{"id":713,"date":"2006-10-15T11:54:19","date_gmt":"2006-10-15T11:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/15\/cranky-book-meme-voted-off-the\/"},"modified":"2006-10-15T11:54:19","modified_gmt":"2006-10-15T11:54:19","slug":"cranky-book-meme-voted-off-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/15\/cranky-book-meme-voted-off-the\/","title":{"rendered":"Cranky Book “Meme”: Voted Off the Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim Henley proposes a “meme” about literature<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Adrienne Aldredge<\/a> has a twist on Bookish Questions I’m herewith turning into a meme:<\/p>\n

\n

What authors have you given up on for good? And why?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m going to stick to authors who continue to produce work, and whom I used to follow eagerly, not authors I felt obligated to try and didn’t like once I did.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jim offers Dan Simmons and Alan Furst as his choices (read his post to see why). Simmons would be an excellent choice, but, um, I bought both Ilium<\/cite> and Olympos<\/cite> in hardcover. (In my defense, I read Ilium<\/cite> from the library first, and it seemed like a return to form…)<\/p>\n

Some thoughts below he fold.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s a little hard to come up with authors that I made a conscious decision to drop, as opposed to authors whose books I just stopped buying. For example, I have a bunch of old Greg Bear books, but I don’t own anything more recent than Darwin’s Radio<\/cite>, and I haven’t read anything more recent than Vitals<\/cite><\/a>. It’s not really that I’ve soured on his writing, though, so much as that he’s choosing to write books that don’t really appeal to me. He’s mostly doing technothrillers these days, and while they’re perfectly competent technothrillers, I’m just not interested in that genre. If he publishes something more in the vein of Moving Mars<\/cite>, or Songs of Earth and Power<\/cite>, I’ll probably pick it up and read it, though, so I wouldn’t say he’s completely off the island.<\/p>\n

There are some authors I’ve consciously decided to take a hiatus from; Charlie Stross is probably the best example. After Accelerando<\/cite> and The Hidden Family<\/cite>, I decided that I’m not reading any of his stuff for a while. If he picks up a theme I like more, I’ll probably read that book, but Glasshouse<\/cite> looks excruciating, and I’ll wait for the paperback of The Clan Corporate<\/cite>, if I read it at all.<\/p>\n

Probably the best example of an author I consciously decided not to read any more would be Robert Heinlein. Of course, he’s dead, so that’s a little bit of a cheat (the trunk novels that have been published recently probably provide a bit of a loophole, but not much). I haven’t read everything by him, though, and I’ve definitely decided that I’m not reading any more. In this specific case, I can even pinpoint the moment when I stopped, thanks to this old booklog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you insist on a still-living author, a survey of the shelves in my office suggests James Morrow. I enjoyed Towing Jehovah<\/cite>, Blameless in Abbadon<\/cite>, Bible Stories for Adults<\/cite>, and Only Begotten Daughter<\/cite> quite a bit, but The Eternal Footman<\/cite> was a hard slog that I never finished, and his recent short fiction (that I’ve read) has been painfully shrill. The Last Witchfinder<\/cite> got good reviews, but it sounds like another crashingly unsubtle anti-religion book, with the bonus factor of a narrative conceit that’s too cute for its own good. I’m giving it a miss, and I’m really not likely to buy anything else of his.<\/p>\n

I feel like I’m probably missing somebody obvious, but that’s all I’m coming up with at the moment. Are there authors that you’ve decided not to read any more?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Henley proposes a “meme” about literature: Adrienne Aldredge has a twist on Bookish Questions I’m herewith turning into a meme: What authors have you given up on for good? And why? I’m going to stick to authors who continue to produce work, and whom I used to follow eagerly, not authors I felt obligated… Continue reading Cranky Book “Meme”: Voted Off the Island<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}