Unpopular Opinions

[bubbls]

I find the style becomes more complex as the series moved along - the first two books were certainly written for children around 8-9 years old, I think (although I loved them anyway even as a teen reader!). As the books progressed, I found the writing style grew more complex, with the exception of that epilogue. However, although the style was more complex, I found the later books would have benefitted from tighter editing, as I think JKR's success made her editors more lax.

I was wondering if it matured. I'll probably give it another try knowing that.

[Crs97]

The Harry Potter series left me in somewhat of a quandary because JKR definitely seemed to let the story become darker and more complex as her audience aged. It was great for the adults and the kids who literally grew up with her books. I can remember our babysitter talking about how young she was when she read the first one, and her parents delayed her HS graduation trip one day so that the final book could arrive before they left. My kids, however, wanted to tear through the entire series in one fell swoop (my then nine year old read the entire series in 9 days!), and I had to go back and reread each one for content. Interestingly, he watched the first movie and has absolutely no interest in any of the others.

Edited June 14, 2015 by Crs97

[AuntiePam]

What makes Rowling's writing seem "juvenile" to me is style, not theme, plot, or story.  It seemed to me that she wanted to make sure that the reader knew what the characters were thinking and feeling, that we knew their motivation.  She'd tell us when and why someone was hurt, angry, sad, happy, afraid, rather than let their actions show us.  Too much was spelled out (no pun intended).

 

I've said this before and I'll say it again, she relied too heavily on adverbs in dialogue tags.  Everyone spoke "angrily, sadly, happily", etc.  It should be evident from what's being said that the speaker is angry, sad, happy.

[Athena]

I love Rowling as an author but her weakness is in her prose. Her strengths are her characters, themes, and general storytelling. There are other authors and writers who are great with plots and pacing (e.g. good mystery writers), but who lack good central or supporting characters. Or writers who are amazing with their prose and descriptive beauty, but suck in actually having any plot. As someone who loves Rowling, I can see why people have issues with some of her works, but the strength of Harry Potter and her current mystery series is the characters. I really enjoy following them along. I think she has improved as a writer, but to a certain extent, she'll never be perfect. No writer could be.

[GreekGeek]

What makes Rowling's writing seem "juvenile" to me is style, not theme, plot, or story.  It seemed to me that she wanted to make sure that the reader knew what the characters were thinking and feeling, that we knew their motivation.  She'd tell us when and why someone was hurt, angry, sad, happy, afraid, rather than let their actions show us.  Too much was spelled out (no pun intended).

 

I've said this before and I'll say it again, she relied too heavily on adverbs in dialogue tags.  Everyone spoke "angrily, sadly, happily", etc.  It should be evident from what's being said that the speaker is angry, sad, happy.

I agree about the overuse of the adverbs, but the one character she kept us guessing about was Snape. What made the "Spinner's End" chapter in Half Blood Prince so compelling was that we were seeing Snape for the first time away from the "Harry filter," so this was presumably the "real" him. We're told what he says and does, but we're left to infer his thoughts and feelings from small gestures. Very well done.

[Danny Franks]

So I'm eighty pages into The Narrow Road to the Deep North, the 2014 Man Booker Prize winning novel, and I'm sighing in predictable disappointment. What did I say? Literary praise is lavished on books with stupid prose gimmicks?

 

This one takes the cake. No speech marks, and because the characters are all less than paper-thin right now, I have no clue who is doing the talking. Rambling, run-on sentences that sometimes take up an entire paragraph, as the writer waxes (overly) lyrical on one bit of description or another. General incoherent, meandering prose that bounces all over the place, but never really lands anywhere.

 

I can see why literary critics creamed themselves over it, because Flanagan's prose is at least poetic, and because the protagonist blathers on about how magical and transcendent books are, at every opportunity.

 

Maybe I'm just an unappreciative philistine, but it all just makes me roll my eyes and long for something with a style that is direct and actually tells a story. The first task of a storyteller, in my view, is to make you care. So far, this one is failing.

