Good Writer, Shitty Storyteller...

Truth is I dont know if I can rightfully classify myself as a nerd, I not am not of above average intelligence, I dont have a multifarious array of trivial knowledge sparsely stored away within my head that I can pull out any given time and impress people with.
The Only thing I can justifiabley say that sets me apart from unnerdy folks is my love for reading and that alone places me in the realms of nerdiness(even if slightly)....can't say that I'm happy or not about slightly being a nerd, its just who I am and I accept it.

As for my reading, it has developed into somewhat of a major problem, I spend so much of my money on novels and it's become so bad that I cannot function normally through a week (which it usually takes for me to finish reading a 500 plus page novel) if I dont read a novel. When I'm out of money and can't afford to buy a new book, I pick up one of the old ones and re-read it. I've read most of the novels I own at least 3 times...some 4 or 5 times, and I'll be posting a picture of my collection for you all to see for yourselves.

Through my reading escapades I have read many a great books by good writers, terrible ones by bad writers but I am here to talk about (as the smarter ones amongst you might have already gussed from the blog title) bad books by good writers.

The concept is very easy to wrap your head around, just think of it in this sense; a good director making a crappy film for example...Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. You can actually see the potential the film has to be very good but through a number of obviouis bad decisions (like casting Orlando Bloom as the lead role) it has fallen into the section of shittiness.( again sorry for lack of a better word)
The same can be said with novels/novellas and truth is not too many writers are guilty of this because it is easy to confuse a bad writer as a good writer that has written a bad book, but thats another discussion for another day.

I think one writer that is the most guilty of this is Dean Koontz and it does hurt when I read his books because I can actually see the potential to be great instead of corny, cliche and trite works of literary fiction which most of his books always end up being. I read a short Bio of him on Wikipedia.org and it said he grew up in poverty and with an abusive alcoholic father and I was a bit suprised because it doesnt show at all in any of the books I read of him...usually a writer incorporates a dark part of themself within their books and you can sort of detect the kind of person they are from reading a number of their books, but with Koontz all his books seems to be too happy go jolly, you pretty much know what you'll get with a Koontz story. The main character wins effortlessly at the end, even the bad guys dont die all the time and it usually some alien or creature thats the cause of distress. All in all I dont think I have ever read a memorable bad human character in any of his novels, he just doesnt seem to possess the skill to create a character that is trully evil and I find it weird that someone thats actually got good skills as a writer and been through something as fucked up as an abusive father cannot do that....I guess it boils down to him having being a very kind person that doesnt see the world with any malice and but with hope and an almost annoying naivety.

Another Writer that falls into this catergory and although a lot would disagree with me is Jeffery Deaver. I like Jeffery Deaver, its hard not to but I think a lot of his books have the most ridiculous plots and they are the most implausible crap ever written on paper. Come on a magician serial killer that wears more than three costumes and change in 30 seconds or so, wtf?
And his signature suprise endings, where you can never guess who the hell the killer is untill the very end, I won't be suprised if in one of his books a chicken is the killer and i'm serious thats how ridiculous his endings are...some random person that is not even related to the story or plot whatsoever happens to be the bad guy...think along the lines of the idiotic ending of the film Saw.

I would have been convienced he was a really bad writer but I had to change my mind when I read his collection of short stories, pure genius and I wonder why he doesnt write more of his longer stories like that. I do appreciate the research he does for his books, because if one thing is guaranteed in a Deaver novel is that there is always a new topic you will learn about and its usually correct facts. point in case his novel The Empty Chair, where he talks and explains a lot about insects and theres something he says (and i'll have to paraphrase because I don't remember the words exactly) "If all the humans in the whole world dropped dead right now, life on earth would continue for millions of years, but if every single insect dropped dead right now life on earth would probably die within a few week" I have no idea if this is a fact or not but it is something very interesting to ponder.