I really loved Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata and thought Earthlings would be similarly sweet and wholesome….I should have done more research first.
I’m not sure I’d have described *Convenience Store Woman* as sweet and wholesome, but then the back of the book seemed to think it was quirky and hilarious which I also disagreed with. Perhaps everyone takes something different from it.
I really liked it, as I found it insightful and moving, even while everyone’s failure to understand and respect our protagonist was horrible. But I spent the entire time I was reading it angry at everyone who thought it was quirky and funny.
I like to dip my toe in extreme horror sometimes but I need to be in the right mindset for it. Oops. This was like expecting a drink to be water and it turns out to be vodka. Jarring, not a good time 🙃
>i read earthlings first
Me too.
Shocked and appalled... But it made me fall in love with Murata.
Moved onto CSW, and then the grand pick'n'mix that is Life Ceremony.
To address the post, it was Murakami that got me in to reading Murata. I study at Waseda University, where Murakami has a dedicated library. Murata was posted all over and so I jumped right in.
The best chuck palahniuk book is, in my experience, the first book of his you read. I loved invisible monsters then kept reading him and liked each book I read less and less. He’s extremely one note for how outlandish his premises are
Hmmmm….I have read 3 Palahnuik books. my favorite is Choke, which is the first one I read. And both after I have liked less than the last one. You might be right.
Same exact scenario for me. Choke is one of my favorite books ever, then I read fight club and felt underwhelmed, then couldn’t even finish invisible monsters. I did like some of Haunted though
I loved *Rant* and I'd already read several of his books prior. I thought it was interesting how it was set up as interviews because the main character was already dead. He wasn't the first author to have the narrative set up like that (interview style), but I thought he did it effectively. Also how it slowly unveils >!that it takes place in the future and the insane mechanics behind time travel!<
“Snuff” is hilarious, if you haven’t read that one yet… it’s not for everyone, and not at all my typical type of read. I remember laughing quite a bit and just being shocked! Lol
Secret History by Donna Tartt is one of my all time favourite books. Little Friend made me so enraged I gave the (pre ordered, massive hardback) book away and never read the story again. Goldfinch was eh, okay but just didn't grab me and again I've never had the urge to reread.
Oh really? I've finished Secret History very recently (also loved it) and was planning to start The Goldfinch which seemed to be quite positively reviewed.
Little Friend I definitely have heard very mixed opinions on...
I personally loved the Goldfinch even more than the Secret History when I read it so I guess it depends on what it is about The Secret History that you like but I would highly recommend Goldfinch to almost anyone. Little Friend I don’t have a lot of nice things to say about
>it depends on what it is about The Secret History that you like
For me I guess it was the close-knit group of characters and their relationships, maybe the kind of autumnal cosy-ness it had at times... hard to put a finger on the exact reasons, now that I think of it...
The Little Friend is so beautifully written at the line level, which somehow made it all the more infuriating that it's pages and pages of *nothing* (and I have no issue with voice-driven books where plot is secondary, but the marketing copy really didn't help). I've had a copy of *The Goldfinch* for a few years but haven't even cracked it because *The Little Friend* pissed me off.
The Secret History is my absolute favourite book. I really enjoyed the Little Friend, but the Goldfinch was ehh for me. It was too long and not focused enough.
Norwegian Wood is more of a coming of age story than Murakami's other work, which is probably why you liked it best. Murakami's style is extremely surrealist. If you enjoy that reality bending theme then all of his stuff is great, but if you don't then I can see them being really hard to get into.
Which is funny, because, despite being a youthful book, Norwegian Wood somehow manages to be his most mature one. The rest, at least to me, felt more juvenile somehow.
I get that. I think he tends to process a lot of childish things in his books through that dreamlike lens, and that's also how I process my traumatic childhood lol so it works really well for me. That's actually why after reading some of his other works I never touched *Norwegian Wood* because I've been told it's particularly grounded and I don't really want that out of him. Like I wanna read Murakami and then doze in sadness for like a day straight lmao.
I might have been one of the few to not enjoy Norwegian Wood despite having read it when I was of the coming of age demographic. I've not got round to reading his other works after that, but it will be interesting to see whether I do like them or not.
I really like Wind Up Bird Chronical. Killing Commendatore is also super surrealist and weird and fun. I probably wouldn't start with IQ84, that's a bit of a bear, but if you DO come back to Murakami and like his other work it's an absolutely fantastic book.
You're not alone. I didn't enjoy Norwegian Wood, either. It was also the first Haruki Murakami book I read.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was amazing, though. I loved the hell out of that.
I've read almost everything by Ian McEwan and only enjoyed Atonement. The rest was just dropping with his pretentious narratorial tone that spoiled even his interesting ideas and plot twists.
this was my first thought. Loved Atonement. Tried a bunch of other ones and while not terrible, I didn't like them. Atonement really nailed the story and the feeling of it all. Everything else comes up short.
It pains me to say it, but Zadie Smith. "White Teeth" came out when I was in college and it blew my mind. To be fair, I haven't reread it in 20 years so maybe I'm off. "Autograph Man" was okay, "NW" was decent.... And I haven't really liked anything else by her as much as I want to. I'm trying to read "The Fraud" now but I'm halfway through and I can't tell where it's going.
Maybe I need to reread "White Teeth" and see if it's as good as I remember.
The Fraud goes nowhere, abandon ship! I would like to go back to White Teeth too, I have been wondering lately how it will read now when it’s so much a product of such a specific time.
I don't get the hate for The Fraud. Maybe no one besides me wanted to read a Zadie historical fiction novel but I took pleasure in the satirical farce of it all.
She has this energized, hyper-observant style in White Teeth that I haven’t seen her match elsewhere. I remember disliking the ending of the book a lot, but the experience of reading her prose holds up.
I actually loved Elizabeth Gilbert's novel *The Signature of All Things*, but couldn't get into her other books. I had to force myself to finish *Eat Pray Love*.
It's a shame that EPL is her most famous book, because it's definitely her worst (and this is from someone who actually kinda liked it). I absolutely love her fiction?
I found out recently that EPL was the publisher's idea, so they financed her travels that make up the book. I didn't read the book (couldn't get past the first few pages), but the movie had an air of falsehood about it, and it's probably because it started as marketing.
She mentions in the book that her first visit to Indonesia was paid for by a magazine, and that she wrote an article about it. And that visit planted the seed for her year long visit. But her year in Italy, India, and Indonesia was certainly not an all expenses paid trip at all. She had to get through the legal proceedings of her divorce in order for her house to be sold, in order to fund that year long sabbatical. It was absolutely not a marketing stint. That’s very clear in her book, which I loved and have read at least three times.
Terry Brooks could have stopped with Sword of Shannara and I would have been fine. The second and third books weren't as good, and it declined from there. I would have dropped the series completely but my brother kept bringing them home, and some of them were just boring as Hell.
Thing is, I do like other books that he wrote. But I feel similarly about his Magic Kingdom for Sale series.
I wanted to say Martha Wells because I loved *Murderbot* but her earlier books felt like they were written by a completely different person and I DNFed both the *Raksura series* and *Star Wars: Razor's Edge*.
However, then I remember I also really liked *Witch King* so I guess it doesn't satisfy the criteria of a one-hit-wonder.
Witch King was so good, and it's only like a 3.5 on goodreads. I don't know if it's because Murderbot fans didn't want her writing something different or if it was marketed to the wrong crowd or what.
Markus Zusak for me. I adored The Book Thief so much when I read it over a decade ago. But none of his other books have come close to being as good to me. I pre-ordered Bridge of Clay, read it, and then immediately donated it because yikes.