[NutMeg]

I started reading HP when my son was reading them  back in primary school (he wanted me to and I'm the kind of mom who's happy to see what their kids' interests are and to debate them with them). He stopped somewhere near the start of the second book but I had already read it and, because I had bought the next one, for him, one evening when I had nothing else to read, I started reading that third volume. And it was The Prisoner of Azkaban that really draw me, as an adult. I think it was mostly the idea of the Dementors, who suck all happy memories out of people, that I found very powerful, in a way I'm not sure would have struck a tween. I was also touched by the characters who were ostracized because of their dual nature (werewolf, shapeshifter). I'm sure that the intended audience has probably felt it in a different way, but as an adult with an unconventional life behind me that book really struck a chord. I then went on to buy and read the whole series (my son never did!) but still think that third book is the absolute best of the lot.   

[bubbls]

You people are convincing me to give HP another shot. It's not like I don't already have a very long list of books I want to read!

[scarynikki12]

the idea of the Dementors

 

One of my favorite things about Potter is how Stephen King describes the Dementors as the scariest thing he's ever read.  If I hadn't already been a major Potter fan, that would have convinced me to start reading.  And I agree that book 3 is what really gets me into the series as a whole.  I love 1 and 2 very much but I didn't find myself getting invested in the overall story until I read 3.  It's just so good!  Aaaand now I'm going to have to do yet another reread. 

[GHScorpiosRule]

So. Because I love the show Outlander, I gave Diana Gabaldon's books another try after 12 years, when I first tried to read them and only got as far as Chapter 3 in the third book (Out of 8, though it was only four or five at the time, and now she's working on Book 9) before I gave up.

 

The story is a good one. And I love me all kinds of Scottish history, Scots, etc. Even went to Scotland in 2001, and wanted to stay and not come back.

 

Ahem.

 

But she remains to be a horrible writer. I believe another reader refers to her style as "purple prose" which, honestly, I don't know what that means. All I know is she is in desperate need of an aggressive copy editor to trim down the fat, if you will of so much wordy mcwordy words and descriptions that do not further the plot and just irk me.  Down to the combination of anachronistic and archaic words that look out of place. How in 20 some years, no one at her publisher's office, hasn't had the guts to have a talk with her, or do the actual editing, is beyond my understanding.

 

And just because I don't like her writing style, what she insists on making me "see" (as I'm a very visual reader--I can see what I'm reading in my mind) that gross me out, but doesn't gross others out, doesn't make me "wrong" in my feelings on the matter.  

 

But I do love the story.  That sounds like an oxymoron, I know.

[Jodithgrace]

Not sure if this would be unpopular or not but I was a fan of Danielle Steel's back in her heyday (80s) - - until I read Lightening.  What a piece of shit!

 

This is so funny! I just discovered the Books forum this evening and posted about this very book in the "books that disappointed me" thread. I summarized the plot the same way you did! LOL 

 

My unpopular opinion..I dislike Gone With The Wind. Scarlett O'Hara bugs me so much with her stupidity and the way she manages to make just about every wrong choice she could possibly make. I keep wanting to shake some sense into her!

[bubbls]

I guess this is unpopular, but I generally don't like book series with a recurring character. I immediately lost interest in the Lee Child/Lincoln Preston books once they began to introduce Agent Pendergast over and over. And I love their books! I think it's because I'm far more interested in being taken on a journey with the story rather than spending time with a character. I wonder if this is an introvert thing.

Edited July 10, 2015 by bubbls

[psychoticstate]

This is so funny! I just discovered the Books forum this evening and posted about this very book in the "books that disappointed me" thread. I summarized the plot the same way you did! LOL 

 

My unpopular opinion..I dislike Gone With The Wind. Scarlett O'Hara bugs me so much with her stupidity and the way she manages to make just about every wrong choice she could possibly make. I keep wanting to shake some sense into her!

 

I just saw your other post and was laughing that our opinions are practically identical.  Lightning is indeed a big old POS.

[Wiendish Fitch]

For years I thought the book Gone with the Wind was better than the movie (though I still like the movie), until I tried re-reading it recently. No wonder the book is over 1,000 pages long, Margaret Mitchell just rambles on and on and won't get to the point! For the love of God, she spends three or four pages describing how the Tarleton twins are miffed because Scarlett didn't invite them to dinner! They're tertiary characters at best, who gives a crap?!

