nightshadea, do I get the impression you also read e.e. cummings, while listening to k.d. lang?
I actually HAD to read a Jacqueline Susann novel recently—The Love Machine!!—because a character was based on someone I was writing about, and I had to quote from the book. I never read it on the train, though; what if there was a derailment? “Woman found dead, clutching Jacqueline Susann book!”
NumberSix, I meant he recycles HIS OWN plots. I see the Lear thing you are trying to ascribe to Hugger Mugger, but I still think that was one of the worst of his books. I’ve read most of them from the beginning of the series, and it shows. Fenris, I agree with your Mary Sue analysis utterly. If that was your favorite one, read Family Honor, where his new female private eye does the same thing with a troubled teen girl. Story has it he wrote the book for Helen Hunt, because she was such a big fan of his work.
Back to Mary Sue, my SO (my Spenser pusher, if you will) and I have talked about what he could possibly do with the series to make it interesting. I think pretty much you’d have to kill off Susan and watch him go loco. Anything else is one more tale of how the invincible Spenser and Hawk defeated the villains and healed the psyche of their clients.
I want to raise a Piers Anthony question. I read a bunch of his stuff in my early teens before the gag reflex set in. For those who have read him extensively, what percentage of his novels involve graphic descriptions of a a teen girl losing her virginity? He’s creeeeeeepy…
[sub]I have a shelf-full of Barbara Hambly, as well as Anne McCaffrey and Jean Auel.[/sub]
Does 19th century schlock count, or does it become a classic once it’s 100 years old? Anthony Trollope is like candy for me.
Ok, all of you, line up and get out of my mind. Shoo.
The first thing I thought of when I saw this thread title was the Anita Blake series. I very much enjoyed the first few, but by the 5th book or so, the rape fantasy theme was becoming pathological. “I want to have sex with that vampire, but I’m going to say NO and fight him off, and then when he forces me, I’ll secretly enjoy it, and then after, I’ll act sullen and pissy about it.” Plus the idea that anyone would be attracted to that self-righteous, whining, wimpy Richard is beyond comprehension. Edward, however, rocks.
The Spenser novels … Number Six, lord knows I enjoy them, and read every one, but these are not great literature. Do Spenser and Susan ever notice that their lives are in a continuous loop? How can Hawk still be so mysterious after all this time? How does Spenser ever make any money? Will anyone ever notice that Susan has an eating disorder?
Count me in as an Outlander fan, heaven help me.
An oldie but a goodie … Sax Rohmer, especially his Fu Manchu novels. Racist, paranoid, imperialistic … but there’s something that keeps me coming back. It’s probably all the scenes that start with a gunshot from the garden, and then Sir Denis Nayland Smith exclaiming “Quick, there’s no time to waste!” (he always exclaims). Since there is No Time To Waste, they all move into high gear and Dr. Petrie makes everyone a bracing whisky and soda (quickly) so that they can go investigate the garden without wasting any time.
At the end, when Fu Manchu has once again escaped (why does Sir Denis still have a job?), and everyone asks “But how did the evil doctor carry out such evil plans?” instead of any kind of plot revelation, Sir Denis just shakes his head (over his whisky and soda) and exclaims “Such is the evil genius of Dr. Fu Manchu.” and everyone says “Ahhhh.” Dr. Petrie makes another round. I’ve found that if I drink along with the Fu Manchu gang, the books make a lot more sense.
Just remembered another guilty pleasure (jogged by the references to Mary Sue’s) that I don’t think has been mentioned yet, David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. Not great literature, but engaging (for me anyway). The books even comment on the fact that there’s a suspiciously high body count around her, yet she’s still alive.
[sub]Even guiltier, I like Weber’s War God’s Own books.[/sub]
There’s also the Basil Broketail series by an author who’s name escapes me at the moment.
