rambles.
Yes!! That’s me too. My wife urged me for several years to read PGW, but I resisted because I don’t like English costume drama films/books. In other words: my stubborn ignorance.
Fortunately for me, she gently persisted, a year or two ago I finally gave in and read one of the Jeeves stories, and by page three I was a convert. I’ve since consumed all of the Jeeves & Wooster stories and a metric scatload of PGW’s other stuff.
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I went to read The Curse of Clifton by Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth (the best selling of the 19th century US authors) after a college professor suggested we read an example of a sentimental novel. The book was nicely done and very well plotted (even if a few elements and assumptions were badly dated).
In the realm of comic books, I picked up a copy of Swam Thing #1, knowing nothing about it, and only buying it because I thought the name was so stupid. Boy, was I wrong about that.
An ex- of mine gifted me with The Master and Margarita on some occasion or another, and it sat on my shelf gathering dust for a couple years, as Russian literature and I never really got along. Czech and Polish and other Eastern European lit I loved, but I just never could get into the Russians I’ve read. And then, one day, on a long train trip, I decided to take it with me and at least try to get through the first chapter. Long story short, I couldn’t stop reading it and now it’s up there with Lolita as my two favorite works of literature.
And I would say that the The Girl
In Blue isn’t even one of his better ones! His peak period, in my opinion, was the late 20s to the early 50s. As other have commented, his work is formulaic, and towards the end He relies more on his formula for plots. But the writing style always sparkles.
Lois McMaster Bujold. I’m a writer and I was going through a phase in which nothing of mine was selling. One day I noticed that my husband (who’s Andy L) had a bunch of books around the house, all written by Lois. He told me I had to read them. I said I would as soon as I sold another story. It took a couple of months. The book was a collection titled Borders of Infinity. I’ve read all of her work in the Vorkosiganverse.
