While She Knits - Black-Balling Edition

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

I think this is a great idea, but I believe it was suggested by MWT--let's talk what we WON'T read.

Is there a genre you don't get?
A style you can't get into?

Conversely--is there some exception to your rule?

This may grow flammable. Some general precautions for your own safety:

~ Keep your language moderate. I'm sure you will. Fans here have certain strains of sympathetic taste, but we're also intelligent and widely interested--someone may love what you hate.
~ If you're shocked by someone's distaste for something, don't give in to temptation. If you can respond with witty banter, you're good to go, but if it rankles in your soul, commenting may not be the best idea.
~ Have fun looking at the inside of other peoples' brains!


It's good to be back and leading you all astray again! Reprobates...

Comments

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

The romance genre in general. I don't mind romance, but I don't like smut, and I especially don't like sacrificing characterization, realistic plotlines or historical accuracy for smut. I don't mean that the entire romance genre is like this, because obviously I couldn't know, but only what I've run across. Except for Georgette Heyer, who is awesome. ^_^

Also horror. My imagination is overactive enough, even as a (theoretically) adult (ok, no, I can't pull that one off) that I would scare myself silly.

romances

[spiderweb888.livejournal.com]

Please don't reject romance because of the smut! There are many fabulous non-smut romances!!!

Most of the earlier regencies have no smut. That's "regency", not a historical set in the regency period . I don't know if they're still publishing those non-smut regencies any more 'cause there wasn't enough of a a market for them. Some good/fun authors are Barbara Metzger, Carla Kelly, May Balogh, Loretta Chase. If you check these authors out, be sure to get the earlier REGENCIES written by these authors, not the historicals (fatter books), which do have sex scenes ("smut").

There are also inspirational romances with no sex. Being an agnostic, I haven't read any (can't stand having religion shoved down my throat), but I hear some are good.

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

Eva Ibbotson writes some lovely non-smutty romances. I'm sure I've recommended them before but can't remember if you were one of the people who didn't like them or not :)

[spiderweb888.livejournal.com]

I won't read horror 'cause I scare easily. When I started reading the second Laurell Hamilton Anita Blake book, my husband was out of town and I *knew* the creaks I heard were zombies trying to get into the house. No more LKH for me.

No books with torture, unless the descriptions are dialed 'waaaay down. Bujold had a torture scene in one book but it was minimal. Patty Briggs also has torture in some of her books, but again, it's mostly off-stage.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I'm fed up with werewolf & vampire books and can hardly wait for authors to stop writing urban fantasy and start writing something original.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

I don't read horror because I gross out easily, and I really don't understand why it appeals to anybody. On the other hand, there are some good ghost (not horror) stories; like Patricia Clapp's JANE-EMILY, and Betty Ren Wright's THE DOLLHOUSE MURDERS and CHRISTINA'S GHOST.

I've never bothered to read any werewolf and vampire books (or most Young Adult stuff because it is far too old for me), but I'm with you that there are too many of them out there, just from reading the reviews of what's available. This brings me to another thing that I don't like, which is the copycat trends. HARRY POTTER is big? Oh, then let us publish practically nothing but magical/fantasy books about someone learning to use his powers! I'm guessing that's what happened with the vampire-type books - one successful TV show or a couple of them, and voila! Glut the market with similar books.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I hate sad books, or really grim ones, which limits me in my reading quite a bit.

Historical fiction is not my thing, either, so when a book like A True and Faithful Narrative or Penny From Heaven comes along I can recommend it wholeheartedly because normally I wouldn't pick it up.

[willow-41z.livejournal.com]

I hate sad books, or really grim ones, which limits me in my reading quite a bit.

Me too, which is actually why I am avoiding finishing the Lymond books. Bad things or emotionally-wrenching things in real life doesn't bother me to the point where I shy away from them and hide my head and pretend it doesn't exist, but I read to get away from all that, so I don't need it in my books, too.

