Stephen King’s nonfiction is, IMO, far better than his fiction. Definitely worth tracking down.
Asimov just makes me sad as an adult. I loved him as a kid.
And then there’s Ian Fleming, who I thought was the essence of cool as a kid, and now just seems kinda pitiful to me.
On the other hand, I try to remember that being an adolescent isn’t any worse than being an adult; you just have different tastes when you’re young.
Daniel
I re-read a Robert Ludlum book recently, just for some light bedtime entertainment. I read heaps of Ludlum and a teenager, and absolutely loved it.
I still think he tells an entertaining enough spy story, i guess, but the writing itself is really pretty godawful.
Michael Moorcocks sword and sorcery stories !
Asimov was the name that occured to me when I read the thread title.
Actually, I’d include a lot of S/F authors…Clarke, Pournelle, Niven,Van Vogt, Simak. Life is too short to read prose that mundane.
I thought of Piers Anthony as well. I remember starting off with Heaven Cent (the protagonist was 9, I was 9, go figure), then reading the entire series over and over through the years, eventually stopping at Ill Wind, or whichever one it is that involves some idiots driving an RV through Xanth. I still think the earlier ones, especially Centaur Aisle, were okay.
More recently, Robert Asprin. The earlier Myth books were ok when they focused on the humor, but the ones that were supposed to be morality tales were just awful. The Phule’s Company series irritated me because the main character was sooooo perfect in every way and everything he did was right and every decision he made was the right one and all the bad guys hated only him because he was always perfect. Good heavens.
I’ve re-read a few of the books I loved as a kid–most of them were definitely not as enjoyable as I remembered but I think that was more from my now adult perspective rather than that they were written by hacks. A Wrinkle in Time comes to mind first; I absolutely loved this as a kid and re-read it many times then yet when I read it again a few years ago, it didn’t do a thing for me, which was quite disappointing to me.
Other books that I enjoyed reading as a child were: the Nancy Drew books, the Black Stallion and other books of Walter Farley, the Little House on the Prairie series. I think it’s mostly that my reading tastes have changed over the years; what I liked as a child just isn’t my “cuppa tea” now. And even as an adult, my reading tastes continue to change; in my twenties, I fell in love in Anya Seton and devoured most of her works–Mary Stewart too (oh boy, was I into her books in HS!); now, not so much.
This is all tempered for me, though, by the fact that I read mostly for pleasure, I want to be entertained and enjoy what I read. Some of the highly reviewed fiction of today is just not what I like. Example: The Time Traveler’s Wife, which sounded really good, but I found very hard to read, and ultimately ended up putting it down unfinished. I do enjoy the Harry Potter books, but sometimes find that Rawlings goes off on tangents! Recently, I’ve been getting “classics” (read: used paper and hard backs), and (mostly) enjoying them; I’ve got a copy of Michener’s Hawaii awaiting me now.
Gods, yes. I picked up an Elric book a couple of months ago - it wasn’t even readable as trash. Such overwrought prose! Such sloppy plotting! Such clumsy dialogue!
I really liked him whan I was 13.
Harummph…(cough…cough…)
You are wrong.
Wrong, dear Sir or Madam [insert appropriate gender neutral pronoun].
Dead wrong.
Can I vote for David Eddings?
His Belgariad and Mallorean were some of the first fantasy I read as a teen. I loved his wry characters, the sprawling story and the feel of the books.
Looking at them now I know that he has very little individual characterization at all in those books, and everyone speaks and thinks alike. His other series is worse because it’s almost the exact same story.
I so loved him though.
The first couple of dragonrider books by Anne McCaffrey should certainly count. The dialog is hideous. “I am Lessa! Daughter of Ruatha!”
Urf.
I was one of those girls who went horse mad, so I was reading books that even then I recognized were terrible.
On the other hand, I just re-read My Friend Flicka, and it has held up really well.
Piers Anthony is indisputably a hack, but he’s occasionally an entertaining hack. Then again, he’s sometimes not even entertaining. If you happen to have a copy of Race against Time, Mercycle, or Macroscope, I would recommend you just burn them. They’d at least have some value, as kindling.
But I have to vehemently disagree about Asimov. Yeah, there’s some absolute hackwork in his body of work, but given how much he’s written, it’s a very small percentage. And even in his best works, there are some aspects of writing ability in which he’s weak, but there are also aspects where he’s one of the strongest. He’s great at coming up with creative premises, which is hardly the sign of a hack.
VC Andrews.
Flowers in the Attic, etc, was pratically required reading when I was in junior high. Who can forget the haunting tale that was My Sweet Audrina? Who didn’t cry her eyes out at Heaven?
Then, you get older, realize the plot is recycled every single damn time (plucky girl set upon by the nasty rich relatives, ends up falling in love or her parents fell in love with a close relative, yadda yadda yadda) and it’s gaggingly repulsive.
Lucy Maude Montgomery of Anne of Green Gables fame. I still like her sequels to the original book but after picking a few copies at a garage sale I realize how over-written they are. She really loved the over-the-top purple prose descriptions.
I still want to go to Prince Edward Island though.
No, my friend wrote one–I’d rather not get too specific–that cribbed the plotline from All About Eve.
Well, maybe hack is overstating it a bit. But I was tragically disappointed when I revisted some of the books that, when I was nineteen, I consider the Best Books E!V!A!R! When I came back to them in my thirties, suddenly Vonnegut, instead of being a font universal wisdom, was a cranky one-trick pony. He has one tone of voice, and one theme. Still, it’s entertaining.
:eek: Anthony Burgess? Ok, he wrote a lot of books and not all of them were good but Clockwork Orange is NOT the work of a hack.
And Kurt Vonnegut’s been going down hill but he has some great, defiatly non hack work.
They both dealt with style and language in new ways, even if you don’t care for them they are well beyond hacks.
Stephen King I don’t give a toss for.
The first book I bought with my own money was a Ballantyne edition of Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I still have it more than 40 years later. Not long ago at an estate sale I found a pristine set of the Tarzan novels in this edition for a buck apiece.
In a re-read, by the 12th tarzan novel, Burroughs was rearranging details in just a few plot lines.
He did a much better job in the martian novels
What about Anthony Burgess? I assume you read more than just A Clockwork Orange, right? (His least favorite of his own works, and initially published incomplete in the US because the US publishers didn’t like the ending). I really enjoy many of his books.
Piers Anthony is the main one that comes to mind. And Heinlein started good, but his later stuff was crap.
I don’t know if there’s been an opposite thread on this…but I have to mention that I read Great Expectations a few months ago and loved it. After hating Dickens in HS.