Name a successful author who's worse than Ted Bell

[Orrex]

I defy you.

[BlueIris]

1. Jackie Collins?

She's pretty bad.

[Left Is Write]

6. First person to come to my mind.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. James Patterson...

what a hack.

[OmahaBlueDog]

3. Share some Ted Bell first..

[Orrex]

25. From page one of "Hawke: A Novel"

The Englishman looked at his unsmiling reflection in the smoky mirror behind the bar and drained hte last of his pint. He'd lost count of how many he'd downed since entering the tattered old pub. It was called The Grapes, and it was one of the more respectable establishments in a rather bawdy little quarter of Mayfiar known as Shepherd's Market.

Pink and rose lights were glowing softly in many of the small windows of the narrow buildings that lined the winding lanes. Hand-lettered names could be found beside the illuminated buttons inside each of the darkened doorways. Fanny. Cecily. Vera and Bea. Their pale faces could often be seen at the window for just a moment before the shade was drawn.

He had drifted aimlessly through the narrow streets of Mayfair, having decided to walk home from dinner at the German ambassador's residence. He'd left rather early when, after he'd down yet another flute of champagne, it occurred to him that every single thing he'd said all evening had bored him to tears.

He'd meant to go straight home, but the miserable weather so perfectly matched the texture and color of his current state of mind that he'd decided to embrace it, dismissing his driver for the evening and electing to hoof it to Belgrave Square.

Damp. Cold. Foggy. Lowering clouds threatening rain or snow or both. Miserable. Perfect.

That's a pretty lame opener IMO, but it's not truly representative of how awful the novel is as a whole. A friend at work recommended it me with such a glowing review that of course I read it, and afterwards I wondered if I could ever speak to him again.

[OmahaBlueDog]

27. It's kind of Hemmingway meets romance novel

[Orrex]

28. But without the writing ability

Believe me, it only gets worse from there.

I'll say this for Bell; I don't get the sense that he fancies himself an author of great literature. He seems more interested simply in writing old-school ass-kicking stories, and realism and character be damned!

Hawke comes across as an engorged parody of 60's-era James Bond.

[OmahaBlueDog]

30. With one exception, Stephen Coonts is worse

"Flight of the Intruder" is a great war novel; then Coonts decided to make Jake Grafton into a Jack Ryan-like character.

[Chan790]

4. Danielle Steel.

It's impossible to be worse than that...her work is the bottomless hole of suck that gave entire genres a bad name.

[Left Is Write]

7. Second person to come to my mind.

Not only is she a terrible writer, she has a terrible editor too.

[Mad_Dem_X]

36. I've read two of her books

and they bored me to tears. How she got so damn successful is beyond me.

[Godhumor]

5. Oh very, very easy - Steve Alten *edited for LA Time review*

The man who wrote "Meg", as a way to cash in on "Jurassic Park". Before it was released, Disney paid him a ridiculous amount of money to turn it into a movie. However, the book was so horrendously bad that the film project has never seen the light of day.

Attached is part of the text from a review by Richard Ellis, one of the men Alten said he was indebted to for research purposes. You can read the full review at http://web.ncf.ca/bz050/HomePage.megrev.html

"Not only is it not the slightest bit terrifying, it is unintentionally, hilariously funny, largely because almost every page contains a genuine howler. Whenever the author discusses biology, paleontology, oceanography, or any other recognized scientific subject, he gets it wrong. It is obvious that Alten equipped himself with a book about sharks, a study of submersibles, some weirdly off-base material about whales, and everything that Peter Benchley, Michael Crichton, and Clive Cussler ever wrote, and then mixed them together to produce an almost totally incoherent story, in which the human characters make no sense, the sharks and whales behave like unknown animals from the planet Zarkon, and the technology sounds like a cross between Rube Goldberg and Buck Rogers.

I am not talking only about arcane scientific constructs that only an ichthyologist would notice; I am talking about sentences like this: 'his foot knocked over the empty coffee pot, staining the beige carpet brown.' Or: 'The Megalodon could detect the faint electrical field of its prey's beating heart or moving muscles hundreds of miles away.' On page 109 they approach the carcass of a 'dead humpback whale.' Two pages later it has become a 'dead Orca.'"

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

8. Never read those books

But I hear he went on to write a series of them that are as bad as the Sci-Fi Channel B movies about sharks and other monster creatures of the deep.

[murielm99]

9. Dan Brown is bad.

But I am not familiar with Ted Bell.

[Richardo]

15. Dan Brown will hold this title for all eternity

Man he's bad.

[Orrex]

23. Brown's incredible success earns him the lifetime achievement award in this category

But in fairness to other hacks, we should take him out of the running; otherwise no one else will ever have a chance.

[BlueIris]

10. Alice Sebold is also quite bad.

Yeah, I know some critics with bizarre taste labeled her first two books marginally "good." But "Almost Moon"? So fucking bad. Even worse than "Lucky," which is some of the worst writing I've ever encountered. Ever.

[khashka]

11. Stephen King

I liked Carrie but Gerald's Game is trash. Almost everything he writes is;

Danielle Steel - she writes the same freaking book over and over.


Khash.