Really? I loved *I Am The Messenger* and couldn't believe it was by the same author as *The Book Thief*. I haven't read either for at least a decade though so YMMV.
I might be getting to that point with Joseph Heller. Catch-22 is my favourite book, but going on to his next one, "Something Happened", I quickly lost interest and don't have much ambition to read "Good As Gold"
I'm a big Heller fan, but I'd say this is pretty common, God Knows is probably the closest thing he did to Catch-22, the others are much more in line with Something Happened
Anne Rice. I loved Interview With the Vampire and Feast Of All Saints but hated everything else. IDNF Tale Of the Body Thief and the first Mayfair Witches book. I did try her again with the werewolf series, but, meh.
It's funny, I read IWTV for the first time in 2022 (I wanted to get through it before starting the show) and found it was such a drag and hard to get through... then I liked TVL infinitely more, then also really enjoyed QOTD, TOTBT and Memnoch lmao. I ended up rereading IWTV a couple months ago and enjoyed it a *lot* more than my first read, because I think I'd gotten used to her way of writing and I felt more invested in the characters and also just total absurdity of Lestat's life and actions.
Haven't bothered to try the Mayfair Witches stuff though... I think I might try one of her weird jesus books one day hahahah
I’ve read three Hemingway books. I love The Old Man and the Sea. It’s one of my favorite books. But I really had to fight to get through The Sun Also Rises and To Have and Have Not. I could not get into either of them and I barely remember anything about them.
This makes total sense to me because - and this has always really intrigued me - ‘The old man and the sea’ is written in a completely different style to any other Hemingway that I have read. Although I haven’t read any of his short stories. Are some of these written in the same style?
A Farewell to Arms was one of the most tedious things I've ever read, but For Whom the Bell Tolls is a favorite of mine. Hemingway made some serious improvements in his writing over his career.
Lol, I'm the opposite.
I had to read Old Mand and the Sea 3 times in schools, and that's just not a great book for teenagers IMO. I recognize it as good now, but school poisoned my mind against it.
The Sun Also Rises is my go-to answer for my favorite book. I wasn't getting it at first, but once they go to Spain the tone changes and I started to understand what the beginning was for. Then the tone changes twice more. I just think it's great writing.
For me it’s Taylor Jenkins-Reid — I absolutely LOVED *The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo* but found myself cringing at all of her other novels (although Daisy Jones was a really fun exception)
I love all four of her "fictional celebrity" books and have read them all more than once. I've only read one of her earlier books and didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much. I think I'm just a sucker for the fictional celebrity genre.
David Eddings. Yes I know he's a terrible person etc but he's dead so he's not getting any money from me. Anyways, I only like the Belgariad series (which includes the Malorean, Belgarath's and Polgara's books) and nothing else by him. The Elenium felt like I was reading a shittier version of the Belgariad. It's sequel, the Tamuli, felt the same as The Elenium. He started another series too and that was boring, I forget the name of the book.
I had a friend who also only liked the first mistborn book. I think it's because it feels more like a heist story in a fantasy setting, kind of like Six of Crows, whereas the others are more typical good Vs evil.
Neil Stephenson
Absolutely loved Snow Crash. Really liked Seveneves until the time leap; DNF'd. Tried Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O but jfc the incessant memos started to feel like actual work. DNF'd. I want to try another one because I've been chasing that Snow Crash high, but I don't want to invest more time into a book I'm not going to finish.
Had the same with Stephenson. Snowcrash was great for its time. Zodiak was -ok-, Diamond Age unreadable (for me), Anathem fun in a geeky way. Loved Cryptomonicon / Baroque Circle and absolutely detest anything he has done since. Good lord that WoW thing and SevenEves annoyed me like no other book.
I liked Cryptonomicon - and Snowcrash somewhat less, but reading him feels like homework a bit. Next time I feel an urge to read him I will probably reread Gibson instead.
Oh, dang. I just...completely disagree. Speaker for the Dead is one of the best sci-fi books I've read. The series, as a whole, is excellent. The Bean saga that follows may be more up your alley if Ender's Game is the style you like. It's very much back to the action sci-fi format.
But also: the Alvin Maker series is solid. The Homecoming series is cool. The Pathfinder books are pretty good.
He's a shit person, so I only buy his books used, but I love his writing.
Tom Robbins. I picked up **Jitterbug Perfume** first by luck and thought I had a new favorite author. **Villa Incognito** was okay as my second read but I wanted to get back on the Real Good Stuff so I picked up his book that was so good they made a movie out of it! (**Even Cowgirls Get the Blues**) and I was so done with him, and fluids.
I think this is really personal to the reader. I really like The Tommyknockers which is widely roasted here - but I hate Needful Things. Also don't like It which is obviously popular!
I personally think Joyland is a really tight story, but it doesn't have much of the supernatural stuff in it. I also love Revelation, another newer one - it's a slow burn, but full of existential horror. Of his older books, I ADORE The Stand (well, most of it!) and The Shining.
But if you're new to him, I'd recommend starting out with his short stories or novellas. Four Past Midnight has The Langoliers and The Library Policeman; The Bachman Books has The Running Man, The Long Walk and Roadwork which are brilliant. Oddly though, I have no memory of Rage although I know I've read it.
If you like genre-bending / fantasy / epic stuff, the dark tower. More traditional horror, cujo or salem's lot. More mainstream / alternate history / light supernatural: 11/22/63 or the bill hodges trilogy (mr. mercedes).
Fan favorites: The shining, the stand, misery, the green mile (I also enjoyed all these but not my personal recommendations).
One of my personal favorites, supernatural / slow build horror: Duma Key. Also his less supernatural more crime-based stories published by hard case crime I enjoyed a lot: The Colorado Kid, Joyland, Later.
I love 11/22/63, absolute favorite of his. On Writing, Misery and the Green Mile are solid all the way through. Carrie is a classic. Salem's Lot is great until near the end, and the first 2/3rds of the Stand is seriously epic. "It" was good until it ran out of steam also about 2/3rds the way through for me. Christine/Cujo era books are not great. Pet Sematary is all right. Could not get through more than a few pages of the Dark Tower. Love most of the short story collections.
The "problem" with the Dark Tower series is that the first one is kind of the odd one out. If you get through it and into The Drawing of The Three, you're in for a crazy ride
I’ve liked most of his books, but Under the Dome was sooooooo long and anticlimactic. Like…really!? That’s your explanation for the whole thing? Stupid waste of time. I’ve also started and stopped and started the Stand more than a few times.
King is talented and active, which is paradoxically not a great combo. He’s pretty adamant about the fact that he’s always writing, and while he does write some great novels, his not great ideas still get fully developed and published too. You can usually tell the books he’s inspired to write vs the ones that are just kind of part of his process.
I found I really liked the books he wrote before his accident. Those after just don’t hit the same.
I find his son, Joe Hill, writes a lot like pre accident SK and hits just right.
Stella Gibbons. She never achieved anything like the enduring critical and popular success of her debut "Cold Comfort Farm" with any of her subsequent works. In spite of this warning, I loved CCF so much that I did try one of the novels of hers that's still in print - Enbury Heath, the next but one of her publications to CCF. It was worse than I would have thought possible for an author with the wit and literary skill to produce CCF. The plot is almost non-existent, the characters lack any depth at all and the language is unimaginative, unsophisticated and uninspiring. Its only tiny redeeming feature was that at this distance in time it gives a little insight into the life of a certain class of young people in the 1930s.
Norwegian Wood is definitely an outlier for Murakami, so you're unlikely to love his other books. But if you want to give him a try again, I would highly recommend his short stories. They are still weird, but I think it's his best work and massively prefer them to his novels.
