Confessions of a GRR Martin Avoider...

[Evil Agent]

While GRRM may not be the best prose stylist in the world, I think he is one of the best writers of dialogue that I've ever read.

Sometimes I even have to re-read his dialogue aloud to myself, it's just so good.

[owlcroft]

Perhaps my favorite piece of symphonic material is Dvorak's "New World" symphony. Quite some years ago, we attended a performance by an all-amateur orchestra (doctors, as best I recall) of that symphony. It was and is a testament to our sense of politesse that we did not up and leave in the middle of the first movement, so dreadful was the torture of the composition. At some point, no matter the melody, the ability to perform it on your instrument with at least rudimentary skill has to become a significant metric.

I knew well that criticism of St. George would produce explosive replies. Lookit: if you like it, you like it. That is entirely your privilege. But the fact remains that in a hundred years, someone who mentions the author or his works will be greeted by "Huh? Who? What?"

Randy, whom I deeply respect, says "His prose is adequate to put across his story." My sensibilities say that "putting across" a story, as compared to "telling" a story, are not comparable. The "story" of Dvorak's Ninth is "put across" by even a dreadful, incompetent amateur orchestra; but it remains unlistenable.

Excellence in prose styling can in itself be sufficient to render even a rather blah plot with rather blah characters readable, and even good or better. But grotesque failure in prose styling renders any plot or characterization unreadable, where even average wordsmithing might have made it tolerable or even interesting.

As one says these days, YMMV.

[chokipokilo]

But the fact remains that in a hundred years, someone who mentions the author or his works will be greeted by "Huh? Who? What?"

I guess if you don't like it, you don't like it, but seems a little harsh for someone who hasn't even completed a story by the man.

[TooNice]

But the fact remains that in a hundred years, someone who mentions the author or his works will be greeted by "Huh? Who? What?"

The opinion remains. And a flimsy, dubious one at that. Your anecdote is equally awful; you listened to that symphony, you haven't read GRRM's books, so where do you get off stating these 'facts' about them? lol.

[chokipokilo]

Excellence in prose styling can in itself be sufficient to render even a rather blah plot with rather blah characters readable, and even good or better.

On this point I disagree strongly.

I knew well that criticism of St. George would produce explosive replies. Lookit: if you like it, you like it. That is entirely your privilege..

So what, exactly, was the reason for all of this? Why not just say that his writing isn't to your liking (or just look at the thread and leave)? Unless you get off on being pretentious or just like to argue when you're bored (and I can fully appreciate that), I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish.

[saintjon]

Sounds to me like Owl likes to be disappointed. That's all. You want stuff to be bad and when you evaluate it your confirmation bias jumps in and liberates you to declare it bad. Then you get to feel real good about how much more you know than everyone who is duped into liking it. You can respond and deny it all you like and that's fine but I guarantee that almost everyone who read your comment felt that way about you (because really we all know someone like this). Toonice is right you've lost the distinction between fact and your opinion. The high school comparison IS ridiculous, most high school students don't have the emotional or intellectual honesty to balance characters like Martin does, you might know this if you took the time to read the damn book. If a high school student turned in A Game of Thrones and you flunked that brilliant book because of the prose then you would have failed the world in your role as a teacher. I believe the opposite of what you say is true. We can already see this happening in our lifetime. Longevity is not a function of appealing to some critical elite. If in 100 years people don't know Martin it will be more because they won't be able to digest anything longer than 140 characters in my opinion. At that point it will be like the T-Rex calling the Brontosaurus extinct.

People like you used to do nothing but **** on Robert E Howard and H.P. Lovecraft and to this day they still have huge followings which will continue beyond our lifetimes because even though you can poke holes all through what they wrote they struck a chord that still resonates with people.

Sorry if I went out of line here, of course Owlcroft is entitled to Owlcroft's opinion. The problem is Owlcroft thinks Owlcrofts opinion is Owlcroft's fact and therefore the world's. When people are so dismissive of something that I and everyone I've recommended it to love so much I tend to dismiss them right back.

[tmso]

Owlcroft - I will politely ask you to refrain from posting your opinion about the quality of GRRMs work.

Can we get back to the original question? Is there an author or type of genre you specifically avoid?

Edit: Other than GRRM.

[HeclaBull]

I tend to avoid the Urban Fantasy genre. For some reason I just can't get into anything supernatural set in modern times unless it's a horror story.

[tmso]

I tend to avoid the Urban Fantasy genre.

I used to have that problem until I read Aaronovitch's The Folly series (Rivers of London, Moon Over Soho, and Whispers Underground). They are fantastic. Funny, witty, sexy, and very entertaining. I'm not going out and buying a bunch of urban fantasy, but now I'll give it a shot rather than dismiss it out of hand.

I suppose as the OP found, you never know until you try it.

[keatskeatskeats]

I guess if you don't like it, you don't like it, but seems a little harsh for someone who hasn't even completed a story by the man.

How many bites of a meal do you need to figure out its a bad meal, or that you won't like it? If a part represents the whole, then reading an excerpt is sufficient. For further discussion that will lead to genuine confusion, you might consult Plato's Meno!

I agree with owlcroft. I tried to read "St. George," and came across some ridiculous phrase like "I have already bedded the wench," laughed and put the book back on the shelf.

