Name: Anonymous 2009-05-18 15:46
Browse the shelves of Barnes & Noble and there are some books with important sounding titles, good looking covers, and perhaps you've heard they're popular and well known. So you either read the book and find it has an amateur fanfic writing quality, or you read the reviews on Amazon to find it was posing as a good book but everything in it sucks. What books rely on the "judge a book by its cover" crowd to buy it, mistaking it for some time testing work of fiction that's actually good? What books only make you assume the writing quality would be good?
When I first saw the Twilight books displayed in huge piles in every part of the store, I assumed they were deep, well written works that had slipped past the radar and had now achieved mainstream success due to their brilliance, after all, their thickness implied some Tolkienesque content, and the covers suggested thought provoking depth amidst simplicity. Surely they must be brilliant to achieve such popularity.
A number of Pride and Prejudice sequels also presume to be well written based on their finely painted covers, but the reviews say they all suck worse than the original.
Harry Turtledove is fond of grand sounding titles that would surely be literature, and their premise sounds fresh and innovative, so I assume not only is his writing skill excellent, but his careful research and attention to detail means he would avoid bad characterization, cliches, and contrived plots, but the reviews say otherwise.
The covers to Inheritance imply an original story that's actually good. Anne Rice novels have good sounding titles. The selection of a good sounding title and a good looking cover imply that such self importance will be justified by good writing. Just go to fanfiction.net and you'll see a bevy of important sounding titles.
When I first saw the Twilight books displayed in huge piles in every part of the store, I assumed they were deep, well written works that had slipped past the radar and had now achieved mainstream success due to their brilliance, after all, their thickness implied some Tolkienesque content, and the covers suggested thought provoking depth amidst simplicity. Surely they must be brilliant to achieve such popularity.
A number of Pride and Prejudice sequels also presume to be well written based on their finely painted covers, but the reviews say they all suck worse than the original.
Harry Turtledove is fond of grand sounding titles that would surely be literature, and their premise sounds fresh and innovative, so I assume not only is his writing skill excellent, but his careful research and attention to detail means he would avoid bad characterization, cliches, and contrived plots, but the reviews say otherwise.
The covers to Inheritance imply an original story that's actually good. Anne Rice novels have good sounding titles. The selection of a good sounding title and a good looking cover imply that such self importance will be justified by good writing. Just go to fanfiction.net and you'll see a bevy of important sounding titles.