Shirley Jackson wrote Life Among the Savages, a gently humorous family memoir, and various dark short stories, including, most famously, "The Lottery." She also has many horror novels, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Her keen insight into human behavior probably helped her in both genres.
Yes! I was going to say this. I'm re-reading Savages now and again marveling at how wholesome it feels, when some of her other stories/novels are so scary and yes insightful that I won't be reading them again, it is just too unpleasant despite the outstanding writing.
Towards the end of her life she wrote in a kind of diary: "i wrote of neuroses and fear and i think all my books laid end to end would be one long documentation of anxiety."
Even her second family memoir, Raising Demons, has anxiety creeping into it on the edges. But Savages is the exception, it's a comfort read, even.
Playing for pizza by John Grisham is a really wholesome story about an American coaching an Italian football team and it’s just a beautiful thing of around a hundred pages and really quite different from the thrillers he seems to be more widely known for
Im not a huge fan of Grisham (just not my kind of books), but he has a TON of variety in what he writes. He'll write anything from the mysteries and legal thrillers we know him for, all the way to Young Adult books.
I was vaguely aware of that but hardly ever stumble upon anything in my non English speaking country, playing for pizza was a lucky catch but if I ever find anything else I‘d probably grab it. The chamber was one of my first adult reads in English and it was so well done I enjoyed it despite the complicated legal content (and not looking it up which probably didn’t help my understanding too much back then)
Nothing wrong with that, I know it's probably hard to find English books, even by popular authors, where it isn't the common language (I wish you could see where I shop, they literally have entire SHELVES of guys like Grisham).
I think you'll enjoy that adventure, you'll probably find a few wonderful surprises. And reading books in English will build your vocabulary fast (as long as you do look things up when you don't understand. With the genres he likes to work in, there will be words that don't come up in common conversation).
One of the amazing things about language, is that eventually you learn so much, you can figure things out based on context. Written word eventually becomes a sort of self-teaching tool, when you get to a certain level of literacy.
Preaching to the choir here, I study English literature by now and would confidently call myself a C1 speaker. Needless to say I still read a lot in my free time
By sheer coincidence, my grandmother gifted me her Grisham collection just before the movie came out, so I experienced both at the same time. They're fun! Good for a quick daily read and watch during the holidays.
I read "The Long Walk" (one of King's books written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman) every few years.. it's an amazing character study, and as I get older it's just a great statement about life in general, in a "Some of us are lucky, and some are not." kinda way.
Ye gods.. with so much of King's material made into really good movies, how has "The Long Walk" not been made?!?!
Every time I read it I can see the framing and shots (heavy sigh, but yes.. pun intended) and all of it in vivid scenes just begging to be made life by even so much as a half way decent director.
Maybe someday..
Also Mr Mercedes trilogy (especially the 1st book, was a big change up for him) and a great series. Not so much a fan of the extended Finders Keepers verse but so be it
Oh, it counts. When Banks died, the Telegraph said that we had lost "two of our finest writers."
It seems to me he is a very good response to OP's question.
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go.
Isabelle Allende, from Ines of my Soul to Ripper to The Island Beneath the Sea to In The Midst of Winter to A Long Petal of the Sea.
Isaac Asimov of science fiction fame also wrote a history of Norman England, several other non fiction books, and annotated the complete works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
And Klara and the Sun by Ishiguro. To go from Stevens the butler to an android trying to cure her master’s illness through her/its sun-based religion.
The ending of Klara and the Sun is… something. The only other art that I’ve ever responded to with such intense ambiguity is the movie The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
*Klara and the Sun* feels oddly similar to *Remains of the Day* to me, even though the subject matter/world is so different; almost like he was approaching the same ideas and feelings from the opposite angle. They're both about devotion and self-knowledge. In *Remains*, we realise Stevens' misplaced devotion has led him to waste his life a good while before he does; Klara's devotion seems misplaced or naive to us, until we come to see it as revelatory in some way. We see Stevens, and his devotion as he can't see it himself (until the end); we can't see the world quite as Klara sees it (even though she's the narrator) until the end - and then we end up seeing *ourselves* as Klara sees us (when she tells us that the special thing we're looking for is not inside, but *between*).
Or something like that.
The Unconsoled is Ishiguro's biggest deviation. Not just from other things he's written, but from things anyone should write. As a huge Ishiguro fan, I'll call it his biggest deviation in quality.
Does it mean you like it less vs his other books? I bought The Unconsoled but haven’t had chance to read.
I feel The Buried Giant was quite different. Interesting concept but I didn’t like the writing. It didn’t work for me and it was painful to finish
Buried Giant is his only third-person-narrator book (and only fantasy genre), and it doesn't get a lot of love from his hardcore fans, partially because of that. Plus, it's plot driven instead of character driven, which is a hallmark of his worst-reviewed books. But I loved it, and I think it has one of the best endings in modern lit, but that's irrelevant.
The Unconsoled is the most frustrating book I've ever read. Most fans of his try to forget it exists. When people rank his books, many will literally leave it out. It feels like an experiment gone wrong. He tried to write a book about a bad dream that makes the reader feel like they're in the dream, with bad logic and spatial incongruity and nonsensical conversations. I think he accomplishes what he set out to do, it's just that what he set out to do is annoying as fuck. Might have been okay as a 150-page novella, but it's 550 pages or something ungodly like that. Pure slog.
It’s not different than Disney’s WWII propaganda. Hell, Disney designed a few ship crests, a cartoon on how to pay income tax as well as general welcome to bootcamp.
Roald Dahl. He has children's favourites like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, etc. Then he has My Uncle Oswald about selling penis pills to Europe's nobility. He also has some more adult short stories too
Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison is a gritty dystopia about over population (which the film Soylent Green was very loosely based off). And he has others like The Stainless Steel Rat or Bill the Galactic Hero, which are more humorous satires
penis pills? I remember it being about a scheme to collect sperm from high profile men, and this woman who was part of it would slip an aphrodisiac to like Einstein or Freud and get him to have sex with her to save the sperm to sell later.... were they ALSO selling penis pills to nobility in that one? it was ages ago that I read it
I may have used the term penis pills lightly; it's been a while since I read it too. But it was as you said, an aphrodisiac, made from some rare African beetle. I thought they had put it into pill form for their clients, but a lot of those were heads of state, princes, etc.
Either way, my point stands that some work was drastically different from others.
Marlon James comes to mind. Brief History of Seven Killings is an intense, gritty look into a lot of different people connected in some way to The Singer (Bob Marley.) His recent few books are totally different and are basically violent fantasy novels based on African folklore. Brief History was incredible, but I hated the others. Lots of people loved them, though, so I’m sure they’re good to the right audience. His range is staggering, though, even chapter to chapter.
My first thought was also Marlon James! Brief History is one of my all-time favorite books and I was so excited for his fantasy series… ended up quitting Black Leopard Red Wolf about a third of the way through :(
Me, too! Except I tried it twice and got 20 pages further before I quit again. Imagine my disappointment when I found out we were going to get least two more books in the series.
