Timewaster's Guide Archive
Departments => Books => Topic started by: Mr_Pleasington on October 28, 2002, 12:16:53 AM
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Pretty quiet in here of late. Thought I'd spark some interest to see what you all have been reading of late.
Here's my list:
1) If Chins Could Talk: Bruce Campbell. My personal hero writes one of the most entertaining books I've read in years. Not thought provoking, but certainly a lot of fun and a great look at low-budget movie production. I churned through this baby in one sitting.
2)Lovecraft. Autumn just feels like the right time to read from his classics, especially with Halloween right around the corner.
3)I Am Legend: Richard Matheson. I finally got to cross this off of me "To be read" list. A great story that provokes a good amount of thought.
That's about it right now. I'm thinking of picking up Ender's Game sometime soon as it's another one on my "To be read" list.
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I just picked up "Zen and the Art of Motercycle Maintenence" a couple weeks ago. It had been on my to-read list for a long time, since I'd had SO many people recommend it to me. Now I see why. The book is truly amazing. Personally, I think it should be required reading for the entire human race.
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I'm reading the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Mission Gamma books. I wonder if they'll make a new series?
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I've just started Tom Clancy's latest "Red Rabbit." Too soon to tell how good it will be, but I think it's funny that Clancy has had to go back in time to write more Jack Ryan books - none of his others sold nearly as well.
And, similar to Tage's, I just read The Magic of Conflict by Thomas Crum. It's practical philosophy extracted from Aikido. Very interesting stuff.
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well, i just finished reading the latest robin hobb book. and sometime im gonna start Albert Speer's biography. he was the guy in charge of the nazi armaments. fascinating book, from what ive heard - the guy wrote it while doing 20 years (21 precisely) in spandu.
oh and i keep on reading lovecrafts work every so often. it needs a certain mood. i use the website below : has all of his work absolutely free. there is no copyright on it BTW.
The H.P. Lovecraft online library (http://www.gizmology.net/lovecraft/works/)
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I'm reading The Little Friend by Donna Trott. It's about a 12-year-old girl in 1970's Mississippi who wants to take revenge on the guy she thinks killed her brother when she was only a baby. The writing is good, and each character has his or her own voice, but the plot seems to be meandering. I actually find myself having more sympathy for the evil redneck criminal family than for the spoiled, abrasive little girl trying to gain her revenge on them.
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I've got about four books going at once right now. I'm trying to plan my trip to Scotland, so I've got guidebooks, which I wouldn't put in as recommended reading unless you are going to Scotland, but the rest are interesting to a more general audience. ;D Just finished Sorceress, which is the sequel to Witch Child by Celia Rees, an interesting book about an English girl who flees the English civil war witch burnings only to land in among Puritans. The first book was great, the second book got tedious. And then the author broke faith with her readers--this good, faithful character throughout the whole book suddenly does something completely out of character. I was disgusted and disappointed. Yeah, it might happen in real life, but come on.
I'm also reading Sabriel by Garth Nix--again. I read them last year when we got a review copy at TLE of Lirael, which is the second book in the series--can't review the 2nd if I haven't read the first, I figured. Never did finish writing the review--but it was a pretty interesting book. Not the best, but good. I just found it in paperback, so I'm reading it again because I can't remember quite what happened.
And I have a couple on the shelf that I'll get to when I'm done with these. And I'm waiting for a few books to come in the mail on Scottish culture throughout history--I'm trying to retell a Scottish folktale, so maybe I should understand more about where the tale comes from. Hence the trip to Scotland. At least, that's my excuse. ;)
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I agree with you on Witch Child, but I still liked the book a lot. I haven't even seen Sorceress yet, but if it is out I will pick it up. I understand it doesn't follow the same character as Witch Child, but is still supposed to be a sequel. Would you rate it as better or worse that the first book?
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I'm reading 100 Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and I just finished Game of Thrones and intend to read Assassin's Apprentice, by Robin Hobb, next.
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umm I'm reading Suikoden 3 and just finished Kingdom hearts. ;D
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I have just started the Two Towers, just in time to have it down pat before the movie. Hoody-hoo!!
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I reread the entire LOTR trilogy (for about the 10th time) the summer before Fellowship came out. I don't want to read any of them too close to a movie release date because then I'll pick up on all the subtle (and blatant) changes, and that would bug me.
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That's what happened to my wife--she finished Fellowship about an half an hour before we went to the theater, and spent the whole movie pointing out all the inconsistencies. She's very excited for the special addition and the extra footage (especially the Lorien stuff).
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I actually went into the first movie not expecting it to be close to the books at all, and so I was very happily surprised by how consistent it actually WAS. Peter Jackson did make changes, but the changes helped with the flow of the film.
Oh, and if you really want to see the extended version dvd, by all means go and buy it. It is worth the price.
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I hadn't been reading much until Thanksgiving break, but my brother and I frequently use books to help us travel more easily on the roads and we did a lot of traveling on our way to Canada and back.
We started our selection this time with Starship Troopers. I'm not sure if I'd ever read Heinlein before or not, but his work was surprisingly good. Contrary to the nature of the cartoon show or (so says my brother) the recent movie, the book had almost nothing to do with the war against the Bugs. Any conflict in the story was really just a sideboard to bounce Heinlein's philosophy off, and I found it a very enjoyable read due to that. The only real bone I have to pick with his ideas was his assertion that everything worthy that humans do is based off their primitive survival instinct, an argument very similar to the one more common today that everything people do is selfish. While those ideas are hard to argue against and I'm not well-equipped enough to do so (we aren't taught much about that sort of thing in the CS department) I reject both concepts. Everything else, however, was insightful if not completely accurate. Anyway, we finished that one off. If anyone wants to borrow it, I'll try to get it back from my brother. It's probably still in his girlfriend's car.
After that we started reading Endgame, a new Battletech novel, but I haven't found anyone on the forum who has any experience with those, so there's not much to comment on. I'm curious to see how much they try to wrap up the entire storyline, however, in response to the totally revised Heroclix universe. It's difficult to see how they could just up and stop all the story threads they've built up to this point, but if they don't, the Battletech universe is going to have serious consistency issues soon.
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I've reread the lotr books, i'm about halfway through return of the king
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Starship Troopers is one of my favorite books...probably why I hated the movie so much. On that note, however, I recently heard that the DVD of Starship Troopers includes a director's commentary in the form of a scene by scene justification of why he did the movie the way he did it. Sounds pretty interesting.
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I haven't watched the movie, but given what I understand they did with it, that'd take some mighty justification. So far as I can tell, they took everything the book was about and made it something it entirely wasn't.
Having 5 users logged on at once is fun.
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I've been rereading Hugh Laurie's "The Gun Seller" which is both a smart and hilarious spy novel. You may remember Laurie from Wooster And Jeeves, Blackadder, etc.. I would recommend the book to almost anyone - so long as you can handle a little bad language - well, a lot of bad language.
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I've been rereading Walt Simonson's run on The Mighty Thor on the recommendation of my brother (which means that this probably belongs on the comic book thread) and I've been surprised at just how crappy they are. It is supposed to be the classic high point for the Thor character, but most of the plotlines are nice epic stories ruined by lame devices. First, Simonson introduces the lamest character in the history of Marvel comics - Beta Ray Bill. He dresses just like Thor and has a magic hammer with identical powers, but he's a horse-faced alien with a giant spaceship named Scuttlebutt. HUH?!?
Among the other travesties committed, Simonson has the Asgardian heroes invading Hel's realm using M-16s that they borrowed from the US army, and he turns Thor into a frog for four issues. A talking frog. It is just UNBELIEVABLY lame. Yet some people seem to think it's a landmark comic series. Anyone care to defend Thor? Because I just don't get it.
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Hey, my personal favorite rendition of thor was the cheesy barbarian in the live-action tv hulk movie some years ago. He was an arrogant, ignorant cuss who liked to drink himself silly, pick fights, and wench all night, and unlike the comic book version he didn't dress like an erotic dancer.
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My favorite Thor is a similar characterization of the character in Neil Gaiman's Sandman, where he is an arrogant, alcoholic womanizer and stone-stupid to boot. My favorite Thor line from Sandman (paraphrased):
"So when we woke in the morning, she asked my name. I told her I was Thor, and she said, 'You're thor? I'm tho thor I can hardly pith thtraight!'"
Hahaha! Maybe Mister Pleasington should use that for his signature line. Or this:
"They call me MISTER Pleasington!"
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How dare you bash Beta Ray Bill, KK! If it weren't for him and that future Thor we would have never seen the Thor Corps :)
That quote's pretty funny, but taken out of context it loses a lot.
Your second suggestion reminded me that in a few years I can say "The call me DOCTOR Pleasington!"
Sadly, I've never seen Mr. Tibbs.
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I can't say that I've read that particular run of Thor, but only because I could never get into the comic at all. I've always considered it the weakest of Marvel's headliners, and possibly the weakest of their backburner schlock. But maybe I'm just being unfair.
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Right now I am reading a book called Fighting Monsters. it is a non-fiction bookk explaining why it is important for small children to be able to identify with violent protagonists (such as comic-book superheroes) and to act out their fantasies in aggressive play. It's fascinating as all hell. Just thought I'd share my two bits.
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I've been reading Stephen Ambrose's "The Wild Blue" about the B-24 crews of WW2. For those of you who don't know, Ambrose is basically credited with the current revival of interest in WW2 - he has written dozens of books, including Band of Brothers, he started the official U.S. D-Day Museum about fifteen years ago (in Louisiana for some odd reason), he was the historical consultant on Saving Private Ryan, etc... Also, for those of you who don't know, "The Wild Blue" is the book that he was accused of plagarism for. I've heard both sides of the argument and I don't know quite what I think.
