Anita Shreve.

Picoult, Phillipa Gregory, Dan Brown, Diana Galbadon, Phillip Roth, Ken Follet

Nicholas Sparks, Ann Rivers Siddons, Jan Karon, Stella Gibbons, Kate Mosse, Philip Roth, and Robert James Waller.

Brett Easton Ellis.

I don't think there are any authors I have read enough of to say I hate them - if I really don't like them, I don't read any more.

I agree with Kath. If I can't get along with a particular author (Dan Brown is a good eg) I don't bother to read any more of their work.

Ordinarily I agree-but my bookclub chose three Picoult books to read...I dearly love the women in my book club, but I did say that if they chose another, I would have to opt out. Fortunately, I was not the only one-just the only one to express her opinion forcefully. Have not picked her up since.

I'm with Vee and Kath on this one. I read one Dan Brown book and just stayed away from him like he had the plague.

Oh, and this may mark me as a Philistine but I've tried to stay away from Dickens. (Yes, THAT Dickens.) I just can't seem to stay awake enough to finish one of his books!

> if I really don't like them, I don't read any more.

Oh I agree completely. Hate may be much too strong a word here, but in my case it means authors who I keep away from like the plague, at the same time shaking my head as to why in the world he is so popular.

dyno, I have some much beloved Dickens such as Oliver Twist and Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. But others were truly snoozers for me. So I do understand

Speaking of so called classic authors: Melville, Proust, Henry James were all authors we had to read in college, and I hated every second of it.

dyno, I share your dislike of Dickens. I've only found 2 of his works I could get through: "A Tale of Two Cities" and "A Christmas Carol." Cindy, ditto for me, with Melville!

I could never get along with Flannery O'Conner or that other Southern male writer, the one who wrote stream-of-consciousness style -- forgive me - I have the flu and my brain membranes aren't working today.

lemonhead, I think you mean William Faulkner. He is difficult to decipher, IMHO. I should have added O'Connor to my own list!

Jeffrey Archer - there are 2 of them with the same name, but I mean the famous 'Sir' whose wife was described as 'the fragrant Lady Archer' by a judge, in court, when they were sending Sir J down to gaol for something - (alas, not for being such a mindlessly bad writer - he should have had an extra sentence for that!). I once tried to read 2 pages; also tried to watch, for all of 10 mins, a dramatisation of one of his scribblings.

Philip Roth, whom I find to be a very cold fish.

There are undoubtedly others I can't think of now.

Dido

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who can't deal with Faulkner - I figured that would be literary blasphemy, but I hated Light in August and As I Lay Dying when I had to read them in school. I've read nothing by him since.

I can't stand Nicholas Sparks, either.

I don't know what I think about Faulkner, Melville, Proust and
Henry James. I've read them but felt I wasn't smart enough to appreciate the writing. Does that mean I hate them?
I love Jane Austen but she is a bit less convoluted than the others.

bumblebeez--"I've read them but felt I wasn't smart enough to appreciate the writing."

Cindy-- "Speaking of so called classic authors: Melville, Proust, Henry James were all authors we had to read in college, and I hated every second of it."

These 2 quotes reminded me that there were so many books I had to read in high school and college that I just hated and if you expressed your opinion that you hated them people looked at you like you were dumb or something, you "just didn't get it". Now I refuse to read something I don't like.

Here are 2 more to add to my list DH Lawrence and James Joyce (especially Ulysses OMG! I hated that book) and the professor who taught the class.

As I read through these posts I notice there is an era I don't like- early 20th century.

