Which books don't do it for you?

[Nick B]

Anything where Vampires/werewolves/undead are cool/sexy/shiny.

A whole horror genre was destroyed when Twilight was written I'm afraid. Zombies are way overdone too, just too much out there in too little time.

I read fantasy, horror and sci-fi, sci-fi most of all though.

Robert Jordan? Uuurrghh I'd rather eat my own liver.

I don't like series of books that simply go on too long. Multiple books written in the same world/universe are great, just not dragging on the same storyline until it is just a piece of unrecognisable meat tied to a rope.

I really don't like books that are written simply to put on paper the authors sexual fantasies. Especially when those fantasies seem to be quite questionable. In fact I don't like graphic sex scenes in books at all, I am not prudish in the slightest, I just find it irritating and unnecessary.

I cant bring to mind book titles as anything I didn't finish due to it being rubbish usually leaves my memory pretty soon after putting it down.

 

[GlasgowSpacer]

Starship Troopers. It's not bad as a political essay (even if I do disagree with it). It just makes the mistake of pretending its a story.

 

[Munch]

Twilight. Vampires should be bloodsucking, scary things you avoid like the plague not sparkly little pretty boys you marry and have kids with.

Da Vinci Code. Lobbed this one outta a train window after a couple of chapters it annoyed me so much.

Fifty Shades of Grey. A friend went on and on about how good these were and eventually I caved and borrowed them. Hmm what a waste of my life. Took far too long to get to the first sex scene and by that time I had an overwhelming desire to punch the main female character and neuter the guy.

Lord of the Rings. Don't get me wrong I love The Hobbit and have tried several times to read Fellowship of the Ring but I just can't get into it. I'll happily read the first 100 pages or so but nothing makes me wanna pick the book up and keep reading.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree, GlasgowSpacer. I could go on about this, but ST is just not a very good novel.

It's interesting how this thread has started to throw up some common thoughts. I'm not surprised to see that people are bored of vampires, zombies and werewolves - especially the feeble versions that have occurred of late - but I didn't expect so many people to want GRR Martin to get on with it.

Good point Quellist, too. Although I'm not prudish about these things, there is a point where you can tell that the writer is putting their fantasies on paper. Graphic sex, whilst generally not needed, doesn't really offend me, though. I think it's as much a problem with Mary Sue characters (where the author clearly fancies the people they're writing about) than actual sex scenes. I once read a book called Lost Souls that might as well have only contained the words "New Orleans is awesome! Goths are awesome! Being a goth in New Orleans is super-awesome!"

 

[Nick B]

Good point Quellist, too. Although I'm not prudish about these things, there is a point where you can tell that the writer is putting their fantasies on paper. Graphic sex, whilst generally not needed, doesn't really offend me, though. I think it's as much a problem with Mary Sue characters (where the author clearly fancies the people they're writing about) than actual sex scenes. I once read a book called Lost Souls that might as well have only contained the words "New Orleans is awesome! Goths are awesome! Being a goth in New Orleans is super-awesome!"

I'm not offended by it, it simply irritates me. I don't think anything I read could actually offend me.

I have read a few of the "-insert name here- are awesome and you should think they are awesome too!" stories. How annoying.
Another thing that annoys me are awful pen names, especially when you can tell exactly what the author is like and what the book will be about.

For instance if you picked up a book called Magik by Raven Spiritfox (made up, at least I hope I just made this up as an example) you can expect a book about modern day teenage girls involved in witchcraft. Probably because Raven Spiritfox (real name Sally Smith (also made up)) believes she is a modern day teenage (in her mind) witch. And witches are AWESOME.
Strangely, if Sally Smith was a middle aged mother of four who liked country music and had never heard of Aleister Crowley before researching for her new novel Magik, it would probably be a far better read.

 

[svalbard]

Master of the Five Magics - the title says it all really. The DaVinci Code - kudos to Browne in pulling off the greatest con in literary history. I know Terry Pratchett is brilliant, people keep telling me, but I have yet to get past a few chapters in a number of his books that I have tried. No doubt I will make an attempt again.

Harry Potter - gave up after the first page.

Sci-fi in general is a no go area for me, although I enjoy sci-fi movies.

Terry Goodkind - read the first 4 books before I realised the story was a load of muck. The TV series was an improvement and that was a travesty.

 

[Rafellin]

Peter F. hamilton - I want to love it, I thought he was fab and friendly and interesting at Worldcon but I glaze over...

Know that one. His concepts are brilliant but lord don't he waffle on...

For me, Kevin Anderson's Saga of the Seven Suns does what I thought P.Hamilton's works would. Highly recommended; all seven volumes.

