# Fiction book / author of good repute, avoided for foolish reason -- anyone else done this?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-book-author-of-good-repute-avoided-for-foolish-reason-anyone-else-done-this/684243
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [March 21, 2014, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-book-author-of-good-repute-avoided-for-foolish-reason-anyone-else-done-this/684243 "2014-03-21T20:12:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2014, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-book-author-of-good-repute-avoided-for-foolish-reason-anyone-else-done-this/684243/21 "2014-03-23T22:55:00Z")
> [@vontsira](#):
>
> Re the bizarre legal proceedings – good grief ! So, what happened to the partridge 🙂 ?
No partridge. Augustus was suspicious his food might be tampered with, so he wouldn’t eat anything except freshly picked fruit and veggies, taken under his own eye. What he didn’t know was that his wife Livia snuck out and coated some of the pears with poison beforehand. I think it was her, or her son Tiberius, who condemned the tree, but I’ll have to get the book out again to be sure. Lots of detail in those things.
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### Author:  [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)
#### Post date: [March 24, 2014, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fiction-book-author-of-good-repute-avoided-for-foolish-reason-anyone-else-done-this/684243/22 "2014-03-24T10:25:03Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> My dad would often pick authors, actors or singers because of their ideologies.
>
> Whenever I found out that a favorite of his had political leanings he wouldn’t have cared for, I was very careful not to mention it. I’m not talking about “likes to roast live puppies”, but things like being in favor of the introduction of divorce (something which Dad’s own sister-in-law was very much in need of at the time).
“Pro-or-anti-because of ideology” is something that a good many people do: it can be hard to achieve the ideal of appreciating the quality of someone’s work, setting aside less positive aspects of the person. An uncle of mine was able to take this ideal position, concerning Evelyn Waugh – whose political and social views and attitudes were in every way, the extreme opposite of my uncle’s; plus he was aware that as a private individual, in his dealings with other folk, Waugh was notoriously a very nasty person. However, my uncle found the guy’s novels, works of genius which he enjoyed immensely.
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