 

Hell, the movie should be praised for trimming those mounds and mounds of fat!

[nodorothyparker]

I wallow in Gone with the Wind every couple of years and have since I first read it in high school half a lifetime years ago.  It's like baked mac and cheese in that it's really decadent and there's just so much of it but it could have very easily been pared way down to a more reasonably sized portion and probably really isn't all that good for you.  It's also cheesily melodramatic in spots and romanticizes some really tough stuff to swallow.  And yeah, Scarlett is so hilariously wrong-headed so much of the time that eventually you just want to throttle her in the moments when you're not wishing damn Ashley would ride off a cliff because that would at least be something decisive.

 

Hmm, maybe I'm not making much of a case for why I continue to have such a soft spot for it

[AuntiePam]

I'm rethinking my affection for To Kill A Mockingbird.  This is after reading Gilbert King's non-fiction book about a case similar to the fictional Tom Robinson case, black men falsely accused of raping a white woman.  In the 1940's, when TKAM is set, black lawyers risked their lives to defend black defendants in the South.  Thurgood Marshall barely escaped with his life after he won a not guilty verdict for black defendants accused of attempted murder.

 

Now I see my favorite scene as patronizing -- the man telling Scout to "Stand up, your father's passing."  Atticus was just doing his job.  He risked nothing except the ill will of some ignorant white people.  He's not the Second Coming. 

[Sara2009]

I'm rethinking my affection for To Kill A Mockingbird. This is after reading Gilbert King's non-fiction book about a case similar to the fictional Tom Robinson case, black men falsely accused of raping a white woman. In the 1940's, when TKAM is set, black lawyers risked their lives to defend black defendants in the South. Thurgood Marshall barely escaped with his life after he won a not guilty verdict for black defendants accused of attempted murder.

Now I see my favorite scene as patronizing -- the man telling Scout to "Stand up, your father's passing." Atticus was just doing his job. He risked nothing except the ill will of some ignorant white people. He's not the Second Coming.

I like " To Kill a Mockingbird," but I think we have to judge it by the time in which it's set. Obviously some of the attitudes expressed in it wouldn't fly today.

[nodorothyparker]

I've been thinking a lot about To Kill a Mockingbird too in light of all the gnashing of teeth over the reported darkening of Atticus Finch in the upcoming release of Go Set a Watchman.  I've always really loved Mockingbird on a purely sentimental level because OMG who doesn't relate to Scout, but yeah, it does have its moments of paternalism and sets Atticus up as a towering mythological white savior figure when he was really just doing his job. It's also told through the gauzy filter of childhood remembrance so a certain amount of romanticizing is to be expected.  I'm getting the sense from some of the preemptive outrage over Watchman that a lot of readers never considered this.

 

I'll probably read Watchman just for sheer curiosity's sake because I love to see how writers evolve, but I don't think it necessarily has to take anything away from Mockingbird.

Edited July 13, 2015 by nodorothyparker

[SmithW6079]

All this talk of "Gone With the Wind" has prompted my re-read of it. Curse you, PTVers! I'm sure I'll stop once it starts getting excessively racist (not that it isn't pretty much like that from the get-go).

 

Scarlett O'Hara bugs me so much with her stupidity and the way she manages to make just about every wrong choice she could possibly make. I keep wanting to shake some sense into her!

 

Actually, I think don't think she's stupid at all. She seems to fit the definition of a psychopath:

Psychopaths, in general, have a hard time forming real emotional attachments with others. Instead, they form artificial, shallow relationships designed to be manipulated in a way that most benefits the psychopath. People are seen as pawns to be used to forward the psychopath’s goals. Psychopaths rarely feel guilt regarding any of their behaviors, no matter how much they hurt others.

 

But psychopaths can often be seen by others as being charming and trustworthy, holding steady, normal jobs. Some even have families and seemingly-loving relationships with a partner. While they tend to be well-educated, they may also have learned a great deal on their own. 

 

She's definitely an unlikable character, for all that she's the heroine of the book. 

 

For the love of God, she spends three or four pages describing how the Tarleton twins are miffed because Scarlett didn't invite them to dinner! They're tertiary characters at best, who gives a crap?!