However, I would like to say that despite all of this guy's credentials, he is a really awful writer. I don't mean that the stories are boring (they're non-fiction anyway), but he can't even put a paragraph together.
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Back to Witch Child--just saw someone's question from 2 months ago--I think the 1st book is definitely better than the 2nd. The second is the one I think that broke faith with the reader. It does follow a different character, but it goes back in time to the first, so that's fine, but the things the first character does are just dumb. The first book was better, storywise, in my opinion.
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Right now I am reading "Dying for Action" (no, it isn't about a Star Trek fans fruitless search for some lovin') which details the life and films of Jackie Chan. Way cool stuff, to be sure. And on a related note, the sequel to Shanghi Noon will soon be hitting theaters. it will be called Shanghai Knights and the two heroes of the old west will find themselves in London. I am sooo there.
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Desperate Star Trek Fans?! ???
Is there anything but a Desperate Star Trek Fan?! ;)
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I have just started reading Perdido Street Station by China Meiville and I am enjoying it immensely. It sort of reminds me of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (another must-read book).
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I started Perdido Street Station, but couldn't get into it. Maybe I was blinded by the "free WFC book" stigma. I've heard very good things about Mieville, though, and the setting of Perdido was certainly intriguing. Maybe I'll give it another go one of these days.
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I just finished Pratchett's "The Last Hero," with lots of pretty pictures and such. It was very interesting, and avoided whatever it is about his books that makes we not like the first 100 pages. I wasn't terribly pleased with some of the wrap-up at the end, and I don't hink Captain Carrot's character was at all consistent with his other books, but on the whole I liked it a lot.
I think I've finally identified the main thing that bothers me about Pratchett--95% of his characters are just archetypes, or even stereotypes. Rincewind, for example, is a coward, and that's all there is--his cowardice is funny, I admit, but there's no layers underneath it. Leonard is defined by his cleverness, Carrot is defined by his sincerity, etc. They are all very good archetypes, and their interplay is amusing, but I keep expecting something else.
Perhaps that is why I like the City Guard books more than the others (the witch books and the wizard books and all of that): Vimes is more or less the only character who doesn't exist solely as a character trait with legs.
As a pre-emptive defense against Pratchett fans, let me assure you that I like the books in general, and that I like the City Guard books a lot. But my approval has conditions, and you're the lucky audience I choose to express them to.
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Well oddly enough I'm reading Dreamcatcher. And I have to read Life on Mango Street for english class. Guess thats all I have here...
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Well let's see my reading list---
Clinical Opthamalogy
Binocular Vision
Will's Eye Disease Manual
And lots and lots of notes.
I can't wait until I actually have some time to do some free reading.
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EYE can SEE from Mr. P's reading list that he is a man of great VISION and inSIGHT.
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Mr. P, you should enroll in a program like mine. My pleasure reading and reading for class are one and the same, mainly. This week's reading: Harry Potter #1, Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones, Dealing with Dragons (a very silly stupid book), and Bed-Knob and Broomstick. Also every book Russell Freedman ever wrote. Well, not quite, but close. And every book on Rosa Parks.
That's just this week.
So far this semester for my fantasy class, I've read:
Wizard of Earthsea (which I'm ashamed to say I'd never read before)
Elske by Cynthia Voight
Tom's Midnight Garden by Phillippa Pearce (another I should have discovered as a child)
The Golden Compass
The Hobbit (again)
Winnie-the-Pooh
The Indian in the Cupboard
The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Pope (another I should have discovered as a teen because I would have appreciated it more then)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (again)
The Wonderful Wizard of OZ
Peter Pan
Redwall
Hitty, Her First Hundred Years (story of a doll, quite annoying. Something my grandmother, who collects dolls, would have loved at the age of 9)
Charlotte's Web
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (VERY good, a retelling of Cinderella)
The Magic Circle (anything by Donna Jo Napoli is good)
Hans Christian Anderson's tales
Five Children and It by E. Nesbit (very Victorian)
Mary Poppins
Artemis Fowl
The Wind in the Willows....
and so on.
That's just for Fantasy/SF. The nonfiction class assigns about 5-8 books a week. At least in fantasy it's only 3 to 4. But they're all good books, usually.
Sheesh! I need to get some sleep. I've developed this strange eye-twitch from all the reading....
On the bright side, Russell Freedman will be in class on Wed. He wrote the Lincoln photobiography that won the Newbery in 1988, and several other well-written biographies, including Confucius, Babe somebody, Eleanor Roosevelt, and a history of the Declaration of Independence. He's got a book on the Bill of Rights in press now.
Anybody read Feed yet? If you have don't tell me about it, but I'll be reading it for class in a couple weeks and would love to discuss it later. It's gotten a bit of acclaim this year too, though I can't remember if it won the Newbery or an honor or what.
P.S.--upcoming reading in fantasy for next week: The Borrowers, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tuck Everlasting, and Neil Gaimon's Coraline. All except the last are books I read as a kid; will be interesting to read them with an adult's eyes. Anyone read Coraline?
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I almost took a fantasy class in undergrad, but biology kept my plate kinda full. The only really fun elective I took was my Serial Killers Class.
Sadly, there are no fantasy book classes in optometry school.
Some dare to dream though.
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I haven't read Coraline, but I want to--Gaiman was at WFC last year and talked about it (and his other upcoming books) quite a bit.
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I read Coraline, and I liked it well enough to give it to my sister for Christmas. I wouldn't have thought he could do it, but Neil Gaiman managed to nail the multi-level approach on the first try, creating a story that intrigues kids and frightens adults. Neil came to Salt Lake City recently and did a reading from Coraline that was outstanding - it only takes an afternoon or two to read, and it's really worth it. Neil's other recent novel, American Gods, is a little more of a time investment, but is just as rewarding. Last year, it won the Hugo (best sci-fi novel), the Locus (best fantasy novel), AND the Bram Stoker (best horror novel.)
I just finished Atonement, the latest novel by Booker Prize-winner Ian McEwan, and it’s excellent. I also recently enjoyed Fast Food Nation, Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf), and Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole). And I can give a big thumbs-up to The Borrowers - classics!
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Kilowatt? What are you doing on the forum--I thought you were on a perilous cross-country journey seeking to calm the raging beast within.
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Kilowatt? What are you doing on the forum--I thought you were on a perilous cross-country journey seeking to calm the raging beast within.
No, actually - I'm three weeks away from graduating from law school. Then I'm going on that perilous cross-country journey (i.e. brother-in-law's Catholic wedding in Omaha.) And then I can settle into a low-key routine of bar exam prep! I'll probably go back to my two-reviews-a-week routine then, unless it turns out that the bar exam is hard.
To keep some semblance of on-topicness here, I've read some really good comics (or "graphic serials" or *snicker* "adventure magazines") lately: Lucifer (the Sandman spinoff on Vertigo) is very good - I read the whole run so far in a single sitting. I'm also enjoying Queen and Country immensely - it's a very-realistic British espionage comic that just keeps getting better (as the artists continue to draw the protagonist's bosom progressively larger.) So there's your obligatory "book" content.
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Right now I am re-reading the Red Dwarf novels. I just finished Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and am about to start Better Than Life. I read them some eight years ago and I have no clue what I did with the books, but since I am planning on running a Red Dwarf game in the possible future, I am once more on a Red Dwarf kick. The novels are well done. A quick read, but sly and humorous enough to hold your attention.
Speaking of Red Dwarf, I never saw season 8 (the latest one to date). Can anybody give me a brief synopsis?
And I don't care what anybody else thinks; I LIKE the term "Adventure Magazines." So THERE!
:o 8) ::)
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i'm reading the wheel of time books, they're quite good.
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I finished the first and started the second, but I couldn't get more than forty or so pages into it.
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It took me six months to read 100 pages of Eye of the World. It was at that point that I realized I shouldn't even try. I don't care HOW long the book is, if it can't get me in 100 pages, it doesn't deserve a chance for the next 100.
Currently I'm reading Unknown Armies (Atlas Games' horror/cult/insanity rpg. There are good and bad. I'll post a review. I'm also running through the "T20" version of Traveller. ehn. I don't think d20 works very well for hard sci-fi, but they've worked it out pretty well so far, even if there is a lot of missing info.
On the non-game side, I read about 10% of McLuhan's Understanding Media today. I think it's going to bear reading, but I don't think it's what i'm looking for right now (for reasons I won't reveal now). So I was going to turn my attention to Wright's Comic Book Nation but that will be good for another project itself. So it looks like I'm turning back to the llama book and Harry Potter adn the Goblet of Fire.
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i've read the first three and am half way through 4. Apart from some annoying LOTR similarities they're really good
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I quite WoT after I read book 4. It started out good, but it was just getting tedious by then. Jordan seemed to have lost the ability to move a plot forward.
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ive got, and read, the first 9 WoT books. I keep on eyeing book 10 in the bookstore.
So sue me.
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I've been a WoT fan since about 93 or 94, but with each new book I get more disgusted. He's dragging it out. I still haven't finished book 10, which I borrowed, and I have a feeling that if I skip right on to book 11 (which, of course, will take three years to get published), I wouldn't miss anything. Too much yapping and not enough actually happening.
He did such a good job at the beginning of creating good characters and moving the plot along, but he's just tied himself into knots lately, adding all these stupid minor characters that no one cares about and no longer focusing on the original main characters. It took him four chapters in book 10 to describe one morning of Perrin's life in which nothing happened. Nothing. Zilch. Sheesh!