[Frank Cannon]

18. Early Stephen King was a mighty force

I remember reading "Night Shift" when it first came out in paperback, and I was just blown away. Just thinking about some of those stories today gives me the chills.

Somewhere, after "Pet Sematary", he started losing me.

The final straw came with "It". I haven't read a King book since.

[TZ]

19. You ever read any of his "Dark Tower" series?

I think its one of the best fantasy/horror series out there..

[Frank Cannon]

22. Naw, that came after "It"

I've been tempted to partake. But that ridiculous "monster reveal" in "It" (along with its accompanying prepubescent gang-bang scene) pretty much put me off of King for life. I'll just have to take your word for it that the DT series is good.

[RebelOne]

31. No way. Stephen King rocks!! He is the Man!!!

The only bad book he ever wrote was "Insomnia."

[cemaphonic]

38. King is ok

His earlier stuff is better, and he desperately needs an editor willing to enforce some discipline, but his is still better than most of the other "bestseller" authors.

[Frank Cannon]

12. Dean Koontz

Never read a book of his that I didn't end up throwing in the garbage in anger--due to massive plot holes, ridiculous "twist" endings, boring car chases (yes, folks; a car chase in a fucking book), and the like.

Don't know what so many people see in that hack.

[old mark]

14. Koontz never rewrites

he starts a book from the beginning, writes several hours a day till it's done, one draft, it's a book.
Has been doing it this way since the late 1970's when he sold a book as a college student. He has never done any other work in his life.

I have never been able to finish one of his books, haven't attempted top read one in several decades.

Hack=DK

mark

[Frank Cannon]

17. I've tried to read three of his books that were highly recommended

And every time, I wondered whether someone was playing a joke on me.

[RebelOne]

32. I see plenty in that "hack."

Next to Stephen King, he is the best.

[raccoon]

33. Two things I don't like about him, and I've read several of his.

(1) seems to keep writing the same book over and over.

(2) always his protagonists just happen to be wealthy (in the ones I've read).

[cemaphonic]

39. shamelessly stolen from Rinkworks great Book-a-Minute site...

http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/
This one is in the sci-fi/fantasy list


The Collected Work of Dean Koontz

Badguy

I'm crazy, so I will do something evil and scary.

Male Lead

I'll use my CIA/NSA/Navy Seals/Green Beret/Marine/Army Ranger/Boy Scout training to stop him.

(He doesn't. Everybody gets CHASED around Southern California. Somebody steals a CAR and changes its LICENSE PLATE. The villain seems to be SUPERNATURAL, but he's just using SCIENCE to seem SCARY, just like in SCOOBY DOO. Male Lead STOPS him.)

Female Lead

I love you.

Male Lead

I'm rich. Let's live happily ever after.


THE END

The Scooby Doo bit is right on.

[murielm99]

42. He also hates liberals. He blames all the world's ills on us.

[LeftyMom]

13. I'll name two: Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind

[Orrex]

21. Well, no argument there

I chanced upon a clutch of these books at the local Goodwill store, and I even pondered buying one, since they were selling for $0.75 a piece and because no money would go to their hack creators.

Still couldn't bring myself to do it. A brief perusal of any page at random reveals a really, really bad writing style. The people who buy and read these shit-volumes must really be out of their minds.

[TommyO]

45. That's what I get for not reading all of the responses before posting

I heartily second yours as being truly bad, unfortunately successful, writers.

[mikeytherat]

16. Nora Ephron, Tom Clancey, John Grisham

mikey_the_rat

[Bucky]

20. Okay, I'll say it. Anne Frank.

I mean, I'm sad that the Nazis murdered her and everything. But talk about emo!

[China_cat]

37. I don't think she qualifies.

She didn't mean to be an author, she was a teenager writing in her diary. As a teenager and with the circumstances what they were, it's a wonder her diary was as together as it was.

Try reading any other teenage girl's diary and you'll consider Frank's a pinnacle of literature.

[TZ]

24. Okay I have to ask...

Who exactly is Ted Bell?:blush: :shrug:

[Orrex]

26. A wretched, wretched writer of Bond-esque adventure fiction

Thumb through a copy of one of his fine works the next time you're in a Borders and feeling masochistic.

[lizziegrace]

29. Robert James Waller

bleh...

[raccoon]

34. I second that emotion. nt

[annonymous]

35. Tom Clancy's Op Center books

These make Ted Bell look good by comparison. I have read a few Ted Bell books and they are pretty silly. However, Barbara Cartland, Daniele Steele, James Waller and W. C. Andrews's books are unreadable. I tried to read a book by each of these authors and couldn't finish it. Tom Clancy's earlier books (Hunt for Red October, Cardinal of the Kremlin)are okay but the Op Center series is total crap which I suspect is ghost written. I avoid any book that is put out under a dead author's name i.e. Robert Ludlum because it usually written by hacks looking to capitalize on the dead author's name.

[City of Mills]

40. L. Ron Hubbard n/t

[Zavulon]

41. Vince Flynn.

Flag-waving, "one of us is worth a hundred of them," "all-violence is justified if it's done for America" bullshit - and it sells like hotcakes.

[BlueIris]

43. Anne Rice.

"But what about—" Those books suck ass, too.

[TommyO]

44. Tim LaHaye, of the Left Behind series.