If you want darkness, violence, sex, and gore, you can just read Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, La Rochefoucauld, and Leopardi--and learn what masterful prose really looks and sounds like.

keatskeatskeats
"because it sounds like skeet skeet skeet"

[tmso]

You are entitled to your opinion, keatskeatskeats, just as the original poster is.

I'll remind you all again of the original intent of this thread:

Don't judge a book by it's cover, right? Well, I have, and I do, and I probably always will. But my biggest fault is judging a book without at least attempting to read it. ... Anyone else have confessions to make?

[keatskeatskeats]

Sounds to me like Owl likes to be disappointed. That's all. You want stuff to be bad and when you evaluate it your confirmation bias jumps in and liberates you to declare it bad. Then you get to feel real good about how much more you know than everyone who is duped into liking it. You can respond and deny it all you like and that's fine but I guarantee that almost everyone who read your comment felt that way about you (because really we all know someone like this). Toonice is right you've lost the distinction between fact and your opinion. The high school comparison IS ridiculous, most high school students don't have the emotional or intellectual honesty to balance characters like Martin does, you might know this if you took the time to read the damn book. If a high school student turned in A Game of Thrones and you flunked that brilliant book because of the prose then you would have failed the world in your role as a teacher. I believe the opposite of what you say is true. We can already see this happening in our lifetime. Longevity is not a function of appealing to some critical elite. If in 100 years people don't know Martin it will be more because they won't be able to digest anything longer than 140 characters in my opinion. At that point it will be like the T-Rex calling the Brontosaurus extinct.

People like you used to do nothing but **** on Robert E Howard and H.P. Lovecraft and to this day they still have huge followings which will continue beyond our lifetimes because even though you can poke holes all through what they wrote they struck a chord that still resonates with people.

Sorry if I went out of line here, of course Owlcroft is entitled to Owlcroft's opinion. The problem is Owlcroft thinks Owlcrofts opinion is Owlcroft's fact and therefore the world's. When people are so dismissive of something that I and everyone I've recommended it to love so much I tend to dismiss them right back.

I feel like Owlcroft should at least be given the chance to reply to this splenetic screed before he is condemned to silence again. There are many moments of flawed reasoning (not surprising for an uduly acidulous comment) I will address only one.

If Martin is still around it won't be because he is part of some massive following won over by his pen, but because as a culture Western civilization is assidulously archiving its past. In another 200 years (if the English deparment is still around, which is highly doubtful) George R R Martin will be studied right alongside Harry Potter and epigrams from Twitter. Why? Not because they are brilliant, but because English professors need culture to study. Just as there is 20th century literature courses, there will be 21st century courses.

Will Martin ever be in the canon alongside the likes of Shakespeare, Shelley etc etc? No. I would suggest that that he does not meaningfully engage with our cultural moment in a fresh and vivid way, nor does he re-engage our past. This does not mean that SFF cannot do such things, but only the work of George R R Martin fails on such an account.

Also, its quite fine to argue by opinion regarding something subjective like art (though Hume has interesting things to say about this in his treatise concerning taste, which always shocks me that so few people who engage in debates regarding art on the internet have read) but what triumphs in arguments regarding opinion simpliciter is persuasiveness. You are not won over by Owlcroft, Owlcroft is not won over by you. Game over unless you want to erect standards of taste (cf Hume), so no point in even posting really!

[keatskeatskeats]

You are entitled to your opinion, keatskeatskeats, just as the original poster is.

I'll remind you all again of the original intent of this thread:

Sorry to derail! I would think however that we are addressing the topic of the thread in perhaps a much more subtle manner than you have been able to discern.

But I will away, gracious for having been allowed to participate in this amusing debate!

[Mr. Aware Eagle]

I, too, am only recently diving into A Song of Ice and Fire. I'm generally not a big fantasy reader, but a friend persuaded me with these words: "I LOATHE the fantasy genre, but I love A Game of Thrones like it was my own child."

[owlcroft]

Can we get back to the original question? Is there an author or type of genre you specifically avoid?

It's not a big deal to me, but the first post of this thread seemed to me to pose a different question: Anyone else have confessions to make? (About books, I mean. . . .) That, coupled with the very title of the thread, led me to believe that a remark about Martin's work was not out of order.

I will also remind some of the commenters that my appraisal was based on text Martin himself had selected as a representative sample of his work. It was not just a paragraph or two, either, but a lengthy extract.

Nor do I understand how anyone leaps to the conclusion that I "didn't want" to like Martin; the reason I went to examine the work sample he provided was exactly to see if he was or was not someone I might like to read at greater length.

I also continue to believe that the prose in which a writer works is crucial to the ability to enjoy his work: you cannot separate it from the rest of the work's aspects--plot, characterization, setting--any more than, as in my analogy, you can separate the qualities of a musical composition from the actual playing of that composition. If the orchestra is off key and off tempo, it is going to sound dreadful.

Individuals' tastes in prose may differ, and I won't try to get into the sempiternal argument over whether one specimen of prose is better than another or why that might be so--that would indeed be off-topic. To my taste, judgement, and experience, Martin's prose is execrable, and makes his work unreadable; if someone else finds it pleasant, or at least neutral, well and good.

I have now, in response to the OP's original question, rendered my "confession" about some books, which, I submit, is as exactly on-topic as can be.