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wow, that's bad, i thought they'd get more exciting as it went on. How many books are there, i've got 1 - 9
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So far, 10. The most recent one is called Crossroads of Twilight. And who knows how long he'll drag it out. I'm hoping for a quick, clean ending in book 11. Come on, no series can hold out longer than that, can it? But I still want to know how it ends, and if he can really pull these threads together--the ones I care about, at least, which he seems to have lost interest in (what's going on with Moiraine? etc).
I did like Jordan's style of writing, to begin with. I guess it's the same with any series, though--what's fresh and inventive in the first book is stale in later books. He seems to be creating one mega-woman character and one mega-man character, slapping them all down on the page, and making minor changes in appearance, so that they're all the same at the end of the series, where they were different people at the beginning--they're all suspicious, they won't TALK TO EACH OTHER.
How much easier would all their lives be if they simply decided to have a correlation meeting once a week? "So, Egwene, how's the siege going?" "Great, Rand, how's that cleansing of saidin going?" etc. Unity these characters ain't got. It occurs to me that the Forsaken were more organized in earlier books, as far as communication goes, than the good guys are in latter books.
And why does it even matter to me?
<sigh>
I guess I just have to know how it ends, even if I'm frustrated. It's my own fault. ::)
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That's why I stopped reading them before I got hooked.
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sob... it's too late for me :-/
seriously though did anyone else notice the LotR similarities in the first few books
here are a few examples:
myrdraal = black rider
moraine = Gandalf
lan = aragorn
3 young characters flleing their home = 4 young hobbits
whitecloaks and trollocs in the shire = the scouring of the shire
and so on....
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uhh, yeah. like most every other fantasy book in existance Isimir.
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It's not as bad as Shannara, but it's still pretty dang bad.
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Wow, I can remember reading the first Jordan book and thinking that absolutely nothing happened (*spoiler* aside from the main character leaving his village), and yet you guys make it sound like a thrilling novel compared to his most recent books.
That's kinda scary.
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what's "shannara"?
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It's Lord of the Rings for Dummies
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Shannara is poo. Take LOTR, remove the epic fantasy elements, remove the interesting characters, remove the good storyline, and add a few genericv fighting bits (i swear fantasy authors have a [insert name here] type template for sieges and other typical battle types) and you have Shannara.
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See, I hear that sort of thing a lot. But I could actually READ the Shannara books. Unlike WoT, which bored me to death on each page.
And while Brooks steals liberally from LotR, he isn't trying to include every real life word that has a vague mystical or fantasy connotation. He uses the Druids, true, and makes them not very like real historical druids, but Jordan tries the Sidhe, Beltane, Shaitan, and more, all in the first couple chapters, and none of them seem to have much connection at all to their real world counterparts and seem to be included simply because he could seem multicultural and knowledgeable. One or two I can excuse, but when you basically are making references to ancient cultures just because you can and don't mean to allude to the actual culture at all, well, why?
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After all this time, I'm amazed it took us this long to start a "let's bash Shannara and WoT" thread. It brings a tear of joy to me eye.
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HAHA! We made Dan cry!
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Ummmm, I'm gonna go against the grain and say that I kinda liked the Shannera books. They weren't great literature by any means, but the original Sword of Shannera is one of the books that originally got me interested not only in fantasy but in role-playing as well. True, most of the concepts are direct rip-offs from (ahem) a certain OTHER trilogy, yet each book was self-contained and there were incredibly cool characters thrown into the mix.
And for the record, Wheel of Time just makes me want to bash my head against a wooden door.
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I'm proud to say I haven't read either series. I was going to start Reading WoT a while ago but EUOL advised me against it.
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Well, I've decided to reread the first five books of Amber in order to prepare to (hopefully) run a long term Amber campaign sometime in the near future.
I'll be stacking the WoT books to use as a footrest, though, so I'm getting some use out of them.
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You're allowed to like Shannara, Slant, you're just not allowed to be proud of it. Honestly, they were some of the only fantasy out there at the time, and much more accessible than Tolkien, so I think a lot of people got into Fantasy that way.
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I'll be stacking the WoT books to use as a footrest, though, so I'm getting some use out of them.
what a good idea! And you can use "the world of robert jordans wheel of time" as toilet paper! No book like that should be released in the middle of a series it should be released at the end
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That's the thing--the series will never end.
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book 35 - the final battle
the creator shows up and blows the dark one to oblivion with balefire - the end
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Just read The Book of Three for the first time in my life. I really have been avoiding it, mainly because of the Disney movie The Black Cauldron, which was horrendous. But the book itself wasn't so bad, for middle grade high fantasy--you know, a beginner's LotR. Eilonwy is highly annoying, but at least she's a strong female character.
What I don't get is this--and maybe the rest of the series will help explain it more--why is the book called The Book of Three? It touches on the Book lightly, but it's all about the quest to warn the Dons and to find Hen Wen. I don't see the connection.
I still say that Alexander's writing leaves something to be desired, but maybe that's because it's been imitated so much (or would you say he follows the Romance/epic tradition anyway?) rather than because it's not imaginative or tight. In fact, I'd even have to admit that I liked the detailed description coupled with an ability to move events along.
And I'm starting now on Nancy Farmer's The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm, which won the Newbery several years ago. Science fiction now. So far it's pretty good. It's the same author who wrote The House of the Scorpion that just came out last year. Can't remember, but I think Scorpion won the Printz, which is the Newbery-like honor for young adult fiction. I've read that--very good. Thought-provoking about Mexican-American relations as it involves drug traffiking and illegal immigration.
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That's one of my favorite series, I've got all the books in it. And yes Disney did ruin it. Aren't you glad they never made the Hobbit even though they wanted to.
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The books get better as they go along, with the exception of #4 which is far better than any of the others. I imagine the first is called The Book of Three just because it made the most resonant title.
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#4 is taren the wander right? That one was realy good, but different. Yet not as odd as #3.
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Yeah, Taran Wanderer. It's very different from all of the others, because the conflicts are less epic but more important. The series gets my full approval based on that book alone (though I like the other 4 a lot, too).
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Its such a sad series too.
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Today I finished Golden Fool by Robin Hobb. EUOL and Fellfrosch invited me to read her Assassin's Apprentice book to discuss it, and I read it and the next two books in the trilogy in rapid succession. Then I immediately afterward read the first book in the followup trilogy, Fool's Errand. Golden Fool is the second book in that trilogy. Now I'm starting on the trilogy that takes place between the 2 chronologically (I believe) but in a different part of the universe--the Liveship Traders trilogy, starting with Ship of Magic. There's a brief appearance by characters which may or may not be from this trilogy in Golden Fool (though it definitely makes mention of events which happened in that trilogy, presented as new information to people who knew nothing about it...) but it seems like the third book in the Tawny Man trilogy is going to have much more of a connection.
Argh. Well anyway, these books are fantastic. Read them.
And the discussion I was supposed to have with EUOL and Fellfrosch about the first book never happened. :(
I also read some of Kim Stanley Robinson's book The Years of Rice and Salt. It's an alternate history book where the black death wiped out all of Europe, so the Chinese and the Muslims are left to inherit the earth. Interesting concept; I looked at it because of an advertisement in F&SF. The beginning of the book was decent but then the characters died and went to heaven and got reincarnated as other characters. I lost interest at this point. Basically the book seems to be about karma, and the storytelling style didn't do it for me.
I see I said nothing about the plot of the books I liked, and did say something about the plot of the one I didn't like. Oh well.
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****Spoiler alert****
Your kinda supposed to read the Assassins trilogy, then the liveships then the golden man ones. But, they are all excellent.
And the fool is present in the liveships - one of the main characters. Named amber.
Awesome books - i am anxiously awaiting the 3rd tawny man book. But i get the impression she (the author) will do at least 1 more trilogy, to finish up the story. I'm guessing, another liveships one then a crossover one where everyone gets connected up by the fool.
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dude, edit your post! The name of that character was a MAJOR SPOILER!@@!@!!
of course I spoiled myself by reading Golden Fool, but sheesh.
Now I'm into the 2nd book of the Liveship Traders and wish I had read them before Golden Fool.
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I just got back from a short vacation, during which I read All Quiet on the Western Front. For those who aren't familiar with it, it was written in 1928 by a German vet of WWI. It is extremely graphic and disturbing (especially considering the time it came out).
Here's the intro:
"This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure for those who stand face to face with it. It will simply try to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped the shells, were destroyed by the war."
Really good book, and it's a quick read. I highly highly recommend it.
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Okay, so I didn't actually read it, but on a very recent road trip I listened Stevenson's Treasure Island and was very surprised. I guess I didn't expect an old adventure novel to be that good. It has plot twists and keeps-you-guessing character development like the best of today's stuff. I highly recommend it.
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Whoa, so old books can still be good? Gee, I never would have guessed.
(I'm not mocking you, Kije, I'm just using your post as a jumping-off point for a rant. I'm still bitter about the Dickens crack in the RJ thread.)
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Mock away! Now that I think about it it was a stupid thing to write :). But to be honest, I really was surprised about that Treasure Island book.
And I loved the character Pip in Great Expectations.
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I just finished the first section of Parke Godwin's Sherwood. I'm not sure if I'll finish. Obviously it's a Robin Hood story, but I'm not sure I like it.
He changes the whole Richard/John thing into Harold (the Saxon King)/William the Conquerer (only we know Harold isn't coming back, as he didn't historically and he is quite dead in the book. Now all that's just fine, though it's hard to sympathize with as the Saxons are, historically, getting what's coming to them. It's much easier to sympathize with the Normans as a) I am one, and b) they're just doing to the saxons what the Saxons did to the Britons (Welsh and Celts) a few hundred years before.