I strongly dislike Mark Twain. Very boring.
Dickens also put me to sleep.
Stephen King should have stopped writing a long, long time ago.
The Davinci Code by Dan Brown had me snoring by page 50.
Deb, I'm right there with you regarding Ulysses and I also hated my English teacher who made me read it.
How in the world did Nicholas Sparks ever get published?
Philip Roth: UGH!
Lisa
West Newfield, Maine

OK, talking about books we were required to read reminds me that I do have an author I really don't like - Thomas bloody Hardy.
Boring boring boring sad boring sad boring

I remember sitting in classes where the professor was talking about the wonders of some authors and feeling like, "Is there something wrong with me? I think this book was awful." But I didn't have the self confidence to stick up my hand and say, "this is crap"

Kath, I remember when I was about 16-17 someone recommended I improve my mind with some Hardy novels. I foolishly choose Jude the Obscure and by the end of the Christmas holidays was ready to cut my throat.

deborah, are you telling us you studied English literature (or perhaps American literature . . .there is a difference) at University and at no time were you able to tell your lecturers what you felt about the books you had to study?
Don't you have a system of tutorials or seminars or have to write essays on the books/lectures you attended? I always thought it was the duty of students to consider they knew better than their teachers . . . although the crap word might not go down to well in the UK where we use it in connection with something we might find stuck on the sole of our shoe. ;-)

Vee-the American university structure varies greatly from school to school. DD and DNephew went to small schools-the largest class my daughter was ever in was 19 students...Nephew had similar experiences. They were both perfectly comfortable arguing and questioning their professors, because of the close interaction and mutual respect. They both were welcome in Professors' homes and were offered the opportunites to work together with professors on research and publications-and received bylines and pay!
Step-niece is now at a large university-she has one lecture class of 800 students. Not a typo...800. Previously she was in classes of 150 and 350. She will never interact with the professor at all-he is a tiny figure at the foot of the tiered seats and a voice through a microphone. Any small-group lab or discussion group she will have will be run by a graduate student "teaching assistant." Her family is paying a tuition proportionally equal to what we paid at the time DD and Nephew were in school-a lot of $$$. Who got their money's worth?

NORA ROBERTS !!!

or any other writer of that type of insipid drivel.

>at no time were you able to tell your lecturers what you felt about the books you had to study?

I remember being a freshman and being just too intimidated by these very smart and older profs who seemed to know everything, and never dared to ask questions. It took me a while to get that confidence. I'd assume most kids were like me, as there is nothing in our system to encourage thoughtful discussion. But I do wish that we would encourage students from the very beginning to be curious, to think for themselves, to ask questions and to be responded to with respect for their intelligence. But we test our kids starting in kindgergarten; there is no longer anything that can be taught except this test. Thats the way it seems, and its maddening to me.

Back to the thread - I think that is why so many people are turned off by reading. In school they are given 'classics' to read, often at entirely inappropriate ages (come on Silas Marner for 12 year olds?). They are hard to read, difficult to understand, yet they have to regirgitate facts about them in some sort of essay. Or worse, they are in a class that dissects a books so precisely that any magic or inspiration from the story is killed. So they hate the books and hate the authors, and ultimately just hate reading. If this is the only type of reading these kids are exposed to, we shouldn't be surprised that as adults they don't have a book in the house and haven't read since HS

I was a liberal arts major with a minor in English and I was really intimidated by some of my professors. I went to Catholic school until college and was taught not to question authority.

Cindy- agree with you. The classes I did well in were the ones where I had more selection in what I choose to read/review/discuss. Some teachers were more thoughtful and would give a list of books to choose instead of jamming their choice down our throats.

Although, I do have to admit there is one book that I never would have chosen for myself but ended up really enjoying- Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad. I started it on a Saturday morning when I was a freshmen and literally did not close the cover until I finished it in one sitting.

"Silas Marner" -- argh! I hated every word. We had "forced" summer reading in the years I went to a preparatory private school. One of our tasks was to get through Lamb's "Tales of Shakespeare." I suppose this was to make the Bard easier to decipher, but it almost ruined Shakespeare for me, forever. I also recall disliking intensely Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter." I think certain classic works at certain ages ought to be introduced to kids via film versions and then, if so inspired, let them seek out the book.

Did anyone here enjoy the "Iliad" or the "Odyssey"? (I am not raising my hand....)

Woodnymph, I recall liking the Odyssey, though I know we read a simplified version that was appropriate for 9th graders (age 14 or so). I was fascinated by Greek and Roman mythology at the time, though, which may explain why I liked it.