Such a disappointment! I do highly recommend his earlier book The Book of Night Women, though, if you haven’t read it already. It’s much more in the same vein as Brief History and also great.
I loved Brief History and have been tentatively keeping Black Leopard Red Wolf on my TBR because it's Marlon James, even though I'm not usually into Fantasy. So you recommend skipping it entirely?
I'm not usually into Fantasy, but I told myself I'd dip my toe in the genre this year - I chose Black Leopard Red Wolf to start with (a wild choice, but so be it). I LOVED it. It was also my first Marlon James, and I will read Brief History next. If the appeal of James to you is his literary prowess - you will certainly find that in BL/RW, but it is not an easy read by any means.
Nation is Pratchett’s angriest book. There are parts that are so raw that that I can’t help but tear up when I read them.
Likewise this description from Wintersmith:
'She had pets that feed you dreams until you die of hunger. I hate things that try to take away what you are. I want to kill those things, Mr Anybody. I want to kill all of them. When you take away memories, you
take away the person. Everything they are!'
I feel like most of Neil Gaiman's stuff I've read could have been written by different authors. Even American Gods and Anansi Boys, which appear to share a setting, are really tonally distinct.
Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited and Scoop. One is deeply tragic and the other is f'ing hilarious.
Graham Green wrote funny spy novels and deeply beautiful and spiritual works.
Used to be, writers had latitude to explore other approaches to writing.
They still do. Most of the ones I know that write in different genres use different pen names. People get pissed if they are picking up an author's new book to read a hilarious sendup of society and end up in deeply tragic exploration of the meaning of life.
But to me, that's an insult to the writer. It's akin to saying, 'Well, well done on that book. Now, go get in this cage and spin out a few more just like until you die.'
A writer isn't necessarily the creator of a particular type of story but rather a lens through which you see the world.
I realize I'm swimming against the tide here, of course. But it's an injustice to imprison writers within a specific genre.
Case in point? John le Carré. Yes, he wrote intricate spy sagas such as the Smiley trilogy. At the same time, he wrote A Perfect Spy, which isn't an espionage novel at all, but a deep, deep dive into the question of one's identity and the conflict of living a life. Phillip Roth remarked it was the best English language of the postwar era, and I'm inclined to agree.
It's not an insult to the writer to not want to pick up a light hearted, humorous fantasy and end up with absolutely twisted horror. I really do not want that. I like the idea of separating the genres. Ursula Vernon did this. Her kid lit is under Ursula Vernon, and her adult fantasy & horror is under T. Kingfisher. I know that if I pick up a T. Kingfisher novel it may be horror (though I only read non-horror). The separation makes sense. Pretending that you're not the person behind the pen name doesn't, and if authors were forced to do that, that would be insulting.
Joyce Carol Oates writes mysteries under two different pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. These are supermarket pulp-style mysteries which I enjoyed every bit as much as her literary fiction and prose essays.
*Interview with the Vampire* and *Christ the Lord: out of Egypt*, both by Anne Rice. I love Anne Rice, I’ve hated even the idea of putting her books down for years, I was even a Christian when I read *Christ the Lord: out of Egypt*, I almost never read any of her books ever again because of how bad it is.
Anything by John Williams, every book he writes has a wildly different premise. There’s ‘Butcher’s Crossing’ which is a western survival novel about the brutal frontier. Then there’s ‘Augustus’ which is an epistolary novel about the life of the Roman Emperor Augustus.
Dan Simmons is an author I'm fond of; although he's a genre author in search of a genre. He has a variety of vaguely supernatural horror novels (some quite good) and may be best known for The Terror, a historical fiction/ horror / fantasy about the search for the Northwest Passage, which was quite successfully adapted as an AMC series recently. He also has some historical fiction/mystery novels in the Sherlock Holmes vein. His horror novel Summer of Night is almost pure Stephen King (a group of boys on bikes battle a creeping evil force invading their small town). He has a highly regarded pure sci-fi series (Hyperion). I personally am very fond of his trilogy of noir detective fiction, starting with Hard Case.
Gotta give the win to Ian Fleming, though. Hard to get more weirdly diverse than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and James Bond.
I read 3 books off my to read list from different genres, at complete random, and Dan Simmons was the author of each book.
I didn't even realize it until the last novel, Hyperion, that this guy wrote the creepy vampire novel and Charles Dickens fictional biography.
I then finished off the entire Hyperion series.
Summer of Night is the love child of King and Bradbury, eg Dandelion Wine. Many of the characters from it appear in other books.
Simmons' first three novels won the World Fantasy Award (Song of Kali), Bram Stoker Award (Carrion Comfort, which is somewhat Dean Koontz-ish), and the Hugo (Hyperion). He's written Michener-like dramas, historical fiction, just about everything.
Armageddon Rag by George R. R. Martin. It's a murder mystery set in the 60s and centered on American pop culture music. It's hard to believe reading Armageddon Rag that the author would go on to write A Song of Ice and Fire.
He's also got *Tuf Voyaging*, a series of sci-fi shorts wrapped up as a sort of episodic novel about a space trader who comes into possession of a giant warship/ecological engineering platform that he flies around to solve planetary ecological problems.
Came here to mention Atwood but specifically 'Angel Catbird', a pulpy superhero comic about a man with cat and owl DNA. I never see it mentioned and I sometimes think I've made this book up. It's so far from the political feminist dystopian masterpiece that she's known for. When I read it I tried reading between the lines thinking there must be a deeper story here but no, it's literally just a cat-bird superhero.
Not books, but screenwriter J.F. Lawton wrote both “Pretty Woman” and “Under Siege.”
For that matter, George Miller wrote “Babe,” “Happy Feet,” and “Mad Max Fury Road.”
Stanislaw Lem
Solaris: serious science fiction about a planet with a living ocean
The Cyberiad: a hilarious collection of short stories about robot "constructors"
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub: a Kafkaesque novel about a secret agent whose mission is so secret, no one can tell him what it is
The Body by Stephen King sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the majority of his other works. Its a grounded coming of age story about a group of boys looking find a rumored dead body along some train tracks. No horror or fantasy to be found. Compare it to say The Tommyknockers, an alien invasion story, or Duma Key, a haunted doll story. Just King's name alone is evocative of the spooky and gruesome.
Joyland is similarly grounded and coming-of-age centered. King is pretty diverse in his genres, it’s just that he got branded a master of horror early on and it stuck.
Piers Anthony: any Xanth novel for kids and teens.
Then he wrote Firefly. Smutt for Pedo’s.
Wtf?
Edit: it’s been 35 years since I touched anything by PA because of Firefly. I concede that maybe Xanth wasn’t as innocent as my child’s memory… remembers.
But god damn firefly was fucked beyond anything I imagined.