But even with trying to not let that influence my view, I'm not sure I like it. Godwin tries to make Ralph Fitzgerald (the book's Sheriff of Nottingham) sympathetic and give reasons that we can accept he has a "claim" on Marian. I guess. A dream and the fact that he's good looking hardly seem like a temptation to abandon a man she's been falling more and more in love with for 200 pages and that she's married. Plus Godwin has a problem with imagery. He describes Ralph's sickly pale and scarred body and then in the SAME SENTENCE tries to tell me that he's a looker. Right. Ok.
Character motivations are also a problem. Why is Marian stuck on this Sheriff guy? Is he TRYING to make the story more like Guenivere? (Godwin has also done an Arthur cycle -- one I'm seriously tempted never to consider reading). Also, why is William so damned unreasonable? He wants the Saxons to heel, he's even impressed with Robin's ability to lead and keep order, but he still makes it impossible for Robin to actually do anything besides go outlaw. Seems like narrative convenience. Finally, I'm supposed to feel pain that this priest (Tuck's superior) is conflicted? He gives me one (3-5 pages, tops) scene where the father feels like the community conscience and then when he kills a man IN SELF DEFENSE, a man who was coming to destroy lands as well as attack the father himself, the priest goes all to pieces.
Godwin assumes too much attachment or knowledge about how he perceives his characters before introducing their crisis key moments. The reader has to fill too much in.
The other problem is his narrative style. Instead of giving you a conversation, he'll summarize the conversation. He narrates the characters meeting up, their small talk, but then the key information is summarized instead of given as dialog. He also change POV frequently. He'll give a third person narrative of an enounter, then immediately switch to a first person account of that persons feelings. I don't mind the change in perspective, but the machine gun changes in person without even indicating whose internal monologue we're getting is jarring.
So, I probably won't finish. Thing is, there are very few books that I have never finished once starting. And to be honest, Godwin's problems aren't more serious than M.Z.B.'s problems with Mists of Avalon, which I did finish. I just don't have the same attachment to the Robin Hood story as I do Arthuriana. Should I feel guilty? Or just dump it back in the library drop box without regret?
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I started Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men last night. (I love Steinbeck.) I've read it before and so I know how the ending just rips your heart out (well, at leats it rips mine out.) And so just reading the first chapter and knowing what happens was difficult and I predict it will be that way the whole time I'm reading. One the positive side, it's a short book so the pain won't last too long. On the down side it's a short book and I can only relish in that heart-wrenching story for so long. This is obviously not a feel-good kind of book, but I find I feel a lot more grounded/centered/able to cope with difficulty after reading stuff like this.
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I read Steinbeck for english class, and watched the movie a couple times. Its an... interesting story. You really feel for the characters as their dream falls to pieces.
And Saint, drop the book. From what you have posted it sounds like tripe. Go read Nobilis instead! :)
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I'm in Tad Williams' "War of the Flowers," a contemporary-set fairyland fantasy.
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Ok, i've at least temporarily dropped the book. Probably for good
partially because the book I've been waiting to come into the library finally arrived.
So I read 150 pages of Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal today.
It's hilarious. I seriously laughed myself out of a chair once this evening, and guffawed outloud so many times that my coworkers are (even more) convinced that I'm insane. This is probably the funniest book I've read in at least 10 years. Possibly ever.
But uh... it borders on blasphemy. I recommend it for those of strong spiritual constitution, but if you're easily offended by unconventionally told speculations on the childhood of Jesus, stay away. I'll give a more full review when I've finished (a couple days, tops).
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so, where's that review?
I'm currently rereading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It's a nonfiction attempt at all of human history in 500 pages. As preposterous as that sounds, it's an excellent read for anyone interested in history or geography. I'd say if you're into serious worldbuilding it's an excellent resource.
The analogy that summarizes the whole book is the story of Pizarro's 168 soldiers capturing the Incan emperor Atalhualpa on Incan turf surrounded by 80,000 Incan warriors. Why did Pizarro come to Peru and Capture Atalhualpa? Why didn't Atalhualpa invade Spain and capture Charles I? The book explains the proximate causes (guns, germs, and steel, to name a few) but the really informative and fascinating stuff is when Diamond attempts to get to ultimate causes (why did guns, germs and steel arise much sooner in Eurasia than it might have in the Americas?) And the book goes to lengths to dispute the cultural theory (the idea that it was the culture or character of the peoples) and other traditional explanations.
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That sounds really interesting. I'll have to check it out.
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Oh, heh. I forgot I'd say I'd review that. I'll write it up. Probably tomorrow. Today's pretty darn busy.
And yeah, that book sounds good. I'll see if the library has a copy.
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I just finished Neil Gaiman's Coraline, and all I can say is wow. That man can write. He's also pretty spooky.
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So am I the only one who thought it was rather obvious? I mean, yeah, the writing's tight, but the story wasn't that great. But everyone else in class loved it. Maybe I should read it again. I read it among so many other books that maybe I didn't give it the attention I should have.
Fell, did you read the discussion about Coraline from last spring when I read it? It's in here somewhere.
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I didn't read it, because I hadn't read the book yet and didn't want to spoil anything. I'll go look for it.
I'm not sure what you mean by "obvious." There's not really any mystery involved, so there's nothing to figure out and therefore nothing to figure out early. It's definitely a style/idea book rather than a plot book, and the writing is excellent and the mood and images are very vivid.
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I've got 4 textbooks on my agenda. One is petite, another two are regular sized. And my Art History book is obesely large. Instead of the book ordered by the teacher, the place sends these monolith sized books instead. And were only using half of the book for the first semester. If I take Art History 2 then I'll get the rest of that books damnable use out of it.
I finished "Temple of the Winds" by Terry Goodkind at the beginning of the week. I had not, until the end of the book, thought that Drefan was the person doing those things to the prostitutes. And overall I like this book from the series. Number 4 that is. But overall the series has been well placed, at least to me. I'm going to start working on "Soul of the Fire" book 5. I'm on page 6 now.
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I was on page 6 of that first Wheel of Time book for like, 6 months.
Anyway, I'm reading the most recent TLE issue as well as King Arthur Pendragon (RPG). Just thought you'd want to be up to date. Plus damned if I'm going to do any work before my lunch ends, so might as well post.
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Dang, Gemm. That looks like a mighty nasty spoiler you just dropped. I wasn't really intending on reading the book--I stopped after the first--but I might someday.
As for myself, I'm reading Initiate Brother by Sean Russel, along with Fast Food Nation, the book we're teaching in English 115 this year.
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Well EUOL, you really should try and read the series. Its one of the few series thats good somewhere. But book two is a bit more graphic. As there is a group of females called the "Mord-Sith" that use things called Aigels, or something like that. And if a magic user use's their magic against them, the Mord-Sith can take control of their magic, making that person helpless. And once they capture them they torture them... and thats the more graphic parts. But Goodkind seems to like making his books very graphic.
Take in book 3, "Blood of the Fold" where the general of the 'Blood of the Fold' has a woman's nipple cut off, and with that nipple cut off he can basically control her. Weird, no?
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I like terry goodkinds books, but i think that he could have lost a lot of that sort of crap and it would not have harmed the books. A few bits were, however, necessary for Kahlans character. Or however her name is spelt. Terry goodkind seems to love putting his characters through utter hell of the rape variety.
Either that, or he has a pain fetish...
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*even greater fear of Gemm*
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Well thats cool. I didn't expect that to happen.
I really don't know why SE's doing that.
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I think the barely restrained tone of eagerness as you described those things may have been the cause.
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Well I was eager about it.
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Well I certainly wouldn't want to meet you in a dark alley.
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Heh, thats kind of redundant. I've never really been in a dark alley before.
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That's kind of the problem I had with the first book. It was excellent except for that one chapter where the main character gets captured and tortured. I bought the second, started reading it, and realized it was going more in that direction. I put it down after that, and never felt the need to pick it up again.
It's a shame, too, since WFR was such a good book. I hear that the second in the series is the worst in many people's opinion.
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Thats a shame EUOL. You should try picking up book 3, or if you can't do that, get book 4. 4 Was pretty good.
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Dont bother. Goodkind is busy doing a wheel of time, stringign it out with each new book giving completely un-forwarned new enemies and yet another chance for Kahlan to get raped.
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I was told that he was kind of doing a more McCaffery-esque continuation of the series, meaning he focuses each book on different characters with their own problems to resolve. In this way, each book has its own climaxes and story, but contributes to the progression of the whole. If Jordan had done something more like this, it wouldn't matter that the series grew so long.
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He does that to a small extent i guess, but frankly the series would have been better if he had not written the last two (thingies of creation and the latest one) and just started bringing an end to the series. Longer does not necessarily mean better in fantasy series.
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On Kije's advice I picked up "Guns, Germs, and Steel." It's freakishly good.
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What's it about?
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History. I actually checked it out fromt he library too. BUt I have like 60 books from the library, and the Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages 350-950 is freakishly long and slowing me down.
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So it took some effort, but I shuffled things and bumped Borges to the top of my reading list. He's one of those authors that I've always heard about but never read anything of (except for that short story, "The Gospel of St. Mark", or something like that.) I've had an English translation of his collected works waiting around and now that I'm reading it I don't know why I waited so long. He's pretty great! Anybody else have opinions/experience with Borges (Jorge Luis)?
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I just finished Soul Music by Terry Prachett which would probably be funnier if I understood more about Bristish rock 'n roll. However it was still great. Mostly because Susan Death, Death's granddaughter, was a main character.
I am now reading "Good to Great" by Jim Collins which is the first non-fiction book I've ever enjoyed reading. Besides the scriptures.
