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	cassildra 2008-08-07 04:14 pm UTC (link)
	How is Laurell K. Hamilton not on that list? Her later books are bad, but the first eight or so are actively engaging. It's just when everything dissolves into porn that the whole thing gets, you know. Over the top and terrible. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	issendai 2008-08-07 04:17 pm UTC (link)
	grin She's not in the interests because my head was full of snot and Dayquil when I put them together. I'll add authors as this thread grows. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cassildra 2008-08-07 04:19 pm UTC (link)
	Ooh, get well soon! tissues with cute things on them. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	issendai 2008-08-07 04:44 pm UTC (link)
	Thanks! I'm out of the worst of it. It's just a month of coughing and clogged ears from here. Germs are stupid. We should banhammer them. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	cassildra 2008-08-07 04:47 pm UTC (link)
	I agree. banhammers germs (Reply to this)(Parent)

issendai
2008-08-07 04:14 pm UTC (link)

I added Harry Potter because it's a series whose popularity shocked the literary establishment (remember the creation of new New York Times bestseller lists so Harry Potter wouldn't be seen topping the sales of respectable books for adults?) and which came under critical fire for its writing, but which was fantastically popular despite its flaws. I'd consider it a good series to study because Rowling is no stylist, but she's a great storyteller--there's a division of function and form in her writing.

Although I am not sure if I would consider HP objectively an outstandingly awful series. Possibly if it hadn't become so popular, it would be more respected, or at least, less disliked.

IAWTC. There's a lot to criticize about the series, especially after book three, but a lot of the backlash was about the series's popularity.

Other Worst Bests:

Christopher Paolini
V.C. Andrews
Laurell K. Hamilton
Terry Goodkind
Terry Brooks
Robert Jordan (?)
Stephen King
Mercedes Lackey
Danielle Steel

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	cassildra 2008-08-07 04:21 pm UTC (link)
	I don't know if Brooks belongs on there. But, I've only read his earlier works. Does he get actively worse as time goes on? Stephen King is a huge YES. I still can't through IT and I've been trying all summer. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

issendai
2008-08-07 04:41 pm UTC (link)

I put Brooks on because of Shannara, which used to be the hot series to revile. It's been overshadowed and may have lost its iconic status over the past 10 or 15 years, though.

I like early Stephen King, but I have to turn off my internal style checker to enjoy him. He's a good old-fashioned trashy read.

Oh! I'd add the author of the Clan of the Cave Bear series.

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	cassildra 2008-08-07 04:43 pm UTC (link)
	I guess I caught the bandwagon late or too young; I enjoyed the first three Shannara books immensely, but wasn't involved in fandom then. Yeah, King's a fabulous writer of the "trashy novel" genre. Although, surprisingly, his "On Writing" has some very helpful bits. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

issendai
2008-08-07 09:41 pm UTC (link)

When I joined fandom in 1990, Shannara fans were notorious for doing things like rejecting LotR as a total Shannara ripoff. It was the AOL of fantasy fandoms. 'Course, nowadays AOL is no longer the AOL of ISPs and we have bigger and ~~truthier~~ better fluffy fantasy megaseries to hate.

If Shannara no longer has iconic bad-series status, cross it off the list. (And make a note: Time redeems all!)

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charmian
2008-08-07 08:52 pm UTC (link)

That is a good point; I guess I thought that Rowling differed because while she isn't a stylist, she's nowhere near as conspicuously awful as someone like S. Meyer.

Huh, what is the hot doorstopper fantasy series to revile these days?

Would Anne McCaffery be eligible for the creepy gender aspects, or is she otherwise a skilled enough author to get her out of this? I'm trying to nominate only authors who I actually remember reading, and I read a few of her early books in junior high, so I don't remember prose issues.

Piers Anthony? Although some of his early stuff was decent.

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	sarracenia 2008-08-08 12:52 am UTC (link)
	I'd definitely second Piers Anthony. I mean, yeah his Spell for Chameleon was decent, and some of the other Xanth books were, but eugh he got skeevy and way too reliant on puns and reader's credits to sell books. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	charmian 2008-08-08 01:14 am UTC (link)
	I got maybe like 8-10 books into Xanth. They were like the first fantasy book series for grownups I read, when I was a teen. Thankfully, I stopped and moved onto other things before PA really started to get disturbing with the young girls. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

issendai
2008-08-11 03:16 am UTC (link)

They were like the first fantasy book series for grownups I read

I think the secret to the Xanth books is that they look like adults' books and they're in the adults' section, but you have to read them by your early teens or you can't stand them. They catch kids in the stage when they're just moving into the adults' section, but their tastes are still partly back in the kids' section.

At least, that's how it was when I was a Xanth reader in the 80's. Do kids still move straight from the kids' section to the adults' section, or has the YA explosion changed that?

