Quite possible. I think I was reading it through my fingers because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Hollow Man by Dan Simmons. It has nothing to do with the movie by the same name, which also sucked. This is about a man who can read minds and manages to go on this wacked out adventures (kinda like a dark Forrest Gump). Anyway, if you’ve ever read the Hyperion/Endymion series, it is 100 million billion trillion times better than this piece of tripe.
My favorite author is Orson Scott Card. I’ve read close to 30 of his books and there have been a few that I haven’t particularly enjoyed. I’ve often times found that the longer a series of his lasts, the more it declines. Not always the case, though. I found the Homecoming series quite readable all the way though. But even the books I haven’t enjoyed, he has a way of writing that still makes it interesting and fresh, something that you feel comfortable with. Even his worst books are better than many authors’ best.
I thought James M. Cain could do no wrong until I sat down on a disappointing weekend with The Institute.
I kid you not, the climax of the story is when a modern-day drunk successfully defends the honor of Gen. Longstreet by spitting back at the chairman of a Senate committee, “you’re accusing me of being a drunk, when you’re the one with the red nose!” Case closed.
No, that didn’t make any sense, and neither did the book.
“Hannibal” by Thomas Harris. He just gave up in the final 2 chapters, and let down what was a great book up until then.
…once again, beaten to the punch…
also
“Sphere” by Michael Crichton: another page turner until the final few chapters, at which time the whole thing unravels and completely falls apart.
“Son of the Circus” by John Irving: I love Irving…“Garp,” “Owen Meany,” “Cider House Rules,” and “Hotel New Hampshire” all rock, but “Son” gave me a headache by the second page in that never stopped until I put it down several chapters later. Abyssmal.
Neil Stephenson isn’t a “best” author (he needs to learn how to end a book) but I do like his stuff, or at least the first 3/4 of all his stuff. Still, the book “Interface” that he wrote with his uncle (using the pseudonym Stephen Bury) is just awful. It’s a political thriller written by someone who really doesn’t have much of a clue of how politics works. It’s incredibly superficial and silly.
I’ll disagree and say that “Congo” was worse. It read like a person trying to imitate Michael Crichton. As if it was ghostwritten by Dean Koontz or something.
Speaking of superpopular writers, on my last plane trip I read John Grisham’s “The Brethren” and I was shocked by how bad it was. It was a great page-turner for the first half and in the second half… nothing.
As a Kingstonian I am obliged to love Robertson Davies, but man, “The Manticore” blew it right out the ass.
There is a somewhat obscure novel written by Alfred Bester called The Computer Connection.
There’s a very good reason why it’s obscure.
I’ve never read Pericles, but as far as bad shit by Shakespeare goes, what about Titus Andronicus?
Practical Magic- by Alice Hoffman. I love her books, but this on was terrible. It had a lot of potential, but she never made the plot more than surface deep. It’s a sad thing when the movie is better than the book.
Gods Of Riverworld by Philip Jose Farmer. The Riverworld series was 4 books long and while the 2nd in the series was kind of dull (by comparison) and did not really accomplish as much as the other three, it was still a working part of a great story. But GoR was quite obviously an afterthought, and pretty much destroyed everything the first four books built.
As far as I’m concerned, Riverworld is a four-book series, not five.
Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut. If you know Vonnegut’s work, proceed with extreme caution. If you don’t know Vonnegut’s work, avoid with extreme unction. Vonnegut rocks, and the fact that the publication of this novel made him realize that he shouldn’t write novels anymore just proves that Vonnegut rocks.
“Abduction” by Robin Cook. He’s known for his medical thrillers, some of which I have read and enjoyed. This book was his attempt at science fiction, and if he wasn’t an established author, no publisher would have printed it! It read like a saturday afternoon serial, with a hidden civilization far beneath the earth. This civilization was composed of humans that evolved long before the dinosaurs, and have been in hiding since (except for the odd sightings of their flying craft, which explains the UFO phenomena). After the destuction of the surface, life re-evolved and begat second generation humans (us). The explanation? We evolved from the same slime they evolved from, so naturally we evolved into the same type of beings. Aaaaargh!!! Avoid this book at all costs! If a studio begins a movie version of it, start a letter writing campaign to prevent it! Oh yeah, they’ve also explored a large portion of the galaxy (and have time travel), but gave up space exploration and decided to settle for Earth.
Mostly Harmless, by Douglas Adams.
It felt like a book he didn’t want to write. It seemed to me like he had wished for “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish” to be a light-hearted story that people would just accept for what it was and not question things like how Earth came back and stuff, and leave the series on that note, and that he got pestered by his publisher into writing another Hitchhiker’s book to satisfy all the questioning fans. He ended the book (unless I misunderstand) with the destruction of everything in existence, including all possible multiple universes. Seems to me he wanted to completely avoid any possibility for yet another sequel. The book therefore left a bad taste in my mouth.
The first four Hitchhiker’s books and the two Dirk Gently books…those came from Douglas Adams’ heart. Mostly Harmless came from his pen, but not from his heart, it seemed to me.
I logged into the Straight Dope determined to clear the air and confess my Jackie Collins addiction in this thread, and low and behold, I found another thread to do that in!
So I can walk in here with my head held high, and tell you that Jackie Collins really disappointed me with her last book in the Santangelo series, Dangerous Kiss.
I know this is supposed to be about bad books by good authors, but I happen to like Jackie, and did find this book to be below the standard I expect from her.
First… hasn’t Brigette suffered enough? In earlier books she goes through being kidnapped, nearly raped, shooting the guy in self defence, watching her friend/stepmother/stepgrandmother being arrested for the crime until she confesses in public, then she gets engaged to a guy who turns out to be a cokehead and breaks it off, then she is raped by a woman while a guy takes pictures, and when you finally think things are looking up for her, Dangerous Kiss comes along. Let’s not even get into that one.
Second… the book is written in a different style. Now I’m not suggesting that they hired a different ghost writer, but if I didn’t know better I’d think they’d hired a different ghost writer 
All in all, that book just sucked. It was a real let down, and I’d rather she’d left things where they stood at the end of Vendetta: Lucky’s Revenge (which in and of itself isn’t as good as Chances, Lucky and** Lady Boss**).