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Well, I just received TMBG's first childrens book in the mail today. Yes I ordered it. I have also finished it today. But I must say it is a good one. And if you have a kid, and they like music, and you want them to read. Get them this book. It is(was) on sale on Amazon for $11.98 or something. Its a really interesting book, and the CD goes along with it. So you can have your kid(s) sing along with it as they read.
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hmm... Christmas coming.. maybe I should...
I'm just about to finish The World of Arthur by Christopher Snyder. an excellent and gentle introduction to the main themes and over all ideas of King Arthur lit, as well as the historical and archeological information (and controversy) about the era.
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Well I am reading a number of books right now. I just finished Magician:Apperentice and have switched over to Master. Iam also reading Dune:Children Of The Dune and a collection of short stories by H.P. Lovecraft. I also finished Kane and Abel for the fifth time. Read one story from the Books of Blood.
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THe Feist books you mention and Lovecraft were all very good. Feist's other books aren't nearly as good, but that series was pretty cool.
I just started the Weirdstone of Bresingamen at Entropy's suggestion. It has a good intro. Which is as far as I got before children distracted me.
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Have you read Lovecraft's short story titled-"The Sadow Over Innsmouth"? I think it's pretty scary. Are there any Clive Barker fans in here?
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I've read all of Lovecraft's stuff. He is very good. Some of it is quite creepy.
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Have you read Necronomicon? There are very few ppl who have.
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H P Lovecraft did not write a story or book called Necronomicon. It was an invention he used to make a consistant element through many of his works. There have been collections assembled under the title and even a book written under the alias "Al-Azif" (the fictional man Lovecraft said wrote the Necronomicon), but nothing he wrote had that title.
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You are absolutely correct in stating that Lovecraft never wrote any book titled Necronomicon. But there is actually a book out there called Necronomicon and it’s electronic version was released on to the net by a Kazaa user. My query related to that book?
By the way H.P. Lovecraft did write an essay tentatively titled History of the Necronomicon in 1927. Al-Azif was not an alias. It was the title of the original book written by Abdul Alhazred, a mad poet of Sanaá, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade caliphs, circa 700 A.D.
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Except that Lovecraft made it all up.
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Did you know that a copy of the original Necronomicon exists in a library in Italy?
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The original Necronomicon that was written sometime in the 20th century, sure.
See, no one has actually SEEN this book. They all know someone who knows someone. Some people say it's in Italy. Some people say the earliest translation we have is 200 years later than the original. Because it's all FICTION. The book was made up.
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Here's a brief chronology of events:
Al Azif written circa 730 A.D. at Damascus by Abdul Alhazred
Tr. to Greek 950 A.D. as Necronomicon by Theodorus Philetas
Burnt by Patriarch Michael 1050 (i.e., Greek text). Arabic text now lost.
Olaus translates Gr. to Latin 1228
1232 Latin ed. (and Gr.) suppr. by Pope Gregory IX
14... Black-letter printed edition (Germany)
15... Gr. text printed in Italy
16... Spanish reprint of Latin text
SOURCE: History Of Necronomicon
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Published when by whom?
And, I should point out that you contradicted yourself. You said the original was in a library in Italy. That last post says the original is now lost.
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The Arabic text was translated into Greek by Theodorus Philetas of Constantinople under the title Necronomicon. This too was later burnt but not before it was translated into Latin by Olaus.Latin texts now existing one (15th cent.) is known to be in the British Museum under lock and key, while another (17th cent.) is in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. A seventeenth century edition is in the Widener Library at Harvard, and in the library of Miskatonic University at Arkham. Also in the ibrary of the University of Buenos Aires.
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no, I meant this history you're "quoting"
Who wrote it? Where is it from? You're not looking at something from Chaosium or Wizards of the Coast are you?
Also, you should be aware that Miskatonic University is likewise not a real university.
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Istanbul, not Constantinople. So if you've a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul!
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Try reading The History Of Necronomicon- i got it on Kazaa. Iam quoting everything from there. Sorry about Constantinople-lol ;)
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So let me get this straight, you're using a text with an anonymous author about a fictional text, that makes reference to universities that do not exist, that you got off a file sharing service from an unknown source, and you think this is proof that said fictional text exists?
Ok, just making sure I got that straight. Good luck in college.
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ROTFL- History of Necronomicon was authored by Lovecraft.
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oh, that one. No, see, that's a work of fiction. He did it to add color to his other fiction.
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You could've posted that a couple of posts ago- would've saved us all that effort. :D
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and see, I thought that was my point all along.
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Ok- i'll just agree to that otherwise someone will say that I wanted to start a flame war or something. That videogame post totally ruined my mood.
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Besides the Magician series, has Feist written any other good books?
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A) The empire series, co-written by jamie wurts i think.
B) "Faerie Tales", a modern horror thing. Very good if i remember correctly.
C) The Serpent War series is more of the same. It's got nifty characters.
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I'd move Faerie Tale (no s) to the top of that list, but otherwise that's most of his readable material, unless you really enjoy books based on the author's most recent role play session. The Krondor series is partcularly terrible, while the books set in Medkimia that are not part of a "series" are just kinda lame.
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I am reading Silverthorn now. It's a continuation of his magician series. They form a part of the Riftwar triology along with A Darkness at Sethanon.
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I'm starting to reseach ancient assyria. I got 5 books on the cradle of civ out from library, ignoring all the ancient egypt (over used topic, boring now) and ancient india (need to follow up on that, know nothing about the region before we brits turned up and little after).
I also borrowed a book that was originally published in 1962, "the penguin book of lost worlds". Reprinted in 1966, which is when my moms copy came from. She had it rebound, its oop now (athough you could get it from the british national library, since it contains a copy of every book published in britain since 1911. They are passing an act that says websites also have to be stored, for posterity. If EUOL or HoM's books comes here, at least one copy will be put in there). Fascinating stuff. THem finding FIVE THOUSAND year old reliefs and frescos just blows me away. I instinctively respect tradition and stuff thats been around a long time, so that is just incredible to me. Priceless.
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So I found myself in the mall the other day, and I always make a stop at the bookstore, just to look, and I saw...
that Orson Scott Card has written a new Alvin Maker book! Yeeehaw!
It's called The Crystal City or something like that. Anyone read it?
After Ender's Game (just the one book, not the rest of the series) the Alvin Maker stuff is my favorite of Card's.
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Orson Scott Card has written a new Alvin Maker book!
Finally! Though the last one took a turn I really got bored with, so I don't know if I'll enjoy it. I tend to really love the beginning of OSC's series, and then get bored with them toward the end. Like in the 3rd or 4th Ender book, how the entire planet was Brazilian? Maybe it'd be more interesting to me now that I've had Brazilian roommates, but it turned me off when I read it back in the early 90s. And there were some other things about the end of that series that just got boring.
I have been reading about the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793. One book is a nonfiction children's book by Jim Murphy (probably junior high reading level), the other is historical fiction by Laurie Halse Anderson called Fever 1793. I love nonfiction children's books, especially the better ones coming out recently--you get the general idea of an event or idea, and then if you want to know more, you can investigate further into adult books, journals, active research, etc. But if all you want is the general idea, you get a quick, enjoyable read.
Of course, then there are a lot of issues involved with children's nonfiction--what parts of the story are told, what parts left out, how much citation is necessary for a reader to be able to trust an author's authority, etc. But for a general idea, I still like children's nonfiction.
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I'm re-reading Heinlein's "Citizen of the Galaxy", for about the hundredth time.
It's my favorite Heinlein book. :)
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I just finished A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones. It's a YA book, but still very good.
I am now reading E. M. Forester's A Room With a View which I have a better chance of finishing than Red Badge of Courage which I only got halfway through. Despite that, ARWAV still makes me very sleepy when I finally pick the book up at 9:30.
My lunch breaks have been dedicated to reading business type books. I finally finished Good to Great and I highly recommend it to anyone. It is well-written and the subject is interesting. I am now reading Built To Last by the same author. After which my dad has recommended that I read The Search for Excellence.
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It's a YA book, but still very good.
Haven't I taught you anything? You should say, "It's a YA book, AND very good."
Right? Right? I should have taught you better! :-[
BTW, Diana Wynne Jones has a lot of really good books. Read Fire and Hemlock, if you haven't. Also the Chrestomanci Chronicles (a series) are interesting. They're middle-grade books--a quick read.
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Diana Wynne Jones is really good. So darn good that Miyazaki's is going to make Howl's Moving Castle into his next anime movie.
That's how good she is.
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A new Miyazaki movie!
/me faints with joy
Sorry stacer! You are so right. I am very sorry.
This is my joyeous post that I finally found a hardback copy of Patricia C. Wrede's Talking to Dragons! The art on the dustjacket is probably the best and most true to the book I've ever seen, and I've had the other three for quite a while now. Now I have a full set (I love it when things match)! Best news is the book is in great condition.
Among other great news, they have rereleased Sorcery and Cecilia (and in hardback!) probably in preparation of the coming release of the sequel. SAC was the book I could only ever find in paperback for $80--that's how rare it was. I am very pleased.
I am currently reading James and the Giant Peach. I must be getting old. This is the first time I've balked at the fact that his parents were gobbled up by a rampaging rhinoceros just escaped from the London Zoo. Why do you think he wrote it that way? Even if it was first published in 1961.
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Izzy- 'cause that's just the way Dahl is. What about the children being eaten by big disgusting giants? He's one of those people that has to tone their writing down for kids.
Have you read any of his non-childrens' fiction? If not, you should- it's excellent. Chris has a whole collection so you can borrow it from him.
As to the hardcover book- I just found out that my old beat-up copy of "Citizen of the Galaxy" is actually worth something, because it's a 1957 printing. Go fig.
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But, then, like you're ever going to sell right?
