How quickly do decide you don't like an author?

[Elodan]

Based on some of recent threads and my own recent personal reading, I was curious as to how many books or portions of a book do you usually read before you decide you don't care for a particular author.

For me it usually only requires reading one of his or her books. In rare cases, I'll give up if I haven't been grabbed after the first 75 pages.

 

[Ferret]

Sometime by the title, sometime by the blurb, sometime by the 1st few pages sometime the first 100. It ciulde be any of those.

 

[takyris]

Everybody told me how great Connie Willis was. She got praised all over the place. I was told to buy her book and love it. So I got it, tried it, and kept stalling at about 50 pages. It was just too dense, too cutely oblique for the purpose of being oblique, and too much interested in portraying a protagonist who doesn't know things and is constantly behind. It was well-done, but I didn't like it.

Hearing everybody praise it up, though, I pressed on, and as soon as I hit 100 pages, it began to click. I ended up loving the book.

Now I know that every time I read a Connie Willis book, the first hundred pages are going to be tough going (I've read only 2, but it's been accurate in both cases) but that the ending will be worth it.

Here, in no particular order, is what I read, and when, if ever, I gave up:

David Eddings: Loved Belgariad and Mallorean as a kid, read the Sparhawk trilogy and thought it was decent, read the second Sparhawk trilogy and got tired of it, and gave up after reading "Belgarath the Sorcerer" -- haven't read him since. In retrospect, his early work is pretty generic, but the honesty and comfortable feeling of the characters made it fun.

Neal Stephenson: Loved Snow Crash, liked Diamond Age but thought it suffered from Overly Smart Syndrome, enjoyed Cryptonomicon as a geek exercise but felt pretty strongly that I was tired of Stephenson's non-ending endings.

Melanie Rawn: Read the first Dragon Prince book, have started the second several times but cannot seem to get interested, and have decided to give the book back. Not actively bad, but it just doesn't compel me. Mickey Spillane wrote something like "The beginning of your book sells your book -- the end of your book sells your NEXT book." Apparently the end of the last book left me bored and annoyed, because I don't have any real faith in it entertaining me deeply.

Terry Goodkind: Read the first book, and did that primarily to be able to refute folks who would snobbishly tell me that I couldn't judge the book without reading it in its entirety. Of course, now I'm told that I'm not fit to judge the book until I read the entire series -- and, by humorous corollary, if I do read the series and then judge it as awful, they're going to say, "Ah, but you did read it all, so it must have entertained you." Fans. Whatcha gonna do? So: Terry has lost my reading dollar.

Terry Brooks: Read the originals, the Heritage followup, and then gave up.

Elizabeth Hayden: Read the first book and gave up.

So, for my money, I tend to at least read the first book in its entirety and then decide whether or not I'm going to keep going. A book has to be pretty bad to stop me from reading it once I've started. It has to be very good, though, to get me to buy the next one. It's a question of wasting money I've spent by NOT reading further versus spending more money on something.

 

[DanMcS]

If it's a new author, I mean, new to me, one I haven't read before, I'll usually finish the book to give him the benefit of the doubt. If the first book is a stinker, I won't go back, unless I read some reviews that say that book wasn't representative of his others.

If it's an author I have been reading for a long time, I will gradually taper off, reading his books long after they are published instead of right away, getting them from the library instead of buying them, hoping he'll turn his crap around and get back to the good stuff he used to write. Eventually, his books become so racist and idiotically nationalistic that I feel dirty just owning his older, good books, and deposit them at the used-book-store in disgust. Tom Clancy, I'm looking at you.

 

[buzzard]

Like others have said, it very much depends on the individual case.
Some books I haven't made it in more than a few pages before giving up. This is generally a case of where the author starts a premise I find irritating. I read for enjoyment, so I see no reason to put up with being irritated.

However, in some cases I will tough something out. I've rarely had it be worth it. I will say this though, if I read a bowser by an author it will take a mighty amount of convincing to make me come back. I admit, that the first stuff of Heinlen, I didn't care much for, so I gave up on him for quite a while. Funny thing is that when I re-read what initially didn't impress me, I came to like it. I still don't like all of his books, though some of his are among my favorites.

buzzard

 

[Lazybones]

For me, my pace of reading is heavily dependent on how deeply I sink into the story. I get bogged down easily, and since I won't usually start a new book until I've "finished" the last one, a bad book can derail my pleasure reading altogether.

Recognizing this, I've been more willing to toss a book aside for good even if I'm well into it, if it isn't clicking for me. I've returned/sold/shelved Elizabeth Hayden's Rhapsody 70% done, Feist's Magician 80% of the way through the 2nd book, and both Sara Douglass's Wayfarer Redemption and Cushiel's Dart (don't remember the author of that one) before I'd gotten 100 pages in.

On the other hand, I've been reading a lot of Jack Vance's old stuff, and picking up a few David Gemmel books that I'd missed, and those are going quite briskly. My local library has a very nice internet-based book ordering system, so it's easy to get less common books from an author's collection.

 

[Wombat]

Some authors take time, especially if my friends like them -- I read through three Tim Powers books before I fell to disliking him, mainly because of all the praise. Heinlein? Gave him 2 books. Marion Zimmer Bradley? One and six pages of another. Zelazny? Half of the first Amber book.

Then there are the authors with whom I have loved a single book, but disliked the others, such as Herbert with Dune.

Nowadays I am much more cherry about recommendations. I have been burnt many times and now choose my reading a bit more carefully. I have dozens of authors I love, and several topics that I enjoy researching. I find that I dislike most "game" novels and, indeed, a lot of sci fi and fantasy (I don't even tell people that I like these genres -- I tell them that I like particular authors, like Kay, De Lint, or Constantine).

So I am willing to read up a bit, but not much; with many new authors, I try them out on the library's dime first

 

[drnuncheon]

Now I know that every time I read a Connie Willis book, the first hundred pages are going to be tough going (I've read only 2, but it's been accurate in both cases) but that the ending will be worth it.

Which ones? By far my favorite of hers is To Say Nothing of the Dog.

J

 

[takyris]

Yup. To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book, both of which I found slow going for the first hundred pages, and then, once the world-rules were established, an absolute blast.

 

[Liminal Syzygy]

enjoyed Cryptonomicon as a geek exercise but felt pretty strongly that I was tired of Stephenson's non-ending endings.

I thought he vastly improved on that with Cryptonomicon. It was an actual real ending rather than just all the plot threads exploding out of control and being tied messily together.