I'm looking at people's lists and I wonder if sometimes we "hate" an author because we have only read one bad book. I love many of the major Dickens novels but have never been able to stand, or finish, Pickwick Papers or Martin Chuzzlewit. I never made it through Ulysses but loved and have re-read The Dubliners. Almost flunked my Am lit course because the final was only on Moby and I just couldn't read it but I loved Billy Budd.

Now, popular authors usually lack that range, so if you hated the 1st one you probably won't like the next. (Although Stephen King wrote Shawshank Redemptionas well as Cujo!) I can read most best seller authors when there's nothing else or I'm just seeing what others see in them, although that doesn't mean I have to finish the book. But don't EVER give me another Tom Clancy. Do men really like reading about weapon technology? I guess so, just as some women read bodice rippers.

While at Junior school (a small two teacher affair) we were read to for perhaps 15-20 mins a day and I remember enjoying the watered-down myths from Tanglewood Tales plus the full length versions of Kidnapped The Jungle Book and similar classic works of fiction. They were the best parts of the school day and those stories are still with me some 50 years later.
My copy of Lamb's Tales From Shakespeare given to me by a well-meaning relation is still unopened since 1954.
As a child who was unable to spell (still cannot) I couldn't understand why the Bard had written about the rear end of sheep (really).

I have a few authors that I don't think I'll ever pick up again:

George Eliot (really had a hard time getting through Silas Marner)

Charles Dickens (I've tried about 3 times now to get through one of his books...I just gave up each time:-)

Nathanial Hawthorn (The Scarlet Letter...could barely finish it.)

Any authors whose books are in the so-called "chick lit" or romance genre..just not my type of book.

On the other hand...several of the "hated" authors on here I've really enjoyed:-). Stephen King is great for a little escapism reading (my favorite is The Stand); and I've also really enjoyed the two Faulkners I've read (As I Lay Dying and Light in August). I'd like to read more by him, but just haven't gotten around to it. It's great there are so many different kinds of books out there to cover everyone's different tastes:-)

Kelly

Often I think we, when younger, were given classics to read for which we had not yet had the life experiences, and thus could not relate. I was too immature when I was forced to read "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", "The Scarlet Letter", and several others of similar adult themes. What a world of difference age makes!

I do think the the time-frame in life in which we read a book can make a tremendous difference in or perception and reception of it. I often will go back and try a book that I hated or gave up on. I have a vivid rememberance of reading Tess of the D'urbervilles in a lonely guesthouse room on a rainy afternoon in Nice while I was waiting for a group of friends who had been traveling thru Spain to meet up with me. I had tried it a few years earlier and hated it but it was the only book in English I could find at the time and I had read through all the ones I had carried with me. For some reason, some combination of circumstances or personal experiences, I loved it on that second attempt. I often try the books I "hated" again at another point in my life. (Started with "The Secret Garden" when I was 10 - hated it and quit after the 3rd chapter, tried again 6 months later and it is still one of my favorite books from childhood.) Books or authors that I have been indifferent to or found silly or just painfully bad (Dan Brown), I simply don't bother with again.

And I have to put in my 2 cents about the way literature is taught in schools. lol. Cindydavid may be right in her assessment that we a raising a nation of non-readers due to our misguided ways of teaching literaure in the schools. I think we can all probably remember someone (teacher, librarian, family member, elderly neighbor) who at some point sparked and fed our love of reading with recommendations and great book discussions - but for every one of those mentors, we can probably think of 10 teachers or professors who beat a book to death and we ended up hating it, the author, or the entire course. As readers, we know we get much of our pleasure from "kitchen-table discussions" (phrase borrowed from SF book critic whose name I'm blanking on now) like those we have in book clubs, with a friend who has read a book we've recommended, or on forums like this - but we often don't afford our students those same opportunities for discussion. And administrators and legislators who have no training in literature or literacy set school policies about what can be taught and how it should be taught. I was going to give an example there too, but I've rambled on for far too long already - lol. Sorry for the length of this post - but this thread just brought so many things to mind. Brenda

It was a well written long post. Agree with everything you said (btw please call me Cindy - the darn site wouldn't let me use just my name when I first registered...)