 

I think that's because Mitchell was describing what she (and millions of other southerners) perceived to be a civilization, where such niceties were part of the fabric of that society.  

 

One of my UOs is that I hate it when authors take real people and use them in mysteries. I'm thinking of the Eleanor Roosevelt mysteries (yes, I know her son wrote them), or the Jane Austen mysteries, or the Charlotte Bronte mysteries. Oh, lord, doing a little bit of Googling shows that there appears to be a whole genre of people re-imagining famous authors as amateur detectives. Blech.

[joanne3482]

Admittedly he is a YA author, but I don't like John Green's books. I've read a couple and I don't think his characters have a lot of depth. 

[Avaleigh]

This thread has made me want to reread both Wuthering Heights and Gone With the Wind. I've read GWTW at least six times but it's been about ten years or so since the last time. Love that book and would have been happy with more details about random characters like Rhett's bastard kid, Eulalie and Pauline, Careen before the convent, Cathleen and Cade Calvert, etc. I always liked how Cathleen was a kind of foil for Scarlett and I wish that more of that had been explored.

 

I thought Harry and Hermione made a lot more sense as a pairing and hated that JKR felt forced to give into the Happy Weasley Family expectations. I also think that books 5 and 7 in that series were crap. 

 

Oh and for all that Andromeda Black was supposed to be inspired by Jessica Mitford, what a let down when we finally get an appearance from the character. Bellatrix (Unity) and Narcissa (Diana) were far more interesting and that's odd considering she supposedly named her daughter after Jessica Mitford. 

[heebiejeebie]

 

 

One of my UOs is that I hate it when authors take real people and use them in mysteries. I'm thinking of the Eleanor Roosevelt mysteries (yes, I know her son wrote them), or the Jane Austen mysteries, or the Charlotte Bronte mysteries. Oh, lord, doing a little bit of Googling shows that there appears to be a whole genre of people re-imagining famous authors as amateur detectives. Blech.

 

 

I hate this. I really really hate this.  No offense to anyone but I read a synopsis about a new series where Princess Elizabeth Tudor (eventually Elizabeth I of some fame and note) is a detective and goes to Istanbul for a chess match and solves a crime there.  I don't like these types when they try somewhat to stick to know fact.  But to take it this far?  Why not just have her fall through a wardrobe and in the climatic solution delivery declare Tumnus did it with a tea spoon!

 

I never understood why authors are so timid (lazy?  Bad?) that they cannot create their own characters to move among real historical figures  Dorothy Dunnett did it mastefully.  Sharon Kay Penman is also very good.  To me it screams a bit cheap since the author can shove some of the characterization heavy lifting onto the reader.  A good segment will come to such a novel with already some idea of who that person is from the most general wiki' knowledge.  Which means the author can fall back on the same and call it "personality:"

 

Blech blech blech

[nodorothyparker]

I hate any fiction that puts real historical figures someplace they clearly never were or has them doing something they never would have done or that's completely outside what we know about them as characters.  I'm not talking about time travel stuff where they may be popped in on briefly and then go back to their regularly scheduled lives, but what the above is talking about.  The average person's history education is poor enough as it is, why muddy what we do know further by making crap up wholesale?  It does come off as too lazy to make up your own characters or not trusting your idea as being good enough to lure a reader in without throwing Henry VIII as your spymaster into it.

[Danny Franks]

I hate any fiction that puts real historical figures someplace they clearly never were or has them doing something they never would have done or that's completely outside what we know about them as characters.  I'm not talking about time travel stuff where they may be popped in on briefly and then go back to their regularly scheduled lives, but what the above is talking about.  The average person's history education is poor enough as it is, why muddy what we do know further by making crap up wholesale?  It does come off as too lazy to make up your own characters or not trusting your idea as being good enough to lure a reader in without throwing Henry VIII as your spymaster into it.

 

I don't mind it in alternate history/fantasy novels. Steampunk does it quite a bit, with the likes of Queen Victoria. It can work quite well, because the rest of the world is so different, yet you've got that presence who you know so well, stuck in the middle of it.

