Which authors' success is a complete mystery to you?

[emkana]

Tony Parsons

Jodi Picoult

for both Senora. Love them. Eye-opnening.

Salmon Rushdie oh I know he starts off so well and then he goes on and on and on and on.

Margaret Atwood is awful!

Really boring, little better than dressed up Shirley Conran. there seems to be so little point to it all.

ranting - no, that's Ian rankin.

Iain Banks wrote The Wasp Factory, Espedair Street, Crow Road, Dead Air etc. He's a fantastic writer.

stillaslow - trying to think now - last time I was at 84DG was around May 06?...

UQD I hope it was not you who spread out very many large sheets of paper on the floor covered in spidery diagrams and wore a hat throughout?

NN - I am ...

I used to be a slowreader but have been reclassified by Pan.

I don't remember spidery diagrams or hats. Not me!!

My success (such as it has been) is a mystery to me too.

Ah, too many Ia(i)ns

Monkeytrouserrs - sounds like Eleven minutes by Paulo Coehlo.

Redadmiral - I couldn't stand 500 years of solitude either.

Agree to Da Vinci Code - and anything marketed using the words - Magdalene/Da Vinci/Grail/Conspiracy

oh another one Zadie Smith.

I am wading through White Teeth right now. She has written an epic novel, about a subject that she clearly knows well (multi culti London), and it is sooooo devoid of the human interest that would make the characters come alive. I am half way through, and feel I wasted my money.

Paulo Coehlo is MEDIOCRE and doesnt deserve the brown-nosing he gets. He is not a great sage of our age. He is tripe!

NQD I am glad is was not you because he struck me as truly and geniusly bonkers.

Paulo Coehlo is SHIT AND GIVES MEDIOCRE A BAD NAME

Ooh MT that is really crushing

I/you/we need to find out who barbarian/slowreader is now too, as you may not be aware she has also outed herself as one of the writing tribe! (84 Drayton Gardens is home of the Society of Authors, where impoverished writers sometimes go to drink warm wine, eat nibbles, moan about their publishers and wonder how on earth anyone affords to live in London. Actually, I think the latter is just me.)

have we had John Fowles?? Totally awful.

UQD how do you know I am not the very nice cleaner at 84?

Totally.

I suppose I don't!

Lewis Grassic Gibbon

I'm just going to say Paulo Coehlo again...he's having you on,suckers who read that shite

Am I really awful for rarely remembering the name of a book I've read let alone the Author?

Ooh, this is bringing up one's I'd forgotten. Seconding Will Self and Julian Barnes. (Not Martin Amis - he's a bit hit and miss, but I love him - Money is fab.)

I think I may be able to clear up the mystery of the Ian Banks. An ex who was a fan said that he writes the money spinning science fiction under the name Ian M banks, and the 'arty' stuff without the initial.