MetaChat - What's the book (or author) you love that others feel the need to abuse you for?

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03 January 2008

What's the book (or author) you love that others feel the need to abuse you for? Just to complete the set, y'see. →[More:] For me, it's Richard Brautigan. I discovered Trout Fishing in America at just the right time, in just the right place - he was my first step into the wider world beyond our suburb, so to speak. From there it was on to Revenge of the Lawn; after that, there was no looking back.

Yet every time I mention him as a favorite author, eyeballs begin rolling so hard I can hear them. I'm not saying he's for everybody - hell, I'm not even saying that everything he did was good. I can't fucking stand In Watermelon Sugar, for example. Makes my teeth hurt. But I do have a soft spot for most of his stuff, and go back and re-read it every couple of years.

post by: bmarkey at: 01:55 | 35 comments

I admit it: Anne Tyler was always a guilty pleasure for me. Haven't read anything by her in a few years. But at one point, she spoke to me somehow.

posted by mudpuppie 03 January | 02:23

Oh, I really like Anne Tyler! It's been years for me, too, but reading Anne Tyler is sort of like wrapping yourself in an old, old slightly threadbare, hand-pieced quilt made by a long-dead ancestor - cozy, warm, familiar, and comforting, but also bittersweet, sad and nostalgic.

I'm trying to pinpoint my answer to this one. All I can think of at the moment is Anne Rice, who isn't really a favorite author, but I read and enjoyed many of her books when I lived in New Orleans. I think, for me, it's more of a genre thing - I really enjoy science fiction and fantasy, and will sometimes forgive a certain amount of literary failing for a great tale.

posted by taz 03 January | 02:58

I have a bunch of Andrew Vachss and James Ellroy books that I'm sure would make a lot of people upchuck. I like them though. For some reason the dark, raw, back alley stuff turns my crank. I bought "American Tabloid" when it came out, and started reading it on the plane when I went to Las Vegas. Talk about Kismet...

posted by eekacat 03 January | 04:48

Definitely Stephen Donaldson's "Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" fantasy books.

They really annoy some people for a number of reasons. The protagonist starts off as an embittered anti-hero when they expect a conventional hero. The books have a lot of pain and suffering and destruction in them. And Donaldson uses a lot of obscure words in them, which the anile find to be most uncondign, leading them to utter mordant malisons about the apparently etiolated prose.

Also in more general terms some people seem to resent my audiobooks. I find it much quicker and easier to read paper books since you control the pace, but since I've started walking to work instead of getting the Tube and train I've taken up some audiobooks instead. But audiobooks seem to be regarded as cheating somehow.

posted by TheophileEscargot 03 January | 04:57

hee. I'm a big Thomas Covenant fan, too, Theo... probably precisely for the criticisms stated. :)

posted by taz 03 January | 05:06

All I can say is that if I read "leper outcast unclean" one more time, I was prepared to show him a new place to wield his white gold - one where the sun don't shine.

That said: if you dig it, you dig it.

posted by bmarkey 03 January | 05:13

I think many people hate the Thomas Covenant series for being a third rate Tolkien rip off. I know I do. Gene Wolfe seems to split people down the middle. Some of his books are more like crossword puzzles than books.

posted by oh pollo! 03 January | 05:20

leper outcast unclean!

whahwhah, call the leper whambulance... I DON' WANNA BE A HERO, AN YOUSE CAN'T MAKE ME!!!

heehee. True, dat, bmarkey, but I still like the crusty old sod. it's a willing suspension of Unbeliever thing. :)

Oh, yeah, I like Gene Wolfe, too.

posted by taz 03 January | 05:31

Must admit I have a bit of a thing for pulpy fantasy, sci-fi and horror, particularly on the morning commute when my brain isn't up to much else. I find myself hiding the cover of a Peter Straub hardback borrowed from the library more than I probably should.

