Stephen King. Maya Angelou. Basically, if you can find a half-dozen books by the author in Goodwill, that's an author worth avoiding. You won't find Harlan Ellison or Spider Robinson there

Upvote for Spider Robinson! I never see him mentioned here.

Anything post crazy (into pedo) Heinlein.

Terry Goodkind

Anyone who hates on books by Stephen King or Maya Angelou is worth ignoring. Just can't trust them if they won't recognize genius.

I don't know, I'd like to think that I have a pretty open mind. Sure, someone hypothetically comes to me and says "Hey fella, I'd recommend reading Mein Kampf." I'll probably tune out what they say.

But that's like, the obvious transgressive answer. If someone is genuinely making an effort to share something with me that they love, I think that effort deserves to be encouraged and rewarded with real consideration. Even if I don't end up reading whatever novel they recommend (it's incredibly rare for me to read non-fiction) I feel like I owe it to them to at least look into it. As someone who is generally very closed-off and private, I can appreciate the effort it takes to open yourself up even a little bit and share something that you enjoy. It makes you vulnerable and opens up a path to rejection. Of course, rejecting of a thing you like isn't rejection of you, but it can still hurt. A paper cut isn't much damage, but it still hurts.

I think a more positive version of this question is "is there a book or author suggestion that makes you immediately trust a person's recommendations?" For example, if someone recommended me a Clifford Simak novel, I'd want to spend some time with that person.

Edit: Upon rereading your post, I may have misinterpreted. This isn't really about the personal level, is it? It's more about recommendations and lists from social media users. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

"That Ayn Rand was a visionary."

Nope.

Banned from publishing history for being equalist.

Brandon Sanderson.

>Is there a book/author that you see on recommendations (be it on TikTok, Reddit, Goodreads, etc) which immediately makes you want to skip the entire list?

No. There is nobody in the world whose taste in books matches up with mine 100%, so any list of sufficient length is bound to have some stinkers. As long as the genre/topic interests me, there are likely to be some winners too.

None. Why would I judge someone over who they read? It’s their business. And those downvotes prove just what absolute snobs readers can be.

That’s the dumbest take. Being at goodwill is not an indicator of quality

Totally agree with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Blake Crouch is the one for me. Incredibly interesting plots, not good writing.

And now that I've read some of the other comments, let's throw in Stephen King, James Patterson, or basically any author that pushes out a book a year.

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Colleen Hoover. I'm sorry, had to be said.