# What books had the best story and worst writing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 10, 2005, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669 "2005-04-10T16:54:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/46a35a/32.png) [@Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walker_in_Eternity)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/21 "2005-04-11T11:37:34Z")
I wouldn’t say the Harry Potter series was the best, but as the others have already been mentioned. The plots are good and but the writing is terrible. Some of the dialogue is quite bad as well. I think that like other books written by poor writers (Tom Clancy to name but one) the HP books make better films than reads. Although J.K Rowlings sales and bank balance would disagree with me on that one. As a slight aside, another popular author who has neither good plots nor good writing ability is Dan Brown (Da Vinchi Code) , but he has been top of the Times bestseller list for weeks and has made approximately £140 from the sales of Da Vinchi alone. It’s terrifying the crap that people will buy. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/22 "2005-04-11T11:55:54Z")
Curt Siodmak’s novella **F.P.1** had a great premise (a giant concrete commercial aircraft carrier), a reasonably good plot (a shipping cabal attempts to scuttle it), and absolutely abominable prose, dialogue and pacing. What with all the references to “blackguards” and “scoundrels” and the continual admiration of the massive chest of the first mate, it reads not so much like early 1930s German tech-fi as like a _Boy’s Life_ translation by Baden-Powell. ---
**Author:** ![Merhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@Merhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merhouse)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/23 "2005-04-11T12:18:44Z")
> [@Hilarity N. Suze](#): > > No lit majors here I see, otherwise surely someone would have mentioned Theodore Dreiser’s _An American Tragedy_ and _Sister Carrie._ > > Not that _An American Tragedy_ was the _best_ story, although it did make a good movie. But the writing was godawful. Funny you should mention him. Even though it’s been way too many years since I’ve read _Sister Carrie_ (like 35 maybe?), I recall really enjoying the book, though it might have been because it was very very **very** long, and I did, and still do, enjoy long books. In my old age, though, I tend to enjoy long books only if they keep my interest. However, I have no idea whether _Sister Carrie_ would do that today, and, well, I doubt I will see if it does. OK, this is probably the most meaningless post I’ve written, but I haven’t had coffee for a couple of days, and it shows. Please don’t let this thread die at my incompetent hands. Thank you 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mississippienne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/24 "2005-04-11T12:21:03Z")
My choice is a very popular historical fiction writer. **Sharon Kay Penman**. Her books aren’t truly _bad_, but aren’t nearly so good as everyone says. It helps that history wrote her story for her, as she chose to chronicle the lives of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and their Devil’s Brood, Llywelyn Fawr and Llywelyn the Last, Simon de Montfort, and Richard III. All highly dramatic stories, complete with pitched battles, love affairs, murder most foul, rebellious teenagers, and adultery. It’s her execution I have issues with. Penman only seems capable of writing about three characters – rogueish bad boy; overly honorable knight; and spitfire lady. Her characters as a result tend to duplicate one another and she has a tendancy to recycle scenes as well. In _Time and Chance_ Rhiannon quotes the Biblical story of Ruth to Ranulf in a scene that’s near identical to an earlier one in _Here Be Dragons_. Her characters never seemed to me to actually inhabit this medieval world she places them in; they flit across the scene like prettily-dressed cyphers that don’t talk or think realistically. There’s a scene in _Here Be Dragons_ where Joanna thinks to herself that her sense of self is too underdeveloped, a line that glares at me everytime I read it. Penman also plays favorites. Her Welsh fixation gets truly annoying after about one book, when every other line is about how brave or clever the Welsh are, or how beautiful and civilized Wales is. In _When Christ and His Saints Slept_, her novel about the civil war between Maude and Stephen for the English throne, she invents a character seemingly for the sole purpose of him going to Wales to hobnob with Owain Gwynedd for a couple hundred pages. Poor Maude, easily the most complex character in the whole thing, is robbed of her share of her own story. Later, in _Time and Chance_, the immortal conflict between Henry II and Thomas Becket is barely there, as Becket flits in and flits out just fast enough for him to die. Penman does occasionally have moments that are just sublime – John’s deathbed confession “I always knew I’d die alone” comes to