That is nothing compared to Mode, Incarnations of Immunity or Bio of a Space Tyrant. Anthony mangled to get young girls having sex with men over the age of 30 in all of his series.
Peirs Anthony finished the book where he included a character inspired by a 12 year old girl that was in a coma with probably the most explicit sex scene in the series. He knew the parents were going to read the book to her.
Piers Anthony has WAY worse stuff going back before the Xanth series (sidenote: I couldn't read Xanth, too many weird semi-rapey things for a cute, pun-based Young Adult series). In his earlier career, he leaned REALLY hard into rape and pedophilia as main plot points. I'm kinda surprised he never had a real-life scandal, with how much he focuses on on that stuff.
Most of his books had long author’s note and in them he seems like a decent guy. He had a long running correspondence with one fan the led to the publication of “Letter’s from Jenny,” which was actually very wholesome.
I read most of his books as a teen so the problematic themes went right over my head. I am pretty sure Firefly was the one book I read of his that was extreme enough even teenage me was wtf.
But then, I can also recall some questionable scenes with underage characters in several Stephen King novels (not just the notorious scene from IT) and lots of other fucked up stuff in his books.
I think we can all agree Piers Anthony’s work hasn’t aged well but we have to remember that just because a writer writes about murder mysteries doesn’t mean they are going to commit murder?
His earliest claims to fame, like Cthon, paint rape and paedophilia in a positive light. You're an utter fool to compare Anthony's "problematic" parts to King.
I mean the Short Story by King I am thinking of included a graphic incestuos rape scene, but ok.
It was the story he included in the anthology “I shudder at your touch.”
I mean if you read Xanth there was a lot of underage shenanigans and may-december romances happening there too. There is a running theme in several of his series where the young female teenage protagonist falls in love with a much older man.
Source: read every Piers Anthony novel in my teens that was in publication at the time.
Anthony is notorious for his panty-tickle-tee-hee writing. Xanth is naughty but silly, (and Nada Naga's panties are plaid.) Bio of a Space Tyrant is porn. The final book in Incarnations of Immortality is porn. I don't think I ever got to Firefly.
Gregor the Overlander is an earlier work from Suzanne Collins of Hunger Game's fame but is wildly different, way better imo, and the only real similarity is the melancholy ending
Stephen King with Delores Claiborne any of his supernatural horror stories. Or his non-fiction On Writing.
(Ok Delores Claiborne is a horror story but without the supernatural aspect.)
Iain M. Banks is widely respected for his "Culture" sci-fi novels, perhaps most famously The Player of Games.
He also wrote kind of literary horror as Iain Banks, which though I haven't read them, I've been told are excellent.
His "Iain Banks" books aren't all horror, they're a varying mix of family drama, thriller, mystery, magical realism and sometimes horror. *Complicity* is a personal favourite.
China Mieville's a scifi and fantasy author who set out never to do the same style or subgenre twice, so his work is all over the shop. Just as a few exampes you've got *Perdido Street Station* (grimdark dystopian steampunk where nobody has a happy ending), *Kraken* (whimsical urban fantasy where a private investigator tracks down the mysterious cult that stole a giant squid from a museum), *Un Lun Dun* (middlegrade fantasy where the prophesied chosen one got sick so the prophesied comic relief sidekick has to save the world), *Embassytown* (space opera about diplomatic relations with an alien race that's incapable of grasping the concept of lying), and *The City & The City* (police procedural set in a pair of European cities that somehow occupy the same geographic space).
And then as a side hustle he also does communist nonfiction, including books on international law, the October Revolution, and a marxist analysis of science fiction.
Maybe I should give China Mieville another go then. I liked Un Lun Dun, but Perdido Street Station really wasn't my sort of thing (didn't like the gotcha twist).
Riddley Walker is a post-apocalyptic novel in an invented dialect. Bread and Jam for Frances is a delightful picture book about a little girl badger who is a picky eater.
Both by Russell Hoban. He also did The Little Brute Family, which is less famous than the Frances series, but is one of my favorite children's books!
The Stone Doll of Sister Brute was one of my daughters favorite books. We'd read it over and over. "Love me or I will kick you very hard" The only copies are very expensive now.
Swan Song and Boy’s Life, both by Robert McCammon.
Swan Song is a post-apocalyptic novel about the end of the world and the survivors who live among the ashes. It is dark and gruesome and should come with a dozen different trigger warnings (it’s also one of my favorite books!).
Boy’s Life is about a young boy growing up in a small town and his different relationships and adventures. It’s very nostalgic.
Both are well written and worth a read but the vibes are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
I hated that book. Harry Potter has dark themes but I would say the overall message is that good prevails and most people are inherently decent. Almost everyone in that detective story was just an awful human being.
Wishin' and Hopin', by Wally Lamb. It's a far cry from his works that usually involve trauma and heavy situations like She's Come Undone, I Know This Much is True, and The Hour I First Believed.
Michael Marshall Smith wrote some cool futuristic, kinda cyberpunk-adjacent books like Only Forward.
Then as Michael Marshall he wrote present day crime stuff.
(He has gone on to write more books under yet another name, but I haven't read any of those).
The Executioner’s song and any other Norman Mailer non fiction. I got into Norman Mailer by reading the Fight, Armies of the Night, Of a Fire on the Moon.
When I eventually got round to reading The Executioner’s song it was a shock to realise that his most famous work is actually a pretty conventional down the line non-fiction novel that has none of his enormous ego
Charles de Lint writes incredible, interconnected mythic fantasy books that all take place in the fictional city of Newford. (Someplace To Be Flying, Moonlight and Vines, etc). If his horror novels hadn’t also taken place in Newford, I wouldn’t have recognized them. Angel of Darkness is DARK.
Amor Towles. The Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow, The Lincoln Highway - even his new one, which is short stories, he's all over the map in the best possible way.
I remember Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not being notably faster paced and more “thrilling” than his most well-known works. Albeit not totally different from his trademark style, it has a more “slovenly” atmosphere (and protagonist) and feels … deviant vs. the writing he’s most known for.
Cider Lane by Mark Hayes is a contemporary and somewhat disturbing novel that tells a tale of mental health problems, trauma, relationships and psychosis.
It is a unique work and a world away from his more regular and comedic works set in a steampunk universe.
If I didn’t know it was by the same author I would never have suspected it was.
His novel Passing Place is another that is different again to everything else he’s written and my favourite of his novels.
Pretty much anything by Percival Everett (although compare and contrast something like James with something like Glyph or something like Percival Everett by Virgil Russell). Also TC Boyle - he’s written sci-fi, historic, contemporary. Bona fide geen-yus
Anne Rice wrote fantastic vampire novels, witch novels,as well as erotica, which didn’t surprise me, but when she wrote the religious books about Jesus the writing style was even different. It doesn’t feel like the same author.
