This week from Booking Through Thursday:
Which is worse?
Finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author, or
Reading a completely disappointing book by an author that you love?
This question is about exceptions--sometimes a good author writes a bad book and sometimes a bad author writes a good book. Which is worse? I'd have to pick finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author. Fortunately, for many author's, the good books cast very large shadows. Fans are a very forgiving bunch.
I have read books I loved, only to find the rest of the author's work lacking. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice comes to mind. I read it when it was fairly new in paperback and loved it. The idea of it was original, the writing kept me glued to the page, and I her other books and followed the vampire sequels for years only to be disappointed again and again. Ron Hansen wrote a marvelous book called Mariette in Ecstasy that is one of my all time favorites, but I've never been able to make it through any of his other work.
Many author's I love have written disappointing books: Charles Dickens has his Martin Chuzzlewit, Jane Austen has her Mansfield Park and Charlotte Bronte her Villette. Margaret Atwood has written some of my favorite books, but she also wrote Orynx and Crake which you'd have to be a die hard fan to praise. I love Midnight's Children by Salmon Rushdie as well as The Moor's Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet but could not find my way into The Satanic Verses at all and I really did try.
But in the end, I'd count every author I've mentioned here as a terrific writer whether they wrote one really good book or twenty. And you can rest assured that when I see their newest book on the shelf I will pick it up and at least read over the blurbs on the cover. I make no promises after that though.
10 comments:
Most of the authors I like are dead, so I usually don't have this problem. But Rowking comes to mind.
book reviews
I can't quite take this question seriously - I read books, not authors. By which I mean, and I think this is what you are saying, too, that writing one great novel, or story, or poem, or, heck, sentence, is an amazing thing to do even once.
I like your answer, in part because it has me sputtering with outrage. Mansfield Park is Austen's best book! Martin Chuzzlewit is a treat, and Dickens' first coherent, thought-through novel. Sputter, sputter.
All part of why book-blogging is so enjoyable.
You know, I hate it when I have emotionally invested in an author, then they go to seed. Breaks my heart. But you are right, its like having kids. You love them, and forgive them of their transgressions (usually!). I always hope they will regain their mojo. You point about Anne Rice's vampires is well taken. That first book had such an essence, you could almost smell it. The second book was decent. Then she went off on all kinds of tangents. Personally, however, I fell back in love with Memnoch the Devil. Blew. Me. Away. Then she lost it again. I eventually dumped her. I also dumped Patricia Cornwell. I tried to make it work, but eventually gave up.
I agree that I tend to be more forgiving with fave authors. I figure they can't be great all the time.
Bluestocking, With dead authors it's usually only the reprints of long out-of-print books that you have to worry about.
Am. Reader, You're comment had me laughing. One reason why I enjoy book blogs, yours in particular, is that it's one of the only places you can find people who've read enough Austen to argue about which one is best. I'll give Mansfield Park another go someday. I'm not so sure about Martin Chuzzlewit.
Sandy, I think this is a much bigger problem with mystery books. Many of them keep going much too long. I've given up on several myself.
Melissa, I read someone once who said that Tennessee Williams later plays, which are not up to the standards of his early ones, should be viewed as chamber music. No composer wrote symphonies exclusively. They all wrote many pieces of chamber music in between their great works.
Wish I'd thought of that for the original post.
for the authors i really like I'll forgive a bad book or even two, but when you start finding that everything you try is bleh, you stop. That's what happened with Anne Rice for me.
What matters to me is whether I'll venture into another book of a new author. It's about building the credit. I do believe in second chances. :)
I'm extra cautious about reading another if the author is not good in my book. At least I wouldn't buy it but borrow it.
Once I have liked a book from an author, the expectation mounts. So it's difficult to not be disappointed.
Fans are a very forgiving bunch sums it up perfectly!
I loved what you had to say and find that I'm always willing to give fave writers a second chance but it I've read a "bad" book by a new-to-me author I usually don't go back.
The Anne Rice is a good example. I've heard the same about Grisham. They both had something to say, wrote a decent first book about it and then just kept typing. But I'm long past the point where I expect every book by an author to be great. Even Shakespeare has lesser works (Love's Labour Lost, Two Gentleman on Verona). It would probably be impossible to name an author with many works that were considered to be all great. There would have to be some failed experiments in there somewhere or they'd become repetitious and formulaic, right?
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