Books Loved by Critics Hated By You

[Venusian Broon]

<off-topic>

(The Baroque Cycle.)

Ive been tempted to read this one.

I certainly would recommend it, for what my recommendations are worth.

I devoured all three books. It really is a fascinating period of history as well, and being a physicist at one point of my life it's great seeing Newton as an action hero .

</off-topic>

 

[Timba]

Not sure if this is loved by critics as I tend to pay no attention to them but certainly many people rave about Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen and I could not get through the first book much less dig in for the rest. Really the only book I have ever completely given up on.

 

[BAYLOR]

I dislike George Elliot's books ,Ive read Silas Marner andd Adam Bede and hated didn't like either book.

 

[Toby Frost]

I’d have to add The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s not a bad story, if an extremely simple one, but the pseudo-Biblical prose is very irritating, and doesn’t quite hide the fact that there’s not very much to it at all. Also, McCarthy commits the cardinal sin of not using quotation marks for dialogue, which to my mind is the ultimate give-away of pretentiousness.

 

[HareBrain]

McCarthy commits the cardinal sin of not using quotation marks for dialogue, which to my mind is the ultimate give-away of pretentiousness.

He does the same in All The Pretty Horses, as well as using "should of" in dialogue and leaving out some apostrophes in contractions (again in dialogue), so don't becomes dont. I can't say for sure why he's done it, but for me it works and once you've got used to it, gets you more into the world he's writing about, whose people generally would probably think of punctuation as an unnecessary nicety (even those who could write at all). I haven't read The Road, but from what I know of it I'd assume that's also true of its characters.

Though there were a few cases of it leading to confusion, I generally found it still obvious when someone was speaking and who it was. If his skill makes quotation marks unnecessary, why use them?

 

[J-Sun]

infaktwyebothertospelpropurlyorusespacesorennypunktuashonatawl

(Seriously, I had the book in my hands due to hearing other things about it that interested me - reading a bit from it was enough for me to put it back for just that reason, leaving aside all else.)

 

[Bick]

Pretty horses for courses, I guess. I loved "The Road", and think McCarthy is one of the world's great writers. My teachers told me you shouldn't start sentences with the word 'but', however Hemingway did it all the time. I reckon if you can write as well as these guys you can break whatever rules you like.

 

[Toby Frost]

Yes, I’d agree. It’s not my sort of thing. If I had to justify the quotations issue, I’d say that using the French style in English makes a book needlessly difficult to read and has no real function apart from to signpost the fact that it’s “literature”.

God, I just used “signpost as a verb”. That’s only two stops from detoxifying my problematic narrative.

 

[Ursa major]

as well as using "should of" in dialogue

Some people say "should of" rather than "should have" or "should've" so I think an author should be able to write "should of" in dialogue where the character would say it.

And, I suppose, in first person (or very close third person) narrative, perhaps 'should of' is also permissible . (But perhaps this should be left to better known writers, where the reader -- particularly the reader for a publisher -- will be less likely to confuse its use for poor English.)

 

[Randy M.]

infaktwyebothertospelpropurlyorusespacesorennypunktuashonatawl

(Seriously, I had the book in my hands due to hearing other things about it that interested me - reading a bit from it was enough for me to put it back for just that reason, leaving aside all else.)

You're missing a good, if grim, read. Note in particular the way the father protects the son and the questions the son asks the father. I think those are central to what McCarthy is digging at.

I have to be won over by some of the trickery of narrative. I'm not fond of second-person, or present tense, or lack of punctuation. McCarthy in The Road and No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian won me over.

Randy M.

 

[Dinosaur]

I quite like McCarthy's style in The Road and thought it worked. And then I tried other books and realized that's his style throughout, which really turned me off him as a writer.

James Patterson seems popular with critics but the couple of his I've tried have been terrible to the point I had to read more than one just to make sure.

 

[Kissmequick]

Atonement slayed me. I was in bits. Not especially for the prose or anything...just that last chapter...I have never sworn at an author so hard. Or cried so bitterly over a book.