I'll have to borrow some from Chris (pending his approval of course) after I finish rereading James and The Secret Garden and some of Diana Wynne Jones's other books.
Was it you who told me that you liked Soul Music by Terry Pratchett? I finished it last month. It was great.
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I don't know how I feel about Wrede's stuff. I've only read Dealing with Dragons, and I enjoyed it, but there was something rather antifeminist in a book that was supposedly quite feminist. I do like how clever the princess what's-her-name is and still want to read the rest of them.
I remember loving Roald Dahl as a kid. I remember reading James and all the Charlie books, too. Loved them all. I can't imagine liking them now, though. I should read them again to test this theory. I have a feeling that I must have glossed over the more disgusting humor, or that my sense of humor has changed since I was 10 (go figure).
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The hardest I've ever seen my mom laugh was when discussing the after-meal activities of the BFG.
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Your mom sounds fun, Saint.
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BFG? What's that?
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Why he's the Big Friendly Giant, of course.
It's a great book- you can borrow it from me sometime.
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Cool! Thanks fuzzy.
Yep, I'm definately having problems with James. But it's short so I am going to finish it anyway. I also dug out my copy of Rats of Nimh and The Secret Garden, but I am considering skipping them. It's hard to go from A Room With a View to books that I read when I was a preteen.
What did you think was anti-feminist about Dealing With Dragons, stacer? I'm interested because I don't think I've ever looked at the book critically before.
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I've decided that I need to read some more of the genre classics, having enjoyed the Elric books so much last month, so last week at the library I picked up a Philip K. Dick collection and so far I'm pretty impressed. Since people love making movies out of his stuff, someone really needs to make a movie out of Paycheck.
I also grabbed another Gaiman book, apparently his first. It's called Neverwhere, and what I've read of it is also very good.
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Yeah, I just read PKD's The Man Who Japed. I also just finished readin all the stories and essays in the Prentice Hall anthology of SF.
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What did you think was anti-feminist about Dealing With Dragons, stacer? I'm interested because I don't think I've ever looked at the book critically before.
In general, there are some really nice feminist things going on--the princess is the one making decisions for her life, makes some good friends, is becoming educated about dragon-ness. But then some other things are against the grain, such as her going into servitude to be a cook to a dragon--from princess to servant. Plus, she (what is her name, anyway?) fits a trend of the time, that of female heroes who are basically men in women's clothing. Robin Mckinley's Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword's Harry is a similar hero--a girl hero who is a hero because she rejects her femininity. Granted, at least in Dealing with Dragons the princess doesn't reject all things feminine--she still enjoys cooking, and uses thinking skills as well as sheer brawn (or its substitute, magic) to solve political problems among the dragons.
Come to think of it, now that I'm looking at it, I'm not really sure what my arguments are. I have a stronger case against books like the one I have to read right now for class, Alanna and the First Adventure, in which a lord's daughter, Alanna, wants to be a knight and so disguises herself as a boy, because being a knight is preferable to learning to be a lady--it is better, not just different.
That said, I really don't have anything against books in which girls kick butt, both physically and mentally. Certainly Dragons does it with humor. Robin McKinley's books are some of my favorites. But looking through a feminist lens, one begins to wonder, does a character have to act "male" in order to be considered a worthy hero? Is physical strength "male"? If not, why do feminists consider it to be, and how can a woman who considers herself a moderate feminist help change that view?
Also--why can't a female hero be at once feminine and physically fit/aggressive/etc.? Can't she enjoy needlepoint at home, wearing nice dresses from time to time, but getting on the horse and running a few monsters through from time to time? If I ever get around to writing a book, that girl would be my hero. Come to think of it, that girl is me, sans monsters. ;D
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See, I find that argument interesting. Because some feminist critics would argue that saying things like needlepoint and cooking are inherently feminine is incredibly sexist. Their only problem with the girl who disguises herself as a boy to go be a knight is that she had to disguise herself as a boy, which would be blamed on the male establishment, not the character or (directly) the author. Joan of Arc, remember, is a big hero to these types of feminists.
I'm not trying to contradict or throw you off. I just think it's interesting that there are two MAJOR philosophical camps in the one group we call "feminism."
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No, I know what you mean, Saint. I'm just not of that camp.
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Cimorene. And I'm not sure I agree with the servitude comment. For Cimorene it was more of a job. She was Kazul's "secretary", if you will, and Cimorene was paid in knowledge and freedom. For the other princesses it was more along the lines of exchanges of status. It was a mark of status to have a princess, and it was a mark of status to be a dragon's princess. I actually think Wrede may have gone a little far to the feminist side in the second book, Searching for Dragons. But after getting married myself, some of the ways that Cimorene and Mendenbar interact are familiar, so maybe she's not as far off as I thought ;). And much of what could have been wrong is toned down in the third book.
I like McKinley as well, and I think that the Hillpeople have a different idea of femininity to which Harry conforms. But maybe I felt that way because all the hillpeople at that time fought in much the same way. Things may have been different in The Hero and the Crown which I haven't read in a while because I disagree with the love triangle.
But I completely agree with your feminist comment. Dresses are completely girly, but what's wrong with them? Why can't I roleplay a mercenary who weilds an ax, but wears a dress to formal occasions? I still haven't figured this out. It's funny how some feminist camps would make us feel just as ashamed of our talents and pursuits as our predecessors felt.
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Here's what I say to that, however: Why does the 'heroic' female have to be heroic in traditional masculine ways? Not that there's anything wrong with the sword-wielding female, but Stacer's comment about women having to 'become men' to be heroes interested me.
If slaying a hundred orcs is a masculine paradigm for heroism (let's just assume, for a moment, that it is that simple,) then can't we create a woman who is equally strong-minded, determined, and heroic--yet doesn't have to go around killing said orcs to prove her heroism? Could she be a hero by exemplifying feminine strengths in the same way our warrior exemplifies masculine strength?
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Yes, EUOL, but what would she do? This is mostly a SF/F argument, since contemporary fiction has different definitions for its heros. In SF/F heros usually have to save something.
I think you have a good point, but I don't know what the answer would be.
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I do : be boring. And talk boring crap. And whine about non-issues. ::)
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I've tried to answer this question in my own writing, since I believe that there should be ways to have conflict, climax, and heroism without simply resorting to 'man A hits man B with a sword.'
Usually, this resorts to the concept of control, especially with women. They learn to control their surroundings, and the people in them, without resorting to physical violence themselves. However, I wonder if this is a feminine trait or not. Is this the sort of thing a woman would do, or that other women would admire?
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Women and female society is based on control. Women who know how other people think and can outthink them or predict how they will react do best in fantasy books. Women have a tendency to network in a way that sword-bashing heroes often don't
So I think that's a fair assessment, EUOL.
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Being a control freak myself, I can honestly say that it is something that women do. The saying, "Behind every great man is a great woman" or however that goes is kind of rooted in it. The idea is that woman control men, who in turn go around hitting As and Bs with swords.
I don't know that it is an admirable trait, however. Free agency is a very important thing, and I think it is a weakness when one person attempts to quash another person's free agency.
But then again, maybe it's a pendulum. One the one side you have the manipulative, controlling villianess (Morag's tea story comes to mind). On the other hand, you have a woman who wins the respect, and therefore loyality, of her people and those around her, thus accomplishing great things by motivating others. In effect "controlling her surroundings." But that still seems a little boring to read about if all the hero does is go around and inspire people.
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But you could say something similar about our sword-wielding hero. A truly honorable hero is made that way because of who he hits with his sword and why he does it. A woman hero, therefore, could be judged by who she manipulates and why she does it.
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In my current book, it's usually "man A hits man B with lute."
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In my current book, it's usually "man A hits man B with lute."
Would this book be about Sir Carl?
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SE, didn't you write an honors thesis on heroism in literature? Did you cover differences between heroism for the genders?
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I didn't look at gender. For three main reasons:
1) i was trying for archetypal lit, and there aren't that many women in archetypal literature as heroes (Yes, there are exceptions, you could argue Sheharezade, for example)
2) length: I only had 10 works to use, since I had the above emphasis, I had to REALLY narrow down the field.
3) my thesis was the hero as an embodiment of cultural values which meant that what I was really saying was that you define what the culture's values were by their archetypal hero's values. An argument partially come up with because of the cultural conflict theme of the Iliad.
However, now that I think about it, this wouldn't have been a good argument for not including women, although I would have had to do it deliberately, and ignore the length requirements -- i've already observed that given enough length, you could find enough archetypal literature to write something about. In a campbell-esque book I could write TONS using example of how the cultural values are different for men and women, and how being heroes would therefore make different requirements. hrm.... time to expand the paper by another 20 pages or more.
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One of the biggest argument against Campbell's archetypal theory is exactly that--his hero in the hero's journey is most definitely ALWAYS male. I believe he might have stated once or twice that it works for female heros, too, but then half his theory is thrown off if you plug in a female protagonist. Maybe he ran into the same problem you did--few female stories. But I would question what you mean by few female heros in archetypal lit. Folk tales are full of them. And if you look especially at the folk tales that the Grimms and Perrault overlooked, you'll find female protagonists doing very female things: valuing community rather than hierarchy, focusing on family relationships rather than the prize of riches, etc. Maybe they just don't fit the archetypal mode because that mode is based on what the male-focused tales typify.
So I would love to hear what you might have to say on the female version of the hero's journey, or at least a revised version of the hero's journey including women. I think archetypal is my favorite school of critical thought, yet it irks me sometimes.
