I like him, but for me, it’s Stephen King, a lot of his stories he goes off on a twenty page non-relevant rant.
Though, the ones where he keeps that to a minimum, are great.
Then there’s Mr. Marketer James Patterson who markets out his name to other authors making it look like he wrote the book when it was obviously someone else.
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Stephen King used to be very innovative. Now… eh.
James Patterson for sure.
Dostoyeskve…the guy who wrote crime and punishment
Ahh I thought you meant the other one at first.
Johnny D
Unpopular opinion, but Salman Rushdie. He’s controversial. That’s all.
I enjoyed the couple of books of his I read, but I also think he’s as popular as he is because of the obvious controversies. Truthfully, he’s very much a college undergrad required reading kind of novelist.
I tried to read The Satanic Verses when it was first published. I made it about a third of the way through and gave up. Maybe it was because I Was in still in high school, but I found it to be very boring.
I second your Stephen King. For the exact same reasons. Yeah, there’s moments of brilliant writing, but then there’s long winded nonsense that takes away from it.
This is why I like his short stories. WAY better than the novels, IMO. Also his non-fiction book On Writing was amazing.
I don’t like Dostoevsky. I find his overall philosophy boring, character frantics and cliche, writting style and structure bad. I like The Idiot, and to some extent the demons. Crime and punishment and brother k I thought were boring.
I’m in a minority though. He is obviously world renowned writer, so maybe I don’t get him. Although most of my russian friends share my opinion.
The Soviet film version of Crime and Punishment is amazing but yeah Dostoevsky generally sucks.
soivets were incredible film makers.
Have not read him but am planning on listening to K-Bros on audiobook soon. Could this be a “Seinfeld is unfunny” effect?
I’d say most authors that dominate best seller lists could be called highly overrated.
A ton of people only read those sorts of books and so their frame of reference for authorial quality is other books like that and this leads to “bland mass-appeal” being considered “top tier”.
George R.R. Martin.
He has no filter. He writes everything and that’s why you end up with just tomes of information and very little plot or character development.
I tried getting into the GOT books, I really did. But when you spend a whole page describing a table of food with such detail, I get annoyed. His books aren’t my cup of tea let’s say.
1000% Stephen King
Patterson was my first thought. He wasn’t a good writer back when he was actually writing. Now as the head of a writing empire that is made in his image, they churn out crappy books at a ferocious rate.
Couldn’t agree more
If by ‘author’ you also mean ‘poet’ - ugh, Emily freaking Dickinson.
She has ONE rhythm, and it’s awful. It’s sing-songy, and it drills itself into your head, rendering her work ultimately meaningless.
And this guy - I don’t know where he came from (and apparently it’s a pseudonym anyway), but this Brian Bilston guy is *everywhere* on social media - people keep reposting his stuff like it’s profound or something. Spoiler: it’s not. Not even close. It’s a social media scourge, is what it is.
Patterson. No contest.
Frank Herbert. I will admit that I only read the first Dune book, but I struggled to find good things to say about it. Characters are one dimensional, the story is not good and is largely dependent on literally everyone in the entire universe being absurdly stupid, but worst of all the worldbuilding which people say is top tier I found to be very very hit or miss. For instance there’s this very complex political structure which is very well done but at the same time mostly irrelevant because one faction holds the vast majority of the power and everyone else is just competing for scraps.
It’s quite possible that the later books correct most of the worldbuilding errors and make the characters and story interesting but the first book left me no reason to ever want to read the later books.
Sarah J Maas
Many of today’s ‘popular’ writers hit me this way, because I feel they are only celebrated because they are different, as opposed to really good.
Malerman. Hendrix. Tremblay.And then there are the ones who write at a childish level, but are best sellers. Patterson. Dan Brown. Those kinds of people, where sometimes the story is so outlandish, or doesn’t make sense, you wonder how people can read book after book.
Here is a controversial one - James Joyce.
I have heard college lecturers suggest that Ulysses (and some other Joyce and modernist texts) may not be in the “canon” in a generation because it was written to be obscure for a specific intellectual audience and never had a popular readership. It was canonized almost immediately by the literary professionals of the day (which were the only ones who could attempt to understand it and who, let’s face it, Joyce was attempting to impress/confound).
A generation from now there will have even less popular readership and the points and historical references he was trying to make will have become so obscure that only those who purposely study his book like some biblical text will understand it.
Not sure whether this view is correct, but I certainly get it. If no-one reads a text (and those who do generally don’t understand it), how does it remain relevant?
The books prior to modernism (WWI) that are part of the cannon (I know what is or is not “canon” is controversial but I am not sure how else to describe classics that are still relevant) all had wide popularity in their day - and most are still wonderful to read. Starting around 1900 English literature became a university study - so the professors and literary elite of the day formed the “cannon.” Around this time literary modernism came into vogue and some (certainly not all) of the texts written at that time were simply dropped into the canon without ever having been popular with the public. So it’s an interesting argument - all texts prior to modernism (from Iliad to Middlemarch) had been blessed by the public - while afterwards some texts were simply anointed by the elite and dropped into the classroom - some of James Joyce works being part of them. Will that stand for long?
It’s an interesting and controversial argument for Joyce and some others basically being overrated.
Now let’s hear the blowback from the modernist fans.