I like many but not all of the authors some hated, among them Dickens and Hawthorne. Some others I have never even tried. Perhaps it matters when and how we first encounter an author.

Not only have I read The Iliad and The Odyssey, but my father read chapters of a prose translation of The Odyssey as bedtime stories to me when I was around nine or ten years old. It sparked a love of mythology that has lasted to this day.

Rosefolly

Rosefolly, I learned to love mythology from reading from a huge Children's Literature textbook of my mother's when I was ten or eleven. It had a whole section of myths and legends, including Norse, and I was fascinated by them.

I don't think I've read enough by any one author (at least one with prodigious output) to say I hate an author... but there have been a few that I just haven't been able to read. Thomas Hardy is one. I've never been able to finish a book by him. I get so frustrated with his characters, I start wanting to scream at them, and then I put the book down and never return. There are also authors I avoid because I've been able to determine they aren't my cup of tea (can't honestly say I hate them). I'd include Paulo Coelho and Jodi Picoult in that category.

I loved Hawthorne, but maybe that's because I started reading his short stories before I ever tried any of his novels. I don't know why teachers start students with The Scarlet Letter. I think House of Seven Gables is a better introductory novel.

My intro to the epics and mythology (and poetry and art, for that matter) were through the Childcraft set that came with my parent's encyclopedia set. I started there, and went to the library to find more books on those subjects. But it was the Childcraft set that sparked my interest.

My father is a retired English professor who taught American and English literature along with poetry, grammar, and public speaking at the university level. Because of that, I tend to approach authors of classic literature with a sense of reverence and awe instead of dread and hatred. There are certainly some authors that I don't care for very much, but I still maintain that they made valuable contributions to the world of literature and, in that sense, I could never "hate" them. My friends and I loved The Scarlet Letter when we were required to read it in high school. In fact, I have no clue how it happened, but several of my friends nicknamed me Pearl. *grin* We even liked Shakespeare, Steinbeck, and countless others.

I do think it's a shame that too often the effort to educate children in the art of literature and poetry ends up sucking the joy and wonder out of it. Overanalyzing and dissecting it and laying out the dry, bare, dusty bones for students' inspection only serves to remove the magic and mystery and takes the art right out of art. A good teacher can balance the technical with the creative, a bit like Robin Williams' character in The Dead Poet's Society. And, as has been pointed out, too often the material is not age appropriate, which only compounds the problem. Speaking from firsthand knowledge (my daughter is 15), many students just flat out don't care about reading and learning things that don't apply to their lives at this very moment. If I had a dime for every time I've heard her say, "Why do I have to know this? It's not like I'm going to use it in real life," I could buy even more books for my TBR stacks.

I agree that the English classes of today's high school's do suck the joy out of reading....I am a reader in spite of those classes - I even read classics (though I much prefer Brit lit to American Lit). I took AP English (if you get a certain score, you get college credits) simply so I did not have to take English in college.

I find it interesting to see authors that others hate...I happen to enjoy Dickens quite a bit, but I cannot tolerate Mark Twain. This probably has something to do with being forced to read Huckleberry Finn, not once, but three times (by my mother, in 8th grade, and in 10th grade). I've tried other stuff by him, as my father is a fan, and just couldn't get into anything.

For myself, if I had been given more options I think I would have been more appreciative. In my high school senior year my teacher would give us a choice of 5 to read. I really liked that and enjoyed and did better in that class than other classes.

On the other hand, here I am almost 50 and an avid reader so I guess I wasn't scarred too much!

And for our family it is definitely true, if the parents are readers so are the kids.

For the most part - but I have three friends with kids who did everything right, and none of those kids like to read. Only one has a regular reader, and whats funny is that mom really hasn't had time to read for years as she owns her own business. But daughter has been reading since she was 5. Go figure.

We read Tom Sawyer, which was much more interesting to me as a Jr Hi kid than Huck Finn was. Fortunately our teacher also had us read Twains short stories, which I think are much more accessible, and I ended up loving him. But I can see where many wouldn't because of that forced factor, or it being inappropriate to the age.