Books critics loved and I hated? A heck of a lot of award winners tbh. I went through a phase of reading a load to see what was considered "great". I couldn;t finish half of them, and those I did, half were a slog. I think out of 20 or so I tried, I actively liked two. Conclusion: What the critics love and what I love are not often the same. So I have a couple of blog reviewers I follow cos I know if they like it, I probably will and one I follow cos I know if they hate it I'll love it (and vice versa). Other than that, I have decided that me and critics don;t share a headspace so I ignore them for recommendations. I go on the reccs of people I know like the same stuff I do.

 

[VALIS13]

Some people say "should of" rather than "should have"

These people need to be shot.

 

[Ursa major]

These people need to be shot.

So in other words, you think we should be shot of them...?

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[BAYLOR]

I read one of Anthony Trollop's Barchester novels and simply couldn't get into it. I may at some point give it another go.

 

[Bick]

I read one of Anthony Trollop's Barchester novels and simply couldn't get into it. I may at some point give it another go.

I read The Warden a couple of years ago. At first, I'd agree that Trollope's prose is a bit ponderous, but it repaid me sticking with it. Good stuff. I'm not rushing out to read more by him, but that's as much to do with the height of the tbr pile than the amount I enjoyed it.

 

[AndrewT]

infaktwyebothertospelpropurlyorusespacesorennypunktuashonatawl
QUOTE]

oops a four letter word as well

 

[Heather Myst]

The Malazan books by Steven Erikson. Way too many pages for so little payoff. I know a lot of people love these books but they were confusing and way over rated to me.

The Soldier Son series by Robin Hobb. I thought book one was bad until I read the next two books. it is so bad that it is hard for me to believe that this was wriiten by Robin Hobb.

The Deed of Parksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. I just found this to be extremely slow.

 

[Extollager]

I read The Warden a couple of years ago. At first, I'd agree that Trollope's prose is a bit ponderous, but it repaid me sticking with it. Good stuff. I'm not rushing out to read more by him, but that's as much to do with the height of the tbr pile than the amount I enjoyed it.

If you do try some more Trollope, you might go to Dr. Thorne. Quoting from a piece about it that I wrote a few years ago:

In his Autobiography, Trollope remarked that this 1858 novel was, he believed, his most popular. It conformed in exemplary fashion to his own statement: “A novel should give a picture of common life enlivened by humour and sweetened by pathos. To make that picture worthy of attention, the canvas should be crowded by real portraits… of created personages impregnated with traits of character which are known.” I host a campus-community reading group that has met for over a decade to discuss works by Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Dante, Conrad, and many others, with an emphasis on Victorian novels; but somehow, Doctor Thorne was our first by Trollope. It went over very well indeed.
Trollope felt that this novel, his eighth to be published, had a good plot – even though plot “is the most insignificant part of a tale.” Doctor Thorne cares for his ******* niece as his own daughter. She does not know the sad secret of her birth. The property of the most prominent family in the neighborhood, the Greshams, is threatened by enormous debts, and so it is understood that the son, Frank, “must marry money.” However, Frank and penniless Mary Thorne love each other. Somewhat as the young J. R. R. Tolkien was forbidden by his guardian from contact with the girl he loved for a time, Frank is sent away from Greshamsbury and Mary is no longer a welcome guest of the family, thanks especially to Lady Arabella, Frank’s mother, a study in worldiness. Dr. Thorne must struggle with his conscience, for he learns that, if the dissolute heir of a deceased self-made rich man dies soon – as he is expected to do – Mary will probably inherit a huge fortune, and the Greshams’ principal objection to her will evaporate! Shall he tell anyone? He is a conscientious man and does not want the drunken heir (his patient!) to die, but he abounds with sympathy for Mary and Frank.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Malazan books by Steven Erikson. Way too many pages for so little payoff. I know a lot of people love these books but they were confusing and way over rated to me.

.

Malazan is very offbeat . Either you like it or hate it . There seems to be no middle ground on this one.