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

In no particular order ~

* New York Times bestsellers (in general; tried several but rarely finished them)
* horror, and books about horrible things people do to others (ditto Willow's comment)
* graphic sex scenes and gratuitous and/or excessive swearing
* self help books
* most science fiction (as opposed to fantasy), but especially futuristic sci-fi

[(Anonymous)]

I hate anything by Christopher Paolini. I want the time I spent reading Eragon BACK. I do not like (but will occasionally read) classical works of literature of the "life sucks and then you die" persuasion. I've don't think I've ever read a horror novel (unless werewolves and vampires count. And if they're Stephenie Meyer's vampires, they DON'T count). Oh yes, and sometimes after reading a wonderful book, I HATE MYSELF because I will never ever be able to get it that RIGHT.
~Feir Dearig
(who apologizes in advance if the above offends anyone)

[cleo]

I won't read the Harry Potter books. I've read enough to know that I don't like JKR's style, and it's most likely because she is heavily influenced by Jane Austin, whom I utterly despise.

If I don't like the style, I just can't stay with it.

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

That makes sense, because I love Harry Potter, and I love Jane Austen. XD

genres & styles I can't stand

[lilian-cho.livejournal.com]

I believe the only genres I haven't tried out are erotica and horror.

Considering many people who've read erotica said slash fanfiction is better written, I don't think I'm missing anything =P

Horror...I just can't stand it, because my imagination is already quite horrifying without outside influence. I have read many shoujo horror, but that's completely different since it's usually either about detectives, or a gothic romance ;-)


Styles I can't stand:
- Charles Dickens writes like he was paid by word count. Oh wait, he was...
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. CAPSLOCK!Harry. DO NOT WANT.
- Editors should have cut hundreds of boring, superflous pages from OotP and DH.
- Ursula K. Leguin =( I can't empathize with any of the characters _at all_.
- I can't finish Over Sea, Under Stone. A few friends assured me that The Dark is Rising is better written. I'll try that one next.
- James Joyce. Short stories, sure. I don't think I can stand that style all through one huge novel though ~_~
- The Lymond books. Since Cassie Clare heavily borrows from Dunette's characterization, it's no wonder I can't stand either. Lymond is too...plastic a character.

Hmm, so for me it's more writer-specific. Mostly, I don't like verbose narration and characters I just can't bring myself to care about.
"Oh, Sirius died? Meh."
"Rocks fall, one of the good guys died. Mmm-kay, whatever."
"So this Wizard unleashed this terrible and powerful spell that yadda yadda yadda. Yeah okay, the book's still boring."

Re: genres & styles I can't stand

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

I believe there's a heart under that hard gloss... (Lymond)
Then again, I'm a sucker for that type--in literature.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

*popping up again after months of silent lurking*

I probably deserve to be flamed for this, but while I mostly read fantasy, I don't read anything that puts a woman in the central hero role. I want to fall in love with a wonderful, courageous, pretty, awesome male hero who saves the world with his mighty magic / his awesome sword / his amazing brain / his sheer loveliness / his being the true heir of... whatever. When a woman is in this role, I just can't feel that fangirly love in the same way.

I also had a long-standing objection to first person narrative, but clearly this didn't stop me loving The Thief. Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy is another of my all-time favourite series, too, and that's first person.

I'm easily put off by writing style, and I also need to have a good focus on characters, and not just on plot. I prefer novels that focus on a small cast of characters and delve deeply into their minds, so am put off by "cast of thousands" epics. However, George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, with a cast of thousands and well over a dozen viewpoint characters, is one of my favourite series ever. All rules are made to be broken, it seems.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

No flaming from me. I quite understand!

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

Something I can't bring myself to read: Problem Novels for Teens. Even reading the reviews in The Horn Book Guide makes me bored. Not that I mind a book in which a character has a problem, but these are the ones that seem to exist specifically to discuss a problem, and to depress the readers. "My mom's in jail for murder, my dad's drunk all the time, my brother's into drugs, my twin sister was killed in a car wreck..." etc. Yick.

