Book and Authors of the Opposite Sex You Hate and Why?

[callistra]

In light of cassiphone 's recent discussion on what books by the opposite sex you like, etc etc etc, I have some questions too.

- What authors and/or who are the opposite sex to yourself do you hate? Why? Edited to add - THAT YOU HAVE READ.

Now, my interest is in the WHY more than the authors/books, so just tell me what pisses you off endlessly in books you have read. I'm including this caveat because I can not remember the name or the author of some of my most hated books. I just hate them from afar. Except for Stephen Donaldson. I always remember how much I hate him. 

Comments

[king-espresso.livejournal.com]

Stephenie Meyer for turning vampires into wussy trojan horses for a Mormon sexual and political agenda.

[nyssa-p.livejournal.com]

*claps* Here, here!

[nyssa-p.livejournal.com]

Robert Jordan without a doubt.
Why, I said in another post, but I'll paste it here too: I put the whole thing down as the MC desperately tries to find his wife in the blood splattered halls....and then stops to look in a mirror and admire his own reflection...and then resumes his desperate search! *shudders* Terrible, terrible, terrible!

I'll also mention that I hate David Eddings personally. I enjoy his books, but he only wrote them to "cash in" on the Tolkien explosion and he's stuck up and arrogant. He doesn't care what his readers think (that he endlessly repeats the same story line) and from memory he wrote that no one is qualified to write unless they have an English degree.

There's more that I "can't get into" and such, but they are the only ones I would consider the word 'hate' for :P

[(Anonymous)]

I hate Robert Jordan personally for poking someone I admire with a stick. Literally.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

From all accounts, and brief personal experience, he wasn't a very nice man.

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

Elaine is very proud of having elbowed him in the gut. Mind you, it was an easy target.

(FWIW, Jon Strahan met him many years after this, and was favourably impressed. It could be that he'd mellowed in time - but it could also be that he didn't want to piss off someone who worked for Locus.)

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I can't really hate Robert Jordan *as an author* because I met him before I read any of his books, and he was so completely obnoxious a human being I couldn't bear to read anything he had written.

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

Hate *Farnham's Freehold* by Heinlein with a burning passion. Sexist clap trap with robots for characters. Only those who 100% agree with the male protagonist survive.

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

Agreed, and it's not the only Heinlein novel I hate (The Day After Tomorrow is jingoistic racist tripe, though he blamed the plotline on John W. Campbell, and Starship Troopers is as ethically horrifying as it is boring)... but Heinlein has also written so many short stories that have left me dumbstruck with admiration, as well as some novels I enjoy immensely, that I will forgive him a lot.

I haven't read (or at least finished) many novels that I hate or would expect to hate, but sometimes I've had very little choice - either because I've been paid to review them, or for academic purposes, or sometimes even just because my curiosity has gotten the better of me. The novel I hate most - even more than anything by Thomas Hardy, who IMHO makes most of Lovecraft's or Stephen Donaldson's work seem both optimistic in its message and economical in its style - is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

I despise *Atlas Shrugged*. Badly written and much loved by various political types that I loathe.

When I say I hated *Farnham's Freehold* I should note that I love many of his books. *Have Space Suit Will Travel* is a favourite and I think *The Moon is A Harsh Mistress* is deservedly a classic.

[angriest.livejournal.com]

Laurell K. Hamilton, but to be fair I only read enough pages to say "Oh my goodness" and put it back on the shelf, so that might break your rule. Almost. Why? Because it was just very amateurishly written.

And I couldn't stand Thea Astley's A Descant for Gossips, or Drusilla Modjeska's The Orchard, because both novels bored me to shits.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

Robert Jordan for the interminable plot of doom and the braid-pulling-in-place-of-an-actual-character-trait (or character); Heinlein of course for his creepy obsession with sex with very young female descendants (among other things); and *ducks* I strongly disliked what I read of George R.R.Martin, because I got the impression he didn't give a shit about any of his characters, so why should I? (And no, it wasn't just the killing-them-off thing, fanpeople. The whole thing just left me cold.) Oh, and Donaldson. I'm so with you there.

[nellievee45.livejournal.com]

Ditto Stephen Donaldson and George R. R. Martin. Robert Jordan? I had the feeling that there could have been an interesting story somewhere in there if he'd cut it back to about a third the length. As it was it all got lost among that bloody braid pulling and the descriptions of what the girls were wearing - because that was what women are interested in. Right?

[black-samvara.livejournal.com]

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig where he demonstrates why it's more important to have an existential crisis than relate to your family.

Makes my teeth hurt.

[purrdence.livejournal.com]

Luke Rhinehart - The Dice Man - I didn't even get through all of the book. When your character's first decision by dice is 'Shall I go upstairs and rape my neighbour?', I'm not going to keep reading.

[liluri.livejournal.com]

Donaldson and Heinlein are on the top of my hated list, I've finished a book by Donaldson but not the book I hated and I've not got very far into a Heinlein book either so not sure if either count. Why I hate them, they make me stabby towards men. That's all that I can remember about them...stabby!

[possbert.livejournal.com]

Is it sacrilege if I say Robert Heinlein? Stranger in a Strange Land I enjoyed; the rest were just some wet dream I really didn't want to read.

[gevauden.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely have to hand in my GothCard for saying this, but... Anne Rice.
Underdeveloped characters, repetitive plots, "gay chic". It's all pretty annoying.

[grailchaser.livejournal.com]

Anne McCaffrey for making her characters act out of character in later novels (I grew up loving her early stuff).

Kate Forsyth for the brainfart of having her characters speak in brogue. Why should I have to spend three minutes trying to work out what the character just said because its written the same way it sounds?!

Hmmm.... does this have to be about authors of the opposite sex? I don't read many female authors of fantasy or sci fi.

I just have to have a whinge about Robert Jordan - who writes passable Conan, by the way. His Wheel of Time is so unbelivably derivative of the Dune series that Herbert's estate should sue for plagerism. And RJ is the reason that publishing companies should never pay by the word.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I found the early Laurell K. Hamiltons OK if very amateurish (especially the plotting, which is sometimes absolutely laughable), but then I read the one where Anita spends a whole book angsting over the moral quandary of possibly having two boyfriends -- and then doesn't hesitate a second before torturing and then murdering someone. So morally fucked up it makes it hard to any sympathy for the character at all after that point, and makes me wonder about the author. I've heard she now rants obnoxiously at anyone who complains that her books have turned into porn (and straight out denies that they have).

I don't hate J.K. Rowling, but I do think she is pretty much the most overrated author ever. The most ridiculously cliched ideas about magic ever, combined with a revival of english school stories -- that really, should never have been revived. Dreadful clumsy plot structuring, and dodgy characterisation. I did like the way the enemy became gradually more political and so on over the course of the books, though.

I used to read Patricia Cornwell, but I think my dislike for the author as a human being has overcome my mild enthusiasm for her somewhat mediocre books. I thought the whole Jack the Ripper thing was both stupid and obnoxious, and other aspects of her behaviour make her sound like a pretty awful human being -- plus the books were getting steadily worse.

I think Margaret Atwood is a pretty foolish and annoying human being, but it doesn't really seem to effect how I feel about her books at all, so I guess she doesn't count. She is egotistical, and does the whole "I can't write SF, because my work is too good to be in that genre" thing. But the books are pretty good.

[kitsune-iii.livejournal.com]

I'm all for hanging up Heinlein on the basis of his poor female characterisation and poor treatment of women, and Frank Miller if we're mentioning comics.