I didn't like Thomas Covenant at all personally, but not for any of those reasons. Everything was painted with such broad strokes, that it just read more like a screenplay or an outline of a D&D campaign than an actual novel to me - no real characterisations or development of lore, history, environments etc. It seemed a real let-down to me as I thought the first part of the book (before he has his car accident and wakes up in loonyland) was really powerful and well-written. The rest of it was such a disappointment to me that I didn't bother past the first book.

posted by bifter 03 January | 05:38

This may be shameless self-promotion, but I wrote a bit about Stephen Donaldson on K5 a while back.

I don't see him as a rip-offer but as a riffer. He takes standard genre scenarios and undermines peoples expectations by working things out faithfully.

Why would an unheroic person instantly become a hero if he's transported to a fantasy world, just because it's a fictional convention?

posted by TheophileEscargot 03 January | 05:42

Vonnegut. A potential gf once told me she hated Breakfast of Champions so much she had to throw it across the room.

posted by DarkForest 03 January | 06:08

I was totally going to mention Andrew Vachss.

posted by box 03 January | 08:08

I think I'd have to say Kerouac at this point. ;-)
Although I must admit I've found most of his other writing pretty unreadable.

posted by richat 03 January | 08:08

Tom Clancy. Although the last two or three of his novels have disappointed, some others (Patriot Games and Debt of Honor) were pretty enjoyable if far-fetched. The Hunt for Red October is one of the most successful first novels I know of, and Without Remorse is a pretty taut thriller, considering it has a story arc that sounds, at first glance, like a Steven Segal movie. Red Storm Rising had a lot of NATO readers staying up late, too.

posted by PaxDigita 03 January | 08:24

I admit it: Anne Tyler was always a guilty pleasure for me. Haven't read anything by her in a few years. But at one point, she spoke to me somehow.

I was coming in here to say the same thing. All of her books have a theme of running away in some respect or another, and there was a time in my life when I could really connect with that.

posted by amro 03 January | 09:50

DarkForest: I assume that after this admission, she was no longer a painful girlfriend?

As for me, I have a lot of guilty pleasures. I constantly berate myself for having read every crap YA book that's come out in the last five years, not to mention almost any piece of chick lit I can get my hands on. You might say, "Okay, but that was your job, right?" But no. Because even after I'd stopped reviewing books -- for the time being, anyway -- I continued to call publishers and beg them for advance copies of, say, Meg Cabot. I have "Queen of Babble" in manuscript form, my addiction is so bad.

The thing is? Meg Cabot is really a good writer, by which I mean she has a voice all her own, and she writes three or four books a year, and she's also a totally kickass person. (Here is my defending myself.)

Oh, and some of the comments in the "books I hate" thread cut me to the bone. Margaret Atwood! She's one of the Holy Triumverate, dammit.

posted by brina 03 January | 10:39

Egads. I saw it on preview, meant to backspace, and didn't. "Painful girlfriend"? Freudian much? I meant prospective, right? Gah. Totally ruined my own joke.

posted by brina 03 January | 10:40

I like the Thomas Covenant books too.

Not a specific author, but people rip on my for my ongoing love of YA fantasy (re-reading Diane Duane's Young Wizards books now, and enjoying them immensely).

posted by gaspode 03 January | 10:53

a painful girlfriend?

Jeez, aren't they all, sooner or later? :) I think it was a better joke that way... Maybe Freudian, maybe half time-travel, back to the early 80s. Wanted her desperately, but well out of my class.

Hopefully, I will keep my shameful admissions few and far between. <slinks away>

posted by DarkForest 03 January | 11:01

Brian Lumley's Necroscope books, until they got all super-serious and boring. The earlier ones are shamelessly pulpy, and Lumley's addiction to exclamation points (in the spoken dialogue! in the characters' thoughts! in the narration! in the titles!) delighted me, while making me blush at the same time.

posted by Lentrohamsanin 03 January | 11:30

I've read my share of Anne Rice and VC Andrews as a young lass. (Who hasn't?)

And I'm not ashamed to say that I enjoyed some Dan Brown. Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code were fun, quick reads.