mind. Actually, King John is by far the best character she’s ever written. Joanna’s affair with William de Braose is likewise handled very sensitively. Her historical research is very good, although I have found mistakes. It’s not that I think she’s a bad writer, I just think she’s a bit overrated, and that her plot owes more to history than her, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Merhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@Merhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merhouse)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/25 "2005-04-11T12:22:14Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I’ll be flamed for saying this by his legion of fans, but _James Michener_. I love some of the movies and miniseries made of his works (particularly _Centennial_ and _Hawaii_), but the books themselves tend to be very dry with more geography than character development while the movies flesh out the people a bit. (The more interesting moments in Abner & Jerusha’s complex marriage in the movie _Hawaii_ was courtesy of the screenwriters rather than the novelist.) If it makes you feel any better, I agree. Over the years I’ve bought a couple of his books, and I can’t get past the first couple of chapters, even for those subjects that I do find fascinating, like _Space_, for example. Come to think of it, I haven’t even seen the book around here for years. Wonder where I’ve hidden it ;x ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/26 "2005-04-11T12:35:38Z")
So far, I’m mostly seeing popular hacks nominated. Not that many of the nominees don’t deserve to be taken down a peg (I enjoy most of Tom Clancy’s books, but God, does he need a good editor!), but practically nobody ever said Tom Clancy, Dan Brown or Tim LaHaye was a great writer in the first place. First, Mark Twain and I nominate **James Fenimore Cooper.** I understand that, in the 19th century, he was extremely popular in France and phenomenally popular in Russia. I can only guess that Cooper lucked out and got superb translators, because I always found his prose painful to wade through. There’s a good story at the heart of “The Last of the Mohicans,” but it’s lost under Coopers’s dull, plodding style. Second, **Herman Melville** managed to make even ripping good adventure yarns boring. ---
**Author:** ![Taran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Taran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taran)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/27 "2005-04-11T12:45:21Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Right now I’m about 200 pages into Colleen McCullough’s _First Man in Rome_, and I have to say, it’s a pretty hard slog. The research is incredible and the plot seems pretty good, but the prose is abysmal- especially the dialogue, which seems to have been translated from Latin to English by an early, unreliable version of Babelfish. Frankly, I’m having more fun reading the glossary at the end; at least the entries are concise. I found that this got better as the book/series continued; she seemed to be figuring out how to write as she went along. I know, I know, that’s totally false to facts, but that’s how it read to me. I nominate _The Magus_. Read it once and loved it, read it again years later and was appalled. Thankfully I hadn’t pressed it on very many people (sorry Sofia). I can’t even remember the author’s name. I do remember that he included an introduction where he said, basically, that he’d learned to write several years _after_ publishing the book. Whoops. ---
**Author:** ![Mollie\_Magill](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mollie_magill/32/20882_2.png) [@Mollie\_Magill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mollie_Magill)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/28 "2005-04-11T12:49:40Z")
> [@Stryfe](#): > > As a slight aside, another popular author who has neither good plots nor good writing ability is Dan Brown (Da Vinchi Code) , but he has been top of the Times bestseller list for weeks and has made approximately £140 from the sales of Da Vinchi alone. It’s terrifying the crap that people will buy. I disagree… slightly. Dan Brown had one good plot. He just keeps using it over an over. Note I said plot: His research still sucks and the writing blows. ---
**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:** [April 11, 2005, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/29 "2005-04-11T12:49:49Z")
**Sue Grafton**. She simply cannot write. ---
**Author:** ![Chance\_the\_Gardener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@Chance\_the\_Gardener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chance_the_Gardener)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/30 "2005-04-11T13:35:13Z")
I’m surprised no one has mentioned **Philip K. Dick** yet. His prose just makes me clench my teeth, but I love the stories. It seems that if the sentences were just rewritten they’d improve tenfold. I’ve got a theory that if I read him in translation he’d actually be better, but I’ve never sought French editions of his stuff. Once I do, I’ll know. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/31 "2005-04-11T14:57:38Z")