 

I've never understood the appeal of those medieval detective books, though. They all seem boring as hell to me. Then again, modern crime novels are boring as hell to me too. I'm a fan of historical fiction, just 'Sherlock Holmes in a friar's robes' stuff. That Elizabeth Tudor as a detective book sounds so ridiculously bad, that I'd almost be tempted to read it, just to see how hacky and unoriginal it was. But I won't.

[Captain Carrot]

I'll probably read Watchman just for sheer curiosity's sake because I love to see how writers evolve, but I don't think it necessarily has to take anything away from Mockingbird.

 

 

I'm considering reading Watchman, but I found out while doing research that it's not a sequel to Mockingbird. Apparently Watchman was written first with the idea that an adault Scout goes home, and finds out that her happy memories of her hero father don't match the reality. The editors of the time thought that the flashbacks to her childhood were more interesting then the portions of the book sent in the then present day, and asked for her to rewrite the book to be about Scout's childhood:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Set_a_Watchman

 

I still think it may be an interesting read for what the book is, but we have to realize that its not a sequel. I have to admit that the facts that Lee had previously stated that she wouldn't publish another book, and that this all came about after the death of her sister caused Tonja Carter to be the sole executer of Lee's estate to be troubling. (Lee's sister, Alice Lee, died in November of last year, and had been quoted as saying, "can’t see and can’t hear and will sign anything put before her by anyone in whom she has confidence."

Edited July 20, 2015 by Captain Carrot

[nodorothyparker]

The provenance issues gave me pause as well when the stories about this "found" book first came out.  But as a hardcore bookie friend who has already finished Watchman and really loved it commented, the estate very likely would have put the book out anyway after Lee's death and she wouldn't have been around to enjoy or benefit from it in any way.  At least this way, people can celebrate her and her talent while she's still alive, regardless of how aware of it she may truly be.  Maybe it's a weak justification, but at this point I don't think it's possible for any of us to know for certain what the reality of the situation is.

 

No, it's not a true traditional sequel in the sense that she wrote it as an intended followup.  But from all accounts it's still the same character at a different time and different place in his life.  Beyond that, I don't consider it fair to weigh in on it until I've finished it for myself.

Edited July 21, 2015 by nodorothyparker

[Captain Carrot]

I haven't read it yet either, but I guess my concern is that people will view these characters as the same people, when really it's the original versions of the characters. It's quite possible that Lee made changes to Scout, Atticus, and the others during the writing of To Kill a Mockingbird.

 

I guess that's what I meant about how to view Watchman. Reading it as a continuation of the story in Mockingbird is flawed, but reading it as the first draft of the story that became To Kill a Mockingbird can lead to some interesting conversations. For instance is the Atticus Finch of Mockingbird a racist that's just doing his job, a hero, or something inbetween? Is he the same character as the Atticus Finch in Watchman, or did Harper Lee make changes to his character? I probably will read Watchman in the near future, then reread Mockingbird to see what changed, and what stayed the same. (Although I'll probably get Watchman from the Library, because in my mind that's better than buying a book that was published under questionable circumstances).

[ulkis]

Among aficionados of historical fiction, the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnet are very popular. And I'm kinda ashamed to admit, I mostly don't like them because I mostly have no idea what the hell is going on 95% of the time in them. Book three I enjoyed because I mostly got what was going on and then in book four was obscure again so I gave up. 

[nodorothyparker]

I've had Dunnet recommended to me by other Outlander aficionados who are really into the historical aspect of that series.  It looks a lot denser and set further back in Scottish history though and I've just never gotten around to looking into it beyond that.  Scottish history is interesting and all, but I don't know if I'm really that interested in it.

Edited July 31, 2015 by nodorothyparker

[EighteenTwelve]

The problem I have with the Lymond Chronicles is that I don't like Lymond.  He's always right and he's usually insufferable about it.  I read the books for the other characters: Sybilla, Jerrott Blyth, Archie, Will Scott, etc.

[wallflower75]

Concerning the talk about P&P (which i love, but I won't say anything about it), I think I actually like "Mansfield Park" better (The protagonist is a sweetie), and I think "Emma" is extremely overrated (and no, it's not that I find Emma unlikeable--I like her just fine).