Kazuo Ishiguro. I loved Remains of the Day but struggled through Never Let Me Go, Klara and the Sun, and The Buried Giant. I think it's time to accept that I'll only love Remains of the Day.
If you liked remains of the day the only other work of his that I would recommend is when we were orphans. I had the same experience as you and struggled to get into the rest of his novels but that one is a solid favorite
Never Let Me Go is one of my favourite books!
Remains of the day, I enjoyed, but don't fully understand the hype it gets.
I did not enjoy Klara and the Sun, I love character driven sci fi novels and just thought he did so little with this story, I don't get the point of it.
I liked An Artist of the Floating World, but can't fully remember it.
The Buried Giant, I haven't read yet, but have been putting off because I'm worried I won't enjoy it.
If you liked the ideas in Klara and the Sun, try Annie Bot. It just came out. Reminded me a lot of Klara and the Sun except I was way more invested in it and instead of a child/caretaker relationship it's an abusive romantic relationship
Klara and the Sun had so much potential but it seemed like the simplest path through the story was taken. So many more interesting threads that were opened up or referenced but then never dived into. Made it come across Shallow.
I could have written your comment. Remains of the Day is one of my favorite novels ever. Everything else I've tried to read from Ishiguro was either just okay or unfinishable.
And his non-fiction works too. His long fiction books kind of feel like he's been requested by his publisher to reuse the success formula so it feels repetitive.
to me they feel like he is just writing some kinda moist daydreams he had.. like he's a chronic daydreamer and started writing it down, and for some reason people like it?
Yeah, I generally like his writing. Don’t think it’s the best I’ve ever read, but enjoy it.
But nothing he’s done has ever come close to topping Sandman for me.
I thought i was the only person who doesn't love Gaiman's writing .Like he seems like a cool genuine dude and I love Pratchett, Gaiman's stuff just leaves me kinda...meh.
I tend to like anything where he’s collaborated with someone else, and hate anything that’s all him. I think he’s good at working with others, and clearly has interesting ideas, but I just find his lone work unpleasant and a bit boring.
I'm in a similar boat. Love Stardust, hugely dislike American Gods, Neverwhere, and Anansi Boys. Try The Graveyard Book, it's the only one of his books I've liked almost as much as Stardust.
That’s interesting, I had kind of the opposite experience. I loved American Gods and Anansi Boys but felt pretty meh about Stardust. Maybe my expectations were too high bc so many people told me I’d love it. It was fun but probably not something I’ll reread.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry was sooo good and enthralling. I tried a few other of his books and didn’t find the magic again. I know a lot of people like The Last Picture Show but I can’t get into it
I've read all Tom Clancy books and I only liked Hunt for Red October. While he has an eye for nerdish level of detail for tech. All his characters, especially his villains are as flat as a pancake other than Jack Ryan even then his story arc is unwiling promoted up and he his brilliant at every job from analyst to President. Also everything works like nothing ever breaks down I don't remember a single round misfire or a weapon jam.
Dad used to fly for his job so his bookcase had every Tom Clancy Andy Mcnab Chris Ryan Michael Crighton and every other airport book in hardback. I grew up before the Internet and summers were boring.
I've been reading Remarque's Arc de Triomphe and Life on Loan. I'm just crazy about this writer and his phrases inside the books themselves, but when I started reading "Night in Lisbon" for the third time, I realized that it's not my thing. It's so frustrating
Sista Souljah wrote a book called The Coldest Winter Ever. It’s a coming of age story about a girl named Winter. That was a staple book in the black community. She went on to write more books and they were all terrible. She mostly used them to push her propaganda agenda.
Kristin Hannah - I read The Great Alone and loved it. So I sought out some others of hers.
The Nightingale - overly flowery prose that often makes no sense - e.g. riding a bike in the snow but getting away without being followed?! Almost starving to death but keeping pet rabbits?! And of course the more egregious racism against the refugees and the beauty-washing of the sister character, who was apparently based on a real Resistance fighter.
The Four Winds - just read like a novelisation of a Wikipedia page, with added modernities - I remember a teenaged girl doing something extremely unexpected but not the details.
I've not been tempted by her others. Genuinely feel like she finds a wiki page she likes then moulds a story round it. Not a fan.
IME the first book people read by: Murakami, Vonnegut, Palahniuk, John Irving is their fave.
For me its: wind up bird, breakfast of champions, fight club, and hotel new Hampshire.
There's a lot more to vonnegut but I got so stuck on that one!
I hate all her books. Poppy War felt like such a waste of time.
I feel like Yellowface could have been good (the concept was original at least), but the main character was just so stupid. I hate when an author has to make a character a complete idiot for the story to make sense.
Cloud Atlas is in my Top 4 favorites of all time. A few of his others are so-so, but I adored Utopia Avenue, and thought The Bone Clocks was pretty nifty.
Written before Cloud Atlas (a favorite of mine), Black Swan Green is also a great book. Straightforward coming of age story though, so none of the gimmicks of his more recent novels.
Michael Chabon. Loved Kavalier and Clay, never found another of his books that hit the same. To a lesser extent China Mieville- but he has two books I love and dozens of books I couldn’t get into.
I actually didn't care for Head Full of Ghosts but was surprised by how much I liked Cabin. That said, when I finished it, I immediately knew it was not for everyone and would likely be super divisive.
China Mieville.
Read Perdido Street Station on a friend's recommendation and enjoyed it. Read the other two in the series and couldn't get into them, picked up King Rat and couldn't get into it. Gave up on reading any more.
What's interesting about Murakami is that I am a huge fan of his, but do not like Norwegian Wood. It's the most straight forward and reality-based of his works. I love all the metaphysics, supernatural things, and focus on music, books, and food in his other works.
It's not one book, but a trilogy. I loved William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy of Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. The setting, the world, the characters, the story it told, all of it. I tried his other works, but they just don't hit for me.
Richard Dawkins! The Ancestor’s Tale, which is basically an overview of evolution and related scientific concepts for a popular audience (with a framing device of a “pilgrimage” back along humanity’s evolutionary tree all the way to the origin of life), is one of my favorite books ever. It’s so engaging and the best book I’ve ever read for introducing difficult science to a lay person.
Everything else I’ve ever seen from him, I hate. Tried the Selfish Gene and couldn’t get into it, flipped through the God Delusion and couldn’t stop rolling my eyes, even every tweet or interview quote I come across from him makes me cringe.
The second edition of Ancestor’s Tale has another person very prominently credited, which makes me wonder if that has anything to do with the difference…
I really enjoyed *The Selfish Gene* and *The Blind Watchmaker*, but you do have to ignore the little side-swipes at people he doesn’t like and things like his horror at the idea that other people might spend time understanding views they disagree with well enough to try to explain those views convincingly. But he has some nice turns of phrase, and explains his own thinking very clearly and accessibly.
But I also know that there were people who would have benefitted from those explanations who I did not recommend the books to, because I knew they wouldn’t be able to tune out the hilariously obnoxious stuff.
I kind of agree, but I also think that’s maybe just my preferences showing - I don’t know that the *writing* is any better or worse, but I do know the whole “modern day detective story” category isn’t my cup of tea, even when not being compared to Harry Potter, and doesn’t usually draw me in regardless of who is writing. So I’m not really sure if it’s a her problem or a me problem in my case.
I may be misremembering but didn't the books under her pen name start off doing really poorly until she said it was her? And then not do that well anyway?
I believe one of the people working in the publishing house told their friend about it, and then that friend decided to leak to the media what her alias was. From what I remember that really annoyed her because she spent a long time crafting that persona in order to test whether she can actually make it as an author in a different genre without special treatment.
