Overrated Authors?

[JohnnyOstentatious]

Tom Picrilli. Sure, he may have poetic prose, but his storytelling abilities are weak.

[callalilly]

Danielle Steel

[sleepydumpling]

Dan Brown
John Grisham

[amsmith]

Does it get any worse than James Fenimore Cooper? Ick. And some of his works are still considered classics.

I disagree with some of the Hemingway haters - overrated as a novelist certainly, but one of the greatest short story writers of all-time.

[elleng]

I think that Patricia Cornwell has become overrated - her style has gone down and when people say that in reviews, she thinks it is a conspiracy - for her fans to post excellent reviews! In truth, she no longer handles her characters as people - Marino for example - her liaison in Virginia for many times - she has included him in her inner circle even knowing he had a crush on her - now Cornwell has transformed him into big biker dude - who assaulted Scarpetta in the last book - and whose fate along with 2 other main characters is in jeopardy. She has sat back on her own reputation and needs to read her first books and remember that her books were the groundbreaking works that put forensics to regular people before any CSI shows were even dreamed up..
Always loved the Leatherstocking Tales by Cooper - Includes The Last of the Mohicans which is way cool, and has been the subject of 2 movies and one fantastic Masterpiece Theatre.

[Ribaldo]

I disagree about CHuck!

Me too! I think he's great. Of course arguing tastes does not mean a heck of a lot anyway.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." ~Voltaire

[clarebear]

I disagree about CHuck!

Me too! I think he's great. Of course arguing tastes does not mean a heck of a lot anyway.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." ~Voltaire

Nice Quote

I hate Chuck Palahniuk's work though, I liked fight club, read it because of the film. Then read Haunted, Choke and Diary and dispised them all.

Dont kill me, but I think Stephen King is overrated. I love certain novels of his, I love the Shining and I love Misery, Different Seasons, Firestarter, Dreamcatcher, Carrie and a couple more.
But I hated Tommyknockers, Regulators, the dark tower books. I just find his work so patchy. When its good, its good. When its bad, its awful.

[sleepydumpling]

Clare, I agree on Stephen King. I just can't find much to like about his work, exept perhaps some of the concepts he comes up with.

[MsBookworm]

I agree with whoever said Danielle Steel. I used to read her books, until I realized that they were all the same story, just different people/places/names.

I'm probably going to get shot for this, but I also think that Nicholas Sparks is overrated. I've read a couple of his books, but I honestly don't see why everybody loves him.

[Erasmus_Folly]

I have never really cared for Stephen King. Of the few I have read The Shining seemed to me the best, but more for the ideas than the writing. (At the time I read it I was living right next to Boulder Colorado and I remember that he got some of the details of place description wrong.)

I read an interview with King a number of years ago in which in answer to a question about the success of his stories he said that he couldn't understand it since he considered himself "just a hack writer". I could not agree with him more.

[Spoons]

Luke Rhinehart, the Dice man is one of the most overrated, stupid books that i have ever read. I have never met anyone who didnt love it, or didnt think wow its really clever and that bugs me. It is rubbish.

Sylvia Plath, im not a fan of the bell jar or any of her poetry.

[Pappy]

I really like Stephen King. I've read a ton of his books and some were a little tough (I couldn't finish Rose Madder and was glad to get done with Tommyknockers so I could move on to something else), but some of them were really great. The first book of his I read was Needful Things and I really liked all all of these little things escalated the anger and hatred in the town until it imploded with rage. I just thought that was cool. I also like how a bunch of his characters are now showing up elsewhere. The main character from Bag of Bones met with the main character from Insomnia (both good books). I really like things like that. It's like stories that are independent of eachother, you could read just one and be satisfied, but there's still a sense that it's a series when you read others.

Right now I'm reading the last Dark Tower book and in all honesty the last two... well, it didn't go where I thought it would. Where I was hoping it would.

But he's a wickedly popular author and I knew reading this thread his name would be mentioned a time or two. I was shocked it started on page 2. I do like how he's never claimed literary greatness though. A writer for the masses, that's what he is and probably why he's so popular.

[blushingmilk]

I really like Stephen King. I've read a ton of his books and some were a little tough (I couldn't finish Rose Madder and was glad to get done with Tommyknockers so I could move on to something else), but some of them were really great. The first book of his I read was Needful Things and I really liked all all of these little things escalated the anger and hatred in the town until it imploded with rage. I just thought that was cool. I also like how a bunch of his characters are now showing up elsewhere. The main character from Bag of Bones met with the main character from Insomnia (both good books). I really like things like that. It's like stories that are independent of eachother, you could read just one and be satisfied, but there's still a sense that it's a series when you read others.

Right now I'm reading the last Dark Tower book and in all honesty the last two... well, it didn't go where I thought it would. Where I was hoping it would.

But he's a wickedly popular author and I knew reading this thread his name would be mentioned a time or two. I was shocked it started on page 2. I do like how he's never claimed literary greatness though. A writer for the masses, that's what he is and probably why he's so popular.

yep not a fan of stephen king at all. considering his popularity he IS overrated.

[Eric]

Ayn Rand, easily. And it's not because of her politics, honest. I'm a left-leaning atheist, but one of my favorite novelists is Dostoevsky, a conservative Christian.

Dostoevsky's characters are usually morally ambiguous, struggling with conflicting desires and motivations. He explores religious and philosophical themes in most of his books, but he makes the reader work, he never provides easy answers. His characters develop and evolve throughout his novels. Even philosophies which Dostoevsky despised and saw as dangerous, such as anarchism and secularism, were presented in ways that forced the readers to grapple with them in all their complexity.

Rand, on the other hand, created two-dimensional characters who parrot her ideas. From page one, we already know who the hero is, who the villian is, and there is never any indecisive moment where this utopian world is ever thrown into question. Her style reminds me of the Stalinist genre of "socialist realism", which produced predictable, boring propaganda (with the exception of Gorky, who was actually a talented writer stuck in an oppressive, dead-end literary genre).

If you removed the politics from Dostoevsky's novels, you would still have classic literature and exceptionally well-developed characters. If you removed the politics from Rand's novels, you would have some cheap romance novels my grandmother buys at garage sales.

[Scott]

If you removed the politics from Dostoevsky's novels, you would still have classic literature and exceptionally well-developed characters. If you removed the politics from Rand's novels, you would have some cheap romance novels my grandmother buys at garage sales.

I recommend reading Ayn Rand to people, but I think I agree with what you say about her story-writing. I like her books--namely Atlas Shrugged. But I am not a good fiction critic. I like fiction, and in a lot of ways I think good fiction is more enlightening than good non-fiction, but I still mostly read non-fiction because it is what interests me personally, especially because my main interests are politics and philosophy. So I guess I like Ayn Rand's fiction in a very similar way to how I like good non-fiction political or philosophical books, even when I do not agree with the particular philosophy or politics.