I am a fan of her but I am surprised no one’s said Ayn Rand. To Faith Is Good, run to your local bookstore and order these three books by James BeauSeigneur- The Christ Clone Trilogy: “In His Image”, “Birth of an Age”, and “Acts of God”. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Wing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/51bf81/32.png) [@Little\_Wing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Wing)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/32 "2005-04-11T16:57:49Z")
**OtakuLoki** mentioned upthread that this was going to be a very subjective poll. Ain’t that the truth. It’s always a bit jarring to me to discover authors whose books I’ve enjoyed reading (several have been mentioned here already) are held in contempt for their style, substance, dialog, etc. and I’m left scratching my head, wondering what I might have missed. But then, I just crack open another book and lose myself for a while. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/33 "2005-04-11T17:14:21Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Colleen McCullough’s \*First Man in Rome[/i…The research is incredible and the plot seems pretty good, but the prose is abysmal- especially the dialogue Couldn’t agree more on all counts, which is such a pity as the subject matter is fascinating. Her characters are way too 20th century to begin with (women simply were not the social equal of men, sad but inarguably true, and yet all of hers are) and she tries to be way too clever and flowery in their dialogue (which completely falls flat when she’s writing a character like Marius, who was known for his crassness, or Sulla, who was known for his viciousness). I still keep the novels though just for the endnotes (never know when you’ll need to throw together a toga or need a diagram of an urban insula). Historian John Toland wrote a series of novels about a racially mixed family (white-Americans and Japanese) in WW2 that had a fantastic plot and interesting character but read as if it were its own synopsis. Had he taken a co-writer it would have worked better. I can’t say that I am a great fan of Neil Gaiman’s prose. His graphic novels are brilliant, but when he’s writing a conventional novel he tends to try to be too clever or too esoteric and it just doesn’t work. I thought _American Gods_ had one of the greatest concepts and plots I’d come across, but the book itself simply did not work, and the same for much of his short fiction collections. ---
**Author:** ![Tracy\_Lord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@Tracy\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tracy_Lord)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/34 "2005-04-11T17:31:07Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I can’t say that I am a great fan of Neil Gaiman’s prose. His graphic novels are brilliant, but when he’s writing a conventional novel he tends to try to be too clever or too esoteric and it just doesn’t work. I thought _American Gods_ had one of the greatest concepts and plots I’d come across, but the book itself simply did not work, and the same for much of his short fiction collections. Gaiman’s prose is hit-or-miss for me. I thought _Stardust_ was delightful, but _Neverwhere_ was on the pretentious side (there was a passage describing cold water as “tasting like diamonds and ice,” at which point I said aloud, “Come ON, Neil!”). I can’t remember how _American Gods_ struck me, but his short stories in _Smoke in Mirrors_ often (not regularly, but often) had the same pretentious feel as _Neverwhere_. Adding to the list, Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series has some strikingly beautiful prose and strikingly hilarious dialogue, but I’m afraid when it comes to his sea-battle scenes, I slog through them for half a page and then flip forward 'til the end. Maybe I’m too much of a lubber to follow along with all of the jargon he throws in there, but I just can’t get through them. ---
**Author:** ![Kaspar\_Hauser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b3f665/32.png) [@Kaspar\_Hauser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaspar_Hauser)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/35 "2005-04-11T17:41:10Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Right now I’m about 200 pages into Colleen McCullough’s _First Man in Rome_, and I have to say, it’s a pretty hard slog. The research is incredible and the plot seems pretty good, but the prose is abysmal- especially the dialogue, which seems to have been translated from Latin to English by an early, unreliable version of Babelfish. Frankly, I’m having more fun reading the glossary at the end; at least the entries are concise. They get much better, prose-wise. I think it’s been said that she rushed the first few books into print. I’m almost finished with the last one now (_The October Horse_) and it’s the best one yet. Much terser and the dialogue is much more