{"id":2004,"date":"2015-11-30T17:32:34","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T17:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/?p=2004"},"modified":"2015-11-30T17:34:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T17:34:16","slug":"authors-answer-2-is-there-an-author-often-criticised-that-you-love-to-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/2015\/11\/authors-answer-2-is-there-an-author-often-criticised-that-you-love-to-read\/","title":{"rendered":"Authors Answer 2: is there an author often criticised that you love to read?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not really. I\u2019ve never read Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em><\/strong>, for instance. I\u2019ve never read Barbara Cartland. I actually have more of the opposite problem: widely lauded books that I absolutely hate. I don\u2019t know why this should be. I\u2019m just contrary, I suppose. Or I look for something odd or quirky in my reading. But it\u2019s happened to me many times over the years: a book receives rave reviews, but when I come to read it, I really don\u2019t enjoy it at all.<\/p>\n

Examples? The Black Prism<\/em><\/strong> by Brent Weeks. So many people rave about it, and there were elements I loved – the magic system was awesome, for instance, and there were a few moments that just took my breath away. But then there was Karris, the main female character, who was super-strong and the first woman to do something or other, but\u2026 what drove her to that was that her betrothed had a fling while off fighting a war and conceived a bastard. I mean, pur-lease, just get over it. Then there was Spirit Gate<\/em><\/strong> by Kate Elliott, which introduced a wonderful, vibrant, intelligent female character, and then turned her into nothing but motivation for the male character. Or we can mention Wolf Hall<\/em><\/strong>, which was exquisitely written award-winning tedium, for me.<\/p>\n

The one that really broke my heart was Daughter of the Empire<\/em><\/strong> by Janny Wurts and Raymond E Feist. Janny\u2019s one of those wonderful authors who pops up all over the place on blogs and forums. She\u2019s a generous contributor, always thoughtful and interesting, a lovely person, and I was so excited to be reading one of her books. It had great reviews, everybody loved it, feisty female main character, right up my alley. And I hated it. The problem was that the main character was just as ruthless, conniving and plain evil as the bad guys. That was the whole point of it, because the society was set up that way, but I really can\u2019t root for someone who\u2019s indistinguishable from the villain.<\/p>\n

If, at this point, you were to say: but Pauline, that\u2019s just you being awkward and cussed and finding fault for some trivial little detail that doesn\u2019t really affect the story, I can only agree. Yes, I\u2019m awkward and cussed and some really odd little things trip me up. But then I only have limited time to read, and I don\u2019t want to spend even ten seconds of it tutting and fussing and muttering, \u201cWell, really!<\/em>\u201d at every verse end. So as soon as I start getting cross, however irrational, out it goes.<\/p>\n

I do have some guilty pleasure reads, though. Mostly, these are light, genre books that provide a quick, easy read as a palate-cleanser between bouts of epic fantasy. I enjoy Regency romance, for instance, or cozy mysteries of the Agatha Christie kind (not the modern trend of eccentric quilting\/baking\/cat-loving amateur sleuth, which tend to be more about the quirks of the main character than the mystery).<\/p>\n

And sometimes my guilty pleasure is in reading anything at all, given the half-completed books awaiting my attention. I should be writing, dammit! The twin pulls of reading and writing: if only there were more hours in the day.<\/p>\n

The original set of answers to this question are here<\/a>. And Erica Dakin’s answer is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not really. I\u2019ve never read Fifty Shades of Grey, for instance. I\u2019ve never read Barbara Cartland. I actually have more of the opposite problem: widely lauded books that I absolutely hate. I don\u2019t know why this should be. I\u2019m just contrary, I suppose. Or I look for something odd or quirky in my reading. But it\u2019s happened to me many times over the years: a book receives rave reviews, but when I come to read it, I really don\u2019t enjoy it at all. Examples? The Black Prism by Brent Weeks. So many people rave about it, and there were elements I loved – the magic system was awesome, for instance, and there were a few moments that just took my breath away. But then there was Karris, the main female character, who was super-strong and the first woman to do something or other, but\u2026 what drove her to that was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[164],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2004"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2010,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004\/revisions\/2010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}