Any well known authors in any genre that you just can't read?

[Toby Frost]

I read Dune about 30 years ago and liked it but I don't think I could I ever reread it. Wasn't able to finish book 2.

I definitely only meant the first book! The others I'm really not interested in - mainly because the most interesting aspects of the Dune galaxy, and it's most distinctive characters, are disposed of in Dune itself.

 

[Toby Frost]

I read Dune about 30 years ago and liked it but I don't think I could I ever reread it. Wasn't able to finish book 2.

I only found the first book interesting, really. Much of what made the Dune setting interesting is destroyed during Dune itself.

The books read like Tarantino scripts.

For better or worse, I think that's very accurate. I get the same feeling from The First Law that I get from Tarantino: it's very slick and well-made, but it lacks "heart" (sorry about the choice of word. It makes me sound like a country singer but I can't think of anything better).

 

[hitmouse]

I read a few Asimovs, Heinleins and Clarkes in my youth, but there's no way I'd be able to stomach the first two now. Clarke is a bit different - though he was very much of his time, I think he was the best ideas man of the three, and that makes his work a bit more palatable.

Agree about Clarke. Asimov I always found insipid.
Heinlein is more difficult. A bit like Norman Rockwell paintings in his view of the world. I still like the early Heinlein as period pieces. His juveniles were the first SF I ever read, so I have a soft spot for those still, and his Future History stories are great. Stranger in a Strange Land is a hilariously bonkers freak SF novel.
Later stuff can be awful and actually distasteful (Farnham's Freehold.)

 

[AndrewT]

James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Mevryn Peake, Stephen Erickson, and some but not all of Iain Banks. I know Erickson is very popular on this forum and I will give him another chance at some point. Banks is an adult version of Douglas Adams. His works were meant to be comical and outrageous but he lost me. I like more serious sci fi like KSR's Aurora. Now that was great! Use of Weapons was surely my least favorite SF or all time and I have finished a few dogs. If I was stranded on a desert island that would be the first book I would leave behind in my closet at home. I realized halfway through how bad it was but kept hoping it would all tie together by the end. Well it did not; just left me scratching my head thinking the editor must need a bulletproof vest. I may try Excession some day though.

 

[dask]

John Clute a fair amount of the time.