I explain to them in detail how bad Eragon is (it usually is Eragon) and they get a bit huffy until I hand them ASOIAF, Locke Lamora, or even a Tad Williams, and ask them to try that and compare. This is rarer now because everyone knows pretty quickly that I like fantasy/sci fi.

Because I can't keep my trap shut I can be too vehement about this and people really do get huffy.

Although I hit a stumbling block with a friend who likes Erikson, whereas I can't read Erikson at all because the writing is awful, the pacing's terrible and I just hate it. I don't get the popularity. She didn't like GGK though, so whenever we meet we have a pretty spirited debate about these things (Harry Potter vs The Dark Is Rising our most recent) and to an extent it is all swings and roundabouts.

If it gets them into fantasy it can't be all bad though. My first forray into non-Tolkien fantasy was Goodkind, after all. Thank god for that Legends anthology, wouldn't have known there was a wider range of stuff out there!