As for the stuff that doesn't do it for me... Most of the mainstream, in sad truth. Asimov, Clarke (bar The Deep Range), Stephen King, most of the authors with dedicated threads on here; plus everything rated as 'classic' for English Literature at school - I read so much I didn't do the coursework By the end of the two years I had read everything in the cupboard and was on books from the library assigned to me by the English teachers. All to no avail. Like an appreciation for fine wine, an appreciation of the classic works of literature is something that I wish I had.

 

[ralphkern]

Iain M Banks: I've tried, lord knows I've tried, but he just doesn't flat my boat

 

[Randy M.]

I'm not sure I'll read more of Richard Laymon's work because The Cellar frustrated me; there was some craft in the story-telling and some skill at a sentence level, but the characters came out of Central Casting, the horror wasn't so much horrifying as disgusting, and on the whole the book felt like it should have and maybe could have been a better exploration of twisted sexuality rather than the evil-twin of an episode of Starsky & Hutch, where the boys don't get there in the nick of time and, oh, yeah, don't survive the episode.

From the ridiculous to the ... literary: While there are several stories by Henry James I count as favorites ("Washington Square"; The Turn of the Screw), there are a fair number that read as though he was trying to frustrate his readership, qualifying every statement so finely that each nuance assumes such import that nothing feels all that important. As I read James, my eyes wander, my mind wanders, my attention is suddenly riveted by the growing of grass or the drying of paint.


Randy M.

 

[Null_Zone]

Urban Fantasy - They tend to have the problem that so much is happening in the world, that there are so many ancient races running around and mystical events and that 99% of the population somehow missing all of this. Plus the various ancient races come across as a bunch of sixth form goths playing World of Darkness and the "ancient religious practices" were really created by a bunch of hippies that took too much LSD in the 60's. Though I do love Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London books.

Game of Thrones style fantasy. Just a bunch of rich nobles running around being incredibly noble and playing at being gritty whilst just glossing over the reality of warfare. Oh no a major character lost his hand and now will angst over it, but in the next scene all the prostitutes in a local brothel are all quite happy and content with their career choice or where Northmen matched their army through allied territory and no one minded, that is the sort of stunt you'd pull on your worse enemy.

Crime Drama - The wife loves them but I can't get over the whole "how many serial killers has this cop dealt with now?" part of it. This maybe stems from the whole Starling/Lector thing being my introduction to the genre where it pretty much ruined her career. From then on she was always that Hannibal Lecter woman not a serial killer catching expert.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Iain M Banks: I've tried, lord knows I've tried, but he just doesn't flat my boat

ditto

Tried 4 books, finished 2. Wasn't too impressed by what I finished.

We need a method of categorizing readers so people can figure out which group they are in and what books they have a high probability of liking. Everyone collectively rating a book does not provide very useful information.

psik

 

[barrett1987]

The Dark Tower - I love King, I love the Childe Roland poem but at sixteen couldn't get past book one - should I go back? Does it become more engaging?

Go back pilgrim. You are missing out. Power through the first book - a book he wrote at 19 - and enjoy the next few. By the time you get to book 6 you'll finish because of the characters. Come-com-la


The two i don't like but others rave about are: Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Didn't like it at all.

The second was those locke lomora books. pfft.

 

[biodroid]

I too could not get into Name of the Wind. Too much writing about nothing really, and it felt like the author really loves himself and it shows. Lies of Locke Lamora, is just not fantasy. Its a heist in another world, that takes too long to get to the point.

To me books should be magical and have soul and make you feel like you just lived that story. Grimdark is popular right now but fantasy should not be bloody and gory, it should be fun, intriguing and wonderous.

I read A Game of thrones and thought there is just too many characters doing too much backstabbing and snail pacing the story.

Steven Eriksons novels have multiple characters too but none I could connect with and also no real history of events either.

 

[Toby Frost]

I'd have to disagree with that. The fact that it is a heist story in a fantasy world doesn't stop it being fantasy, to my mind. Neuromancer is a heist story in a science fiction world.

I think part of the problem comes from good books being overhyped. The Lies of Locke Lamora or The First Law trilogy are perfectly good books (I'd give both of them 8/10), but the sheer adulation they get from some reviewers doesn't help anyone much. I wonder if people come to them, and other books, expecting pure genius and are disappointed when what they get is "only" very good.

 

[GlasgowSpacer]

To me books should be magical and have soul and make you feel like you just lived that story. Grimdark is popular right now but fantasy should not be bloody and gory, it should be fun, intriguing and wonderous.

I think there's room for both. Making everything completely dark or light makes things to predictable. Assuming everything has to be one way or the other puts serious limits on the kind of stories authors can tell, and also stifles creativity as it means they have to write based on what other people demmand, not their own ideas.