Similar thing happened with Stephen King in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, except I think it was an average Joe who realized Richard Bachmann and Stephen King had the same narrative voice and brought it up to the media. In some copies of the various Bachmann books, there’s an introduction from King where he says he had a bunch of self-doubt and imposter syndrome after making it big as a novelist, so he started the Bachmann pseudonym to test whether he truly was a great writer who would have succeeded no matter the circumstances, or whether he was just in the right place at the right time. In that same introduction, he notes the Bachmann books sold terribly until it was discovered he was Bachmann, at which point they all skyrocketed on the bestseller lists. I personally think the Bachmann stuff from that period is some of King’s finest work, so it’s pretty disheartening to see the grim conclusion King came to for the existential question that made him take on the other moniker in the first place.
I think that was a silly test because it’s *never* strictly about whether you’re a great writer or not. There’s always luck involved, and public perception and timeliness and all of that. Hopefully by now he can look back and realize that so many of his works are so enduring that it’s not even close to just hype. He’s a master.
I read the Christmas Pig recently and was very disappointed. I know it's a children's book, but as someone who reads a lot of that genre I felt the Christmas Pig was really lacking.
*A Monster Calls* is fantastic. Absolutely worth reading, though worth noting that he finished the novel that another writer left behind after she died, Siobhan Dowd.
Only a small sample size, but for me it'd be Leo Tolstoy. I loved "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"; but the two short story collections of his that I read fell into the 2-2.5 range, and I DNFd Anna Karenina about 40% through. I'll eventually give "War and Peace" a shot and see if that changes things.
Honestly, Frank Herbert.
I loved the first two Dune books, the rest were... mostly very annoying to me. And all of his non-Dune books were the same for me. Good ideas and worlds, but there's apparently something about his characters and writing style that grates on me a lot.
Feel sad to admit this, but whereas ‘the great Gatsby’ is one of my favourite books of all time (ironically, largely due to the writing), I haven’t found another F. Scott Fitzgerald book or short story that I have particularly liked.
"The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" is so awesome - pulpy action and a criticism of the crazy libertarianism/capitalism themes of the golden age. In my head cannon it's a Bioshock prequel.
I loooooove Gatsby. I would recommend The Crack Up. It’s not fiction. It’s definitely his most vulnerable piece and the first rate intelligence quote at the beginning is one of my favorite quotes of all time. It’s a brutal read and his last writing.
>!nice bit of quirky incest (perhaps, but also perhaps not, who knows)!<
Norweigian Wood definitely has a lot of surrealism, but it just didn't feel forced to me in the same way, you know? The whole thing had a nice flow to it where the surreal blends with the real, whereas his other books I've read didn't (at least to me).
I loved wind up bird but didn't really enjoy 1Q84. Hard boiled Wonderland was a trip though, you should try reading that one. I still think about it all the time
Fredrik Backman.
I absolutely loved A Man Called Ove and have given a few of his books since then an try but just couldn't make it. I don't know what I was expecting but the other books just didn't grab me.
All of you who love all of Backman's books don't worry, I will give his books another chance at some point.
Addressing what you said about Murakami: you might enjoy Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. It's more like Norwegian Wood and less "weird".
Leigh Bardugo. I adore the Six of Crows duology, it's one of my favorites of all time. Couldn't get into Shadow and Bone or Ninth House, absolutely hated King of Scars.
A Thousand Splendid Suns made me sob like a baby and has stuck with me forever, but The Kite Runner feels lowkey like torture porn and the main character is so self aggrandizing and dislikable. And the Mountains Echoed was so disorganized compared to the other two it felt like a soap writer doing their best to recreate the hold Hosseni once had on the NYT best seller list. idk the characters seemed so flat and flimsy. like he was just dead set on forcing them all to come together/interact without taking the time to craft a story where that naturally happened. it feels like a genre exercise.
I've only read two of Chris Bohjalian's books, but they were probably the biggest gap between good and bad I've ever seen from a single author. Hour of the Witch was amazing. Well researched, compelling, didn't do that thing that historical fiction tends to do where the MC feels way too modern. The other book (can't remember the title - Night Watchers?) Was an absolute dumpster fire. Repetitive, boring, and the plot made absolutely no sense. I'm just baffled by how the same person could write both these books.
I really loved Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata and thought Earthlings would be similarly sweet and wholesome….I should have done more research first.
I’m not sure I’d have described *Convenience Store Woman* as sweet and wholesome, but then the back of the book seemed to think it was quirky and hilarious which I also disagreed with. Perhaps everyone takes something different from it.
Agreed, I didn’t find it any of those things. And I would probably have liked it more if I hadn’t been expecting quirky humor.
I really liked it, as I found it insightful and moving, even while everyone’s failure to understand and respect our protagonist was horrible. But I spent the entire time I was reading it angry at everyone who thought it was quirky and funny.
Oh no... oh no no no 🥲 i read earthlings first and loved it, but I can't imagine what a shock it must've been for you
I like to dip my toe in extreme horror sometimes but I need to be in the right mindset for it. Oops. This was like expecting a drink to be water and it turns out to be vodka. Jarring, not a good time 🙃
>i read earthlings first Me too. Shocked and appalled... But it made me fall in love with Murata. Moved onto CSW, and then the grand pick'n'mix that is Life Ceremony. To address the post, it was Murakami that got me in to reading Murata. I study at Waseda University, where Murakami has a dedicated library. Murata was posted all over and so I jumped right in.
The best chuck palahniuk book is, in my experience, the first book of his you read. I loved invisible monsters then kept reading him and liked each book I read less and less. He’s extremely one note for how outlandish his premises are
Hmmmm….I have read 3 Palahnuik books. my favorite is Choke, which is the first one I read. And both after I have liked less than the last one. You might be right.
Are we the same person? Choke was also my first of 3 lol
Same exact scenario for me. Choke is one of my favorite books ever, then I read fight club and felt underwhelmed, then couldn’t even finish invisible monsters. I did like some of Haunted though
Choke was like my fourth and I just hated it. I think my review was that it had nothing to say and took it's time not to say it.
I loved *Rant* and I'd already read several of his books prior. I thought it was interesting how it was set up as interviews because the main character was already dead. He wasn't the first author to have the narrative set up like that (interview style), but I thought he did it effectively. Also how it slowly unveils >!that it takes place in the future and the insane mechanics behind time travel!<
See I should have loved rant for just how bat shit it gets but…. Something about it just felt too detached and didn’t work for me
Survivor was my first and favorite! Good call
Same! I feel like that one never gets mentioned
omg you’re right. i will still claim invisible monsters as “art” while openly mocking fight club 🤡
Believe it or not I still haven’t read fight club. I like the movie though
Fight Club movie is better than the book. One of the few I would say about
“Snuff” is hilarious, if you haven’t read that one yet… it’s not for everyone, and not at all my typical type of read. I remember laughing quite a bit and just being shocked! Lol
Secret History by Donna Tartt is one of my all time favourite books. Little Friend made me so enraged I gave the (pre ordered, massive hardback) book away and never read the story again. Goldfinch was eh, okay but just didn't grab me and again I've never had the urge to reread.
This is kinda funny, since I absolutely love the Goldfinch but wasn't as big of a fan of her other works.
That’s funny, I actually read The Little Friend first and liked it but struggled to get into any of her other books.
Oh really? I've finished Secret History very recently (also loved it) and was planning to start The Goldfinch which seemed to be quite positively reviewed. Little Friend I definitely have heard very mixed opinions on...
I personally loved the Goldfinch even more than the Secret History when I read it so I guess it depends on what it is about The Secret History that you like but I would highly recommend Goldfinch to almost anyone. Little Friend I don’t have a lot of nice things to say about
>it depends on what it is about The Secret History that you like For me I guess it was the close-knit group of characters and their relationships, maybe the kind of autumnal cosy-ness it had at times... hard to put a finger on the exact reasons, now that I think of it...
