I love to read. I really really love to read. I read everything and anything and should be reading a text book for an exam at 2.00 tomorrow but had to finish a novel instead. I finished the novel and threw it across the room where I nearly kneecapped my boyfriend and beheaded the cat.
The author that sucks is Karin Slaughter (I really hope no-one on the Board is a relative). I have bought, read, re-read and loved crime thrillers by Jonathan Kellerman (always neatly tied up the end), the first 4 novels by Cornwall (all the rest followed the Kellerman recipe), P D James (unsurpassed), RD Winfield and Elizabeth George and the outstanding modern crime classics by La Plant. However Slaughter had me howling with laughter when it was an obviously serious moment, and gave me more WTF? moments than … than… I don’t know … I’m too distressed! Does anyone else her novels - am I not getting it?
Haven’t read that author, but I gotta warn you - do NOT read any of Cornwall’s novels that don’t have Kay Scarpetta in them. She lost her mind at some point and put out some of the worst tripe I’ve ever had the misfortune to read. Approach with caution!
Funny you should write that! Apparently she has started to believe her own bullshit about Lucy et al. I loved her first novels - you didn’t know the killer until he/she was caught by proper investigating methods. But THEN she brings in the factors that a) Lucy is a lesbian and all round computer genius b) her lover is killed - only to be resurrected etc. I feel your pain - I thought I was only to something good, only to have this author go the “Kellerman” way - everything is neatly tied up at the end. I want to smack myself in the head … oh… there are smilies to do that for me! Some detective I would make! :smack:
Sorry to do this but the novel I was reading, a killer stalks a blind girl into toilets after drugging her tea in a crowded lunchtime diner. He proceeds to mutilate her in the most awful way. There had to be blood everywhere, but nobody saw a thing, even though the said diner is situated on the only busy street in a small town. The perp would have had to been covered with blood, not to mention the screams of his victim should have been heard by other patrons of said loo. The ending was that the perp had deliberately drugged the tea at a time when the heroine was having lunch with her sister and should have saved said victim. I am more likely to wake up next to James Packer than that ever happening in real life! Mind you, I wouldn’t particularly like to wake up to James Packer, he is a wanker even if he is Australia’s richest wanker. Oh, and without the plot holes.
One of my guilty reading pleasures has been the Miss Julia books, by Ann Ross. I don’t know how I ever happened upon them in the first place, but they’re just simple stories about a crotchety old Southern lady who reminds me of my Grandma. I’ve been reading the series all along, and last night I finished the most recent, Miss Julia Strikes Back.
Of course, these stories are always filled with serendipity, but this one was absolutely a string of unbelievable coincidence and dumb luck from beginning to end. Long story short, the clueless old lady, along with her young grandson, a female neighbor, and an alcoholic private investigator working under duress break up a ring of jewel thieves. Uh-huh.
The bullshittiest part of all was when the old lady and her grandson kidnap the PI from a strip bar, take him to a motel room, steal his clothes, and nurse him through a bout of DTs.
Another irritating part was when the old lady offers to pay the private investigator to attend church for a year. He accepts ( :dubious: ) and is “saved” on the very first Sunday! ( :rolleyes: ) These books have always dealt with religion and church matters, being, as I said, about an old Southern lady like my grandma. But they’ve always been done in a sort of humorous vein. This time, I felt it was really heavy-handed.
Anyway, so it was crap when I picked it up and I knew it, so that’s what I get for reading crap. But I still have to say, “Man! That was crap!”
Terry Goodkind is what would happen if Ayn Rand wrote fantasy after (self-admittedly) never reading any fantasy as a way to act out her sadomasochistic rape fantasies.
So… wait. What? How do you act out sadomasochistic rape fantasies by never reading fantasy? And if Ayn Rand’s rape fantasy can only be acted out by not reading fantasy… Then her rape fantasy isn’t really a fantasy until she writes fantasy after not reading fantasy? Or is it the other way around?
And Terry Goodkind exists, now! Does that mean that all of this REALLY HAPPENED?
Terry Brooks is what would happen if Ayn Rand wrote, but did not fantasize about, erotic fantasy involving the sadomasochistic rape fantasies of Anne Rice, having never acted out fantasies in which she read erotic fantasy but never admitted it to herself.
Robert Jordan is what would happen if she allowed Raymond E. Feist to watch.
Heh I have to derail this thread even further but seriously what the hell happened to Terry Goodkind? So-so but readable fantasy for the first few books then book after book where the main characters sit around talking about how everyone needs to be a strong freedom loving individual any form of charity is for lazy morons and Richard Rahl is the best at every goddamn task in the universe so everyone sooner or later ends up loving him and following his shinning example (of course the hypocrisy of his habit of totally annihilating everyone that stands against him and flat out telling other nations to join his empire or be conquered yet spouting endlessly about how everyone should be powerful individualists beholden to nobody is unacknowledged). I was pretty far into the series when I finally just quit in disgust after he made bigger and bigger strawmen for Richard to slay. Seriously who has such a beef with pacifists that he makes them look like totally brain dead morons, hypocrites, and yet somehow so insanely dangerous they had to be sealed off from the rest of the world in case (oh god the horror) the idea of nonviolence actually spread throughout the world!
She writes Cinderella fantasies for bored housewives. No big secret to their popularity. They’re certainly not good literature, but the appeal to her market segment doesn’t need much explanation.
Before I opened this thread I played my game of “how many responses until xxxx is mentioned?”
Today xxxx = “Dan Brown”
I’m really surprised that I’m the first one to mention Dan Brown as an author that (in my opinion) sucks balls. Every story is almost identical. Ugh! it just pisses me off thinking about how much of my life I’ve wasted reading his ‘other’ stories.
I’m a romance novel reader and I don’t consider them fine literature by any stretch. However, I can usually follow the story as it coherently advances, and the character development, such as it is. Some even have a gentle humor to them. The one I read by her? No idea what she was trying to relate. In fact, I saw a movie of the book once and it took me days to realize that that was the book it was based on, the book was so inscrutable.
:smack: 