 

While I prefer P&P to Mansfield Park, my thoughts on Fanny Price echo yours.  In fact, my Jane Austen UO is that Mansfield Park is my second favorite after P&P.  I don't get the Fanny Price hate, I really don't.  Sure, she's not dazzling, witty, or beautiful.  Yes, she's reserved and doesn't speak up for herself much.  People consider her wimpy.  To those people I say, go reread the scene where her uncle tries to browbeat her into accepting Henry Crawford's proposal.  She cries, she cowers, but she doesn't give in.  And she continues to refuse to marry Henry even when the rest of her family beseeches her to do so--even Edmund, whose advice she always follows.  Think about the courage it takes to stand up to the people who have raised you since you were ten years old and not even be able to fully explain why you're doing it.  People applaud Elizabeth Bennet when she defies her mother and refuses Mr. Collins's proposal, but at least Elizabeth has Mr. Bennet on her side.  Fanny has no one.  She's not wimpy.

[Wiendish Fitch]

While I loved The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, there is something about Kate DiCamillo's writing in her other books that bothers me. She's too repetitive and up her own ass, but she keeps being showered with Newbery Awards, so she's doing something right.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Wiendish Fitch

[Yokosmom]

In fact, my Jane Austen UO is that Mansfield Park is my second favorite after P&P.

 

It's my second favorite too, though not because of it's heroine.  Fanny and Edmond are my least favorite people in the book, really.  It's all of the secondary characters that I find so enjoyable to read about.  The courtship and philandering of Maria, both of the singularly awful aunts, the Crawfords, Fanny's ghastly return home to her birth family... I'm glad Fanny got her happy ending, but she isn't the reason why I enjoy the book so much. And though Edmond may have been kind, he was also a bit priggish (perfect fit for Fanny and perhaps natural in a clergyman) and was unable to even enjoy scenery unless it contained something that was productive and useful.  Not much aesthetic feeling in that one. 

[Cobalt Stargazer]

I know they're classic lit, but I hate hate hate Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre for the same reason I detest the Twilight/50 Shades of Gray amalgamation.  Men acting like abusive assholes to women who keep loving them anyway in hopes that they can change them is not sexy.  I don't care that he has a shiny new everything or broods prettily.  An asshole is still an asshole.

 

This is an ancient post, but I'm going to defend Wuthering Heights, mostly because I've never read Jane Eyre.

 

Heathcliff was a kid when Cathy's father brought him into the house, and as they got older they fell in love. Only she had some kind of dream/fantasy/whatever about being married to a gentleman, or at least someone who wasn't mostly dead broke. Like Daisy Buchanan picking Tom, Cathy chose the wealthy Edgar despite or maybe even because of what she felt for Heathcliff, and from there he becomes bitter and vengeful, ruining her drunkard brother's life by buying the house out from under him, then marrying Edgar's sister even though he was still obsessively in love with Cathy. Wuthering Heights isn't so much a romance as it is a tragedy, but it isn't as if Cathy is any kind of peach either.

Edited September 21, 2015 by Cobalt Stargazer

[Jazzy24]

This is an ancient post, but I'm going to defend Wuthering Heights, mostly because I've never read Jane Eyre.

Heathcliff was a kid when Cathy's father brought him into the house, and as they got older they fell in love. Only she had some kind of dream/fantasy/whatever about being married to a gentleman, or at least someone who wasn't mostly dead broke. Like Daisy Buchanan picking Tom, Cathy chose the wealthy Edgar despite or maybe even because of what she felt for Heathcliff, and from there he becomes bitter and vengeful, ruining her drunkard brother's life by buying the house out from under him, then marrying Edgar's sister even though he was still obsessively in love with Cathy. Wuthering Heights isn't so much a romance as it is a tragedy, but it isn't as if Cathy is any kind of peach either.

I disliked Cathy and Heathcliff both equally just assholes all around ugh.

[Haleth]

I could never understand why Wuthering Heights is considered such a great romance.  They were both horrible people who got everything they deserved.

 

I do think Jane Eyre is a great story, even if Rochester is an asshole.