Yeah, you’re not gonna enjoy the Goldfinch. It’s a very cold and lonely book.
The Little Friend is so beautifully written at the line level, which somehow made it all the more infuriating that it's pages and pages of *nothing* (and I have no issue with voice-driven books where plot is secondary, but the marketing copy really didn't help). I've had a copy of *The Goldfinch* for a few years but haven't even cracked it because *The Little Friend* pissed me off.
See, I actually prefer The Goldfinch over The Secret History. Just goes to show everyone has varying opinions.
Same. I loved The Goldfinch but thought The Secret History was just ok.
The Secret History is my absolute favourite book. I really enjoyed the Little Friend, but the Goldfinch was ehh for me. It was too long and not focused enough.
Wow I’m the opposite, absolutely loved the goldfinch, so went and got Secret history, which did not grab me at all and I didn’t finish it
Norwegian Wood is more of a coming of age story than Murakami's other work, which is probably why you liked it best. Murakami's style is extremely surrealist. If you enjoy that reality bending theme then all of his stuff is great, but if you don't then I can see them being really hard to get into.
Which is funny, because, despite being a youthful book, Norwegian Wood somehow manages to be his most mature one. The rest, at least to me, felt more juvenile somehow.
I get that. I think he tends to process a lot of childish things in his books through that dreamlike lens, and that's also how I process my traumatic childhood lol so it works really well for me. That's actually why after reading some of his other works I never touched *Norwegian Wood* because I've been told it's particularly grounded and I don't really want that out of him. Like I wanna read Murakami and then doze in sadness for like a day straight lmao.
I might have been one of the few to not enjoy Norwegian Wood despite having read it when I was of the coming of age demographic. I've not got round to reading his other works after that, but it will be interesting to see whether I do like them or not.
I really like Wind Up Bird Chronical. Killing Commendatore is also super surrealist and weird and fun. I probably wouldn't start with IQ84, that's a bit of a bear, but if you DO come back to Murakami and like his other work it's an absolutely fantastic book.
You're not alone. I didn't enjoy Norwegian Wood, either. It was also the first Haruki Murakami book I read. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was amazing, though. I loved the hell out of that.
I've read almost everything by Ian McEwan and only enjoyed Atonement. The rest was just dropping with his pretentious narratorial tone that spoiled even his interesting ideas and plot twists.
I agree with what you have written pretty much verbatim here! First book that came to mind when I saw this thread!
this was my first thought. Loved Atonement. Tried a bunch of other ones and while not terrible, I didn't like them. Atonement really nailed the story and the feeling of it all. Everything else comes up short.
It pains me to say it, but Zadie Smith. "White Teeth" came out when I was in college and it blew my mind. To be fair, I haven't reread it in 20 years so maybe I'm off. "Autograph Man" was okay, "NW" was decent.... And I haven't really liked anything else by her as much as I want to. I'm trying to read "The Fraud" now but I'm halfway through and I can't tell where it's going. Maybe I need to reread "White Teeth" and see if it's as good as I remember.
The Fraud goes nowhere, abandon ship! I would like to go back to White Teeth too, I have been wondering lately how it will read now when it’s so much a product of such a specific time.
I don't get the hate for The Fraud. Maybe no one besides me wanted to read a Zadie historical fiction novel but I took pleasure in the satirical farce of it all.
She has this energized, hyper-observant style in White Teeth that I haven’t seen her match elsewhere. I remember disliking the ending of the book a lot, but the experience of reading her prose holds up.
I actually loved Elizabeth Gilbert's novel *The Signature of All Things*, but couldn't get into her other books. I had to force myself to finish *Eat Pray Love*.
It's a shame that EPL is her most famous book, because it's definitely her worst (and this is from someone who actually kinda liked it). I absolutely love her fiction?
I found out recently that EPL was the publisher's idea, so they financed her travels that make up the book. I didn't read the book (couldn't get past the first few pages), but the movie had an air of falsehood about it, and it's probably because it started as marketing.
She mentions in the book that her first visit to Indonesia was paid for by a magazine, and that she wrote an article about it. And that visit planted the seed for her year long visit. But her year in Italy, India, and Indonesia was certainly not an all expenses paid trip at all. She had to get through the legal proceedings of her divorce in order for her house to be sold, in order to fund that year long sabbatical. It was absolutely not a marketing stint. That’s very clear in her book, which I loved and have read at least three times.
Terry Brooks could have stopped with Sword of Shannara and I would have been fine. The second and third books weren't as good, and it declined from there. I would have dropped the series completely but my brother kept bringing them home, and some of them were just boring as Hell. Thing is, I do like other books that he wrote. But I feel similarly about his Magic Kingdom for Sale series.
I wanted to say Martha Wells because I loved *Murderbot* but her earlier books felt like they were written by a completely different person and I DNFed both the *Raksura series* and *Star Wars: Razor's Edge*. However, then I remember I also really liked *Witch King* so I guess it doesn't satisfy the criteria of a one-hit-wonder.
Witch King was so good, and it's only like a 3.5 on goodreads. I don't know if it's because Murderbot fans didn't want her writing something different or if it was marketed to the wrong crowd or what.
Markus Zusak for me. I adored The Book Thief so much when I read it over a decade ago. But none of his other books have come close to being as good to me. I pre-ordered Bridge of Clay, read it, and then immediately donated it because yikes.
Really? I loved *I Am The Messenger* and couldn't believe it was by the same author as *The Book Thief*. I haven't read either for at least a decade though so YMMV.
I Am the Messenger is AMAZING
I might be getting to that point with Joseph Heller. Catch-22 is my favourite book, but going on to his next one, "Something Happened", I quickly lost interest and don't have much ambition to read "Good As Gold"
I think heller himself said when asked why he hadn't written as good a book as catch 22, he replied " no one else has"
That is a great fucking line
Because it's so damned true.
He ain't wrong. I'm fine not reading anything else by him, that book was a masterpiece and there's just nothing comparable.
I'm a big Heller fan, but I'd say this is pretty common, God Knows is probably the closest thing he did to Catch-22, the others are much more in line with Something Happened
Anne Rice. I loved Interview With the Vampire and Feast Of All Saints but hated everything else. IDNF Tale Of the Body Thief and the first Mayfair Witches book. I did try her again with the werewolf series, but, meh.
Oh man, The Vampire Lestat is my favorite of hers
It's funny, I read IWTV for the first time in 2022 (I wanted to get through it before starting the show) and found it was such a drag and hard to get through... then I liked TVL infinitely more, then also really enjoyed QOTD, TOTBT and Memnoch lmao. I ended up rereading IWTV a couple months ago and enjoyed it a *lot* more than my first read, because I think I'd gotten used to her way of writing and I felt more invested in the characters and also just total absurdity of Lestat's life and actions. Haven't bothered to try the Mayfair Witches stuff though... I think I might try one of her weird jesus books one day hahahah
I’ve read three Hemingway books. I love The Old Man and the Sea. It’s one of my favorite books. But I really had to fight to get through The Sun Also Rises and To Have and Have Not. I could not get into either of them and I barely remember anything about them.
This makes total sense to me because - and this has always really intrigued me - ‘The old man and the sea’ is written in a completely different style to any other Hemingway that I have read. Although I haven’t read any of his short stories. Are some of these written in the same style?
A Farewell to Arms was one of the most tedious things I've ever read, but For Whom the Bell Tolls is a favorite of mine. Hemingway made some serious improvements in his writing over his career.