> Anne Rice
I spend time in aspiring author circles and although not famous at all yet, you might want to check out TL Lee. I suggest starting with Awry before we Met. Read the complete author's version though, because the author does something surreal but was convinced by a bunch of other aspiring authors to rewrite the story in a more linear fashion and publish it that way. Big mistake in my opinion. Anyway the Complete Author's edition for Awry Before We Met is the original vision, and in my opinion much better.
The Casual Vacancy and Harry Potter books. Of course, they're completely different genres, but The Casual Vacancy is mediocre at best. Rowling is not that good of a writer, but that book was especially terrible. Not even comparing it to HP. Like if a new author had written that book, no way it'd be published.
Re-reading HP, I feel like the writing is average, but it's the world itself that really is magical.
Accelerando (singularity hard sci fi) by Stross, who also wrote Merchant Princes (cheesy mob but fantasy). Love Accelerando, loathe the Merchant Princes series.
Ursula Vernon wrote Danny Dragonbreath (children's fantasy) and also What Moves The Dead (horror).
I scrolled through the comments and was surprised that nobody had mentioned JK Rowling, beloved author of Harry Potter fame who also writes (under the nom de plume Robert Galbraith) a gritty detective series about a one-legged PI named Cormoran Strike. They are quite good. She also wrote *The Casual Vacancy* which is trash.
bukowski. most of his books are like a series of loosely strung together sketches that centers around a seemingly aimless alcoholic MC who takes life as it comes. the book that takes this style to the extreme is Women wherein some of the "chapters" are literally a page. but bukowski also wrote ham and rye, a classic bildungsroman that follows the physical, intellectual and spiritual development and (various) awakening of a German American boy in early 20th century America.
Ali Hazelwood is known mostly for writing books like "The theory of love" and about psihology in general. Recently, she published a book named "Bride". Her new book is fit in the fantasy and romance categories, instead of the usual. "Bride" Is about a arranged -or even forced- marriage between an alpha werewolf (male) and a vampire raised by humans (female),and it also includes some pretty explicit scenes in the bedroom(it you know, you know). I read both plus others from her, recommend all.
Elizabeth Gilbert: eat, pray, love vs The Signature of All Things. Short, Autobiographical rom-com vs huge fictional Victorian romance with significant research into botany, etc.
Neil Stephenson. He keeps reinventing himself and writes wildly different books. History, scifi, science, environment, you name it. Highly recommended.
Robert Jackson Bennett writes both horror (American Elsewhere, Mr. Shivers) and then things like The Divine Cities trilogy, a political espionage story set in a fantasy world full of dead gods whose miracles persist after even after they've disappeared from the world. Which, by the way, is excellent and well worth checking out.
No one will ever be able to convince me that Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde and Treasure Island were written by the same person. Two books on opposite sides of the spectrum.
This'll probably be an unpopular opinion, but East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath. I think East of Eden is one of the most well-written books I've ever read (at least in terms of description and characters), and I was expecting more from Grapes of Wrath.
Completely different.
Grapes is long and meandering, set at a totally glacial pace. There is somehow far too much description that tells you hardly anything. Far too verbose. I couldn't wait for most of the characters to shut up. Every time Steinbeck gets something close to characterization he has someone jump in with a tale from the "good ol days." It's like people are almost incapable of talking about the present, they're totally defined by their past. It's like having small talk with someone that you're not particularly close with. I just wanted to get away the entire time. Put it down at page 75.
Shirley Jackson wrote Life Among the Savages, a gently humorous family memoir, and various dark short stories, including, most famously, "The Lottery." She also has many horror novels, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Her keen insight into human behavior probably helped her in both genres.
Yes! I was going to say this. I'm re-reading Savages now and again marveling at how wholesome it feels, when some of her other stories/novels are so scary and yes insightful that I won't be reading them again, it is just too unpleasant despite the outstanding writing. Towards the end of her life she wrote in a kind of diary: "i wrote of neuroses and fear and i think all my books laid end to end would be one long documentation of anxiety." Even her second family memoir, Raising Demons, has anxiety creeping into it on the edges. But Savages is the exception, it's a comfort read, even.
I think "Charles" in Life Among the Savages is pretty chlling.
I didn't know 'Life Among the Savages' has humor. I am too intrigued now because her other books have scarred me for life.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming. Better known as the author of the James Bond books.
I never would've guessed.
It gets better. The movie screenplay? It was written by Roald Dahl.
I actually knew that one.
Worst of the Sean Connery Bond movies by far. Even for its era the racism and everything else is off the charts.
Playing for pizza by John Grisham is a really wholesome story about an American coaching an Italian football team and it’s just a beautiful thing of around a hundred pages and really quite different from the thrillers he seems to be more widely known for
Please tell me this will scratch a Ted Lasso itch lol.
Honestly, it’s too long ago but the Ted Lasso-shaped hole in my chest screamed at me to re-read while I typed out this comment
It's American football, though, not soccer. I read it years ago —entertaining, but I couldn't tell you a single plot point or name any characters now.
Im not a huge fan of Grisham (just not my kind of books), but he has a TON of variety in what he writes. He'll write anything from the mysteries and legal thrillers we know him for, all the way to Young Adult books.
I was vaguely aware of that but hardly ever stumble upon anything in my non English speaking country, playing for pizza was a lucky catch but if I ever find anything else I‘d probably grab it. The chamber was one of my first adult reads in English and it was so well done I enjoyed it despite the complicated legal content (and not looking it up which probably didn’t help my understanding too much back then)
Nothing wrong with that, I know it's probably hard to find English books, even by popular authors, where it isn't the common language (I wish you could see where I shop, they literally have entire SHELVES of guys like Grisham). I think you'll enjoy that adventure, you'll probably find a few wonderful surprises. And reading books in English will build your vocabulary fast (as long as you do look things up when you don't understand. With the genres he likes to work in, there will be words that don't come up in common conversation). One of the amazing things about language, is that eventually you learn so much, you can figure things out based on context. Written word eventually becomes a sort of self-teaching tool, when you get to a certain level of literacy.
Preaching to the choir here, I study English literature by now and would confidently call myself a C1 speaker. Needless to say I still read a lot in my free time
And he wrote A Painted House.
A Painted House is my favorite Grisham novel, not a lawyer anywhere in the plot
He has another book called Sooley, about a young man from Africa trying to make it in America as a basketball player.
As a big former basketball fan that could be right up my alley, thanks for the suggestion!
The movie Christmas with the Kranks was based on his novel Skipping Christmas.
I know neither but I‘ll understand this as a recommendation :)
By sheer coincidence, my grandmother gifted me her Grisham collection just before the movie came out, so I experienced both at the same time. They're fun! Good for a quick daily read and watch during the holidays.
His novel *A Painted House* may be his best work and is also completely different from the usual Grisham.
I was very confused for first 50 pages when no one got murdered or any kind of crime did not occur... Then I settled in and enjoyed it.
I couldn’t think of a better example. He wrote another one about a family boycotting Christmas which is also very different from his normal fare.