natural sounding (though not entirely). ---
**Author:** ![shelbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@shelbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shelbo)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/36 "2005-04-11T17:47:22Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Second, **Herman Melville** managed to make even ripping good adventure yarns boring. Hey, now! Don’t be dissin’ my boy Hermie! Sure, there are slow parts, but you also get amazing passages; like this one: > [@](#): > > _From Moby Dick, the Try Works_ > By midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the carcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean darkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur- freighted brigs of the bold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad sheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the turkish frigates, and folded them in conflagrations. > > The hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide hearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of the pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship’s stokers. With huge pronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding pots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted, curling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled away in sullen heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of the boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces. Opposite the mouth of the works, on the further side of the wide wooden hearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the watch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their front, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged forks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul. Oooh, I love that. ---
**Author:** ![mailman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8491ac/32.png) [@mailman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mailman)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/37 "2005-04-11T17:51:40Z")
I nominate Mary Shelly’s _Frankenstein_. She created a great situation, but the book itself is pretty awful. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/38 "2005-04-11T18:13:40Z")
> [@Sage Rat](#): > > Steven King seemed pretty awful for prose. It doesn’t seem to have damaged his sales though. 😉 See, I think just the opposite: he’s at his most unreadable in his fiction, where his plots are cringeworthy, but his nonfiction is dynamite. He’s got a very relaxed, engaging, chatty style that I love. (And occasionally he stumbles across a good plot, and then it’s all kinds of fun). He’s kind of the literary equivalent of Shyamalan for me. (And FWIW, I can’t imagine King writing something remotely like _Left Behind_, although a review of the series by him would probably leave me in stitches.) I agree wholeheartedly about Neil Gaiman, though. I started reading him through the Dream series, and was blown away by parts of it; consequently, I really tried to like his novels, but they’ve mostly left me underwhelmed. Even _American Gods_, which everyone else thinks is the second coming, was pretty ho-hum for me. I’ll add an author to the list, a la Phillip K. Dick: Kurt Vonnegut. His writing is probably intentionally hokey, but it’s still hokey. At least it’s readable, though, and beneath the hokiness is a cynical humanity, a pessimistic compassion, that’s rarely matched. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/39 "2005-04-11T18:16:26Z")
> [@mailman](#): > > I nominate Mary Shelly’s _Frankenstein_. She created a great situation, but the book itself is pretty awful. Another book I really like, although admittedly there’s some scenes in it odd to modern sensibilities. My favorite is when a character (the good doctor himself, I think) is riding his horse through the countryside, pondering his problems. He stops the horse, climbs down, walks over to a nearby hillock, flings himself down on it, and sobs uncontrollably. Then he gets back up, climbs back on the horse, and continues his ride. I know it’s not supposed to be funny, but c’mon. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/40 "2005-04-11T18:27:16Z")
I second Mary Shelley. Amazing idea and plot. Victor Frankenstein is a complex and maddening character. It raises philosophical and moral issues and forces the reader to address them. Clearly more than a “ghost story”. I hate reading it so, so much. The only time I’ll read it is when it’s assigned to me, and then I’ll only do it grudgingly. I just cannot stand her prose. I really enjoy Stephen King’s novels. I buy them the day they’re released. I re-read them. But as the years go on, I have more and more trouble getting over his style and engaging with the story. As a matter of fact, I bought **Wolves of Calla** the day it was released and it took me nearly 8 months before I could get past the first 100 pages because I was so distracted. I really do adore his non-fiction style though. It’s wonderful. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669.md?page=3)