And then of course there are the smart-alecky-brat books, where we're supposed to find the child cute. Thank you, but I don't need any more than I get at school in real life; and I especially don't need something that encourages the kids to be that way. Beverly Cleary's early Ramona books were different, because in the earliest ones when she was bratty you saw how it annoyed Beezus or someone else, and didn't get the idea that this was an admirable way to behave. Starting with RAMONA THE PEST, you saw things from Ramona's point of view and realized that her behavior made sense, that there was a reason behind it. I couldn't make it all the way through a Junie B. Jones book when I tried a few years ago, because of the ghastly grammar and because of the whole air of "this is cute." I may be doing the series an injustice, but I can't stand them.

Oh, and then there are the historical fiction books that feature modern characters in historic dress, basically, behaving in a way nobody in that time period would have; or that simply don't sound right for the period. Or the ones that dwell on the ghastly sanitary conditions, etc., which shouldn't be dwelt on because to a person of the period it's a normal, everyday thing. It's one thing to mention, "I went to the privy," just as in a modern book one might mention going to the bathroom, but one wouldn't in a modern book start in on, "I turned the silver handle, the one marked with a blue dot, and cool water gushed out of the curved spout above it, what we called a 'faucet,' splashing into the porcelain basin below. I knew that if, instead, I had turned the handle marked with a red dot, it would have been hot water that came out. The water poured through a grated hole in the bottom of the basin - we called it a sink - and out through a pipe that had a bend in it ...." etc. So why do we have to read in detail about that in the historical stuff? Avi's CRISPIN: CROSS OF GOLD was a Newbery Honor Book (I think), but it simply didn't ring true to me. Neither did CATHERINE CALLED BIRDIE. They didn't mesh with my knowledge of the Middle Ages. Cornelie Meigs' books, and Marguerite de Angeli's, and Eloise Jarvis McGraw's, for example, are much better. And Georgette Heyer's, to bring in adult books.

I can probably think of more, but won't for now!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

and then there are the historical fiction books that feature modern characters in historic dress, basically, behaving in a way nobody in that time period would have

Oh, gosh, yes. One of my pet hates is historical novels that impose the moral values of today on the past - e.g. the heroine is the feisty medieval feminist who goes on about equal rights for women; the villain is anybody noble, or a father who's in favour of dynastic marriage or whatever; the hero is the Anglo-Saxon serf who preaches democracy. If a story is set in a time when the prevailing moral standards were different from how they are now (and even now, of course, ideas of moral rightness vary a lot from place to place), then the story should reflect those values, in my opinion. Make us care for people even though they hold values that current thinking (which may well change in the future anyway) holds are wrong.

Sorry. Pet theme of mine.

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

I hate graphic violence in books, mostly because it's really hard to read in a squinty way trying to tell when the scene is over without absorbing the horrible details.

I'll read scary books if they've been recommended to me and I know I won't be alone in the house, but won't actively seek them out.

I rejected lots of books at a second hand sale recently as they seemed to be focussed on the heart-rending anguish of someone as their family member dies of a long and painful disease etc. Again, if someone I trust says it's worth reading, I'll read a tragic book but I wouldn't normally go out of my way to torment myself.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

I've gotten pretty good at absorbing just enough of superviolent scenes to figure out when they end without having a panic attack! Catch-22 gave me an hour-long fit of hysteria and I can't physically touch a copy of Lord of the Flies, but with HONING! I have reached a point where I can keep myself braced all the way through Snow Crash...which is so fantastically worth it.

You do lead me to add, however, that I cannot read anything about Hiroshima. Barefoot Gen, why did I pick you up....? *shudders*

[hemisofia.livejournal.com]

I can't seem to read anything classified under the plain "Fiction" or "Literature" these days. Mainly because it's where books that don't fit into the horror/fantasy/sci-fi/crime/romance etc genre got tossed into and are then usually about everything or nothing and tend to be very depressing.

