I remember when reading Unseen Academicals that it felt like three novellas he merged into one novel. I forget the three separate storylines, but each probably could have had its own book. I ranked it in the bottom half, but not at the bottom of Discworld. I have, however, only read 28 of the books(leaving a solid chunk to go still).
I liked Moving Pictures, but it was kind of unnecessary. It was cute.
Dan Simmonses Hyperion Cantos are some of my favorite books ever. But Flashback? Holy crap, Flashback.
I too will not disagree with the general assessment of NOTB. If I try, I can remember a few details (“GAYBOUNCEGAYBOUNCEGAYBOUNCE” and the interminable arguing). The only reason, I think, that I remember the story at all was because I gave an old girlfriend the nickname ‘Sharpie,’ because of the biting thing, not the personality. Just a single line in the book that I look at favorably. I tried to read it again a few years ago; didn’t get too far before dropping it.
William Goldman wrote a sequel to Marathon Man called Brothers. Absolutely awful. I was terribly disappointed.
I found some Heinlein stuff to approach (and bleed into) self-indulgent wish-fulfillment, notably Number of the Beast, Time Enough For Love, and Friday. What turned me off from buying any more of his work was I Will Fear No Evil.
I have a soft spot for “The Ringworld Engineers”.
Along the same lines, I really like the Niven & Pournelle book “Inferno”. The sequel “Escape from Hell” hit the trifecta of crappiness – a combination of tedious, unnecessary, and mean-spirited.
I read all the sequels, and Gentry Lee’s standalone novel, and if that guy ever wrote one good paragraph I must have missed it.
I hope Clarke got a lot of money from those travesties.
I Will Fear No Evil is the worst Heinlein for me also, but I can see that if someone started with NOTB they might be real confused. I kind of liked it, better than Friday also.
I grew quite fond of the novels of Carl Hiassen but made the mistake of reading his first, Tourist Season, in which the author tries to get the reader to view a psychopathic serial killer as nobly heroic. Fuck that.
Yes! Last Picture Show was an excellent book. Texasville wasn’t. More glaring for me was the difference in quality between Lonesome Dove, a superb book, and the terrible sequel (forgot the name) which seemed to have been written by a different person. IMO most of McMurty’s books don’t compare well to Picture Show and Dove.
Right back to add my own contestant:
To the best of my knowledge I’ve read the complete works of Edward Abbey, enjoying every word except for Hayduke Lives! It’s an utterly unnecessary sequel to The Monkey Wrench Gang, and was written Abbey was dying. It was clearly written in a hurry, and although the story line is more or less complete the book is painfully unpolished and incomplete.
So it’s the worst book (the only bad one, actually) but Ed can’t be held responsible- he had a good excuse.
Let’s see, favourite authors…
LeGuin - *Rocannon’s World - a good short story padded to a not-great novel.
Pratchett - [del]Faust[/del]Eric *- Just a bore to read.
Banks - Matter - I don’t dislike it, but I found it by far the least engaging Culture novel.
I love Stephen King, but Cell sucks ass.
I missed the whole point of the first book, possibly leaving it a few weeks between vital points, and missed the whole point of the overall novel. When I listened to it again, on audio book, it was much clearer and an ambitious, fun and intelligent book…
IIRC, King has no memory of having written Cujo, due to substance abuse. Might explain a lot.
John le Carré’s best novel was his very first; they gradually declined thereafter and went rapidly downhill after the Cold War when he decided his job was to preach against Anglophonic imperialism instead of to entertain. (Le Carré’s forté is the vignette: sometimes the best course is to read chapter 1 and throw the rest of the book away! My 2nd-favorite le Carré novel is A Perfect Spy - a collection of eleven unrelated vignettes.)
BTW, when I was very young my three favorite sci-fi writers were L. Frank Baum, Isaac Asimov and ... Paul French!I like Richard Russo. I could not make it through “Bridge of Sighs”.
As to the sequels to Lonesome Dove, I loved them all, but Dead Man’s Walk was certainly the weakest.
I have two, one where the general audience tends to agree with me, and one where they don’t.
The one where others agree: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, her one attempt at a full-length novel. It was nominated for a bunch of literary awards, but when you look at how actual readers rated it on Amazon and Goodreads, there seems to be a consensus that the book was not good. And I suspect that Russell even realized so herself. Her first published book was a (good) collection of short stories, and after attempting a (horrible) novel, she went right back to publishing (good) collections of short stories.
The one where a lot of people disagree: American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I have read eight books by Gaiman, and enjoyed every single one, except for the most popular book he ever wrote. I had such high hopes going into this book, and was dismayed to find myself doing that thing where you have to keep re-reading the page because you didn’t care enough about the story to absorb the words the first time.
Gregory McGuire wrote three wonderful books based on children’s stories: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, and Mirror, Mirror.
Then Wicked was turned into a Broadway musical and McGuire decided to do three sequels: Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz. The fact that none of these books have been turned into anything says it all.
I do like the way Maguire’s bios read over the years. First he live in Boston. Next he lived in Boston with his family. Today he lives in Boston with his husband and children.