[Gary Wassner]

I don't really have a hate list, and my love list is too long to post. But I was wondering after all these discussions about good and bad, quality and trash, best and worst, if the lists correspond from one person to the next - if one 'love list' and 'hate list' from the same person will match another's list in both categories. What are the odds?

[malibu]

I don't have a 'hate' list either... so if our 'love' lists agree, then you and I are a match!!!

[Gary Wassner]

So who do you love?

[Teresa Edgerton]

Good question, Gary! In my experience, the lists hardly match at all. No matter how many favorite books any two people have in common -- so that you would think there would be a strong similarity of taste -- there will still be a great many books that one will love while the other privately marvels that a person of otherwise discerning judgement could bear to read such trash.

That's why I tend to be wary of making unqualified recommendations to even my closest friends. No matter how highly I may praise a book, as soon as someone says, "So you think I'll like it" I start thinking of reasons why they might not.

[Gary Wassner]

I know what you mean. I would expect though that the reasons a book doesn't appeal to me would somewhat delineate the reasons that another one might. I would suspect. If one lacks beautiful imagery or is too violent (or not violent enough), too sexual (not sexual enough), too dark etc etc.

Okay, I loved TDTCB and I hated American Gods.

[Rob B]

Hate is such a strong word....however....

I LOVED The King of Elfland's Daughter and hated The Charwoman's Shadow, both by Lord Dunsany.

I loved The Darkness that Comes Before AND American Gods but hated Little Big, a book Gaiman adores.

and at one point I liked Robert Jordan, but I hate Terry Goodkind's writing.

[malibu]

Okay, I'll elaborate.

When it comes to love, there's not many books that would get that level of praise. I guess I would say it's easier to hate a book than love them. Love for a book (for me) relates back to a time when my heart and imagination were more easily captured--and I was much younger. Books which took me to a fantasy world as a kid, with characters I cared about. C.S. Lewis - Narnia. S. Donaldson - Thomas Convenant Chronicles (dichotomy--I hated the inane protagonist, I mean criminitly; I believe in this imaginary world why can't HE?--but I loved the books). T. Brooks - Magic Kingdom Series (not his most complex work, but I loved them).

Oh, and I absolutely LOVE J. Gamber - Redheart!!! But, you will all have to wait a while longer to fall in love with that work!

[Teresa Edgerton]

I don't really have a hate list either -- why bother to put one together? In fact, I'm not sure I even understand this compulsion some people have to rank their favorite authors in a particular order.

Still, my own opinion of a book is capable of changing -- and I'm not just talking about the process of my tastes maturing. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood for a particular book, or tuned in at the moment to the specific strengths and qualities that book possesses. Sometimes it's a matter of my emotional state, and a book that left me cold before may be incredibly moving at some later point in my life.

So if my own list of loves and hates (if it existed) wouldn't agree with other (equally imaginary) lists of my own, made up at different times, it would be a bit much to expect them to line up very closely with anyone else's.

[Jay_T]

Well hell, just to make it even, and to get it started 25 authors that have work I love, and 25 authors who may be good chaps but their work I absolutely hate:



25 Loves:

Mervyn Peake
Edward Whittemore
Michael Moorcock
Jonathan Carroll
George R.R. Martin
China Mieville
Jeff VanderMeer
Italo Calvino
Fritz Leiber
M. John Harrison
Brooks Hansen
Michael Swanwick
Tim Powers
Gene Wolfe
Angela Carter
Jeffrey Ford
John M. Ford
Graham Joyce
JG Ballard
Paul Di Filippo
Mikhail Bulgakov
Neal Gaiman (if we are including Sandman)
Mary Gentle
Franz Kafka
John Crowley



Hates (I don't hate 25, dont get me wrong, I dislike 100's but these are the only ones I can think of whose work I hate):


Christopher Paolini
Robert Newcomb
Terry Goodkind
David Eddings
Terry Brooks
David Weber
Curt Benjamin
Robert Jordan
Margaret Weis
Tracy Hickman
Kevin J. Anderson
Janny Wurts
Mercedes Lackey
Piers Anthony
Gary Gygax
Ed Greenwood
Keith Baker
Mitchell Graham
David Sherman
Dan Cragg
Brian Herbert

Paolini and Newcomb, for the life of me I just can't see how anybody can give them any merit on any level. Kevin J. Anderson has probably written more consecutive sub-par books then anyone in recent memory (and I can't stand his and Brian Hebert's Dune work), Anthony's Xanth is just...just what? I don't know. Sherman and Cragg may have written the single worst book of 2005 with Jedi Trial, Keith Baker won a contest and got a book deal, and wrote a ridiculous novel, City of Towers ,Weis and Hickman are the architects and masters of wasted retail shelf space, Wurts is probably the best writer of the bunch, her works didn't just grab me (and I gave her 5 books to do it hoping) , Gygax is the single most overated influence ever, Goodkind is just Goodkind, Apparently Jordan still can't write a believable female character no matter how many attempts Tor gives him, Mitchel Graham had the word Ring in his title, Ed Greenwood wrote Silverfall which is almost unbelievably bad, Curt Benjamin chose to use the word Sesho every other word in his Prince of Shadows work, Terry Brooks not only hasn't written anything original, but he hasn't improved on anything he has borrowed, Eddings writes the same book over and over and now has made it a family pastime as well , Weber - I dont give a damn about Horatio.

(EDITED) let me add one, and I know he is a semi-legend but Gordon R. Dickson for naming a talking wolf Aargh, of all things

[Jack]

So who do you love?

The Band (featuring Ronnie Hawkins) ask me that a lot:

WHOOO DOO YA' LUUVVV?!!

Sorry... :rolleyes:

Anywho, we have a match! Or mis-match. I'd say American Gods and Neil Gaiman in general probably have a lot of love hate matches. I absolutely adore American Gods, as well as Gaiman's other works, and I've noticed a lot of people feel the exact opposite. Yes, I "love" Gaiman's work, in the sense that it is difficult for me to understand how anybody could not.

What I'm trying to say is that when it comes to art, in any medium, "love" and "hate" can be blinding. In that sense, I don't truly "hate" Jordan or Goodkind, as I can understand why people enjoy their work, even though I don't. I can't think of any authors for which I have this blinding hatred for, by the above definition, mind you, but I can think of a band, just to give you an example. I "hate" Creed, by the definition that I think their music is bollocks and I have no idea how anyone could enjoy it. Yet many do. Extremes are illogical.

I love:

Neil Gaiman
Clive Barker
Susanna Clarke (one book, I know, but I LOVE it)

And I certainly "like" a smattering of others, but not in the blinding, all-devoted, might I even say fanboy sense I love the above.

I hate:

No one, really. But I've still got a lot of reading to do!
EDIT: To be fair, I did hate Goodkind for a while. I got over it.

I dislike:

Terry Goodkind
Robert Jordan
Tad Williams (his Otherland series, anyway)