1.) Favorite author 2.) Their worst book

>>9027227
John Hawkes

Of the ones I've read so far, The Passion Artist was probably the weakest, but I like all of them.

>>9027227

Dostoyevsky
The Adolescent (aka A Raw Youth)

I suppose it was a final opportunity for him to work some things out in novel form prior to Karamazov, but I find it so unengaging. I can't get on board with the protagonist, either for or against him, and it doesn't seem to talk about much of anything, relative to his other four novels (or virtually all of his shorter work)

>>9027227
Hermann Broch.

Sleepwalkers was too fucking long.

>>9027227
Terry Pratchett
The Colour of Magic
Nothing controversial there

Not sure if I can choose an absolute favourite
>J.G. Ballard
>Rushing to Paradise

James Joyce

Ulysses

Dubliners, Portrait and Finnegans Wake all choose either brevity or lyricism and then focus principally on that, then complementing it with the other judiciously. Ulysses is a hot mess.

>>9027289
I found portrait to be his worst. It seemed very scaled back and insecure. The work of a man desperate for approval.

>>9027227
Kafka
Betrachtung (not count Heizer as it's not a book), still good though.

>>9027271
Where to start with Broch?

Ismail Kadare
Spiritus

>DFW
>Infinite ass

>>9027280
CoM was his best book, not his worst.

>>9027508
>Wallace

Really his worst book is Girl with Curious Hair. Broom of the System might be considered too for its showiness, but it's kind of unfair since it was a school project and not (afaik) intended to be published in the first place.

This one seemed like it had the potential to be a somewhat insightful thread. Thanks anyway, OP.

>Salinger
>Nine stories

>>9027227
weeeew this is a hard one.

William Gaddis

either a frolic of his own or agape agape

but I love and hate agape agape at the same time. so fuck I guess frolic.

>>9027227
Dostoyevsky

Poor Folk, it was still nice but pretty forgettable

>>9027227
>Virginia Woolf
>Jacob's Room
it was like staring at a Monet painting with fuzzy glasses I had no idea what I was looking at.
The first chapter was cozy as fuck, then it goes all stream-of-subconsciousness Sound and the Fury level fractured narrative

>Pynchon
>Inherent Vice
I don't even know. I tried it 3 times and the furthest I got was some 200 pages in, I just can't do it. Everything else I read from Pynchman was fantastic.

>>9028221
I always think of it as being a spiritual companion to Vineland.

>>9028221
My what shit taste you have. Crying and V aren't even worth reading.

>>9028191
You liked Carpenter's Gothic more than those two?

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>>9028181
Run for your life punk, cause if I catch you you're a dead man

>>9029520
loo

>>9028221
I actually liked Inherent Vice more than The Crying of Lot 49 (overrated due mostly to the fact that it's short enough that people can push through it without ever actually getting any of it and feel smart saying they liked it), and I think Bleeding Edge is his worst.

Harper Lee
Go Set a Watcham

JG Ballard

Everything he wrote between 2000 and his death. With amazing economy, he managed to use a single plot to write four different novels.

>Faulkner
>A Fable

Virginia Woolf
The Waves

>>9028966

Not that guy but I'm reading The Recognitions right now, and so far I like Carpenter's Gothic better. It seems tighter, with less filler. I get the feeling people don't like it b/c they don't like the protagonist.

Conrad
The Secret Agent (still good though)

Hans Fallada

Der junge Goedeschal

>>9029520
Shut the fuck up, faggot. You're just a fucking casual.

>>9027227
Thomas Pynchon
Against the Day or Vineland

>>9028941
This is absolutely incorrect

Thomas Mann

Buddenbrooks

>>9027227
Nietzsche
Human, All Too Human

>>9029643
WHAT THE FUCK

Hesse
Beneath the Wheel

>>9027227
Yates
Revolutionary Road

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>>9027289
>>9027320
children please, if you haven't read his poetry, Exiles and Stephen Hero you can't talk about Joyce

>>9030045
Disagree. Of those I've read, he doesn't have a really "bad" book, but I'd call Siddhartha easily the worst.

>>9029727
I really enjoyed The Secret Agent. Haven't read anything else besides Heart of Darkness. Recs?

>>9029714
It really isn't that at all. I don't consider any of Gaddis' books to be bad, but what people like about The Recognitions is how ambitious it was. Carpenter's Gothic is the exact opposite of that; an intentionally dinky little spin on cliched materials in a confined setting. It's impressive in its own way but it's a very drab kind of vision compared to the heights The Recognitions was aiming for, and not just because of the themes, what the characters are like, or the plot.

>>9030152
To put it in his own words, The Recognitions feels like it was written by "that Youth who could do anything" while there's progressively less vitality, less ambition in each of his subsequent books.

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1) Dougal Dixon
2) Man After Man

Donald Trump.

Art of the Comeback.

>>9027227
Nabokov
King, Queen, Knave

>>9027227
>Joyce
>Ulysses

>>9030244
>Anon
>This bait

>>9030223
Yeah,

Executive Order: Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements

was his best work to date.

>>9027227
Kafka

The Castle

I couldn't even finish it. It was a very comfy and beautiful read but I got around 250 pages in before I set it down and never picked it up again.