GES
One more to add to the stack, the seventh book of Incarnations of Imortality (Of Eternity IIRC). In this book a judge and a young teen (around 13 or so I believe) have a thing. The “good guys” take the girl as a companion. Time then passes differently for the judge and the girl. She returns several years later having not aged (for her only a few weeks have passed). However she is now legally 18 so she and the judge can now indulge his preference for pubescent teens without legal implications. The whole thing was decisively offensive. Now I could have understood if Anthony had included a story line like this in his book about Satan. But to have the “good” characters encourage an obviously unbalanced relationship with a run-away teen and the middle aged judge who had earlier ruled on a case involving her, just offended me.
Ditto here. Until my mid-twenties I loved him as a light read. Now I couldn’t read him without retching.
None, as far as I’ve read. He gets…weirdly creepy in a “Hey little girl, let me show you something…interesting.” way. In Xanth, there’s an adult conspiracy (his words) to prevent children (little children mind you) from learning “how to summon the stork” (which, in Xanth is the literal truth…storks bring babies, and women get “fat” from laying around for 9 months, waiting for the stork to arrive). When a child is told how the stork brings kids, the kid is shocked, horrified and his/her innocence is lost. QED all adults long to tell kids about the stork, while at the same time resist so as to preserve their own power and control over the kid. Blech. There’s a couple of creepy scenes where he shows kids being told.
And let’s not get started on the whole “It ain’t rape if you know your attacker” thing from the first Xanth book.
Whadda pig.
Fenris
Jeez, you all keep mentioning guilty pleasures of mine. if I ever deluded myself about my Uniqueness As An Example Of The Human Animal, those notions have been utterly disabused…
(“Well, christ, Pix, they’re called ‘best sellers’ because lots of people read 'em. You’ll have to find another barometer for your, ahem, SPECIALness.”)
Okay. Here’s my list…
Spenser, of course, although Robert Parker started to look a little peaked to me once I began reading Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole novels. Speaking of which…
The Elvis Cole novels. All of the basics of the Chandler/MacDonald/Parker hard-boiled-dick template, done just a little more freshly; possibly because Elvis Cole isn’t a tenth as smug or self-satisfied as ol’ Spense is. Also possibly because the character of Joe Pike makes Hawk look like the completely unlikely creation that he is. Also also possibly that when Crais realized he’d taken Elvis and Joe about as far as he could take them, he stopped writing them.
Nero Wolfe: I know, I know, they’re Classic Mysteries, but nobody reads them for the PLOTS, do they?
Larry Niven’s Known Space cycle: I was in my teens when I discovered these and, true to form, bought up and read every one that I could. Goodness knows, Niven isn’t any better a writer than most people who crank out science fiction, but boy, them aliens was cool.
Ann Rule’s Crime Files: I still confess to a salted-peanuts fondness for these true-crime potboilers, in a slow-down-and-gawk-at-the-traffic-accident kind of way. These taught me very quickly that confessing to a fondness for books about serial killers and sociopaths is no way to get a second date.
Oh, yeah… forgot one…
The Doc Savage pulp reprints by “Kenneth Robeson” (a/k/a Lester Dent).
I observe that this thread began as a discussion of writers we knew were terrible but kept reading anyway – but we’ve all ended up mentioning writers who may be hackish, may be formulaic, but are by no stretch of the imagination “bad writers.”
Sigh. They just don’t make stinky book cheese like they used to. Ah, John Norman, where are you now?
I love the Elvis Cole novels, but I consider them just good enought that they’re not really a guilty pleasure. I believe Crais is going to write more Elvis books, though – last I heard, he said the next one is going to do for Elvis’ character what L.A. Requiem did for Joe Pike’s.
One series I do enjoy along with a moderate swig of guilt is Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels. They’re hardly great literature, and I’d like to know how long Evanovich is going to string out Steph’s dithery confusion about commitment and her incompetence as a bounty hunter, but when I discovered them I read through the first five in about a week, and the sixth as soon as I was head of the library waiting list.
I have to check and see where I am on the library’s Seven Up list, actually . . .
Damn, beat me to it! As soon as I saw the Elinor Glyn ref, I thought of SJ Perelman’s send-up of “Six Weeks”. God, he was funny.
Fenris: You’re right about The Punisher / Executioner. My bad. In defense of the Spiderman people, though, theirs was a much better character.
