Book Worms discussion

I just saw an interview with her on Goodreads, and I was curious. Does anyone here like her books? I've never met anyone who named her as a favorite author, though it could just be that I travel in the wrong circles.

Susan wrote: "I just saw an interview with her on Goodreads, and I was curious. Does anyone here like her books? I've never met anyone who named her as a favorite author, though it could just be that I travel in..."

Hi, Susan. In my very humble opinion, Joyce Carol Oates is a little like Jane Hamilton (A Map of the World) in that their stories are overlong and bleak. I have read books from both of these authors and cannot really remember anything about the books other than they were overlong and bleak. Joyce Carol Oates is a favorite author of Oprah (who is not a favorite of mine) and so her books grab your attention in the beginning and somewhere in the middle you lose interest and by the end you have forgotten what it was that you just read. But, you know the old adage -different strokes for different folks - so, maybe you would like her books (I have not read one since the Mulvaneys). No one I know has ever rated her as a favorite author either.

I think I'm just suspicious of her because she's so prolific, but there was a piece about her last year in the New York Review of Books and it piqued my interest in her work. Once I get through the insane backlog of books I already have marked to read, of course :P (Though I expect she will have written another 20 books in the interim!)

I don't think I've ever read Joyce Carol Oates, actually.

I started to read two of her books: We Were the Mulvaneys and The Falls. I heard great things about both. However, the first forecasted such a bleak (thanks for the perfect word) ending, and I couldn't get into the second. I liked the setting of The Falls because of its proximity, but it was not enough to hold me.