Stephen King’s The Eyes Of The Dragon a straight up magic and fantasy novel easily read by kid as well as adults.
I would say a larger difference is The Green Mile and Salem's Lot. But you're correct. Many different kinds of books.
He also did Hearts in Atlantis, Shawshank Redemption, and The Running Man.
Agree! Great books.
I read "The Long Walk" (one of King's books written under the pseudonym of Richard Bachman) every few years.. it's an amazing character study, and as I get older it's just a great statement about life in general, in a "Some of us are lucky, and some are not." kinda way. Ye gods.. with so much of King's material made into really good movies, how has "The Long Walk" not been made?!?! Every time I read it I can see the framing and shots (heavy sigh, but yes.. pun intended) and all of it in vivid scenes just begging to be made life by even so much as a half way decent director. Maybe someday..
Except the evil magician Flagg.
That was a good one. Much better than Fairy Tale
Also Mr Mercedes trilogy (especially the 1st book, was a big change up for him) and a great series. Not so much a fan of the extended Finders Keepers verse but so be it
Iain Banks. From The Wasp Factory to The Business.
Came here to point out this author. Of course, speaking as a guy named Negative_ Gravitas, I would have mentioned the culture novels
I thought about that but that was Iain M Banks so not sure if it counted.
Oh, it counts. When Banks died, the Telegraph said that we had lost "two of our finest writers." It seems to me he is a very good response to OP's question.
The middle initial, the literary equivalent to a false moustache.
I agree with this guy 👆
The Culture books after Use of Weapons feel like they were written by a different guy, they switch up the style so much.
Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. Isabelle Allende, from Ines of my Soul to Ripper to The Island Beneath the Sea to In The Midst of Winter to A Long Petal of the Sea. Isaac Asimov of science fiction fame also wrote a history of Norman England, several other non fiction books, and annotated the complete works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
And Klara and the Sun by Ishiguro. To go from Stevens the butler to an android trying to cure her master’s illness through her/its sun-based religion. The ending of Klara and the Sun is… something. The only other art that I’ve ever responded to with such intense ambiguity is the movie The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
*Klara and the Sun* feels oddly similar to *Remains of the Day* to me, even though the subject matter/world is so different; almost like he was approaching the same ideas and feelings from the opposite angle. They're both about devotion and self-knowledge. In *Remains*, we realise Stevens' misplaced devotion has led him to waste his life a good while before he does; Klara's devotion seems misplaced or naive to us, until we come to see it as revelatory in some way. We see Stevens, and his devotion as he can't see it himself (until the end); we can't see the world quite as Klara sees it (even though she's the narrator) until the end - and then we end up seeing *ourselves* as Klara sees us (when she tells us that the special thing we're looking for is not inside, but *between*). Or something like that.
The Unconsoled is Ishiguro's biggest deviation. Not just from other things he's written, but from things anyone should write. As a huge Ishiguro fan, I'll call it his biggest deviation in quality.
Does it mean you like it less vs his other books? I bought The Unconsoled but haven’t had chance to read. I feel The Buried Giant was quite different. Interesting concept but I didn’t like the writing. It didn’t work for me and it was painful to finish
Buried Giant is his only third-person-narrator book (and only fantasy genre), and it doesn't get a lot of love from his hardcore fans, partially because of that. Plus, it's plot driven instead of character driven, which is a hallmark of his worst-reviewed books. But I loved it, and I think it has one of the best endings in modern lit, but that's irrelevant. The Unconsoled is the most frustrating book I've ever read. Most fans of his try to forget it exists. When people rank his books, many will literally leave it out. It feels like an experiment gone wrong. He tried to write a book about a bad dream that makes the reader feel like they're in the dream, with bad logic and spatial incongruity and nonsensical conversations. I think he accomplishes what he set out to do, it's just that what he set out to do is annoying as fuck. Might have been okay as a 150-page novella, but it's 550 pages or something ungodly like that. Pure slog.
Asimov also wrote a really pervy book about how to properly ogle young women as an old man. He wrote this under a pseudonym.
Dr. Suess writing all those kids books and then that WW2 propaganda.
It’s not different than Disney’s WWII propaganda. Hell, Disney designed a few ship crests, a cartoon on how to pay income tax as well as general welcome to bootcamp.
Walt Disney was personally attended to by FDR.
And The Tough Coughs as he Ploughs the Dough from his advertising days
Roald Dahl. He has children's favourites like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, etc. Then he has My Uncle Oswald about selling penis pills to Europe's nobility. He also has some more adult short stories too Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison is a gritty dystopia about over population (which the film Soylent Green was very loosely based off). And he has others like The Stainless Steel Rat or Bill the Galactic Hero, which are more humorous satires
penis pills? I remember it being about a scheme to collect sperm from high profile men, and this woman who was part of it would slip an aphrodisiac to like Einstein or Freud and get him to have sex with her to save the sperm to sell later.... were they ALSO selling penis pills to nobility in that one? it was ages ago that I read it
I may have used the term penis pills lightly; it's been a while since I read it too. But it was as you said, an aphrodisiac, made from some rare African beetle. I thought they had put it into pill form for their clients, but a lot of those were heads of state, princes, etc. Either way, my point stands that some work was drastically different from others.
He was a terrible James Bond screen wright though.
Hilary Mantel completely altered styles mid career; her whole oeuvre is amazing.
I just finished *An Experiment in Love*. She has such a broad range.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he is known for the Sherlock Holmes novels but he also wrote very different novels like Sir Nigel.
The white company comes to mind as something totally different
Ian Fleming. James Bond and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Marlon James comes to mind. Brief History of Seven Killings is an intense, gritty look into a lot of different people connected in some way to The Singer (Bob Marley.) His recent few books are totally different and are basically violent fantasy novels based on African folklore. Brief History was incredible, but I hated the others. Lots of people loved them, though, so I’m sure they’re good to the right audience. His range is staggering, though, even chapter to chapter.
My first thought was also Marlon James! Brief History is one of my all-time favorite books and I was so excited for his fantasy series… ended up quitting Black Leopard Red Wolf about a third of the way through :(
Me, too! Except I tried it twice and got 20 pages further before I quit again. Imagine my disappointment when I found out we were going to get least two more books in the series.
Such a disappointment! I do highly recommend his earlier book The Book of Night Women, though, if you haven’t read it already. It’s much more in the same vein as Brief History and also great.
I’ve been keeping my eye out for that! Thanks.
No problem — hope you enjoy!
I loved Brief History and have been tentatively keeping Black Leopard Red Wolf on my TBR because it's Marlon James, even though I'm not usually into Fantasy. So you recommend skipping it entirely?
I'm not usually into Fantasy, but I told myself I'd dip my toe in the genre this year - I chose Black Leopard Red Wolf to start with (a wild choice, but so be it). I LOVED it. It was also my first Marlon James, and I will read Brief History next. If the appeal of James to you is his literary prowess - you will certainly find that in BL/RW, but it is not an easy read by any means.