Regarding Spenser, I never said Parker was a great writer. He isn’t. But neither is he a bad author, which is what the OP asks for. There is a wide variety of quality between great and bad, and Parker falls somewhere in between. He is, IMO, a good writer, and among the best in the crime genre (second to Elmore Leonard, who is a great writer, but who generally doesn’t do detectives).
I don’t doubt that Spenser is Parker’s idealized vision of what a man should be, but he’s hardly perfect {for a true Mary Sue, check out Dirk Pitt). Spenser has in the past been shot twice by bad guys, most recently when he knew that there was a hit out on him and he just got out drawn. He once had a client killed while acting as her bodyguard, purely due to making a stupid mistake. He has robbed hookers just because he needed the money, and then murdered their pimp in cold blood. Most of this was during the 80’s, the high point of the series, and the quality has fallen off lately. The best books are the 4 or 5 that deal with the time of Spenser and Susan’s break up and reconciliation. Taken as a whole, the series is IMO good writing. Parker’s non-series books recently (Poodle Springs, Gunman’s Rhapsody) indicate to me that when he isn’t constrained by the requirements of a series, he’s still on the top of his game.
What to do to make the series interesting? I agree that killing a major character (Hawk or Susan) would work. I wouldn’t really mind if Parker decided to kill Spenser, as that would give Parker the chance to really let all the stops out.
I do have to disagree with you regarding Spenser’s loyalty to Susan. The only time Spenser slept with other women was during the aforementioned break up period, and even then he was constantly comparing them to Susan (sometimes favorably). Another Parker Character, Jesse Stone, is the type that will sleep with anything in a skirt, and makes no apologies for it.
Not only do I read everything Harry Turtledove writes, but I buy his stuff in hardback. :eek:
Danimal, you stand charged with…
Reading and enjoying Piers Anthony. How plead you?
Guilty. Anthony, i insist, is a good stylist. I have enjoyed everything he wrote (well, everything except For Love of Evil), no matter how absurd or frail the plot. I only feel bad when I get to the end. He’s a Schedule I narcotic, I tell you; you feel high all the time you read him, then the high wears off and you’re depressed.
Reading and enjoying Dean Koontz. How plead you?
Guilty.
Reading and enjoying David Weber. How plead you?
Guilty. On Basilisk Station, Path of the Fury, and Mutineer’s Moon have at least some claim to be good books, I insist, but I have no excuse for reading the rest of his work. Particularly The Apocalypse Troll - ouch! Ya shoulda listened to Jerry Pournelle, David: the greatest favor any author can do to his reading public is to burn his trunk.
Reading and enjoying Robert Jordan. How plead you?
Guilty, but I didn’t enjoy it any more after book 3.
Reading and enjoying Terry Goodkind. How plead you?
Guilty, but I only enjoyed books 1, 2, and 4.
Reading and enjoying Ayn Rand. How plead you?
Guilty.
Reading and enjoying Victor Herbert. How plead you?
Guilty, and I deny that the charge constitutes a crime. Herbert is a Hugo and Nebula award winner, dammit! He’s a good author! (Well, OK, The Eyes of Heisenberg kinda stank, but even good authors aren’t perfect).
This gave me the weirdest mental picture. Imagine a turn of the century operetta (full costumes, etc):
“Babes in Dune-land”
or
“God-Emperor of Toyland”
or
“The Red Mill Plague”
Frank Herbert was the writer, Victor Herbert wrote operettas. 
Fenris
I love the Destroyer stories, which I believe are currently being penned by Will Murray. I own every single Dr.Who paperback, all the Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt books, all the Mercedes Lackey stories, and most of the Dean Koontz books.
And I put catsup on my hot dogs.
God, you people are sick
Sick, sick, sick.
You disgust me. I’m leaving.
[sub]What’s this?[/sub]
Go away!
[sub]Next to the Conans.[/sub]
They’re Howards! None of those “Conan of Cinnebon” rip-offs.
[sub]Gor?[/sub]
They’re for research!