I really dislike chick lit too .. they're usually really shallow and annoying and unfair to the young single successful women the books are targeting.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

I hate:

*Modernists!
*Christopher Paolini!
*Cassandra Claire!
*Stephen King & the Thriller/Horrors (which should be the name of a band)
*I read about one contemporary adult novel every...two years.
*True Crime
*Anything about angels.
*Toni Morrison

[lilian-cho.livejournal.com]

Hahahah Amen for Paolini, Clare and King.

Why angels?

[chazzbanner.livejournal.com]

True Crime. I get creeped out by it even if it happened over a hundred years ago. I tried to read the "Pear Tree" something murder that P.D. James wrote with someone else (a bludgening in early 19th or late 18th century) and The Devil in the White City (America's first mass murderer, early 1890s) and put both down.

[faerie-music.livejournal.com]

I once, for reasons completely unclear to me now, picked up a True Crime book at the library. I read about half of it, and really quite enjoyed it while I was reading it, but couldn't sleep for a week, and eventually decided it wasn't worth it.

[twtd]

I'll second everyone who says they don't like Paolini. He writes likes he's 16 (yes, I know he was, and this is why so few 16 year olds get published) and any good editor should have looked at Eragon and made him cut half of it. I don't generally read horror, but The Haunting of Hill House is a fantastic exception. I don't like being scared so it kinda kills the genre.

It's really hard for me to come up with any hard and fast rules. If something catches my eye and sounds halfway decent, I'll probably read it. I don't like the style of most things written in the 18th or 19th century, but there are exceptions. I don't want to read anything about the Civil War or the Holocaust, particularly fiction. I've read Across Five Aprils, Number the Stars, and Night, plus innumerable academic texts, and I'm content not revisiting any of it.

Discounting Toni Morrison (who I have not yet read, but will eventually), if Oprah is making it into a movie of the week, I don't have much interest in reading it.

I won't start a fantasy series that's over three books long. I don't want to make that kind of investment, either financially or temporally.

I can't get past the first 100 pages of The Subtle Knife

Other than that, I'll read (or at least start) almost anything that's put in front of me. The only good advice that I've ever gotten from a motivational speaker was to read a good paper every day, even the parts you aren't interested in. You never know who you're going to meet or what they're going to want to talk about.

Paolini, Pullman

[lilian-cho.livejournal.com]

Paolini made dragons boring. How can anyone make dragons boring?!111

I also can't read a lot of Philip Pullman--I'm not sure why, I don't think it's badly written or anything. And it's not verbose or flowery. Maybe because it's rather lofty?

[faerie-music.livejournal.com]

I don't like books in which the main character is completely unlikeable, or, worse, in which all of the characters are unlikeable. The former category can be redeemed by the supporting characters, but there's no hope for the latter. My two main examples are Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and Wicked. I get a certain amount of grief for this from my family (particularly that I never made it through Wicked; since Fiyero was the *only* likeable character, I stopped soon after he died), but since I read almost exclusively for pleasure, I really don't see the point of pushing through a book I am not enjoying.

I also dislike books whose worldview is utterly bleak. Lord of the Flies, and 1984, which I had to read for school, are my prime examples for this category, though it occurs to me that Wicked sort of fits here, too. No wonder I never finished it. As I am a generally cheerful, optimistic person who believes the best of people, these books are simply alien to me.

dystopia

[lilian-cho.livejournal.com]

since I read almost exclusively for pleasure, I really don't see the point of pushing through a book I am not enjoying.

Amen.

I can't finish 1984...I did enjoy Lord of the Flies, but I suspect that was because I was on a dystopia mood when I read it.
So you don't like Brave New World either?

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

Most people have already mentioned what I don't read, but I'll just say it again I guess...
I avoid the romance genre--most fantasy adventure books have romance, and I like the plots of those books better.
No horror for me.
Paolini... ugh.
Same with Twilight... oh my goodness I really love to hate that book. Yech.
Da Vinci Code? Why?
I have a sort of wariness toward really really popular books (like the last three mentioned). I'll read them if I HAVE to, and maybe I'll even find a good one, but in general my experience has been that I really don't prefer them.
I also second the depressing/bleak world view books. I'm reading to have fun, not to be depressed.