Edited September 22, 2015 by Haleth

[nodorothyparker]

I think all the Bronte sisters had issues that were only exacerbated by the repressive times they lived in and having an asshole for a brother that they apparently all used for inspiration.

 

At least in Anne's version of things, the quite feminist for its time The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Helen is able to get away from her drunken lout of a husband and find a life for herself rather than just stiff upper lip her partner's terrible behavior.

Edited September 22, 2015 by nodorothyparker

[Athena]

At least in Anne's version of things, the quite feminist for its time The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Helen is able to get away from her drunken lout of a husband and find a life for herself rather than just stiff upper lip her partner's terrible behavior.

 

My favourite Bronte is Anne. She is the best writer and the one who is most realistic. You genuinely feel for her characters because you can tell Anne took a lot of her own experiences as a governess and as an observer of people.

 

I do admit to liking Jane Eyre, but Anne is far superior than Charlotte as a writer. Anne was the least sheltered because of her own experiences. Emily seemed very naive. I think she wrote it so we're suppose to feel for the star crossed Cathy and Healthcliff except that I wanted them to die most of the novel.

[nodorothyparker]

Anne's my favorite too, mostly because she's the only one of three who doesn't needlessly romanticize terrible men who behave terribly.  It's fascinating to me as a modern woman that she was so rounded condemned by her peers, including Charlotte, for writing Arthur Huntingdon as such an unredeemingly awful person as opposed to softening and prettying him up to be a classic tortured hero of English lit or making Helen so stalwart in just being done with it.

 

There's at least a somewhat decent story in Jane Eyre.  So I don't hate it the way I hate Wuthering Heights, which is ridiculous to the point that I want both Cathy and Heathcliff to fall into an open grave in the beginning and save us the trouble.

Edited September 22, 2015 by nodorothyparker

[wanderingstar]

I know she's most celebrated for her mysteries (of which I've read and enjoyed several), but my favorite work by P.D. James is Children of Men. It's a short but genuinely powerful work. 

[nodorothyparker]

Children of Men is on my sort of want to read if I ever get time list, but I'll admit I was seriously put off P.D. James by her abysmally underwhelming Death Comes to Pemberley. It's partly my own fault because I'm a horrible sucker for any and all continuations, sequels, prequels, whatever of Pride and Prejudice even though I know a whole lot of them just aren't very good, but even by those standards it was weak. The "mystery" was terrible, background details of the source material canon were inexplicably changed, and the characterizations were wildly off. If you're lucky enough to get someone to pay you for writing what's basically fan fiction I don't think it's too much to ask to be faithful to the original work and have the characters acting like, well, the characters they are in the original. Edited October 4, 2015 by nodorothyparker

[GaT]

I love PD James' mysteries, but her other books leave me cold. I especially didn't like Children of Men.

[SmithW6079]

Children of Men is on my sort of want to read if I ever get time list, but I'll admit I was seriously put off P.D. James by her abysmally underwhelming Death Comes to Pemberley. It's partly my own fault because I'm a horrible sucker for any and all continuations, sequels, prequels, whatever of Pride and Prejudice even though I know a whole lot of them just aren't very good, but even by those standards it was weak. The "mystery" was terrible, background details of the source material canon were inexplicably changed, and the characterizations were wildly off. If you're lucky enough to get someone to pay you for writing what's basically fan fiction I don't think it's too much to ask to be faithful to the original work and have the characters acting like, well, the characters they are in the original.

The only PD James I've ever read was Death Comes to Pemberly, and I put it down in disgust after a chapter or do. It was awful, and I couldn't believe it was by a well-respected author.

[BookWoman56]

I saw some of Anne Tyler's novels mentioned in another thread, and it reminded me of what may be a very UO: I hated the ending of The Accidental Tourist. It's been a while since I read it, but I thought the comments the wife/ex-wife made about the main character's new love interest were dead-on accurate: she was not educated, she would not fit into the academic setting of the main character, his colleagues would be horrified by the relationship, and while the new love interest was entertaining, she and the main character had almost nothing in common.