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	charmian 2008-08-11 03:51 am UTC (link)
	That does sound like it. Quite a successful secret too, if his output is any indication. They also are easy to read, which is another reason he can afford to be so prolific. I don't really know. I think it might depend on when they're introduced to adult books in school as well. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	issendai 2008-08-11 03:56 am UTC (link)
	Ohhh yes. And readers below the literary age of reason are a) omnivorous, b) ravenous, c) loyal, and d) very very nice to authors. They're the perfect fandom, as long as you don't expect intellectual discussions in the forums and don't mind that other people twitch when your fandom comes up in conversation. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	charmian 2008-08-11 04:06 am UTC (link)
	Hmm, when is the age of reason, then? Around sixteen or so? When readers start being disappointed in books? Although, perhaps it is somewhat elitist to say this, but in some ways I think there are some readers who never reach the age of reason; the ones who act as though you killed their cat if you criticize an author. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

issendai
2008-08-11 04:43 am UTC (link)

There's definitely a transition between "I love it, so if you hate it then you hate me"/"Don't be mean to her, she put so much work into the book"/"Why are you criticizing it anyway? It's a novel, it doesn't have to make sense" and... the other kind of reader.

Once upon a time I thought most people hit it between the mid-teens and early 20's. Then I met the Twimoms, and my world was shattered.

Sooo... I theorize that it's a function of how much contact a reader has with literary criticism. There's an element of emotional maturity, which is why it's rare to reach the age of literary reason before the mid-teens, but after that it's a function of how long it takes a reader to absorb the critical mindset. The reader needs to lose her identification with the author, learn to emotionally separate author from text, and get used to the idea that it's acceptable to say things about a book that one wouldn't say to the author's face. Then she needs to learn to analyze a text, which is partly a function of (formal or informal) education and partly a function of learning to separate enjoyment of a text from one's opinion of its individual elements.

Of both of these parts, the emotional one is the most important. It's okay to not be good at analyzing books. You can still take part in discussions, even if you don't get any distinctions for it. But the most brilliant critic in the world isn't going anywhere if she can't discuss a book without losing it at people who think differently.

I agree with you that some people don't make that transition. it's not elitist to say so. Okay, it's elitist to call the dividing line the "age of reason"... If anyone has a better name for it, please, say so.

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	charmian 2008-08-11 07:24 am UTC (link)
	The Twimoms are very interesting, actually. This is the first time I've met a group of people in fandom who have identified themselves as "moms." ~~Critical mass?~~ Maybe, the critical stage? Very much a function of education, I think. If you read book reviews a lot, you also learn to absorb it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

sithwitch13
2008-08-08 12:19 am UTC (link)

Seconding Goodkind. It's the damnedest thing, I started reading them to appease a friend of mine and realized about halfway through that while I couldn't put 'em down while I was reading them (except for some of the later ones when I was just angry at the author and just wanted it to end) afterwards I was making this face a lot: D:<

What about Dean Koontz? I loved his stuff for about a year or two in high school, read every one that my library had, and then realized that I had just read about twenty derivations of the exact same story.

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	issendai 2008-08-11 03:17 am UTC (link)
	Oh dear. Dean Koontz: Like Wodehouse, only less charming. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	schuldig 2008-08-07 05:08 pm UTC (link)
	How about adding James Patterson to the list? Cradle And All was amazingly bad. I'm not an HP fan and have only read the first book, but am I the only one who thinks that the writing is pretty good? It's simple, engaging and has a strong voice. I'd just seen the plot so many times before. (Reply to this)(Thread)

issendai
2008-08-08 01:56 am UTC (link)

Would John Grisham also fit on the list? He was panties-wettingly popular a while back, but I never read anything by him, so I don't know whether his writing was bad enough to count.

The writing in the first HP book or three is pretty damn good. It's only after Rowling became megapopular that her books started suffering from underediting and plot bloat; she really needs an editor who's not afraid to sharpen the red pencil.

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	schuldig 2008-08-08 04:12 am UTC (link)
	Ohhh... I see. I was wondering why everyone was saying it was so bad when I would be happy to able to produce that level of writing. :P (Reply to this)(Parent)

	keleri 2008-08-07 07:42 pm UTC (link)
	Michael Crichton should fit into this category I think--exciting novels, good to read on an airplane, but omgsciencedoesnotworkthatway etc. (Reply to this)

	luthe 2008-08-07 08:46 pm UTC (link)
	What, no Anne Rice? Founding mother of purple prose, bad writing, and pretentious wanking? Really, people. Also: Oh, John Ringo, no. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	charmian 2008-08-07 08:57 pm UTC (link)
	She definitely deserves discussion based on what her vampire series dissolved into. Maybe in the category of "so once you make it and can fire your editor..." (Reply to this)(Parent)

	velvet_mace 2008-08-08 07:14 am UTC (link)
	Heinlein (especially towards the end) with his I-forgot-what-the-plot-was-supposed-to-be-so-lets-just-have-an-orgy-instead style of writing. (Reply to this)

panther3751
2008-08-08 04:38 pm UTC (link)

Because authors that I consider decent, such as Brooks and Heinlein, are being mentioned in the above comments (they had definitely written bad novels, yes, but also had written a lot of good works) perhaps we should consider just which authors should be put into the interests.