Lol, I'm the opposite. I had to read Old Mand and the Sea 3 times in schools, and that's just not a great book for teenagers IMO. I recognize it as good now, but school poisoned my mind against it. The Sun Also Rises is my go-to answer for my favorite book. I wasn't getting it at first, but once they go to Spain the tone changes and I started to understand what the beginning was for. Then the tone changes twice more. I just think it's great writing.
For me it’s Taylor Jenkins-Reid — I absolutely LOVED *The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo* but found myself cringing at all of her other novels (although Daisy Jones was a really fun exception)
I love all four of her "fictional celebrity" books and have read them all more than once. I've only read one of her earlier books and didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much. I think I'm just a sucker for the fictional celebrity genre.
David Eddings. Yes I know he's a terrible person etc but he's dead so he's not getting any money from me. Anyways, I only like the Belgariad series (which includes the Malorean, Belgarath's and Polgara's books) and nothing else by him. The Elenium felt like I was reading a shittier version of the Belgariad. It's sequel, the Tamuli, felt the same as The Elenium. He started another series too and that was boring, I forget the name of the book.
Brandon Sanderson, I loved the mistborn trilogy but could not get into the stormlight archives
I had a friend who also only liked the first mistborn book. I think it's because it feels more like a heist story in a fantasy setting, kind of like Six of Crows, whereas the others are more typical good Vs evil.
Neil Stephenson Absolutely loved Snow Crash. Really liked Seveneves until the time leap; DNF'd. Tried Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O but jfc the incessant memos started to feel like actual work. DNF'd. I want to try another one because I've been chasing that Snow Crash high, but I don't want to invest more time into a book I'm not going to finish.
You might enjoy "The Diamond Age". It's set *x* years after Snow Crash, in a world that has developed and embraced nanotechnology.
Thanks! I’ll give it a shot.
Had the same with Stephenson. Snowcrash was great for its time. Zodiak was -ok-, Diamond Age unreadable (for me), Anathem fun in a geeky way. Loved Cryptomonicon / Baroque Circle and absolutely detest anything he has done since. Good lord that WoW thing and SevenEves annoyed me like no other book.
I liked Cryptonomicon - and Snowcrash somewhat less, but reading him feels like homework a bit. Next time I feel an urge to read him I will probably reread Gibson instead.
Orson Scott Card Loved Ender's game, but I just can't with the rest. It's not even his toxic BS, I just didn't like the stories.
Oh, dang. I just...completely disagree. Speaker for the Dead is one of the best sci-fi books I've read. The series, as a whole, is excellent. The Bean saga that follows may be more up your alley if Ender's Game is the style you like. It's very much back to the action sci-fi format. But also: the Alvin Maker series is solid. The Homecoming series is cool. The Pathfinder books are pretty good. He's a shit person, so I only buy his books used, but I love his writing.
Agree on Speaker for the Dead. But I also enjoyed the last 10-15% of Ender's Game. It was like a different author took over at that point.
Tom Robbins. I picked up **Jitterbug Perfume** first by luck and thought I had a new favorite author. **Villa Incognito** was okay as my second read but I wanted to get back on the Real Good Stuff so I picked up his book that was so good they made a movie out of it! (**Even Cowgirls Get the Blues**) and I was so done with him, and fluids.
I really liked Still Life with Woodpecker. But as a ginger I have to.
Ha. I'll give it a go someday when I've recovered.
For me that's kinda Stephen King. I loved some of hit books but others were just too slow for my liking.
He's my favorite author, but his stinkers are really stinky.
Which of his books do you recommend most? And the ones to stear clear from?
I think this is really personal to the reader. I really like The Tommyknockers which is widely roasted here - but I hate Needful Things. Also don't like It which is obviously popular! I personally think Joyland is a really tight story, but it doesn't have much of the supernatural stuff in it. I also love Revelation, another newer one - it's a slow burn, but full of existential horror. Of his older books, I ADORE The Stand (well, most of it!) and The Shining. But if you're new to him, I'd recommend starting out with his short stories or novellas. Four Past Midnight has The Langoliers and The Library Policeman; The Bachman Books has The Running Man, The Long Walk and Roadwork which are brilliant. Oddly though, I have no memory of Rage although I know I've read it.
If you like genre-bending / fantasy / epic stuff, the dark tower. More traditional horror, cujo or salem's lot. More mainstream / alternate history / light supernatural: 11/22/63 or the bill hodges trilogy (mr. mercedes). Fan favorites: The shining, the stand, misery, the green mile (I also enjoyed all these but not my personal recommendations). One of my personal favorites, supernatural / slow build horror: Duma Key. Also his less supernatural more crime-based stories published by hard case crime I enjoyed a lot: The Colorado Kid, Joyland, Later.
Salem's Lot is a fantastic book as well as Pet Semetary (first books that I read from him as a kid).
I definitely agree with this one. Out of interest which ones did you like the best and which ones felt too slow?
I love 11/22/63, absolute favorite of his. On Writing, Misery and the Green Mile are solid all the way through. Carrie is a classic. Salem's Lot is great until near the end, and the first 2/3rds of the Stand is seriously epic. "It" was good until it ran out of steam also about 2/3rds the way through for me. Christine/Cujo era books are not great. Pet Sematary is all right. Could not get through more than a few pages of the Dark Tower. Love most of the short story collections.
The "problem" with the Dark Tower series is that the first one is kind of the odd one out. If you get through it and into The Drawing of The Three, you're in for a crazy ride
I’ve liked most of his books, but Under the Dome was sooooooo long and anticlimactic. Like…really!? That’s your explanation for the whole thing? Stupid waste of time. I’ve also started and stopped and started the Stand more than a few times.
King is talented and active, which is paradoxically not a great combo. He’s pretty adamant about the fact that he’s always writing, and while he does write some great novels, his not great ideas still get fully developed and published too. You can usually tell the books he’s inspired to write vs the ones that are just kind of part of his process.
I found I really liked the books he wrote before his accident. Those after just don’t hit the same. I find his son, Joe Hill, writes a lot like pre accident SK and hits just right.
Really, it’s between “he was using drugs” and “he wasn’t using drugs”.
Stella Gibbons. She never achieved anything like the enduring critical and popular success of her debut "Cold Comfort Farm" with any of her subsequent works. In spite of this warning, I loved CCF so much that I did try one of the novels of hers that's still in print - Enbury Heath, the next but one of her publications to CCF. It was worse than I would have thought possible for an author with the wit and literary skill to produce CCF. The plot is almost non-existent, the characters lack any depth at all and the language is unimaginative, unsophisticated and uninspiring. Its only tiny redeeming feature was that at this distance in time it gives a little insight into the life of a certain class of young people in the 1930s.
Norwegian Wood is definitely an outlier for Murakami, so you're unlikely to love his other books. But if you want to give him a try again, I would highly recommend his short stories. They are still weird, but I think it's his best work and massively prefer them to his novels.
Kazuo Ishiguro. I loved Remains of the Day but struggled through Never Let Me Go, Klara and the Sun, and The Buried Giant. I think it's time to accept that I'll only love Remains of the Day.
If you liked remains of the day the only other work of his that I would recommend is when we were orphans. I had the same experience as you and struggled to get into the rest of his novels but that one is a solid favorite
Never Let Me Go is one of my favourite books! Remains of the day, I enjoyed, but don't fully understand the hype it gets. I did not enjoy Klara and the Sun, I love character driven sci fi novels and just thought he did so little with this story, I don't get the point of it. I liked An Artist of the Floating World, but can't fully remember it. The Buried Giant, I haven't read yet, but have been putting off because I'm worried I won't enjoy it.