What DO I read for? I think first for character, writing a close second. Plot comes third. I love a good plot, but if it isn't held up with good characters and held together with good writing, I just don't have the patience for it.

Twilight, Da Vinci Code

[lilian-cho.livejournal.com]

I was at first excited about Twilight...until I realized that "Wait, these two friends who like it are also the ones who love Eragon to bits. Never mind."

I will watch the movie though, just because it's Pattinson =P

Considering how many Christians boycotted Da Vinci Code, I was expecting something more. It's just meh. So okay, Jesus + Mary, descendants of Christ yadda yadda yadda. There have been other Catholic-y B-movies with that plot before...

Life of Pi's good, and it was quite popular =D (Or maybe my definition of popular is rather skewed).
Have you read Diana Wynne Jones?

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

All right, let's see if I can be coherent, because I'm operating on no sleep...

-Sci fi. I don't have anything against it, it's just not my cup of tea. I'm not interested in the future, or technology, and I'm a huge history nut.

-Chick lit. I'm sure some of it is okay, and again, I'm not totally against the genre, if people want to read it and people want to write it, whatever, but I don't care about dating/shoes/New York, so... not for me.

-Most stuff marked as 'literary fiction'. It's mostly pretentious and dreary. Congratulations on being able to make your words sound nice, but if you can't write a story and make me care about the characters, I'm out.

On that note, I don't like books with no sense of humour. I find the Brontes are bad for this. Apparently their books are Very Serious Business. I enjoyed Wuthering Heights, just because it was so ridiculous, and it's not that I didn't think Jane Eyre was good, because I did, but I couldn't count it as one of my favourite books, because it's just so serious. Life isn't like that. Well, maybe it is if you're a Bronte. :-\

Then again, I'm a huge fan of Jane Austen, so that might tell you something about the kind of writing I enjoy. Jane Austen is kind of my hero.

Er... urban fantasy. I love contemporary fantasy, I write contemporary fantasy, but urban fantasy, not so much. I'm not a big city person, and I don't like things that are really dark and gritty. Just not my style. It's also kind of annoying how so many of these books seem to follow a basic formula, and all include vampires, werewolves, or faeries... can't people think of something new? The trend is going to die soon, and then where's your career going to be, if your books aren't different in any way?

Oh yeah, and gratuitous sex and violence. And gross-out humour.

Anyway, there are exceptions to all these rules. I would never not read a book just because it was in a genre I didn't normally like. And now I'm going, because I've rambled on for far too long.

[lilian-cho.livejournal.com]

seconding sci-fi.

I like time travel stories, but not when the protagonist travel to the future =/

druids

[(Anonymous)]

It's unfair and I know it's unfair, but I will usually avoid any fantasy or even historical fiction based on British Isles folklore. No druids, I mean. No Mabinogian. No Tolkeinesque fairies. I loved Prydain and Susan Cooper's books and then, I think, I was done. I forced myself to read a few others that have been worth the effort-- Pat O'Shea's Hounds of the Morrigan, and Alan Garner's books, but I really do have to force myself over the initial resistance. Of course, before there were lame rip-offs of Harry Potter, there were endless lame rip-offs of the Mabinogian, and that's part of the problem, but not all of it. I'll dodge even the most highly recommended book if it's got druids in it.

mwt

Re: druids

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

There goes my theory that the next book was going to be entitled 'Eugenides and the Druids'!

[keestone.livejournal.com]

Chiming in with the Romance and Chick Lit genres here. I'm fine with romance as a part of a plot, but if the romance is the whole point of the story, I feel cheated. From the amount of people recommending Heyer, I should probably try her, but I haven't gotten around to it.

I don't like Horror for the sake of Horror, but I won't turn down a book that has elements of Horror in it.

Anne Rice: I decided thirty pages into Interview With A Vampire that she was typing one-handed and I really didn't want to see where the other hand was.

