# Tell us about the worst books by your favorite authors. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 17, 2020, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079 "2020-02-17T16:54:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/101 "2020-02-22T01:09:36Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > Douglas Adams’, “Dirk Gently…”. What utter nonsense; Couldn’t put it down fast enough. Hard to believe it was written by the same guy who wrote, “Hitchhiker’s Guide”. No. Just no. Really? Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was perhaps the best Douglas Adams book. It’s neck-and-neck with HHGTTG. The sequel was so-so-, but still pretty decent. _Mostly Harmless_ and maybe even _Life, the Universe, and Everything_ … they sucked. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/102 "2020-02-22T02:36:55Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I didn’t include them because I don’t consider them as being written by Clarke. > And you are too kind. The lead character in the first book is, IIRC, an Olympic athlete, Nobel prize winner who has an affair with the King of England. I don’t think even Lionel Fanthorpe could come up with that one. William F. Buckley has his protagonist Blackford Oakes fuck a fictitious Queen of England in one of his spy novels. In the same series, Oaks crashes a U-2 in Russia and asks the military who capture him, “May I borrow your phone?” ---
**Author:** ![DWMarch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwmarch/32/1010_2.png) [@DWMarch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DWMarch)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/103 "2020-02-22T03:51:56Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > The Bear and the Dragon started the serious decline of Tom Clancy. > > I bought Red Rabbit in hardback although not on day of release. I pretty much didn’t bother with Clancy after that. Maybe I’ll sort though his other stuff when I’ve got a lot of time on my hands, but I think I’ll just reread Hunt for Red October or Cardinal of the Kremlin. TBaTD was definitely a stinker and made me wonder what the Chinese had ever done to Clancy to piss him off so much. I found Red Rabbit better on the second read, going into it knowing that Jack Ryan was going to get bossed around for most of the novel and wasn’t going to have a big hero moment. But Clancy’s worst has to be Locked On. He gets way too political in that one and he doesn’t even try to make some of the “bad guys” (a Democratic administration) into anything other than caricatures. Since he died his writing has greatly improved in terms of humor and dialog but the authors publishing under the TOM CLANCY ™ brand are missing something even if they manage to get some fetishized descriptions of military hardware in there. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > For something besides NOTB, let me not recommend Frederick Forsyth’s **The Phantom of Manhattan** , his sequel to Gaston Leroux’s _Phantom of the Opera_. I’ve been a fan of Forsyth since _The Day of the Jackal_, and have read all his books (except the nonfiction _The Biafra Story_), many of them multiple times. But he should have stayed away from this book. It’s not his subject matter, or his time period, or his milieu, and it’s simply awful. I have not read this one (although I have read a lot of Forsythe and will generally buy any of his spy thrillers the day they come out) but yeah, I can totally see that this novel is solving a problem that no one actually has. > [@Isosleepy](#): > > Neill Stephenson’s Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. His books can get a little slow at times, and he can’t write an ending for shit. But all his other books I enjoyed reading and loved to have read. This one I put down not quite halfway in, and won’t pick it up again. You didn’t miss anything. What a wandering-ass book this was. I read the whole thing but it was a struggle and in the end I wasn’t sure which story I was supposed to have been reading. Seveneves was similar in that it’s going in one direction for a long, long, long time and then that story just stops and a totally new, marginally connected one starts. > [@Chronos](#): > > I wasn’t able to finish _Stranger in a Strange Land_, either, but enough people love it that I’m willing to entertain the notion that it’s not bad, just not for my tastes. I find that SiaSL is a book that takes a long time to get going and then goes too fast to the ending. However, I did re-read it recently and really enjoyed it but that could also be because I was in just the right headspace to appreciate some of the themes. John Varley is my favorite author and he’s another one who gets my cash on the day he drops a book. Having said that, Irontown Blues was not a favorite and seeing how it is a semi-sequel to Steel Beach I had high hopes for it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/104 "2020-02-22T07:32:58Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > William F. Buckley has his protagonist Blackford Oakes fuck a fictitious Queen of England in one of his spy novels. In the same series, Oaks crashes a U-2 in Russia and asks the military who capture him, “May I borrow your phone?” Quite aware of that. Only 1 of 3 things for the Lee character. And WFB took plenty of heat for it too. ---
**Author:** ![LoneRhino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lonerhino/32/1311_2.png) [@LoneRhino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LoneRhino)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/105 "2020-02-22T12:09:59Z")
I’ve read all of John Irving’s novels. I couldn’t finish his last one Avenue Of Mysteries. I’m currently struggling through The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie, another author I usually love. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/106 "2020-02-22T14:29:25Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > While I wouldn’t call **Ira Levin** a _favorite_ author of mine, nobody could deny that **A Kiss Before Dying** And **Rosemary’s Baby** are classic thrillers. **The Stepford Wives** and **The Boys from Brazil** are only a few steps lower. > > Then he came out with **Son of Rosemary.** Not only abysmal, but it reached back in time and ruined **Rosemary’ Baby** for me. > > _Shun it._ Hey! That book does not exist in my universe! Thomas Harris wrote Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. He should have stopped there. ---
**Author:** ![Snake\_Plissken\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Snake\_Plissken\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snake_Plissken_1)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/107 "2020-02-22T14:31:39Z")
If “Cujo” wasn’t the last Stephen King book I read, it was close enough. [/QUOTE] He made the Devil Dog from Hell a St. Bernard, for fucksake! The movie was even worse…trying to make this big, fat, slobbery doofus of a dog look like a man-killer was pretty funny, though. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/108 "2020-02-22T15:26:50Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Voyager** : > > And you are too kind. The lead character in the first book is, IIRC, an Olympic athlete, Nobel prize winner who has an affair with the King of England. I don’t think even Lionel Fanthorpe could come up with that one. To be fair, if I were the King of England, and there were a woman out there who was both a Nobel laureate and an Olympian, I’d want to have an affair with her, too. ---
**Author:** ![edspellman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/58956e/32.png) [@edspellman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edspellman)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/109 "2020-02-22T20:37:17Z")
Always was a fan of Brit detective fiction, including Agatha Christie. Trying to read one of her last Poirot novels, “Elephants Can Remember”, was torture though, by the 3rd chapter the whole thing seemed a dull turgid confusing boring mess, and I left it. Since have realized it was written when she was in her late 70s, ? if that showed signs of early Alzheimer’s? Sad, really. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/110 "2020-02-22T22:55:02Z")
The worst Stephen King for me was _Christine_. I hated it. Not only annoying, but boooooooorrrrrrrrring. I forced myself to read half of it and just couldn’t carry on. I absolutely loved _The Secret History_. _The Little Friend_ was a boring, irritating slog and it went on so long and it finally just petered out. I can’t believe I actually finished it. It nearly finished **me**. ---
**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/111 "2020-02-23T00:14:34Z")
> [@Snake\_Plissken](#): > > If “Cujo” wasn’t the last Stephen King book I read, it was close enough… > > …He made the Devil Dog from Hell a St. Bernard, for fucksake! The movie was even worse…trying to make this big, fat, slobbery doofus of a dog look like a man-killer was pretty funny, though. Different strokes. I’ve met three Saint Bernards at non-dog-show environments. Two of the dogs were profoundly pissy, and would have been violent to anyone who wasn’t Daddy or Mommy. The other dog—one of the two mascots the bar, “Saint Dane’s” in Houston, Texas was named for—had the biggest (expletive for emphasis) head I’ve ever seen on a dog. I am not a small man. This dog’s head was nearly as wide as my chest. The bar was dog-friendly, we were watching some NFL game there with our, fairly dominant, dog, and this Saint Bernard shows up. My Weimaraner, who normally would do the ‘who’s bigger’ thing, with holding her head higher, bristling her fur, etc…took one look at this thing, dropped her tennis ball, and tried to get away. I think it was so big, it didn’t even register with her as being a dog. So, I had no problem thinking of a Molloser, like a Saint Bernard, being a vicious, man-eating threat. ---
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/112 "2020-02-23T03:29:20Z")
Sayers wrote some religious stuff that I don’t care for; but even within the glorious Peter Wimsey canon, _Gaudy Night_ sticks out like a nail in a sore ass to me. What a bummer. ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/113 "2020-02-23T07:43:11Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > This is going to be an unpopular opinion, but I consider the _Dark Tower_ series to be some of Stephen King’s worst work. > > I read it, but it took me three false starts to get through the first book (finally had to listen to it on audiobook to manage). The middle books weren’t bad, but the last two or three were self-indulgent crap (this was deep in King’s “I nearly got wiped out by a van and you readers are going to suffer as much as I did by having to listen to me rehash it endlessly for the next five years” period). He literally inserted himself as a character. > > I know a lot of people love these books and consider them some of King’s best work, but I’m not among them. I’d much rather read his horror stuff. So far, I’ve only made it part way through book 2 of Dark Tower and may not bother trying again. Definitely not his most engaging story-telling. I was also going to nominate his “Tommyknockers”. Sort-of science fiction doesn’t seem to work well for him. I’ve also basically given up on his works of the last few years. Shrill political filibusters in lieu of an actual story are not worth paying for, and I think he’s forgotten that his JOB is to entertain the paying customer, not to shove his personal beliefs down our throats. I actually liked NOTB, Farnham’s Freehold, and Lost Legacy, TBH. My basic criterion when I pick up fiction is that it entertain me, and Heinlein delivers for me. In large part due to my own personal background, Darkover is forever tainted for me by MZB’s personal behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/114 "2020-02-23T08:44:29Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > The Bear and the Dragon started the serious decline of Tom Clancy. Clancy was one of those authors who I always had to have the hardcover book on day one. > > So, did my usual and prepared for a long night of reading accompanied by a couple cocktails. And, then, WTF? Why are there endless pages devoted to fettuccine Alfredo??? What a horrible horrible book. > > I bought Red Rabbit in hardback although not on day of release. I pretty much didn’t bother with Clancy after that. Maybe I’ll sort though his other stuff when I’ve got a lot of time on my hands, but I think I’ll just reread Hunt for Red October or Cardinal of the Kremlin. I roughly read the Tom Clancy books in chronological order and wound up giving up on him after **Rainbow Six**. I absolutely love the video games that came out of that novel, but the book itself has all the bad later-era Clancy hallmarks, overly long, subplots that ultimately don’t go anywhere despite having hundreds of pages written about them, weird political tangents, characters that also don’t really go anywhere, and lots and lots of training sequences. You can edit this book down by 75% and have a tight little 200 page pulp action work, instead you basically have the villains create a biological weapon that will cause a global extinction, but their actual execution of that plan goes off the rails almost immediately which made me wonder why they even bothered setting up that plan for hundreds of pages. Despite being over 800 pages long the final chapters also seem oddly rushed, and even the book points out the fact that if the bad guys hadn’t made a series of really stupid decisions at the end the book they wouldn’t have been so easily and quickly defeated. Plus it’s got the weird thing where despite taking place after Executive Orders where Jack Ryan is President the President in this book is unnamed the entire time, despite the next book in the series also having President Ryan, due to a weird rights dispute with Clancy’s ex-wive, which makes it odd for the unnamed President to be such an important character in the story if you can’t name him. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/115 "2020-02-23T15:00:27Z")
> [@Seanette](#): > > So far, I’ve only made it part way through book 2 of Dark Tower and may not bother trying again. Try again. I could not get into book 1, thought book 2 was better, and things improved from there. Unlike others, I really liked books 6 and 7. What King was doing worked for me. ---
**Author:** ![Limmin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f04885/32.png) [@Limmin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Limmin)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2020, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/116 "2020-02-24T17:23:49Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Personally, I gave up on the Honor Harrington series when I picked up a book in a bookstore, wasn’t sure if I’d read it, so I read the synopsis on the dust jacket… and still wasn’t sure if I’d read it. All of the later books were the same damn story. This precisely my experience with the HH series. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2020, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/117 "2020-02-24T17:26:45Z")
_The Shark Mutiny_ by Patrick Robinson. The first half is decent enough; a war in East Asia. Reads a bit like Tom Clancy, good reading. The second half degrades into this bizarre story about a submarine commander losing his marbles and raving about how the planet Mercury is moving in such and such a direction and therefore why he had to make such and such a decision while facing a court martial. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2020, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/118 "2020-02-24T17:30:09Z")
Beverly Cleary’s early books about Ramona were fun because she was such a typical, real portrayal of a real little girl. Her last two (Ramona age 8 and Ramon’s World) have lost that charm as Ramona because a regular child. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2020, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079/119 "2020-02-25T10:24:35Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > That Bujold has maintained such a consistently high quality throughout (so far as I’ve gotten), for so many decades, is a remarkable accomplishment, worthy of some lifetime achievement award. Turns out reality was a little ahead of me. Couple months ago the Science Fiction Writers of America [awarded](https://nebulas.sfwa.org/lois-mcmaster-bujold-named-sfwa-damon-knight-grand-master/) her the 2020 Damon Knight Grand Master Memorial Award. It appears to be the most prestigious lifetime achievement award in SF. Well, she’s earned it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-us-about-the-worst-books-by-your-favorite-authors/848079.md?page=5)