So it is. I like Good as a Steaming Pile of Liquified Doggie Doo even better.
Like Gold was one of the oft-used catchphrases of the book… that’ll teach me to post without getting up and verifying.
It stops being the Bible and starts being adventures and battles around about page 80. It took me many tries to make it that far. But now, I love it.
As for the OP:
Phillip Pullman
Love: The Golden Compass
Really engaging, interesting alternate world fantasy with fun characters. There’s a civilization of armored bears living in the Arctic, what’s not to love?
Hate: The Amber Spyglass
The universe is saved by two 13 year olds having sex. Oh, and religion is stupid.
I was … let down.
I have another, John Fowles. I couldn’t put down The Collector, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, or even the evil, convoluted The Magus
But, The Ebony Tower, and Daniel Martin, thanks for playing, better luck next time.
Oh one more Larry McMurtry His westerns are joys to behold. Even the Texas series, Terms of Endearment, Cadillac Jack, Texasville and The Last Picture Show were enjoyable, but Somebody’s Darling and All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers are vapid and truely, IMO, pass-worthy.
(Although, I love the last title, I’ve felt that soo many times in my life.)
Robert Charles Wilson:
Liked: The Harvest
Not so liked: The Chronoliths - Long way to go with no payoff
Huh. I adore the Baroque Cycle and thought Zodiac pretty much sucked. Matter of taste I guess.
My, we do read a lot of sci-fi, don’t we?
I loved loved loved Harry Harrison’s A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!. The Stainless Steel Rat, on the other hand…blah.
Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series - Books one through five are my favorite fantasy writing ever; I like them better than Tolkien, Lewis, MacDonald, Dunsany, etc. - and then number six and onward have been unreadable.
Charles Dickens:
A Tale of Two Cities was a wonderful story of a man making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of love.
Oliver Twist was ostensibly a political comment on the morality of using capitol punishment on children. In reality, it was an early treatise on bipolar disorder. To summarize:
“Oh, I’m so miserable! Alas, it is my lot in life to suffer!”
“Oh, I’m so happy! My life will be wonderful and happy and full of trees and flowers and chirping birds and…”
“Oh, woe is me! Why do I suffer so?”
“Oh, joy! This surely must be what heaven is like!”
… ad nauseum …
It took me alphbetising my bookshelves to realise that the author of that derivative, predictable dreck that was The Dragonbone Chair and sequals was the very same person who amazed me with the Otherland quartet.
(I was sixteen at the time, I think. Now I’m just lukewarm about the both of them.)
Niven and Pournelle: Loved The Mote in God’s Eye, hated The Burning City. I can’t even remember if I finished it or not. What happened to the guys who wrote Footfall and Legacy of Heorot?
Oh, and I’m somewhat reversed from the OP: I loved Neverwhere, but was a bit ambivalent about American Gods (it just seemed to drag a bit in the middle bits). Of course, I’ll still read Anansi Boys (I’m next on the queue in my public library! Yay!)
John Ralston Saul. His philosophy books - Voltaire’s Bastards, The Doubter’s Companion, The Unconscious Civilization, Le citoyen dans un cul-de-sac, Reflections of a Siamese Twin, On Equilibrium, and The End of Globalism - are incisive, lucid, and engaging looks at a society where systems determine values and not vice-versa.
His novels? Are so not worth the effort it’s not funny.
I liked Neverwhere and Dalemark (though only once I reread them), if not as much as some other books.
I heard a nice story about Joseph Heller. Apparently he was being interviewed about one of his less good books, and the interview says “I’m afraid, everyone wants to ask: how come you still haven’t written a book as good as catch 22?” and he replies leasurely “Well, mister, not many people do, do they?”
James Patterson. It’s weird that the guy who wrote such scarey shit as “Kiss the Girls” would turn around and write such a great love story as “Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas.”
Spider Robinson
Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon funny and original.
Callahan’s Key absolute dreck. The death of the Callahan series.
Douglas Coupland, my favorite author and major crush.
Generation X, Hey Nostradamus! and others are terrific.
Girlfriend in a Coma. Not so terrific. In fact, I wish he’d never written it so it wouldn’t be in my memory. He’s still cute, though.
I really like The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell but the sequel Children of God? Not so much.
Anybody read her A Thread of Grace? Any good?
Came in here just to mention Neal Stephenson. Snow Crash rocked, but I couldn’t even finish Quicksilver, let alone the whole Baroque Cycle. And there’s not many books so unreadable I can’t finish them.
Read Tad Williams several years ago. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn…his lousy Tolkien ripoff, waste of time. I thought Otherland was fantastic, though, even if it was way too long.
To each their own.
Have you read book 11, Knife of Dreams? I would have agreed with you entirely, EXCEPT that book 11 is suddenly, inexplicably, good again. (And book 9 wasn’t awful, although book 10 was SO BAD that thinking about it makes my hair hurt).
I nominate:
Ken Follett
He’s written some fantastic thrillers (The Eye of the Needle) and interesting and compelling historical epics (The Pillars of the Earth), and also some of the worst books I’ve ever read (Jackdaws and The Third Twin).
J.K. Rowling:
Love: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Hate: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I’m amazed at the difference between these two novels. Order of the Phoenix is poorly edited and has a very weak narrative line. Rowling’s editing skills improved incredibly for Half-Blood Prince, which I think is the best in the series.
I know there are some crazy conspiracy theories that say Rowling stopped doing the actual writing after book 2 and while they are not true, these two books show me why people think it. It’s like Rowling wrote Order of the Phoenix and she gave an outline to a superior ghost writer for Half Blood Prince.
MaxTheVool beat me to the nomination of Ken Follett. Pillars of the Earth is (IMHO) a masterpiece and I’ve read it five or six times. I just can’t reconcile this with the utter insipidy that is Night Over Water.
I liked both books, but I will concede that The Sparrow was by far the better of the two.