That said you do have a point that dark and gritty has just become the new safe style for a lot of fiction.

 

[j d worthington]

From the ridiculous to the ... literary: While there are several stories by Henry James I count as favorites ("Washington Square"; The Turn of the Screw), there are a fair number that read as though he was trying to frustrate his readership, qualifying every statement so finely that each nuance assumes such import that nothing feels all that important. As I read James, my eyes wander, my mind wanders, my attention is suddenly riveted by the growing of grass or the drying of paint.

Henry James is someone it took me a bit to "get into". At his best, he is superb; undeniably one of the best. At his worst, he is pretentious as hell. Lovecraft (in a letter to, if memory serves, his friend Alfred Galpin) once cited a quip he had heard about the matter of H.J. having "three periods: James the First, James the Second, and the Old Pretender".....

To me books should be magical and have soul and make you feel like you just lived that story. Grimdark is popular right now but fantasy should not be bloody and gory, it should be fun, intriguing and wonderous.

I think there's room for both. Making everything completely dark or light makes things to predictable. Assuming everything has to be one way or the other puts serious limits on the kind of stories authors can tell, and also stifles creativity as it means they have to write based on what other people demmand, not their own ideas.

That said you do have a point that dark and gritty has just become the new safe style for a lot of fiction.

I think that is the problem, really; that it takes swings of the pendulum one way or the other. Though there have always been dark fantasies out there, of course, from "Carillon of Skulls" by Lester del Rey or Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique cycle on (at least). It is the view that this is somehow inherently more "realistic" a trend in fantasy than any other than I find preposterous. But both (as well as everything between) has its place; I'd just like that place to be a little more justly assessed.

For example, if the darker and grimmer aspects of fantasy were left out, some of the most iconic works in the field would have never seen print. This would include a large chunk of Moorcock's work, as well as Karl Edward Wagner's Kane series, not to mention a fair degree of Robert E. Howard (who did a fair amount of tragic stories in his career). Not to mention such a powerful (and, yes, magical) tale as Anderson's The Broken Sword. On the other hand, if the lighter end of things were left out, we'd not have the gems that Cabell wrote (particularly Figures of Earth, Something About Eve, The High Place, Domnei, "The Music from Behind the Moon", The Cream of the Jest, etc.), nor the other aspect of Moorcock's work (The Dancers at the End of Time sequence, for example), nor Terry Pratchett's nor several of Neil Gaiman's works (short or long). Nor, for that matter, several of Dunsany's....

On the subject of explicit sexuality... again, it depends. If it is nothing more than putting one's fantasies on paper, then it is most often meretricious. On the other hand, if it serves a genuine purpose to the story and/or on a higher level (as with Moorcock's The Brothel in Rosenstrasse, where his use of it mirrors what is happening in the Edenic world outside Frau Schmetterling's house, thus reinforcing his theme of the corruption of our shared reality which our imposition of our fantasies upon it often lead to), or Nicholson Baker's Vox, where the entire sexual fantasy aspect of it gives very deep insight into character and makes them deeply human on many levels... then that's another thing.

 

[Kierkegaurdian]

Space opera is hard for me to get into, for some reason. Didn't like Pandora's Star by Hamilton or Use of Weapons by Banks. It might just be that the writing was very plain, and without much finesse, and I am looking for something more literary. They were mostly just collections of action / adventure tropes with the occasionally interesting far-future tech idea.

 

[Mr Fraaz]

I struggled for 4-5 months with Elric: The Fortress of the Pearl by Moorcock. I really wanted to like it. Michael Whelan's Elric art made such an impression on me when I was a kid, but I never got around to reading the books back then.

This autumn I decided to do it, but found that I had to force myself through it. There was too much wandering around in dream realms where anything could happen and you just had to accept it happened, because it was dreams and thus incoherent and weird. Way too abstract for my taste.

I'm still going to try Stormbringer! but if that is the same I'll give up. Or try the graphic novels, perhaps.

 

[j d worthington]

I have a liking for Fortress of the Pearl, but it took a while to grow on me. I would suggest that, before going to Stormbringer! you try The Revenge of the Rose and/or The Vanishing Tower (a.k.a. The Sleeping Sorceress). The first is a good deal more polished in the writing, but both are, I think, among the best Moorcock ever did with either Elric or his world. Stormbringer, being a much earlier effort, is very uneven; it begins rather roughly, but the latter half of the book really is very impressive....

 

[Mr Fraaz]

Thank you very much for the advice! I'll try out one of those that you suggest first! I'd really love to give Elric another shot (or two).