Which authors' success is a complete mystery to you?

[emkana]

Tony Parsons

Jodi Picoult

agree with Joanne Harris, all she has done since chocolat is re-write it over and over and over...

agree with mrs ruffalo re alice sebold, the lovely bones I think it was, or lonely bones?

Hmmm. I like some (but not all) Jodi Picoult and love Joanne Harris.

However, still trying to work out the apparent appeal of Zadie Smith.

George Eliot
Tolstoy
Trollop
All science fiction
All horrible childhood
All aga shopping books
All books with no jokes/likable characters/ jokes
Anything with accents or dialects written down

Oh now I love Zadie Smith but lots of the chick-lit stuff I just don't get - that Ahern woman for example. Emily Barr - wrote a good column a few years back and now churns out mediocre and dull books.
I'm with others on Tolkein and realy just don't "get" Philip Pullman. I'm sure I will rot in hell for that.

Yes franca, the lovely bones. I think half the problem with these books is that they get such a big build up that you are expceting something wonderful and it is actually quite ordinary.
I also found this with;
Monica Ali- I though Brick Lane was terrible
and I rvine Welsh- I hated trainspotting

Dan Brown.

Agree with Tony Parsons and JK Rowling

oh,almost forgot - Dan Brown and Paulo Coelho

Jenny Colgan, that shopping bint and indeed the whole contingent of "chicklit" types.

Haruki Murakami.

Dan Brown.

Marina Lewycka.

frogs - agree with you about Arlington Park !

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don't mean to be disingenuous BUT

ian mcewan jodi picoult jenny colgan JKRowling

Dan Brown and Jk Rowling.
And the Bronte sisters, just chick lit dressed up in britches and bloomers.

I don't personally get Rowling but I can sort of see why she is successful.

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that bloke who does the magical realism books - Paul Coelho is it? Utter shallow tosh.

Would Cecilia Ahern ever have been published if she wasn't the daughter of the Taosaich (sp)? Me thinks not but I am a bit cynical.

And now they've made a ruddy film of her book!!

lannygrrl, did you enjoy "Norwegian Wood"? I found it painful to read. I struggled to the end because people had recommended it to me, but the narrator was such a twat and the women so annoying. And I got sick to death of the endless rambling descriptions of what people were eating and drinking.

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