As for manipulation and control, EUOL, watch out that you don't end up using it in a Robert Jordan-esque way, if that's the route you take rather than sword-wielding women. I can't tell you how annoyed I get with those women (and the men, too, but more so the women) trying to manipulate everyone and everything, especially with lack of communication. I still say all the good guys needed was a good correlation meeting once a week, and they wouldn't have had half the problems they had. Of course, I must admit that I am a control freak, too, and (much as I hate to admit it) RJ's got a point--the female half of the source is controlled by surrendering control. Sometimes women focus so much on control that we have to remember that we can't control everything.
I think it's good for female characters to be free to be physically strong, able to wield a sword or whatever if needed, but also that it's important to have them be able to embrace the things that make them feminine.
And MoD, I don't remember any love triangle in Hero and the Crown. ??? Have you ever read any of McKinley's retellings of fairy tales? She wrote Beauty in 1978, and retold it as Rose Daughter just a couple years ago. She also did a Sleeping Beauty called Spindle's End. All very good.
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well, i don't really throw in with the "hero's journey" completely. I think it's a nice archetype, but I think Campbell goes too far with how universally applicable it is. To make it so applicable, I feel that too much of each step is watered down.
Instead I think that each culture embodies it's heroes with different values. Achilles, for example, is amazingly good at fighting, and he has little else in him but a strong drive for revenge.
Contrast this to Odysseus, who embodies a later Greece: who still conquers, but can do it by his wiles. He's still capable in battle, but he can also orate, he's pious, and has a very strong family drive.
I guess mostly I don't think of the cycle as a useful tool for analysis. It's kinda nifty to see when it fits (and not because you forced it to fit), but I don't feel it tells you much about what's going on in the story or the culture.
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stacer: I'm referring to the triangle between Aerin, Tor and Luthe. I thought it was depressing. :'(
I've read Spindle's End (loved it!), but neither of her Beauty and the Beast books. (I love this topic, it gives me so many good books to read).
I agree with stacer. RJ women are stupid and I don't want to read about them. (Not that I can really say anything, since I haven't read any of his books, just heard other people complain about them).
There is nothing heroic or admirable, imo, in someone who lies for their own amusement, or their own screwed up sense of what the world should be like.
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The RJ women aren't problematic in the first book. They're just mildly annoying at times, but hardly a reason not to read it. They only get really disfunctional later in the series.
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I just finished Robin Hobb's newest, Fool's Fate, the ninth in the series that starts with Assassin's Apprentice. Actually it's three trilogies, but anyway I've no idea if it will be the last book in this universe. The US version doesn't come out until February, so I had the British version given to me for Christmas (via amazon.co.jp to eliminate shipping charges).
The book itself is HUGE. 9 1/2 inches tall, 6 1/2 inches wide, and a bit over 2 1/2 inches thick. A little over 800 pages. I only read the US versions of the other books, but I'm pretty confident this is the longest book in the series.
Anyway it's a great book. It ties up this trilogy very well and has a good happy ending. That always matters for me. It also doesn't do the one thing I had feared about this series.
The only thing I'm dubious about in the series is that when the first book was being written, I don't think Robin Hobb had completely thought through explanations of how several things happened. When they were given in the third book, they didn't quite account for everything--I'm speaking mostly of the white ships. The explanation for the Forged didn't quite work for me either until I read this ninth book.
I really liked this book, but I think I liked the second trilogy better. I believe it's mostly because the first and third trilogies are in first person so we can see things only through one person's perception. The second trilogy is in third person and has a much larger cast of characters with many things going on at once, giving it a truly epic feel. It also allows for great character growth among many characters, including several I didn't expect growth from. Oh well, I mentioned the books earlier in this thread even...
But anyway this book is good, so go read them all. I'm very glad that Brandon and Dan told me they were going to read the first book and that I should too. I don't know if they ever actually did.
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..OOKLA POSTED! Wow. Things must be slow over at his OTHER web site (you know, the one with millions of pageviews and hoards of zombie-like manga fans.)
Anyway, I read the first trilogy (and wrote reviews on them.) I really liked the first and second books--and gave them quite stunning reviews. However, two main things about the series disappointed me.
1) They were just SO depressing. Everything always happened for the worst. It's good to have life hard and gritty--that's Hobb's style. But it just got overwhelming.
2) The third book, in my opinion, was terrible. It had some good moments, but mostly it seemed horribly out-of-place and contrived. I felt like, as you said, she had no idea where she was going with the series, and by the third book had written herself into so many corners that she had to struggle to make things work. The story never addressed the things that I thought of as the main plot conflicts, and the main character just never really had anything important to do with the plot.
That said, the first two books are still excellent. I've considered the other trilogies, but I feel very 'hit or miss' with Hobb. I really like some pieces of her books, and I really dislike others. I haven't been sure if I wanted to take another chance on her or not.
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I didn't look at gender. For three main reasons:
1) i was trying for archetypal lit, and there aren't that many women in archetypal literature as heroes (Yes, there are exceptions, you could argue Sheharezade, for example)
2) length: I only had 10 works to use, since I had the above emphasis, I had to REALLY narrow down the field.
3) my thesis was the hero as an embodiment of cultural values which meant that what I was really saying was that you define what the culture's values were by their archetypal hero's values. An argument partially come up with because of the cultural conflict theme of the Iliad.
However, now that I think about it, this wouldn't have been a good argument for not including women, although I would have had to do it deliberately, and ignore the length requirements -- i've already observed that given enough length, you could find enough archetypal literature to write something about. In a campbell-esque book I could write TONS using example of how the cultural values are different for men and women, and how being heroes would therefore make different requirements. hrm.... time to expand the paper by another 20 pages or more.
Hey if you still have it kicking around I wouldn't mind reading it. I'm pretty interested in the subject for writing purposes.
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One of the biggest argument against Campbell's archetypal theory is exactly that--his hero in the hero's journey is most definitely ALWAYS male. I believe he might have stated once or twice that it works for female heros, too, but then half his theory is thrown off if you plug in a female protagonist.
I can't remember a lot about the model itself, since the last time I really looked through it was in 9th grade or something. But from what I remember, it doesn't really have anything to do with what it takes for someone to be a hero as such, its more like a model for telling a story about a hero. Sort of like the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action thing. Its just sort of the standard opertation or guideline, it doesn't really explain why a story is good or anything. So for the hero model, its not so much that its what a hero should do to become a hero, its just a guide on how it generally happens in a story. Hopefully that made a little sense.
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Right now I'm reading "The Last Coin" by James R Blaylock, which btw is out of print and fairly hard to get ahold of. So I'm not sure if you could just walk down to the library and borrow it. Its about the 30 silver pieces Judas got for betraying Jesus, and this villian guy called Pennyman is trying to collect them all because when they are all gathered together, it will start the Apocalypse. Its pretty interesting and all the characters are kind of quirky. I think it would have been a lot better with a cooler main character.
Before that I read the complete works of HG Wells (The Time Machine, Island of Dr Moreau, Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, etc). I'm sure most people have read at least some of those, so no real point in going over them. Although I am kind of interested in knowing if many other people read older books like that. I used to read mostly just modern scifi/fantasy, but for the last few years or better I mostly read old classics like Dickens, Poe, Shelley (Frankenstien), Stoker (Dracula). When the new Planet of the Apes movie came out they finally republished the original novel so I finally got to read it. That's one thing I hate about older books, for being the "classics" they are often hard to get ahold of.
Which reminds me, after they put out the new Cout of Monte Cristo movie, they reprinted that story as well and I finally got to read it.
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Ah, when will the glorious days of cheap, in-bookstores Print On Demand arrive? Please be soon.
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Heh, yeah. I've tried more than once to get the old Conan, Death Dealer (not that old), Elric, and probably a couple more that I'm forgetting. One that comes to mind was for a paperback of the first Death Dealer series on Ebay which I bid like 30 bucks on and I still lost the bid. And this was a fairly trashed 6$ paperback, its insane.
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I just finished Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. It's obviously less mature than American Gods--I think it was Gaiman's first novel, in fact--and you could tell he was looking for his voice throughout most of it. It's still a great novel, though, with sort of equal parts George Lucas, Stephen King, and Douglas Adams. Some of the resolutions weren't as tight as I wanted them to be, which is one of the complaints I had about American Gods, but the images and the ideas were in turns fascinating, funny, and epic. It would make a killer movie, if you get a good production designer.
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All of a sudden, i'm up to my eyebrows in books. My mom just gave me "The amulet of Samarkland" by johnathan stroud, and "The re-discovery of cordwainer smith". The latter looks like a dune style sci fi thing (Yeah, yeah i know dune is space opera...). I am reading the silmarrion on the bus to work, i should really finish off the lotr corebook, not much of that left to go, and i should read EUOL's book sometime. Its fantasy, and i'm in the mood for fantasy since RotK, so that will probably be next.
Plus, i'm trying to work out the whole "buy a new pc" thing. Too many options.
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Just a warning, Entropy--I was doing an edit the other night, right after I sent you the book, and ran into a pretty big flaw. Just be warned to ignore everything that happens with Shinri in chapter nine. It happens over again--done much better--in a later chapter.
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Her fiance disappearing in the earlier chapter, and sinking at sea in the later one? Yeah, i spotted that. I'm up to "shinri 1-2 v4".
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Doh. Too late. Oh well--never mind, then. From there on most of my recent changes are small, so you shouldn't have any problems.
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/me explains to Entropy about "spoiler" warnings.
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1) They were just SO depressing. Everything always happened for the worst. It's good to have life hard and gritty--that's Hobb's style. But it just got overwhelming.
I agree that there were pretty depressing parts. However, everything works out in the end...unfortunately, I mean by the end of the third trilogy. Some of the depressing stuff left at the end of the first trilogy is finally resolved in the end of the third.