My dislike of the ending has only been reinforced by having watched a similar scenario play out IRL. A friend who was a professor of philosophy had gone through a bad experience and married someone "hot and quirky" after a brief relationship; she had never attended college and had no interest in doing so. In academia, it's almost required to have faculty parties at which both faculty and spouses mingle and discuss both their field and current events, etc. The new spouse just was completely out of her depth at those parties. It's not that she needed to know extreme details of various philosophical works, but she had no clue who even the major philosophers were, no awareness of current events, etc. She expressed a certain amount of contempt for people who read a lot, which did not go over well with his colleagues. She ridiculed them paying attention to political issues instead of playing sports. After a year or two, she left him for a construction worker.

While I do believe that people from very different backgrounds can have good relationships, there has to be willingness on both sides to learn a little more about the settings in which each person is comfortable and to demonstrate at least some respect for that background. The ending of the book just plays into a pet peeve of mine, that so many books and films push the idea of love as a magic bullet that will miraculously overcome any relationship obstacles, up to and including people who have zero in common and actually don't even like each other somehow having a good relationship because they are "in love" with each other.

 

ETA: I evidently confused some details of Macon's profession with another book; it's been so long since I read it I had convinced myself he was an academic who wrote the travel books on the side. But yes, most authors I've met, no matter what they write, tend to want relationships with people who are a bit more introspective than Muriel. I get that the death of his son made him more receptive to change, but for someone who had insisted for his entire adult life that he wanted to stay squarely in his comfort zone, to more or less reject his previous life seems too extreme. It was less as if he wanted to change and more as if he just latched on to Muriel as having some characteristics he wanted for himself. And I still maintain that for someone with Macon's personality, a year down the road Muriel is not going to seem forceful and headstrong to him so much as pushy and stubborn.

Edited October 11, 2015 by BookWoman56

[cherrypj]

I saw some of Anne Tyler's novels mentioned in another thread, and it reminded me of what may be a very UO: I hated the ending of The Accidental Tourist.

 

Oh no, not unpopular: not in this house. I love Anne Tyler, but I hated that ending. Sarah got the shaft, all because of some water spots on a taxicab's window.

 

I will say that I don't think Malcolm and Muriel had different "academic" backgrounds. He was a travel writer, but that doesn't make him an academic (his office staff loved Muriel). For me, the irreconcilable differences lay in their personalities: she was forceful and headstrong; he most decisively was not. (He was SOOO wimpy! William Hurt played it perfectly.)

 

Can two totally different personalities co-exist? Sure! It is hard? I think so!

Edited October 11, 2015 by cherrypj

[Holmbo]

I have another one. I love Jean M Auel's earth children series (except the last one, that ones crap).

I love her portrayal of the way early humans might have lived and viewed the world and the descriptions of different plants and animals and the landscape.The sex scenes bored me though.

[proserpina65]

As someone who lives in a small rural county about an hour north of Baltimore, I loathed Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons.  I both recognized and hated the main character's attitude about non-city people, whom she clearly considered as being lower class than herself, and spent the first few chapters wanting to punch her.  So I put it down and refused to ever read anything by her again.

[Pepper Mostly]

I hated the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and refuse to read any of the other books. It was a page-turner, to be sure, but it was so sick and twisted (and I am far from a prude). And of course every woman he encountered, (even the cashier at the supermarket and the cleaning lady at his office, presumably) wants to jump the protagonist's bones. And all of them are totally fine with a no strings attached, friends with benefits relationship! Ugh. Couldn't put it down, but I hated myself. It was like junk food--while you're eating it you're going "oh my god this is awesome", then an hour later you're all "oh my god what did I do?" 

[GreekGeek]

Did anyone else have trouble getting past the first pages of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? I couldn't figure out who was who and what was going on...something about someone getting a flower at the same time every year? I guess I should give it another try, since everyone else who's read it couldn't put it down.

[SmithW6079]

I liked the Harry Potter books. I find JK Rowling's backstory of how she overcame homelessness to become a best-selling author inspiring. I get that people loved her books, and that if she never wrote anything else, she's set for life. But I'm starting to find it really pathetic that all she seems to post about on social media or all she's ever asked about is Harry Potter, whether it's a prequel or sequel or a new play or talking about her favorite chapter or what she would have changed in the books. "Move on!" I want to scream.