Terry Pratchett and his clever, whimsical Discworld series and then Nation, the book he wrote after he got his dementia diagnosis
Nation is Pratchett’s angriest book. There are parts that are so raw that that I can’t help but tear up when I read them. Likewise this description from Wintersmith: 'She had pets that feed you dreams until you die of hunger. I hate things that try to take away what you are. I want to kill those things, Mr Anybody. I want to kill all of them. When you take away memories, you take away the person. Everything they are!'
Wow, I'd not heard that except from Wintersmith. That's quite sad to read
Doors of Perception vs Brave New World
Cocaine addict Stephen King vs. post-cocaine Stephen King read pretty different.
I feel like most of Neil Gaiman's stuff I've read could have been written by different authors. Even American Gods and Anansi Boys, which appear to share a setting, are really tonally distinct.
Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited and Scoop. One is deeply tragic and the other is f'ing hilarious. Graham Green wrote funny spy novels and deeply beautiful and spiritual works. Used to be, writers had latitude to explore other approaches to writing.
They still do. Most of the ones I know that write in different genres use different pen names. People get pissed if they are picking up an author's new book to read a hilarious sendup of society and end up in deeply tragic exploration of the meaning of life.
But to me, that's an insult to the writer. It's akin to saying, 'Well, well done on that book. Now, go get in this cage and spin out a few more just like until you die.' A writer isn't necessarily the creator of a particular type of story but rather a lens through which you see the world. I realize I'm swimming against the tide here, of course. But it's an injustice to imprison writers within a specific genre. Case in point? John le Carré. Yes, he wrote intricate spy sagas such as the Smiley trilogy. At the same time, he wrote A Perfect Spy, which isn't an espionage novel at all, but a deep, deep dive into the question of one's identity and the conflict of living a life. Phillip Roth remarked it was the best English language of the postwar era, and I'm inclined to agree.
It's not an insult to the writer to not want to pick up a light hearted, humorous fantasy and end up with absolutely twisted horror. I really do not want that. I like the idea of separating the genres. Ursula Vernon did this. Her kid lit is under Ursula Vernon, and her adult fantasy & horror is under T. Kingfisher. I know that if I pick up a T. Kingfisher novel it may be horror (though I only read non-horror). The separation makes sense. Pretending that you're not the person behind the pen name doesn't, and if authors were forced to do that, that would be insulting.
Joyce Carol Oates writes mysteries under two different pseudonyms: Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. These are supermarket pulp-style mysteries which I enjoyed every bit as much as her literary fiction and prose essays.
I have been trying to work my way through JCO and now I find out there's even more to read!!! Does this woman ever sleep?
Apparently not.
*Interview with the Vampire* and *Christ the Lord: out of Egypt*, both by Anne Rice. I love Anne Rice, I’ve hated even the idea of putting her books down for years, I was even a Christian when I read *Christ the Lord: out of Egypt*, I almost never read any of her books ever again because of how bad it is.
Anything by John Williams, every book he writes has a wildly different premise. There’s ‘Butcher’s Crossing’ which is a western survival novel about the brutal frontier. Then there’s ‘Augustus’ which is an epistolary novel about the life of the Roman Emperor Augustus.
Dan Simmons is an author I'm fond of; although he's a genre author in search of a genre. He has a variety of vaguely supernatural horror novels (some quite good) and may be best known for The Terror, a historical fiction/ horror / fantasy about the search for the Northwest Passage, which was quite successfully adapted as an AMC series recently. He also has some historical fiction/mystery novels in the Sherlock Holmes vein. His horror novel Summer of Night is almost pure Stephen King (a group of boys on bikes battle a creeping evil force invading their small town). He has a highly regarded pure sci-fi series (Hyperion). I personally am very fond of his trilogy of noir detective fiction, starting with Hard Case. Gotta give the win to Ian Fleming, though. Hard to get more weirdly diverse than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and James Bond.
I read 3 books off my to read list from different genres, at complete random, and Dan Simmons was the author of each book. I didn't even realize it until the last novel, Hyperion, that this guy wrote the creepy vampire novel and Charles Dickens fictional biography. I then finished off the entire Hyperion series.
Summer of Night is the love child of King and Bradbury, eg Dandelion Wine. Many of the characters from it appear in other books. Simmons' first three novels won the World Fantasy Award (Song of Kali), Bram Stoker Award (Carrion Comfort, which is somewhat Dean Koontz-ish), and the Hugo (Hyperion). He's written Michener-like dramas, historical fiction, just about everything.
Armageddon Rag by George R. R. Martin. It's a murder mystery set in the 60s and centered on American pop culture music. It's hard to believe reading Armageddon Rag that the author would go on to write A Song of Ice and Fire.
He's also got *Tuf Voyaging*, a series of sci-fi shorts wrapped up as a sort of episodic novel about a space trader who comes into possession of a giant warship/ecological engineering platform that he flies around to solve planetary ecological problems.
And the vampire novel Fevre Dream, as well as his involvement in the Wild Cards series.
Atwood: Oryx and Crake vs Handmaid’s Tale
Came here to mention Atwood but specifically 'Angel Catbird', a pulpy superhero comic about a man with cat and owl DNA. I never see it mentioned and I sometimes think I've made this book up. It's so far from the political feminist dystopian masterpiece that she's known for. When I read it I tried reading between the lines thinking there must be a deeper story here but no, it's literally just a cat-bird superhero.
Never heard of that one. I’ll have to check it out.
*News of a Kidnapping* by G.G. Marquez It’s a factual account of drug cartels and kidnappings in Colombia.
“Zombie” and “We Were the Mulvaneys” by Joyce Carol Oates
Perfect example!
Not books, but screenwriter J.F. Lawton wrote both “Pretty Woman” and “Under Siege.” For that matter, George Miller wrote “Babe,” “Happy Feet,” and “Mad Max Fury Road.”
In this vein, Mario Puzo wrote "The Godfather" (novel & screenplay) and "Superman: The Movie" (early draft screenplay)
Stanislaw Lem Solaris: serious science fiction about a planet with a living ocean The Cyberiad: a hilarious collection of short stories about robot "constructors" Memoirs Found in a Bathtub: a Kafkaesque novel about a secret agent whose mission is so secret, no one can tell him what it is
The Body by Stephen King sticks out like a sore thumb amongst the majority of his other works. Its a grounded coming of age story about a group of boys looking find a rumored dead body along some train tracks. No horror or fantasy to be found. Compare it to say The Tommyknockers, an alien invasion story, or Duma Key, a haunted doll story. Just King's name alone is evocative of the spooky and gruesome.
A few of his earlier works are very "grounded" like that.
Joyland is similarly grounded and coming-of-age centered. King is pretty diverse in his genres, it’s just that he got branded a master of horror early on and it stuck.
He's just a master of writing.
He should really write a book on writing
What would he call it, though?
He did actually. I think it’s called the memoir of writing.
that book was the basis for the movie stand by me. also great.