Is one bad book enough for an author to be listed as being 'horrible yet popular'? Is one good book, conversely, enough to redeem them?

Or are we just looking at ones who are the most prolific, such as the Harry Potter series ... books or authors that develop their own 'cult' without the literary merit that would seem to accompany that renown?

--- Though I'm tempted to suggest some 'classic' books to our 'Best Worst Books' examples. Such as Lord of the Flies. Good heavens that thing was a piece of trash.

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charmian
2008-08-08 10:39 pm UTC (link)

Hmm... I guess you can ask Issendai. It's her comm; I never really started this post with an intention of changing the interests list. I mostly just asked the question because I wanted a better sense of what people considered bad/good books. Personally, I would say that there's something fundamentally different about a series where the books start out good, but the author declines, vs. one where the author becomes popular and stays that way on the same level of merit/demerit.

But also, what makes a cult book, I think, would be a really interesting topic.

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issendai
2008-08-11 03:48 am UTC (link)

I'm thinking that rather than changing the interests, I'll list the writers on the info page as examples of what we mean by good bad writers.

By good bad writers, I mean writers who are incredibly popular, but whose books are rejected by Educated Readers of Taste(TM) as crap. Frexample, in sophisticated circles it's not the done thing to say you love The Da Vinci Code. I'm defining "readers of taste" broadly--one of the tests I use is, "Can you tell F_W that you love a book without feeling the need to defend your choice?"--but basically, there's a rough cut-off line between people who adore trashy megabestsellers and see nothing wrong with their writing or plots, and people who can't stand trashy megabestsellers or who read them as a vice and consider them deeply flawed. I'm looking for books whose fans are mostly from the first side of that schism.

So I'd say that Lord of the Flies doesn't count because it's not trashy enough. Heinlein might not count; I'm not familiar enough with his books, but I get the impression that it's been a long, long time since he was considered a trashy good read, and tastes have changed enough that his books might not be useful to study. I also don't think Orson Scott Card counts because his wildly popular books weren't trashy (feel free to argue that point), and his lousy later books aren't wildly popular.

Is one bad book enough for an author to be listed as being 'horrible yet popular'?

No, unless the horrible book is the basis for the author's popularity. If the author was popular for a body of normal work, but also had one trashy-popular hit, I'd count the book but not the author. (A lot of readers I know would nominate The Mists of Avalon for that distinction.)

Is one good book, conversely, enough to redeem them?

No, they're still the author of a pile of trashy-popular books. It might be interesting to study the differences between their good and their good-bad books, though. It would be interesting to see how popular the good book was compared to the trashy-popular books, and what characteristics the two kinds of books shared.

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charmian
2008-08-11 04:13 am UTC (link)

Heh, so f_w will be generally the standard? So then HP is in an ambiguous category there, I think, because there are fans of the book on the comm.

I don't think Heinlein really counts either, because you actually won't be laughed at for liking Heinlein, or Orson Scott Card's writing, for that matter. The only book of his I read is Alvin Maker, and I thought it was pretty good, and without overt badness. So, I think I agree with you, if the books by which the author made his/her reputation are actually acknowledged as good, it shouldn't count.

Is silliness of the fans also a (contributing) factor?

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issendai
2008-08-11 04:52 am UTC (link)

F_W is a useful standard because the comm culture is past the "literary age of reason" you and I are talking about above, but it's not the only standard. And HP is an unusual case. Not as trashy as many of the other authors listed, black swan phenomenon, etc.

Is silliness of the fans also a (contributing) factor?

It's something to consider. If the book inspires the kind of devotion that makes fans act batshit, it's worth looking into to see what the author is doing right.

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	charmian 2008-08-11 07:19 am UTC (link)
	HP really is an unusual case... Maybe it would be a good idea to next discuss Twilight's virtues, as that is pretty much a standard case of a bad good book. Yes. If the book inspires a cult, the author has def. tapped into some vein. (Reply to this)(Parent)

franzen
2008-08-09 04:04 am UTC (link)

I think Orson Scott Card's work is beginning to qualify, if it doesn't already. Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow have a certain level of quality, but the remaining three novels in each set are novels only a fanboy or friend could love. (And I understand he has a new(ish) post-apocalyptic piece about a band of Republicans trying to take back the world ... I don't even know.)

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	issendai 2008-08-11 03:52 am UTC (link)
	I think it would qualify if his later bad books are popular. OTOH, if no one's buying, then he's just a bad writer who used to be good. Oh, and a nutbar. Definitely a nutbar. Regardless of sales. (Reply to this)(Parent)