Which authors' success is a complete mystery to you?

[emkana]

Tony Parsons

Jodi Picoult

that's the only one I've read

am trying to remember if have ever read chicklit beyond those days when bridget jones was a column in the independent - read notting hell finally, that is chicklit?

John Steinbeck and George Elliot are my all time favorite authors. I cannot beleive they have been mentioned on this thread. They have bought me hours and hours of joy and I am that they being put in a category that include Jodi "one plot" Piccoult, Celia "nepotism" Ahern and Marianne "free magazine giveaway" Keynes.

Oi! That I was at school with Andrea Ashworth's sister is my only (pitiful) claim to fame and not one of you has even managed to muster an "ooh, did you?"

Make up your mind stillaslow!
We've been in the same room then... spooky...

If sun does stream through my kitchen windows it just makes me notice how filthy they are.

Mike Gayle is bloke chick-lit.

I bet Kates and Amandas have sparkly clean windows (probably shagging the window cleaner though).

Kate. Definitely. The same room at the same time?

who is andrea ashworth?

Her younger sister was at school with me, SP

Once In a House on Fire (it's very good and very well written, despite being of the "My Life Has Been So Much Worse Than Yours" genre)

Stillasslowreader.

You are now designated as barbarian of the universe.

George Eliot as a "complete mystery"..

you have noo idea of Middlemarch??

Julian Barnes..

utter shite writer.

Always knew it, then saw him being interviewed and that confirmed his posy-but-empty landscape.

Martin Amis

Jodi Picoult

Michel Houbecq

ooh yes, Tolkein

Patrick Suskind

Louis de Bernieres - well researched, but he doesnt really have a CLUE about what he is writing about!

this thread is soo cathartic.

Oh, and that Unquiet Dad bloke

Oh yes I have I have dissected Middlemarch and laid open every nerve and artery and I CAN'T STAND IT!

Perhaps you have over-studied it?
It is a wonderful book!

Iain Banks. Why does anyone like Iain Banks?

But may change my name to Barbarian of the Universe as that describes me perfectly.

right.

ooo, were you at school with her sister then?

I would love it if someone I was at school with became famous. or if one of their siblings did. but it's highly unlikely, as they were a bunch of ne'er-do-wells.

In that case you have no salvation. Bless your soul.

Middlemarch IS the finest novel in the history of the English launguage.

Oh who is that Me Me Me author? even his name sounds egocentric?
he is utter shite, anyway.

Yann Martell. I abandoned Life of Pi after about 50 pages. It was the first time that a book annoyed me so much I just stopped it. I still shudder just to think of it.
And then more or less the same happened with Rachael Cusk's In the Fold...
Very traumatic

Iain Banks? Is he the one who writes those crime noir type novels?

yes, who is that nightynight ? what has he written ?