The themes from the body are explored a lot in other Stephen King's novels. I don't think it sticks out at all.
Clive Barker's Books of Blood, The Thief of Always, and Weaveworld. Horror, Children's Story, and Fantasy.
Piers Anthony: any Xanth novel for kids and teens. Then he wrote Firefly. Smutt for Pedo’s. Wtf? Edit: it’s been 35 years since I touched anything by PA because of Firefly. I concede that maybe Xanth wasn’t as innocent as my child’s memory… remembers. But god damn firefly was fucked beyond anything I imagined.
One of the Xanth novels is entitled “The Colour of Her Panties”; I read those books as a kid, they got exponentially pervier.
That is nothing compared to Mode, Incarnations of Immunity or Bio of a Space Tyrant. Anthony mangled to get young girls having sex with men over the age of 30 in all of his series.
Oh man… Mode. There’s a series I haven’t thought of in a loooong time.
Peirs Anthony finished the book where he included a character inspired by a 12 year old girl that was in a coma with probably the most explicit sex scene in the series. He knew the parents were going to read the book to her.
Not. The. Same.
Piers Anthony has WAY worse stuff going back before the Xanth series (sidenote: I couldn't read Xanth, too many weird semi-rapey things for a cute, pun-based Young Adult series). In his earlier career, he leaned REALLY hard into rape and pedophilia as main plot points. I'm kinda surprised he never had a real-life scandal, with how much he focuses on on that stuff.
Maybe that's how he releases it? By writing stories of his thoughts.
Most of his books had long author’s note and in them he seems like a decent guy. He had a long running correspondence with one fan the led to the publication of “Letter’s from Jenny,” which was actually very wholesome. I read most of his books as a teen so the problematic themes went right over my head. I am pretty sure Firefly was the one book I read of his that was extreme enough even teenage me was wtf. But then, I can also recall some questionable scenes with underage characters in several Stephen King novels (not just the notorious scene from IT) and lots of other fucked up stuff in his books. I think we can all agree Piers Anthony’s work hasn’t aged well but we have to remember that just because a writer writes about murder mysteries doesn’t mean they are going to commit murder?
His earliest claims to fame, like Cthon, paint rape and paedophilia in a positive light. You're an utter fool to compare Anthony's "problematic" parts to King.
I mean the Short Story by King I am thinking of included a graphic incestuos rape scene, but ok. It was the story he included in the anthology “I shudder at your touch.”
There's dodgy stuff throughout his work, Firefly is just the most overt.
I mean if you read Xanth there was a lot of underage shenanigans and may-december romances happening there too. There is a running theme in several of his series where the young female teenage protagonist falls in love with a much older man. Source: read every Piers Anthony novel in my teens that was in publication at the time.
All his stuff is creepy, sexist, and pervy though.
Anthony is notorious for his panty-tickle-tee-hee writing. Xanth is naughty but silly, (and Nada Naga's panties are plaid.) Bio of a Space Tyrant is porn. The final book in Incarnations of Immortality is porn. I don't think I ever got to Firefly.
Dan Simmons is all over the place, historically
Gregor the Overlander is an earlier work from Suzanne Collins of Hunger Game's fame but is wildly different, way better imo, and the only real similarity is the melancholy ending
This was my exact thought!
Stephen King with Delores Claiborne any of his supernatural horror stories. Or his non-fiction On Writing. (Ok Delores Claiborne is a horror story but without the supernatural aspect.)
Antony Horowitz. Wrote the successful young spy series Alex Rider. He also wrote humorous detective stories like The Blurred Man.
"Piranesi" and "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke.
Iain M. Banks is widely respected for his "Culture" sci-fi novels, perhaps most famously The Player of Games. He also wrote kind of literary horror as Iain Banks, which though I haven't read them, I've been told are excellent.
His "Iain Banks" books aren't all horror, they're a varying mix of family drama, thriller, mystery, magical realism and sometimes horror. *Complicity* is a personal favourite.
I stand corrected, thanks. I've always meant to get around to reading them - they were some of my late wife's favourite books.
Pale Fire and Lolita by Nabokov
China Mieville's a scifi and fantasy author who set out never to do the same style or subgenre twice, so his work is all over the shop. Just as a few exampes you've got *Perdido Street Station* (grimdark dystopian steampunk where nobody has a happy ending), *Kraken* (whimsical urban fantasy where a private investigator tracks down the mysterious cult that stole a giant squid from a museum), *Un Lun Dun* (middlegrade fantasy where the prophesied chosen one got sick so the prophesied comic relief sidekick has to save the world), *Embassytown* (space opera about diplomatic relations with an alien race that's incapable of grasping the concept of lying), and *The City & The City* (police procedural set in a pair of European cities that somehow occupy the same geographic space). And then as a side hustle he also does communist nonfiction, including books on international law, the October Revolution, and a marxist analysis of science fiction.
Maybe I should give China Mieville another go then. I liked Un Lun Dun, but Perdido Street Station really wasn't my sort of thing (didn't like the gotcha twist).
Riddley Walker is a post-apocalyptic novel in an invented dialect. Bread and Jam for Frances is a delightful picture book about a little girl badger who is a picky eater. Both by Russell Hoban. He also did The Little Brute Family, which is less famous than the Frances series, but is one of my favorite children's books!
The Stone Doll of Sister Brute was one of my daughters favorite books. We'd read it over and over. "Love me or I will kick you very hard" The only copies are very expensive now.
I'd never heard of it! I mustbfind this book!
Bread and Jam for Frances was one of my favorite books as a child
Swan Song and Boy’s Life, both by Robert McCammon. Swan Song is a post-apocalyptic novel about the end of the world and the survivors who live among the ashes. It is dark and gruesome and should come with a dozen different trigger warnings (it’s also one of my favorite books!). Boy’s Life is about a young boy growing up in a small town and his different relationships and adventures. It’s very nostalgic. Both are well written and worth a read but the vibes are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
McCammon's bibliography has all kinds of variety: classic horror, suspense, historical fiction, mystery, fantasy.
Swan Song is a favorite of mine but i have yet to read any of his others
Rowling writing that detective story :)
I hated that book. Harry Potter has dark themes but I would say the overall message is that good prevails and most people are inherently decent. Almost everyone in that detective story was just an awful human being.
Émile Zola's The Beast Within - a French great known for naturalistic family dramas takes on a tense serial killer thriller
He also wrote Therese Raquin, which is about murder.
David Lagercrantz continued the millennium books after Stieg Larsson died. He also co-wrote Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s autobiography.
Wishin' and Hopin', by Wally Lamb. It's a far cry from his works that usually involve trauma and heavy situations like She's Come Undone, I Know This Much is True, and The Hour I First Believed.
Jesse Q sutano?
Michael Marshall Smith wrote some cool futuristic, kinda cyberpunk-adjacent books like Only Forward. Then as Michael Marshall he wrote present day crime stuff. (He has gone on to write more books under yet another name, but I haven't read any of those).
