Most of the threads comment on the good things in literature.

I have been reading Agatha Christie and I hate Captain Hastings and Miss Marple with a passion.

Neither of them have learned a thing from their first appearances in print to their last. They still both assess people by such things as their public presentation, the shape of their heads, etc, and of course the distinction between being 'Engish' and 'foreign'.

There are also plot holes in them that would not be accepted in a childrens' story - the kids would pick it up and deride the story.


The only way Christie has become the world's best selling fiction writer after the Bible must be because there are the same number of intellectually insufficient people in the fiction market.


I also hate Bertie Wooster stories. He is another cretin who learns nothing as time goes by.

Bit like most of Heinlein's characters really.

Any other subjects of vitriol by anybody???



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2012 04:40AM by bunyip.

Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Creepy little self-pitying whiner. I read the first two trilogies, but the first book of the following tetralogy is one of the very few books that I have decided not to finish.
<I had my copy of "White Gold Wielder" autographed personally (how else, now I think of it) by the author, but only because he happened to be in the bookstore when I bought my copy.>

I liked more of Heinlein's books than those of his I didn't like, so to speak.

I'm with you 100% on the Agatha Christie thing, and Wooster, as much as I admire the wit of P.G. Wodehouse, Bertie really gets on my moobs.

But my biggest gripe has always been with narrative style and the over use of certain devices.

The dream, whole chapters of someone's dreams because the author can't think how else to include it in the story.

The story in the story, if it has nothing to do with the plot, I don't want to know. Crowbarring in a short story for no apparent reason other than the fact they've all ready written it is a waste of time and material.

Reiteration, necessary for readers who might not have read previous books, but I've read the same room/character description a dozen times in some series.

Not a devise but, phonetics, the over use of. I don't mind a bit of a lips or a comic accent but don't overdo it. Anyone who has read Ian. M. Banks Feersum Endjinn will know what I mean.

I could go on all day but John's coming round to help me rid the world of long drawn out travel sequences and overly descriptive battle scenes.
Deus Ex Machina.

Hammond Innes and the smell of cordite pop-up in every work. I have to agree where the writer relies on the same crutches.

Sorry to use bad language, but one encounter with Dan Brown and his famous work was enough to put me off.

I'll tell you what I hate, what I really really hate and it's Lord of the rotten rings. When it was published in the fifties I read it avidly three or four times.

Going back to it as an old boiler I hate the black and whiteness of it: the great gormless twittiness of Sam Gamgee" Oh,please Mr Frodo sir tear my eyes out and I'll carry you 300 miles over burning coals" ness of him: the absolute heroic wetness of Frodo: the unnecessary war machine produced by the baddy to get a ring which any self respecting baddy could have helped himself to easily; the twee poetry etc,etc.


Also two more rotten books are The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan and The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. What on earth was THAT all about?

it's nice to learn that one's opinions are supported by others who have more valid assessments than do I.

Agreed with LOTR. Read it first when recuperating from a car crash and waiting for fractured skull to stop throbbing.

Read it many times later and each time thought less of the plots than the time before.

Was drawn to thinking of the sex lives of the various protagonists. Or lack of.

Language use is good, but to repaet Milligan's writing in the Goon Show: 'What rubbish!' 'Yes , but beautifully spoken!'

Agree with opinion on heinlein - early stuff was good - up to Glory road. After that quite questionable.


Now add Steven King

Even Jane Austen hated Fanny Price. She wrote a letter to her neice saying that she would have prefered Mary Crawford to be the heroine but that would have been unacceptable both to her publisher and her audience.

Which kind of takes us back to P.G. Woodehouse and Agather Christie who after all weren't writing for a modern audience. I dare to defend them.

Though if I'm going to defend charachters on the grounds of their historical context it means I can't attack Jane Eyre who is utterly loathsome and wet. Thank goodness for the ridciulous dream sequence in the book which means I can go on hating it with impunity.

Historical context be damned. If a character is a dickhead then they are a dickhead whatever the era!

Am I the only one who thinks W E Johns was a closet queer, to use the historical term and many apologies to anyone who is offended in any way the historical fact.

None of his characters even rec ognise the opposite sex.

But I flew all the way with Biggles and Ginger(!!!!) when I was younger.

I think nearly all baby boomer males did. At that age we though that 'sex' was the number between five and seven in Swedish, but then Ursula Andress came along and the clock went haywire.

My brother was attempting to accumulate a complete collection of the Biggles books before his death 16 years ago. I wonder what happened to those books?

Do I kill my nephews to acquire them, or is there a more pleasant - no not pleasant, but less messy - way of acquiring them?