[sub]20 volumes?[/sub]
I was 15 when I bought 'em. They’re collectors items! Do you know how much they go for on ebay? . . . Well . . .
[sub]nudge[/sub]
All right, all right. Sorry, folks. It’s a fair cop, but society’s to blame.
ive heard that robert jourdan is a pen name for someone … and hes a current writer of sci/fi fantasy ect
anyone else heard who hes supposed ot be if its true ?
Wow…you haven’t read this book, have you? To characterise the novel as a defense of pedophiles doesn’t even remotely address what the book is about. The incident to which you refer is the subject of a single chapter (not the novel as a whole), for one thing; and is the only part of the book that even addresses anything resembling pedophilia (but not pedophilia itself). It upset people, certainly; and it’s amazing to me how quickly and vehemently people jumped to characterising it in this fashion, when a reading reveals this is not remotely accurate.
Quick synopsis, not for the faint-of-sensitivity-to-these-things:
The character in question (a 5 year old girl named Nymph–how’s that for subtlety) is being chased and tormented by her brother, and takes refuge inside a house nearby, where she meets a man named Mad (short for Maddock). He is understandably concerned at her presence in his house, and warns her how dangerous it is to go into strangers’ houses. She explains to him that her brother is chasing her and being mean and she needs somewhere to hide. Mad asks what her brother is doing to her, and a story spills out that he is forcing her to allow him to anally penetrate her with a candle. She also reveals that her father “plays” with her sometimes, but “just when things are gettin’ good” and she’s “starting to get into it”, he gets mad and makes her quit. She wants Mad to explain to her why Daddy gets mad at her and Brother wants to stick candles “where she poops.”
Mad, having been previously caught in a sexual relationship with another young girl (older than Nymph, but still too young…if memory serves, about 14), insists that while her brother and father shouldn’t be doing these things to her, it isn’t something that he really should be explaining to her, and she really shouldn’t be there. She insists relentlessly, as kids will when they want to know something; because as much as she hates her brother, she loves her Daddy, and wants to understand what she’s doing wrong.
This eventually leads to a extremely reluctant (on Mad’s part) session of SexEd 101, complete with demonstrations (Nymph will settle for no less) which prove to be…um, er…successful for both parties. A relationship between the two develops, evidently quite gratifying and satisfying to both of them, which only crashes and burns when her brother follows her one day and spies in the window.
Charges are filed, and Nymph is tricked by the prosecution into testifying against Mad (she’s told that anything she can tell them about her relationship will help him–who she loves in her childlike way–so she unwittingly (and trustingly) gives them so much rope on him that they wouldn’t have to settle for hanging; they could cocoon the guy). Mad (her only friend) is promptly arrested, jailed, and killed in prison. Nymph, meanwhile, is put back with her abusive family, devastated by the news of Mad’s murder, emotionally destroyed by the conviction that it was her fault, and spends the rest of her days an emotional wreck.
End Synopsis
Anthony’s point was (if I read him correctly) that society’s attitudes towards children and sexuality aren’t nearly the damage preventative that they are supposed to be (and that we are led to believe they are), and indeed can be very damaging in their own right. Sexual abuse comes in many forms, not all of which are recognised officially, because sometimes (as in this case) they are sanctioned officially. Other than Nymph herself, there were four players in this scenario: the father, the brother, Mad, and the System. I won’t put words in Anthony’s mouth, but the impression I got was that he was saying that while everyone rushes to condemn Mad’s actions, if anything he was the only one involved who didn’t sexually abuse her. Aside from society’s position that any sexual contact with a child is abuse by definition (which I still have difficulty agreeing with–and evidently so does he), I would have to concur with him.
He writes under the name of Sharon Greene. And if he doesn’t, then she is a damn fine imitation. Crystals of Mida, anyone?
And yep, my family owns at least one copy of every book or one out of each series mentioned here. Perry Rhodan, the Lensmen, Doc Savage, Anita Blake, Bazil Broketail, the Destroyer (actually, some of these were pretty sharp social satire), got 'em all.
I thought we were called bibliophages?