But the one I get abused for is my love of Salinger. As a former lit major, I should have a more obscure favorite author, I guess. But I don't.

posted by jrossi4r 03 January | 11:39

Terry Pratchett for sure. The recent ones (like, the last 10) are great stories and hilarious, but the US covers are just so goofy it's hard for people to get past them.

posted by Capn 03 January | 11:51

I'm a huge fan of the Sue Grafton alphabet series, and have had a few sneers from snobby friends about them. I also love Marian Keyes, who writes what I suppose could be described as 'chick lit'. But Rachel's Holiday is probably one of the best (and funniest) books about recovery I've ever read. Whenever I see a copy in a charity shop I always buy it to pass on to someone.

I'm also a sucker for Ann Rule and her true crime books, and Carl Hiaasen, whose books make me laugh out loud.

None of these would be considered 'literature' by those in the know, but I enjoy them.

posted by essexjan 03 January | 12:21

I like some of Palahniuk's books.

posted by chuckdarwin 03 January | 12:56

Stephen King. Say what you will, but Carrie, The Stand, It, Different Seasons, Misery, The Bachman Books, The Shining, The Talisman and the Dark Tower books are all excellent.

Also murder mysteries. And Margaret Atwood to my boyfriend. I should have started with Oryx and Crake rather than Handmaid's Tale.

posted by goo 03 January | 13:57

jrossi, I have also read a bunch of Anne Rice. I would even go so far as to say I liked a bunch of the earlier books in the Vampire Chronicle series. Same with the Mayfair Witches. But, to paraphrase the Simpsons, the Vampire Chronicles turned into man-on-man porn so slowly it took me a few books to notice!

Oh and, yay Salinger!

posted by richat 03 January | 14:51

essexjan, I went through a Carl Hiaasen phase for awhile. I thought they were entertaining, easy reading, and his characters can be pretty great. Like the biker/enforcer who collects roadside memorial crosses.

posted by eekacat 03 January | 16:39

I also went through a Carl Hiaasen phase. And I'll probably read his next book, too. Also Lee Child and Elmore Leonard.

posted by box 03 January | 16:50

I often get accused of being either a liar or an elitist when I say that my favorite novel is Ulysses. I get that Joyce is not everyone's cup of tea, but I really don't get this notion that if something seems incomprehensible and/or uninteresting to you, anyone else who does happen to find it comprehensible and interesting is automatically suspect.

posted by scody 03 January | 17:30

Not just anything "incomprehensible and/or uninteresting", just the Joyce. heheh

My indulgence are those vampire serials that are little more than Harlequins updated for the new millennium.

posted by mischief 03 January | 19:03

I have a bunch of Andrew Vachss and James Ellroy books that I'm sure would make a lot of people upchuck.

Vachss & Ellroy rule baby! Burke is a bad motherucker.

posted by jonmc 03 January | 19:42

I really don't get this notion that if something seems incomprehensible and/or uninteresting to you, anyone else who does happen to find it comprehensible and interesting is automatically suspect.

It's the 'incomprehensiblity' part. I've never read Ulysses, so I have no opinion on it, but if somethings really complicated or difficult but still raved about, you can't help but wonder if people praise it just to seem smart or hep.

(not accusing you, scody, just an observation)

posted by jonmc 03 January | 19:48

and people love to dump all over Chuck Klosterman but I will defend him to the grave, dude. and Jedidiah Purdy, too, although I can kind of understand why people don't like him, even though I kind of admire the kid.

posted by jonmc 03 January | 19:49

This isn't really an author, but my friends gave me a lot of grief for reading 'A Fine Balance' because it was on Oprah's Book Club.

posted by reenum 13 January | 13:42

Anne Rice for me, too. Romance novels- Regency and vampire, even better if it's Regency vampires. Gene Wolfe, definitely! Robert Heinlein- several of my teen years are dedicated to him. Frank Herbert's Dune- I love the book and the movie, but a lot of people look down on the movie, confuse the book and the movie, and then tease me about liking the book. Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books.

posted by halonine 17 January | 17:37

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