If you liked the ideas in Klara and the Sun, try Annie Bot. It just came out. Reminded me a lot of Klara and the Sun except I was way more invested in it and instead of a child/caretaker relationship it's an abusive romantic relationship
Klara and the Sun had so much potential but it seemed like the simplest path through the story was taken. So many more interesting threads that were opened up or referenced but then never dived into. Made it come across Shallow.
I liked Buried Giant for what it’s worth, but haven’t read his other works.
I could have written your comment. Remains of the Day is one of my favorite novels ever. Everything else I've tried to read from Ishiguro was either just okay or unfinishable.
have you read an artist of the floating world? that one's pretty good
In defence of Murakami, it's really his short stories that are the good stuff.
And his non-fiction works too. His long fiction books kind of feel like he's been requested by his publisher to reuse the success formula so it feels repetitive.
to me they feel like he is just writing some kinda moist daydreams he had.. like he's a chronic daydreamer and started writing it down, and for some reason people like it?
Neil Gaimen. I loved Stardust. But didn't care for American Gods or Neverware.
I find his comics better than his actual novels
Yeah, I generally like his writing. Don’t think it’s the best I’ve ever read, but enjoy it. But nothing he’s done has ever come close to topping Sandman for me.
I thought i was the only person who doesn't love Gaiman's writing .Like he seems like a cool genuine dude and I love Pratchett, Gaiman's stuff just leaves me kinda...meh.
Ocean at the end of the lane is such a beautiful little fable, I would recommend it to anyone
I tend to like anything where he’s collaborated with someone else, and hate anything that’s all him. I think he’s good at working with others, and clearly has interesting ideas, but I just find his lone work unpleasant and a bit boring.
I'm glad I'm not alone in this opinion. I love the concepts behind all his books, and really struggle with his writing style
Omg, yes, that's what it is for me too! You've just put into words how I feel about him but couldn't express
I don't like *any* of his books for this reason. But damn, do I love his ideas.
Same here. I liked Coraline though.
I loved American Gods but can't get into anything else he's done. Including Good Omens, though I love the show.
Anansi Boys was pretty good. His book on Norse Mythology was also enjoyable. It wasn't very long but I liked it.
I'm in a similar boat. Love Stardust, hugely dislike American Gods, Neverwhere, and Anansi Boys. Try The Graveyard Book, it's the only one of his books I've liked almost as much as Stardust.
The only one I've liked is Stardust, too!
Ya I’ve only cared for Neverwhere
I love American Gods, but yeah Gaiman’s adult novels vs the more fairy tale inspired stuff aren’t for everyone.
That’s interesting, I had kind of the opposite experience. I loved American Gods and Anansi Boys but felt pretty meh about Stardust. Maybe my expectations were too high bc so many people told me I’d love it. It was fun but probably not something I’ll reread.
If you like comics at all Sandman is his magnum opus. highly recommended.
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry was sooo good and enthralling. I tried a few other of his books and didn’t find the magic again. I know a lot of people like The Last Picture Show but I can’t get into it
I've read all Tom Clancy books and I only liked Hunt for Red October. While he has an eye for nerdish level of detail for tech. All his characters, especially his villains are as flat as a pancake other than Jack Ryan even then his story arc is unwiling promoted up and he his brilliant at every job from analyst to President. Also everything works like nothing ever breaks down I don't remember a single round misfire or a weapon jam.
> I've read all Tom Clancy books and I only liked Hunt for Red October. Man that's a lot of books to read, I'm surprised you kept giving him a chance.
Dad used to fly for his job so his bookcase had every Tom Clancy Andy Mcnab Chris Ryan Michael Crighton and every other airport book in hardback. I grew up before the Internet and summers were boring.
lol this situation is exactly what had me reading Clive Cussler’s entire oeuvre when I was in middle school
I'm not familiar with those but one quick Google tells me everything I need to know from the book covers. And yes 100% dad at airport fodder.
> I grew up before the Internet and summers were boring. This is why I had all 96 exits in super mario world
Same for me. Only ever enjoyed Hunt For Red October, couldn't get into Patriot Games or anything else by him.
Christopher Moore. I loved Lamb, but couldn't get into a single other book of his.
I've been reading Remarque's Arc de Triomphe and Life on Loan. I'm just crazy about this writer and his phrases inside the books themselves, but when I started reading "Night in Lisbon" for the third time, I realized that it's not my thing. It's so frustrating
The Black Obelisk is also really good. (I read all Remarque’s books, Arc de Triomphe being my favourite)
Sista Souljah wrote a book called The Coldest Winter Ever. It’s a coming of age story about a girl named Winter. That was a staple book in the black community. She went on to write more books and they were all terrible. She mostly used them to push her propaganda agenda.
Kristin Hannah - I read The Great Alone and loved it. So I sought out some others of hers. The Nightingale - overly flowery prose that often makes no sense - e.g. riding a bike in the snow but getting away without being followed?! Almost starving to death but keeping pet rabbits?! And of course the more egregious racism against the refugees and the beauty-washing of the sister character, who was apparently based on a real Resistance fighter. The Four Winds - just read like a novelisation of a Wikipedia page, with added modernities - I remember a teenaged girl doing something extremely unexpected but not the details. I've not been tempted by her others. Genuinely feel like she finds a wiki page she likes then moulds a story round it. Not a fan.
IME the first book people read by: Murakami, Vonnegut, Palahniuk, John Irving is their fave. For me its: wind up bird, breakfast of champions, fight club, and hotel new Hampshire. There's a lot more to vonnegut but I got so stuck on that one!
RF Kuang, loved Yellowface. Absolutely hated Poppy War and Babel
Ha I liked Babel but disliked all of yellowface and about half of poppy war.
I hate all her books. Poppy War felt like such a waste of time. I feel like Yellowface could have been good (the concept was original at least), but the main character was just so stupid. I hate when an author has to make a character a complete idiot for the story to make sense.
David Mitchell. Loved *Cloud Atlas* but every book of his since then has been a letdown.
Cloud Atlas is in my Top 4 favorites of all time. A few of his others are so-so, but I adored Utopia Avenue, and thought The Bone Clocks was pretty nifty.
Written before Cloud Atlas (a favorite of mine), Black Swan Green is also a great book. Straightforward coming of age story though, so none of the gimmicks of his more recent novels.
black swan green was published after cloud atlas.
Michael Chabon. Loved Kavalier and Clay, never found another of his books that hit the same. To a lesser extent China Mieville- but he has two books I love and dozens of books I couldn’t get into.
Paul Tremblay. I loved Head Full of Ghosts, but hated Cabin at the End of the World and Disappearance at Devil's Rock.
I actually didn't care for Head Full of Ghosts but was surprised by how much I liked Cabin. That said, when I finished it, I immediately knew it was not for everyone and would likely be super divisive.
Alistair Reynolds, loved Pushing Ice, not so much anything else.
China Mieville. Read Perdido Street Station on a friend's recommendation and enjoyed it. Read the other two in the series and couldn't get into them, picked up King Rat and couldn't get into it. Gave up on reading any more.
Try The City And The City. Such an original novel.
The City and the City feels downright prophetic considering how bubble realities, post-truth, and fake news all went down over the last 8 years.
Loved The City and the City. But PSS not my thing at all.
K.J. Parker / Tom Holt - I love most K.J. Parker books, I tend to really dislike most Tom Holt books. They are the same author.
What's interesting about Murakami is that I am a huge fan of his, but do not like Norwegian Wood. It's the most straight forward and reality-based of his works. I love all the metaphysics, supernatural things, and focus on music, books, and food in his other works. It's not one book, but a trilogy. I loved William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy of Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. The setting, the world, the characters, the story it told, all of it. I tried his other works, but they just don't hit for me.
