Not with authors (off the top of my head, anyway), but I remember thinking Stevie Wonder's song Living for the City was one of the greatest statements in musical history when I was a middle-class white boy in the 70s. I downloaded it a while ago, and found that actually, it sucks.

Oh, but you wanted to talk about authors? Nevermind.

That's still a great song, yhbc, from a nearly flawless album. I could do without the "skit" in the middle of that song, but it doesn't make it suck.

But we're talking about authors. Never mind.

heinlein. Richard Bach (the list of readable books has slipped to one!) EE Doc smith. must be lots more :)

Second for Heinlein. Second for Piers Anthony.

And kind of half-a-second for King - some of his schlock is really schlock, but there are a couple of gems out there. Wizard_and_Glass from his Gunslinger septilogy (octology?) is pretty damn good all by itself.

Larry Niven started to irritate me (enough with the fucking Irish Coffees, already!) many years ago. I recently tried reading him again, and found him pretty lousy. I still love his ideas, though.

After hearing Arthur C. Clarke reading his stories on tape, I couldn't read him anymore: he's the most boring reader, ever, and after I heard him, I started hearing him narrating his stories.

Pohl was still okay by me, but it's been a couple of years since I read him. Did you read O Pioneer, wolfdaddy? It was pretty good.

But then, I read it when it first came out. Which was *sob* six or seven years ago. Where does the time go?

interrobang, Pohl, upon rereading a lot of his stuff, just seems so horribly misogynistic and his male characters so damned immature and clueless to me. Heechee Saga springs immediately to mind for examples of both.

I never really liked Clarke, but I loved the Rama series, which he launched. So there's that.

Heinlein's ALWAYS been a disgusting dirty old man to me. And Anthony frustrates me because so many of his series started out with awesome promise, but each series should have ended about thirty-bazillion books before they actually did. King ... I dunno, I guess I outgrew him actually he's as garrulous as I am in words and I can't stand that.

I love Niven's short stories. Can't stand his full length stuff. I can read the Belgariad over and over and over again, but can't read Lord of the Rings without getting pissed at JMS, thus depreciating my love for Babylon 5, which I refuse to do any more.

I can re-read Snow Crash over and over and over, but Stephenson's longer works just make me feel like I'm at work and that's just too damned much to ask of me. Every time I read the Masters of Rome series, I'm encouraged to read some more ancient writers...but not encouraged enough to learn Latin or anything crazy like that. Though I am beginning to tire of McCullough going out of her way to pooh-pooh the idea that no one prominent in ancient Rome but for Atticus and Sulla had sex with other men while using so much of Suetonius as a source...and Suetonius thought (or gossiped about other people thinking) everyone was queer back then.

I'm iffy with Gaiman, though Sandman and Good Omens are fantastic, American Gods disappointed me greatly. I'm currently re-reading Ilium by Dan Simmons, who I really like, since Olympos is now out. Hyperion is probably my favorite sci-fi read EVAR, and Hollow Man is probably the one book that made me want to slit my throat after reading it.

But, hey cool, there's this thread that's magically appeared so I can go sample new stuff! Yay!

See? Garrulous. I want to be breezy. Just once.

Tolkein was awful when I reread before the movies. Heinlein sucked once I had half a brain.

In fact, I find must science fiction awful now. Good books are so damn rare in that genre that I actually gave up on it for about 5 years at one point.

Tom Robbins.

When I was, oh, 19 or 20, I read just about all of his novels one summer.

I have no idea what I was thinking.

If you find most sci-fi awful, srboisvert, might I recommend The Stars My Destination? Alfred Bester, if you haven't yet read him, lives up to the first half of his last name.

I liked Vonnegut when I was young; now I can read precious little of his material without wincing, then falling asleep. I shudder to think that I once read all the Michener the public library could offer (I was just a boy! I didn't know!)

Ha. Ditto on the Michener, Hugh. (I was just a widdle bunny! I didn't know!). But I still love Vonnegut.

Also ditto on the Tom Robbins, though I still have a fondness for Jitterbug Perfume. Hey - New Orleans and Greek mythology... it's gotta be my bag, right?

And on the New Orleans thing, Anne Rice has been a guilty pleasure of mine. I still love Interview - I don't care what anyone says... *sob!*

Also, I have to say that John Irving is sort of like a parent... When you're younger you think they're like all-knowing gods, and can do no wrong, but then you get a little older and a bit embarrassed about their foibles and excesses, but you still love 'em because you must and you always will.

Tom Robbins.

When I was, oh, 19 or 20, I read just about all of his novels one summer.

This exact scenario happened to me as well. The summer after graduating from college, I read all of his books. I now cannot fathom the compulsion that fueled such a single author binge. In fact, they all blend together in a bland pablum of sex and psuedo-philosophy.

Piers Anthony, gawd. Truth to tell, A Spell For Chameleon holds up pretty well, but after that... glargh. *shudder*
*wince*

I used to like Jonathan Kellerman's thrillers as brain candy or train reads, but they really don't hold up well, even on those standards.

Like everyone else: Piers Anthony. He clearly writes for self-consciously precocious eleven-year-olds. I picked up one of his books the other day and nearly gagged. Off to Half Price Books with all of them. I can't believe I ever read that pap.

I also have an embarrassing Piers-Anthony-related confession: When I was young (6th grade?), I read a comment by PA that went something like this: "It is as necessary to know the names of the parts of speech in order to write properly as it is to know the names of the parts of the body in order to walk and talk properly." In a fit of hubris I stood on that principle and steadfastly refused to learn any more grammar. Now that I write for a leaving, I have found that to be to my great detriment. Alas...

Another author I dearly loved as a teenager and now loathe: Ayn Rand. What was I thinking? Oh, and an author that I loved, then hated, then loved again: Robert Anton Wilson.

Hmm. I still love Piers Anthony, but then, I haven't read any for about ten or fifteen years. Sounds like I should skip it.

I used to really like William Sleator ("House of Stairs" was awesome), but when I re-read his stuff recently, it was awful.

P.S. All ya'll are science fiction nerds. But I am too.

I used to like Norman Mailer in junior high. He wrote about naughty bits quite a lot. "But Mother, this is literature!"

Oh, that's another one Ayn Rand. I used to be an actor (for fun! not for profit! Well, except that one time...) and I was in Rand's "The Night of January Sixteenth" onstage. There were a lot of, hrm, Rand-nuts in the cast and me, being a young innocent ingenue felt the need to bond with them, so I went out and read Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

Now? Bleah. Bleah!

Specklet, I beg to differ. I am a sci-fi/fantasy/ancient history nerd. I'm big enough to fit into three pigeonholes!

I really liked this when I was younger, but now find it repetitive and underwhelming. I can't believe I recommended it to so many people. What was I thinking.

Ah haaa! Hee.