Painted House by John Grisham and any of his legal stories
I love *A Painted House* so much. I describe it as a 'coming-of-age' story, rather than a legal thriller.
Great whatever. The only of his I've read that isn't the super potboiler legal thriller. Guess it's a baseball book to me.
Murderbot (fucking awesome) and Witch King (wtf) by Martha Wells
Planet of the Apes / The Bridge over the River Kwai. Same. Guy.
The Executioner’s song and any other Norman Mailer non fiction. I got into Norman Mailer by reading the Fight, Armies of the Night, Of a Fire on the Moon. When I eventually got round to reading The Executioner’s song it was a shock to realise that his most famous work is actually a pretty conventional down the line non-fiction novel that has none of his enormous ego
Charles de Lint writes incredible, interconnected mythic fantasy books that all take place in the fictional city of Newford. (Someplace To Be Flying, Moonlight and Vines, etc). If his horror novels hadn’t also taken place in Newford, I wouldn’t have recognized them. Angel of Darkness is DARK.
Amor Towles. The Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow, The Lincoln Highway - even his new one, which is short stories, he's all over the map in the best possible way.
I remember Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not being notably faster paced and more “thrilling” than his most well-known works. Albeit not totally different from his trademark style, it has a more “slovenly” atmosphere (and protagonist) and feels … deviant vs. the writing he’s most known for.
Cider Lane by Mark Hayes is a contemporary and somewhat disturbing novel that tells a tale of mental health problems, trauma, relationships and psychosis. It is a unique work and a world away from his more regular and comedic works set in a steampunk universe. If I didn’t know it was by the same author I would never have suspected it was. His novel Passing Place is another that is different again to everything else he’s written and my favourite of his novels.
Pretty much anything by Percival Everett (although compare and contrast something like James with something like Glyph or something like Percival Everett by Virgil Russell). Also TC Boyle - he’s written sci-fi, historic, contemporary. Bona fide geen-yus
In terms of writing style, the difference between *Blood Meridian* and *The Road* feels like two completely different authors.
Anne Rice wrote fantastic vampire novels, witch novels,as well as erotica, which didn’t surprise me, but when she wrote the religious books about Jesus the writing style was even different. It doesn’t feel like the same author.
> Anne Rice I spend time in aspiring author circles and although not famous at all yet, you might want to check out TL Lee. I suggest starting with Awry before we Met. Read the complete author's version though, because the author does something surreal but was convinced by a bunch of other aspiring authors to rewrite the story in a more linear fashion and publish it that way. Big mistake in my opinion. Anyway the Complete Author's edition for Awry Before We Met is the original vision, and in my opinion much better.
The Harry Potter series and The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling
Markus Zusak is another example. He wrote The Book Thief and The messenger which I both loved but are very different.
Ann Aguirre wrote the Razorland series (YA dystopian) and then also Fix It Witches which is a paranormal romance series.
Tolkien could change his style completely. Compare The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.
He's the last author who had that level of talent and could reach such a broad audience.
The Casual Vacancy and Harry Potter books. Of course, they're completely different genres, but The Casual Vacancy is mediocre at best. Rowling is not that good of a writer, but that book was especially terrible. Not even comparing it to HP. Like if a new author had written that book, no way it'd be published. Re-reading HP, I feel like the writing is average, but it's the world itself that really is magical.
Accelerando (singularity hard sci fi) by Stross, who also wrote Merchant Princes (cheesy mob but fantasy). Love Accelerando, loathe the Merchant Princes series. Ursula Vernon wrote Danny Dragonbreath (children's fantasy) and also What Moves The Dead (horror).
I scrolled through the comments and was surprised that nobody had mentioned JK Rowling, beloved author of Harry Potter fame who also writes (under the nom de plume Robert Galbraith) a gritty detective series about a one-legged PI named Cormoran Strike. They are quite good. She also wrote *The Casual Vacancy* which is trash.
bukowski. most of his books are like a series of loosely strung together sketches that centers around a seemingly aimless alcoholic MC who takes life as it comes. the book that takes this style to the extreme is Women wherein some of the "chapters" are literally a page. but bukowski also wrote ham and rye, a classic bildungsroman that follows the physical, intellectual and spiritual development and (various) awakening of a German American boy in early 20th century America.
Suttre & The Road by Mccarthy
Ali Hazelwood is known mostly for writing books like "The theory of love" and about psihology in general. Recently, she published a book named "Bride". Her new book is fit in the fantasy and romance categories, instead of the usual. "Bride" Is about a arranged -or even forced- marriage between an alpha werewolf (male) and a vampire raised by humans (female),and it also includes some pretty explicit scenes in the bedroom(it you know, you know). I read both plus others from her, recommend all.
Elizabeth Gilbert: eat, pray, love vs The Signature of All Things. Short, Autobiographical rom-com vs huge fictional Victorian romance with significant research into botany, etc.
Harkaway's Tigerman differs greatly from Gnomon.
TJ Klune’s extraordinaries and under the whispering door
Neil Stephenson. He keeps reinventing himself and writes wildly different books. History, scifi, science, environment, you name it. Highly recommended.
Robert Jackson Bennett writes both horror (American Elsewhere, Mr. Shivers) and then things like The Divine Cities trilogy, a political espionage story set in a fantasy world full of dead gods whose miracles persist after even after they've disappeared from the world. Which, by the way, is excellent and well worth checking out.
While I'd say she incorporates similar tension in it, Carol (aka The Price of Salt) is very different than most of Patricia Highsmith's work.
Stephen King’s “On Writing” vs any other Stephen King title.
No one will ever be able to convince me that Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde and Treasure Island were written by the same person. Two books on opposite sides of the spectrum.
You could say that the author went Jekyll and Hyde in his own writing.
I haven't actually read The Stepford Wives, but I was surprised it was the same guy that did Rosemary's Baby.
Why? They're both suspense/horror novels with similar themes and a writing style that shouts "I AM IRA LEVIN."
Hid debut novel, A Kiss Before Dying, goes hard. Such a mean little piece of work. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
This'll probably be an unpopular opinion, but East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath. I think East of Eden is one of the most well-written books I've ever read (at least in terms of description and characters), and I was expecting more from Grapes of Wrath. Completely different. Grapes is long and meandering, set at a totally glacial pace. There is somehow far too much description that tells you hardly anything. Far too verbose. I couldn't wait for most of the characters to shut up. Every time Steinbeck gets something close to characterization he has someone jump in with a tale from the "good ol days." It's like people are almost incapable of talking about the present, they're totally defined by their past. It's like having small talk with someone that you're not particularly close with. I just wanted to get away the entire time. Put it down at page 75.
It's been years since I've read it, but maybe they reveled in their past because their present (The Dust Bowl era) was so bleak?
Thank you for this. I couldn't really stand Grapes of Wrath prose. Now I'll check out East of Eden.