Sue Monk Kidd, Nicholas Sparks, Jody Piccoult, and many others who "specialize" in the genre often called "chick lit" even though it has nothing to do with literature in any sense of the word. Any author whose use of language and conversation seems to talk down to me immediately gets tossed. They seem to assume I cannot make the connections myself. I shudder to think that some of these far-less-than-talented people should someday be read as a window into our age. Who do we have that can equal some of the literary greats?

I went to a college that had small classes - fewer than 50 kids, sometimes barely 15. And we got just as much time with the professor as the huge classes. Why? The professors didn't seem to want anything to do with us. They talked at us for the allotted time, packed their cases and were off to the depths of their cavernous offices not to be seen until the next lecture. I do not think the problem is class size, but rather the attitude of the professors.

cece, I'd like to read that review.. was it in your newspaper?

PAM

It doesn't always follow-I read like I breathe (obviously, or I wouldn't be here) DH reads all the time, newspapers and magazines more than books-but a lot of them...DD is in grad school for English, so she obviously reads-and DS, a freshman in college, has read few books in his life that he didn't "have to" for school. He reads sports magazines, and the newspaper-but when he has leisure time, reading never is his choice. We limited television, read to him as a baby and child, set the example...it just didn't happen. So, in one of the great ironies of life, who is the only one of us who CAN read in a moving vehicle? you guessed it.

In retrospect, I learned to appreciate my high school English teacher. She was near retirement when I had her, so she often taught us the old school methods, but she was very good. She also gave us a list of books to choose from for our reports and special projects. I remember at the time not being interested in trying Faulkner, but a girl in my class -- who was not a big reader -- gave her report on As I Lay Dying. Her enthusiasm for the novel was so infectious, she convinced me to try Faulkner.

I also remember taking a Post WWII Fiction course in college. Almost every novel selected by my professor centered around mid-life male angst. The professor was also of the mind that if you weren't an English Literature major, you probably weren't (or never would be) a serious reader of literature. I walked away from that class with a bitter taste in my mouth.

My love of reading probably came from my parents and my oldest brother who read out loud to me from my infancy. However, my other brother doesn't read books for entertainment though he received the same encouragement. Same with my sons: one reads as avidly as I do in many genres, but the other only enjoys instruction manuals, such as How to Maintain Your Airplane and A to Z Home Wiring, which he reads very, very well.

I attribute my profound distaste of dystopian literature to high school reading -- my teachers seem to have all been bitten by the same dystopian bug. In three years I was assigned Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Brave New World Revisited, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Land Under England, and a couple I've mercifully forgotten. If I had read them in a more spread-out period and the teachers hadn't been such sheep, I might have enjoyed and got more out of them, but, as it was, I was soured forever.
if you weren't an English Literature major, you probably weren't (or never would be) a serious reader of literature.Georgia, I ran across that sort of pickle-brained professor frequently.

I may get stoned for this but James Joyce and Sue Miller.

Astrokath, I had to laugh out loud at your comment on the author you didn't like:

Boring boring boring sad boring sad boring

Priceless!

My niece used to teach eighth grade English and, on my recommendation, had a class read Twain's Bluebird story. I thought it was the funniest thing I ever read--much better than the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County that was in my high school lit book--but she said her kids didn't find it funny at all. She did, so maybe it is more an adult story.

I do like most Twain and all Faulker but not so much Hemingway.

frieda, thats funny. One of my fav classes in HS English was Utopian lit. It covered all of those but also covered The Green Child, Walden, and Utopia. Fascinating stuff, esp to some of us sci fi/fantasy fans who were eager to read them. But I have had experiences with other genres that certain teachers favored and they made me less than a fan.

Pam asked - "Who do we have that can equal some of the literary greats?"

Toni Morrison comes to mind. Although I've only read Song of Solomon and Sula, they were superb.

I agree with several above, Jodi Picoult, Phillipa Gregory, Nicholas Sparks... and I'll add Wally Lamb. Pretty much all the Oprah recommendations are too "emotional trauma of the month" to me.

Others I'll never pick up again are Umberto Eco and Ayn Rand.

Oh, really? I like Umberto Eco but I think Ayn Rand is too, hm, self-righteous? Is that the word I'm looking for?