Stephen King: People whose opinions I respect absolutely love his storytelling, but they gave me the wrong books to prove it to me and his grammar drives me nuts.

French Naturalism.

There's a whole genre of Irish fiction that I've nicknamed "grey" fiction. Basically, it's a laundry list of, "see how hard we had it" (with a side helping of "we're special because we suffered"). It tends to feature the Troubles, institutional abuse, authoritarian fathers, poverty, sexual repression, and lots and lots of rain. It's a movie genre too. (I coined the term after sitting through a screening of Song for a Raggy Boy; the color palette was entirely grey, and it portrayed both a pedophile priest and a sadistically abusive priest who brutally beat a boy to death on camera. Whoo hoo. Also, it was an Inspirational Teacher Movie, and I generally hate those movies to begin with.)

dreary

[(Anonymous)]

somebody up thread used the word "dreary" and i think that perfectly characterizes what i don't want to read. no dreary books.

mwt

[dawnbluewings.livejournal.com]

Hrm....

Most vampire/werewolf books annoy me. But not because of the vampires/werewolves, and more because of other people's reactions to them. I really liked Blood and Chocolate because when the human found out that his girlfriend was a werewolf, he freaked out and ran off. That's what would happen, generally, not "Oh my god E I love you so much make me like you!" (I'm looking at YOU Stephanie Mayer...)

Anne Rice. I believe someone said it before me, but I DO NOT WANT TO SEE WHERE YOUR OTHER HAND WAS WHILE TYPING.

Anything with gratuitous sex/violence. Just no. I'm sorry, but no.

ANYTHING in which there is detail of a rape. Sorry, but it's just not cool to detail something like that.

Sci-Fi. My only exception to this rule is the Pern books, and then really only the ones set before the rediscovery of Landing. After that they get lame and Sci-Fi-y.

Most 'Romance'. My one romance author is Diana Gabaldon, but... yeah. Her stuff is more "Historical fantasy that just happens to feature a little sex", not "ZOMG LET'S GET NAKED AND PLAY CUP-AND-DAGGER BECAUSE I'VE JUST MET YOU!"

Anything that is a 'Novelization', or worse, 'Junior Novelization'. Yes, I'm talking about the endless Star Wars/Star Trek/Buffy/Angel/Etc. things. JUST MAKE THEM DIE.

Basically anything that a certain friend recommends. Because this is the girl that loves "Savage Desire"....

[keestone.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about all the dislike of Science Fiction on the thread. I've always seen SF/F as more of a continuum than two separate genres, and I love both. What are the things you don't like about Science Fiction?


Novelizations and spinoff books -- While I won't be reading them, I don't mind that they exist. But, I really hate it when they clutter up my genre bookshelves.

[smills47.livejournal.com]

Returning after absence and sporadic lurking --

I don't read Romance novels (I mean the ones with titles like Love's Savage Fury ;) ), but I adore Georgette Heyer -- although surprisingly I couldn't get into her one serious historical novel, My Lord John, even though that's really my favorite fiction genre, and even though I understand it was the one book she really wanted to write. Go figure.

Joyce: at one time my husband was reading Ulysses to me aloud, and I was loving it, but Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I found so painful that I had to put it aside.

Horror: I like the kind that sends a frisson down my spine but not the kind that makes me go "Well yuck!" This more or less comes down to old versus current fiction. "O Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad" and Arthur Machen's "The White People" would be prominent examples of the first kind. Most of Stephen King would be an example of the second kind -- except I once read a short story of his called "The Reach," which was more of a ghost story, and wonderfully poignant and humane. And I like Tanith Lee's fantasy fiction, but not her horror novels (see "Well yuck!", above).

My husband likes techno-thrillers as airplane reading, but they leave me cold.

