Thread: Authors you used to admire

Who are some authors you used to like, and now do not? Why did this change? I don't mean 'I used to love The Cat in the Hat but now I'm older so I don't like it so much'.

You can probably still respect Dr. Seuss and like him as a writer for the age group he's writing for.

I mean someone that you used to like, and now think that they're really not ery good, for whatever reason.

I used to like Anne McCaffrey. In the past 5 years (from the age of 19) whenever I read it I get annoyed at something, a turn of phrase, a focus she has, themes... I also don't like how she's treated gay people and her beliefs about that so she's lost points there for me. Her writing style no longer seems brilliant to me.

I used to like David Baldacci's thrillers. I thought the early ones were genuinely inventive and suspenseful. Lately, alas, his novels strike me as rather industrial and formulaic. Possibly the royalty cheques got so large that he decided to trade in his creative muse for a cash machine. Too bad.

~ L ~

I mentioned this somewhere else, but one author I used to worship was Terry Goodkind. I started reading him when I was in middle school and couldn't get enough.

Or so I thought. His first three books were great. His fourth, not so great. Then he started getting weird, as in writing entire books where the main characters never showed up. (Just to clarify, this was the Sword of Truth series, which was, I thought, supposed to be character-driven.) Now, I can't stand to even pick up one of his books. Yeah, series are great. But don't milk the damn thing dry!

The only other author that really pops into my mind right now is Madeleine L'Engle. Used to love her work. Now I think it's basically mindless drivel. And no, I don't think this falls into the "Cat in the Hat" category. Yes, her books were geared toward kids. But so was The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, and that remains one of my all-time favorite books.

Isaac Asimov. When I was younger, I really liked his fiction. As I grew older, it got to the point that all I could see were the anachronisms and inaccuracies (like the newsroom in Nightfall which is hopelessly anachronistic). Some of his things are still good, and the ideas embodied in the stories are mostly sound, but the scenesetting is so bad it puts me off.
I still like to read about Mrs. Whatsit and tesseracts. But then I have grandchildren

Tom Clancy. His first eight or nine novels are among the best techno-thrillers you could ever hope to read. His latest stuff is dross. I recently read The Bear and the Dragon and was so totally bored of all his propaganda crap that I burnt a novel for the first time ever.

I used to really be into James Herbert when I was getting into reading. But as I became more widely read I gradually went off him. I couldn't get through the last book I read (Spear I think it was) and have since gotten rid of most of his books.

James Michener is the classic collapse. I read "Hawaii" preteen and it blew my mind. His earlier stuff, better yet. But "Mexico" was a useless, bloated, messed-up piece of crap and apparently it wasn't the only one. He just got into a rut, and tossed dirt in on top of himself.

Thank you, Lin - I've been afraid to say to people that the great Michener's 'Mexico' is unmitigated crap. Given a history as fascinating as that of Mexico, you would think that even a hack writer could turn out a pretty good book. I've tried to read 'Mexico' a few times, thinking each time, 'it can't be that bad', only to discover it's worse.

It's sort of like me telling people my singing is not as bad as it sounds.

You're a poet and you live across the bay in Mexico. Try your hand at 'On First Looking into Michener's Mexico'.

Oh, it just sucks. "Caribbean" isn't bad at all, but I understand that much of his later work was as lame as "Mexico"

It's too bad when some old farts don't know when to shut up and ... ah ... let's not go that way.

Yeah. Not that we're old farts or anything. Not farts anyway. Technically.

I think for anyone, if you sit down with this question long enough you could end up with a never ending rant, but I'll refrain from that. Simply put, I used to admire Anne Rice. Call it what you will, but at the age of thirteen I found her vampire tales very impressive. Captivating stories strung together with beautiful prose composed with a keen eye on grammar, language, and direction. While I still like what she did for the lore, her habit of spending longer than what I felt was needed on describing the smallest article of clothing, the mundane details of room, and so forth. This complaint may come off as a surprise as when Anne Rice and criticism are mention it often leads into statements about her religious views. I really didn't mind it so much in Menmoch the Devil, but then again I stopped reading her books around the time it came out.

I never fell much into the reading of a particular author.As I just said in another thread, I've read all of Frank Herbert's books, and they still hold water with me, but he was never the be all, end all of writing either.( I just like the guy's imagination lol ) I read " Interview with a Vampire " when I was young, as well as a few of her others, but ended up only liking aspects of the stories as opposed to the whole story itself. Same goes with Atwood's books.( Her particular format fascinates the hell out of me ) For everything good you can find with an author, you can find just as much bad as well. We are also taking about "genres" geared towards specific audiences, so what would knock you on your butt when you are 15 ain't necessarily gonna cut the mustard when you are 35.

Originally Posted by MrDeadman

I think for anyone, if you sit down with this question long enough you could end up with a never ending rant, but I'll refrain from that. Simply put, I used to admire Anne Rice.

I used to love Anne Rice too! I surreptitiously read a large chunk of one of her books in a library a couple of years ago. That's when I found the love affair had ended.

Originally Posted by DanCol

I mentioned this somewhere else, but one author I used to worship was Terry Goodkind. I started reading him when I was in middle school and couldn't get enough.

Or so I thought. His first three books were great. His fourth, not so great. Then he started getting weird, as in writing entire books where the main characters never showed up. (Just to clarify, this was the Sword of Truth series, which was, I thought, supposed to be character-driven.) Now, I can't stand to even pick up one of his books. Yeah, series are great. But don't milk the damn thing dry!

I completely agree about Goodkind. Also the latter books seemed to become vehicles for his personal agenda to such an extent that he left plot holes large enough to drop a skyscraper through.