Orwell’s Room 101 from his iconic novel 1984 is possibly the very worst and most feared place in the whole of literature, bringing to life your very deepest fears and forcing you to live them. It’s basically a really horrible place to be, so where better to send the authors that irk you. We asked, if given the choice, which author you would send to Room 101 and based on your votes we have a top 10!
Here’s your literary Room 101, and some of your reasons why!
E. L James
Our overwhelming winner is E. L James for 50 Shades of Grey, with most of you wishing you could dump both the author and the book series in your Room 101.
Related:
Ayn Rand
Also accruing a great deal of your votes and ire is Ayn Rand, for her political stance, her misdirected all-knowingness and for somehow thinking she is enlightened when she clearly is not.
Related:
Dan Brown
In third place for repetitive plot structures and for using the same story in every book is Dan Brown. This author is always a divider for you lot, you either love him or hate him.
Stephen King
For overlengthiness and for turning what we’re sure are wonderful stories into unreadable tomes is Stephen King. I have to say he’s my own choice, I don’t know how movies I love so much can start out life as books I can’t read!
Related:
Review – Doctor Sleep
Review – Under the Dome
Review – Revival
J. D. Salinger
For Catcher in the Rye and for the obnoxious Holden Caulfield, Salinger is a choice for many of you for Room 101. I can’t say I disagree!
Related:
Salinger Quotes on Life
Review – For Esme with Love and Squalor
Review – The Catcher in the Rye
Jeffrey Archer
For writing trash and for barely being worthy of the title author is what one commenter said when putting Archer in Room 101.
Charles Dickens
Dickens is in for weak and weedy characters and for being boringly unreadable. Now hang on a minute!
Related:
Quiz: What the Dickens
10 Charles Dickens Quotes for Hard Times
7 Facts about Dickens and his pet raven
James Patterson
James Patterson is in for dull writing aimed at the mass market and for letting down his own standards by his often released bog standard writings.
Related:
Veronica Roth
For breaking the hearts of all the fans who had invested so much in Allegiant.
George R. R. Martin
Do you think he’d write faster if he was faced with his worst fear (which is possibly the internal fear that he himself won’t be able to finish). Pressure, much?
Related:
Review – A Game of Thrones
Quiz: Will you survive Martin’s Pen of Death?
So that’s it, the ten authors you’d put in Room 101. Are we mean? Yeah probably but there you go.
Who would you put in Room 101? We even had a suggestion for Orwell himself! Let us know in the comments.
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Charles dickens? Maybe you should go to an author you can appreciate like Stein or Seuss
Authors that “ire” me you say? Authors that use “ire” as a verb for one!
And J K Rowling – but only because she thrice used the clause “span around” in one of the HP tomes.
You’ve got Dan Brown and Dickens – but I’d lock away Dickens for clunky coincidence as a plot staple.
Ronald H. Balson, Saving Sophie for his line “the sky was Dodge Blue” and this a depiction of a NY sky. No where in the book was baseball ever mentioned. Also his character descriptions were rather trite.
Dodge is also a make of car, and the blue Dodge is a particular shade, so maybe that’s what he was suggesting? Though it is a little too narrow a reference for most people to get it.
Don’t agree with King being on here, if only because I can’t trust someone who thinks the movies of his books are good, but the books themselves are bad. Sure, they start out so slow that I want to throw the book down and weep, but it’s like a rollercoaster– can’t have the fun drop in pace without a bit of an incline to start with.
Dickens and Oscar Wilde for it appears the reason why they are so boring is because they repeatedly said the same thing many times when publishers paid by the word not by the work itself
Get yer own collective ass into Room 101 for putting Charles Dickens on the same list with James Patterson and Dan Brown…