About historical novels: one sort that puts me off is the kind where the characters talk and act like people today -- I find it jarring. Especially the ones that window-dress the contemporariness by throwing in "prithees" and "forsooths". My favorite authors are Patrick O'Brian and Dorothy Dunnett. O'Brian makes no concessions to the modern reader; his characters talk the way they really did in the Napoleonic era (I've read that he had a large personal library no volume of which was written later than about 1830!). And Dunnett solves the language problem by having characters talk in a way people never have nor will in real life.

Well, at least this shows that the exception proves the rule! Thanks for all the recs mentioned, I'll definitely be looking up some of them. (Recently finished Fire and Hemlock as recommended here and loved it!)

[(Anonymous)]

I don't like costume dramas either, but I do like historical fiction. Why isn't there a new Heyer? Why? People sometimes tell me, oh if you liked Heyer you'll like . . . and do you know what? They are trash. I have never found anything like Heyer. Has anyone else? And before you say yes . . . tell me, is there ANY sex in the book you want to recommend? Because if there is, then that's not what I am looking for. Not that I mind a little good sex in a book, but a book that doesn't have any sex in it, is a book that has to have something else going for it. (Oops, not Christian Fiction. That's just the bodice ripper without the bodice ripping-- like no fat ice cream, completely beside the point.) I am afraid that I am being too snarky here, but I have been disappointed one too many times. Why do people think that dressing their characters up correctly and mentioning the right vocabulary makes a book historically accurate? I am so sick of feisty heroines taking on the bad guy and slapping him down while wearing a nice morning gown with apple green and cerise ribbons.

mwt

[(Anonymous)]

peggy nags to inform me that i haven't been signing my posts. sorry. that was me saying that i was going to force feed her science fiction. i will try to sign in the future because not every anon on this thread was me, and that might lead to confusion.

mwt


not that i ever post here. oh noes. i am working.

Re: mwt

[(Anonymous)]

You say that as if confusion is a bad thing.

Why, it might be very fun to post anonymously and have people wondering who it is. I think I shall try it.

Long live confusion and merry mayhem!

(Wait a minute - working? Aren't you supposed to be knitting?)

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

I know I'm late to the party, but if anyone checks back in here:

I have to say, I won't read the "other" books of any genre.
I've read a very few sci-fi I picked up and was drawn to that I loved.
I like Heyer's better books quite a lot.
I read much more of the half-way to really good fantasy, but even then if it's fantasy that's just fantasy genre product, I don't pick it up.

Not to besmirch the authors who probably wrote their hearts out on that manuscript. Not to downplay the role of genre, or the intelligence of readers of that genre product.

But when you can find the greatest books of all of them and spend a life reading, why get bogged down?

[peggy-2.livejournal.com]

what are the "other" books of a genre? Do you have any examples?

[aspectabund.livejournal.com]

Hoo boy, am I late to the game. XD Apologies to everyone above me, I doubt I'll read everyone's counters to the main posts... too many comments!

Anyway, I generally don't read romance or horror, the former because it's corny and the latter because I'm a wiener about scary stuff. Of course, if romance and horror are merely a single layer of a book in question, I'm fine with it as long as it's integrated nicely. I mean, most fiction novels have some degree of romance or suspense to them after all. But just romance or horror... well... it seems like it's missing something vital. Like a plot.

I am also incredibly wary of epic fantasy. It's the narrative voice that makes my head feel all muddled and heavy, and then I start thinking things like "But why are there apostrophes in his name?" "If it's an ancient magical sword, isn't it rusty?" "Oh, an elf. That's new." "I don't think I can even pronounce that."

I dislike books that take themselves too seriously, like they're trying to write literature and want to make a good impression or something. :|Also, I like children's books MUCH better than adult fiction for the most part. Or at least better than adult fiction that seems to think that it must be really dry and nonsensical, just because it's adult stuff.

[idiosyncreant.livejournal.com]

I also have a really hard time with the basic epic fantasy. I think that's kinda what I meant in my first comment of my own up there...

I recommend the "Twilight" related thread, just because Jade was kinda funny.

And you know? I'm going to stop being intrigued every time I see your very atmospheric icon. What's it about? From? Whathaveyou?