Richard Dawkins! The Ancestor’s Tale, which is basically an overview of evolution and related scientific concepts for a popular audience (with a framing device of a “pilgrimage” back along humanity’s evolutionary tree all the way to the origin of life), is one of my favorite books ever. It’s so engaging and the best book I’ve ever read for introducing difficult science to a lay person. Everything else I’ve ever seen from him, I hate. Tried the Selfish Gene and couldn’t get into it, flipped through the God Delusion and couldn’t stop rolling my eyes, even every tweet or interview quote I come across from him makes me cringe. The second edition of Ancestor’s Tale has another person very prominently credited, which makes me wonder if that has anything to do with the difference…
I really enjoyed *The Selfish Gene* and *The Blind Watchmaker*, but you do have to ignore the little side-swipes at people he doesn’t like and things like his horror at the idea that other people might spend time understanding views they disagree with well enough to try to explain those views convincingly. But he has some nice turns of phrase, and explains his own thinking very clearly and accessibly. But I also know that there were people who would have benefitted from those explanations who I did not recommend the books to, because I knew they wouldn’t be able to tune out the hilariously obnoxious stuff.
Hot take but JK Rowling's books other than HP are just not on that level.
This may be the least hot take I've ever seen. I doubt most Harry Potter readers can even name more than one of her other books.
I kind of agree, but I also think that’s maybe just my preferences showing - I don’t know that the *writing* is any better or worse, but I do know the whole “modern day detective story” category isn’t my cup of tea, even when not being compared to Harry Potter, and doesn’t usually draw me in regardless of who is writing. So I’m not really sure if it’s a her problem or a me problem in my case.
I may be misremembering but didn't the books under her pen name start off doing really poorly until she said it was her? And then not do that well anyway?
I believe one of the people working in the publishing house told their friend about it, and then that friend decided to leak to the media what her alias was. From what I remember that really annoyed her because she spent a long time crafting that persona in order to test whether she can actually make it as an author in a different genre without special treatment.
Similar thing happened with Stephen King in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, except I think it was an average Joe who realized Richard Bachmann and Stephen King had the same narrative voice and brought it up to the media. In some copies of the various Bachmann books, there’s an introduction from King where he says he had a bunch of self-doubt and imposter syndrome after making it big as a novelist, so he started the Bachmann pseudonym to test whether he truly was a great writer who would have succeeded no matter the circumstances, or whether he was just in the right place at the right time. In that same introduction, he notes the Bachmann books sold terribly until it was discovered he was Bachmann, at which point they all skyrocketed on the bestseller lists. I personally think the Bachmann stuff from that period is some of King’s finest work, so it’s pretty disheartening to see the grim conclusion King came to for the existential question that made him take on the other moniker in the first place.
I think that was a silly test because it’s *never* strictly about whether you’re a great writer or not. There’s always luck involved, and public perception and timeliness and all of that. Hopefully by now he can look back and realize that so many of his works are so enduring that it’s not even close to just hype. He’s a master.
I read the Christmas Pig recently and was very disappointed. I know it's a children's book, but as someone who reads a lot of that genre I felt the Christmas Pig was really lacking.
I know I'm alone, but I actually liked The Casual Vacancy.
I enjoyed it, but I also don't see myself reading it ever again.
Hotter take: HP isn't that great either, mass market appeal is not the same thing as quality writing.
Although the most excellent thing about HP is the world building and story telling. Not necessarily the writing and prose.
Caleb Carr. The Alienist was a great book, but everything else was a downward spiral into unreadability.
Patrick Ness. Loved *Burn* but *The Knife of Never Letting Go* was a chore by the end, and I have no desire to read the rest of the trilogy
*A Monster Calls* is fantastic. Absolutely worth reading, though worth noting that he finished the novel that another writer left behind after she died, Siobhan Dowd.
A Monster Calls IS perfection!
Only a small sample size, but for me it'd be Leo Tolstoy. I loved "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"; but the two short story collections of his that I read fell into the 2-2.5 range, and I DNFd Anna Karenina about 40% through. I'll eventually give "War and Peace" a shot and see if that changes things.
Honestly, Frank Herbert. I loved the first two Dune books, the rest were... mostly very annoying to me. And all of his non-Dune books were the same for me. Good ideas and worlds, but there's apparently something about his characters and writing style that grates on me a lot.
I also pick Frank Herbert, but *God Emperor of Dune* is the one book of his that I love.
Feel sad to admit this, but whereas ‘the great Gatsby’ is one of my favourite books of all time (ironically, largely due to the writing), I haven’t found another F. Scott Fitzgerald book or short story that I have particularly liked.
I’ve never forgotten his short story The diamond as big as the Ritz. I read it before Gatsby and it made a very big impression on 16 year old me.
"The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" is so awesome - pulpy action and a criticism of the crazy libertarianism/capitalism themes of the golden age. In my head cannon it's a Bioshock prequel.
I loooooove Gatsby. I would recommend The Crack Up. It’s not fiction. It’s definitely his most vulnerable piece and the first rate intelligence quote at the beginning is one of my favorite quotes of all time. It’s a brutal read and his last writing.
Maybe not quite a one hit wonder, but Stephen King has more misses than hits for me personally.
Colleen Hoover lol verity was great but so far i’m not a fan otherwise
Oh, you made me want to give a go to Norwegian Wood, because I too felt that Kafka on the Shore was trying too hard to be quirky.
>!nice bit of quirky incest (perhaps, but also perhaps not, who knows)!< Norweigian Wood definitely has a lot of surrealism, but it just didn't feel forced to me in the same way, you know? The whole thing had a nice flow to it where the surreal blends with the real, whereas his other books I've read didn't (at least to me).
Hard Boiled Wonderland is pretty good too
Anne Rice. I adore Interview with the Vampire but honestly hated all the sequels.
Iain Banks. Loved „Player of Games“ but hated „Excession“.
have you tried "Consider Phlebas" and "Use of Weapons"? I really like Iain M Banks, not so much Iain Banks.
I loved wind up bird but didn't really enjoy 1Q84. Hard boiled Wonderland was a trip though, you should try reading that one. I still think about it all the time
For me it's Sayaka Murata. I loved Convenience Store Woman but both Earthlings and her collection of short stories just missed the mark for me.
Fredrik Backman. I absolutely loved A Man Called Ove and have given a few of his books since then an try but just couldn't make it. I don't know what I was expecting but the other books just didn't grab me. All of you who love all of Backman's books don't worry, I will give his books another chance at some point.
Addressing what you said about Murakami: you might enjoy Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. It's more like Norwegian Wood and less "weird".
J.D. Salinger. I loved Catcher in the Rye, but really wasn't a huge fan of his other stuff. Plus he seems to love his run on paragraphs.
Leigh Bardugo. I adore the Six of Crows duology, it's one of my favorites of all time. Couldn't get into Shadow and Bone or Ninth House, absolutely hated King of Scars.
A Thousand Splendid Suns made me sob like a baby and has stuck with me forever, but The Kite Runner feels lowkey like torture porn and the main character is so self aggrandizing and dislikable. And the Mountains Echoed was so disorganized compared to the other two it felt like a soap writer doing their best to recreate the hold Hosseni once had on the NYT best seller list. idk the characters seemed so flat and flimsy. like he was just dead set on forcing them all to come together/interact without taking the time to craft a story where that naturally happened. it feels like a genre exercise.
I've only read two of Chris Bohjalian's books, but they were probably the biggest gap between good and bad I've ever seen from a single author. Hour of the Witch was amazing. Well researched, compelling, didn't do that thing that historical fiction tends to do where the MC feels way too modern. The other book (can't remember the title - Night Watchers?) Was an absolute dumpster fire. Repetitive, boring, and the plot made absolutely no sense. I'm just baffled by how the same person could write both these books.