2) The third book, in my opinion, was terrible. It had some good moments, but mostly it seemed horribly out-of-place and contrived. I felt like, as you said, she had no idea where she was going with the series, and by the third book had written herself into so many corners that she had to struggle to make things work. The story never addressed the things that I thought of as the main plot conflicts, and the main character just never really had anything important to do with the plot.
Hmm...what did you think were the main plot conflicts, that never got addressed?
I agree that the third book is definitely the weakest of all of them. It was wandering all over the place and really unfocused for a lot of the way through. I thought it had a good climactic trilogy-ender for the last part of it, but it seemed like the end to a different trilogy than I was reading in the first 2 books...ha ha ha
Even so, though, I probably liked the third book better than Eye of the World (though for me that isn't saying much).
However, the flaws of the first trilogy aren't there in the second at all. It takes place in a different part of the world, though chronologically after the first, with very different characters. It felt to me like it was planned from start to finish, and doesn't have the plot problems of the third book. You could read the second trilogy and really enjoy it without having read the first trilogy.
The third trilogy has some more of the depressing stuff that the first had, but as I said, it does get resolved in the end.
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Here's the thing. I read the first two books, and felt Hobb building up this incredible mystery surrounding the Forging and the White Ships. I kept thinking "Wow. When is Fitz going to get captured by one of the ships? When are we going to see Forging in process? When are we going to find out the secret to this magic?"
None of that happened. Instead, we got this strange 'epic fantasy' style final book, when the first two were very tense political intrigue novels. The climax didn't really involve Fitz--another of my big complaints about the series--and it felt very Deus Ex. Not that it came out of nowhere, but that it solved their problems too easily without ever really letting us expeirence the beauty of the magic system.
As I've said, I found the first two books to be excellent. Hobb has an amazing narrative style. However, I felt she didn't know where she was going with the third book, and poped out a very cliche ending, which I found dissapointing.
But, on to other things. When are you going to read over THE WAY OF KINGS, Mr. Editor man?
EDIT--Uh, I just got your email. Never mind.
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Speaking of Mr. Editor man, where are you at right now, Peter? Where are you working?
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I'm in Japan (Okayama) teaching English until March. After I get back (well actually, before I get back), I'll be applying for editing jobs in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
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I'm rereading the Cronicles of Prydian with my husband. Does anyone else like Lloyd Alexander? Did he write anything else of merit besides The Amazing Adventures of Prince Jan?
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Prydain is all of his I've read, but those were very good. Got me hooked on fantasy, really.
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He's got a trilogy of quasi-historical novels, which I believe is called Westmarch (?). I know that one of the books is called The Kestrel. That series was very good, but I read it in elementary school so maybe it doesn't hold up to older tastes. Prydain, does, though, so this might also.
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Lloyd Alexander!!! I remember reading "The Book of Three" as a kid. It was cool at the time, even if it seems a tad "derivitive" today.
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Freaky Ookla's in Okayama, that was my mission ya know. I was actualy in the city for 2 weeks:)
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It's part of the Hiroshima mission now. My stake center is by the old Okayama mission office though.
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Actualy the Okayama became the Hiroshima missoin when I was there. The only thing that chaged was the location of the mission home. Now since the disolving of the kobe mission it's alot bigger.
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Is the Kobe mission the one in the far north, the one that Evan went to? He tells me what mission it was and I always forget. All I remember is that it was really really cold, because one of his areas was the farthest north you can get in Japan. Which is to say, it was even worse than Boston weather.
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No he went to Soporo mission which gets Siberian snow. They, on adverage, have several feet of snow all winter long. And they have special second story doors in someplaces becasue it snows so much they can't use the first story ones to get outside.
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I borrowed The Coming of Conan from a friend.
It's Robert E. Howard's stories delivered in their original order.
Not having read Conan before, I'm intrigued. Howard's writing style is a bit odd, but once you get used to it the stories really fly off the page.
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Right after Christmas I went to the mall to spend a little cash and fill out my presents, and I found that B. Dalton was having a 40% off sale. Going through the fantasy section there, I started realizing that I didn't know my sci-fi/fantasy shelves anymore. Scary.
Anyway, among the books I picked up, I got Path of Fate by Diana Pharaoh Francis cause it looked cool and the writing style in the first few pages wasn't bad. The book as a whole turned out pretty well. Is anyone else familiar with her books? Does she have anything else in print?
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I also went on my misison to japan and I went to the Sapporo Mission. It is the top, the Kobe mission is near Osaka though they were different missions last I heard.
We did get alot of snow. four feet in one storm, but that was a really big storm. They had sidewalk size snowblower tractor things that just drove down the side walk to clear the snow. So latter when we rode down them on our bikes (yes we rode bikes all year) it was just like the attack on the death star.
But that is enough on Japan I went to Master an commander and loved it so much I have been reading all the Patric O'Briam books I can get my hands on. They are historical fiction rather than SF&F but I really like them.
For those who don't know Patric O'brian wrote several books about Jack Aubry and Stephen Maturin, two of which were titled MAster and Comander and The Far Side of the World. The plot of the movie is very loosly based on a sort of amalgam of the two books.
I really recomend his books, Istarted with The Golden Ocean which isn't part of his series but it was relly good. Since it is a stand alone book it might be the best place to start though it is about a Midshipmen and not a captain.
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Right after Christmas I went to the mall to spend a little cash and fill out my presents, and I found that B. Dalton was having a 40% off sale. Going through the fantasy section there, I started realizing that I didn't know my sci-fi/fantasy shelves anymore. Scary.
Anyway, among the books I picked up, I got Path of Fate by Diana Pharaoh Francis cause it looked cool and the writing style in the first few pages wasn't bad. The book as a whole turned out pretty well. Is anyone else familiar with her books? Does she have anything else in print?
Never heard of her, but I seem to have found her website if that helps you at all.
http://www.sff.net/people/di-francis/
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Thanks. I didn't stay long at her site and I wasn't planning on being impressed, but I did at least find out that there would be a sequel. I was kind of hoping so. I guess that's one mark of a good book.
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I'm on and off reading The Da Vinci Code right now. I think its good. Anyone ever read Ender's Game? Man, now thats a good book...really makes you think...
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has anyone here ever heard of the discworld series by terry pratchett, it's very good eespecially this one called soul music... all i can say is death is the funniest character ever, especially when he gets drunk and starts yelling at people in the bar.
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It is a good series, and I think you'll find that most of the folks here have read at least one or two of the books, (I think I've read most of them.)
Death is great; I'm a fan of the Luggage, myself.
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I actually haven't read any Prachett. Don't know why. Just haven't really ever gotten around to picking up one of his books. Plus none of my friends have suggested I read any of his stuff.
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Voices in your head don't count as friends, Gemm.
Plus : Go pick one up.
:P
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The, luggage, know it love, it fear.
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What is this luggage you speak of? ???
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enyone here heard of Fred Saberhagen?
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No but he sounds...European, by his name. What kinda stuff does he write?
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the luggage is an indestructable suitcase with teeth and hundreds of liitle legs, it is completely faithful to it's owner and completely hommicidal to anything it percieves as threat to said owner,it eats them, but all that ever comes out of the luggage is freshly laundered clothes smelling of lavender...
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Apparently, I'm reading a dragonlance novel and a couple forgotten Realms novels.
I hate it when companies do this
Wizards of the Coast sent me this week three novels (the label said to The Leading Edge, those people canNOT keep their friggin' review list straight). They're volumes one, two, and three. Naturally, all three are from different trilogies, which is what really makes me mad. Grr... I feel obligated to review my free stuff, but I think this lady is goign to get a call.
My only consolation is that they're D&D fiction, so should take me all of an hour to read.
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Saberhagen is one of my flat-out favorite authors, for both fantasy and sci-fi. I even got to talk to him once at World Fantasy, and felt as giddy as a school-girl.
With Pratchett, on the other hand, I grow increasingly disillusioned with every book I read. The man has only written one character in his entire career--the rest are all personality traits with legs.
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That's common enough in comedic writing that it shouldn't be TOO big of a detraction.
I remember reading Saberhagen, but it was a long time ago. Maybe I was too young, but the books didn't grip me very much.
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Isn't Saberhagen the one who wrote the books about swords named after greek/roman gods?
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Yeah, that's him. The swords each did cool things, and there were gods running around--though I remember being confused about who they really were.
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I cannot believe you mention Terry Pratchet as if he was someone you had just heard of....
Terry Pratchet is a good author; for the first 5 books or so.
After that he gets boring and repetitive - most of the jokes get stale.
But by all means try him, but I warn you, You'll prob get over him after a while.
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Ya I read a few of his books too EUOL. The problem was that there were so many of them, and they were poorly labled as to order, that it was very confuseing if you didn't start from the begninning.
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See, this is what i really hate about Newbies. Their stubborn belief that they know everything and we know nothing.
Outkast - silence. I love Terry Prattchet. The man is a mine of funneh. Plus, he's British. Just because you are jealous of his non-colonial atmosphere...
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See, this is what i really hate about Newbies. Their stubborn belief that they know everything and we know nothing.
Yes, like when Gemm 'discovered' They Might Be Giants, and we had to explain to him that he was the LAST person on earth to discover them.
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=P Always last to know and first to find out.
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I think that's because there's a disconnect in your brain, Gemm.
Yes, Terry Prachett is very enjoyable to read. And if you think he's only been able to create one character in his entire life, that probably has more to do with your reading abilities than it does with his writing abilities.
Hogfather is still my favorite.
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I think it's safe to say, Entropy, that you are the only one on this site bothered by OutKast's comment. All you had to do was say, "yeah, I've been reading Pratchett for years and I love him." It's easy, and he gets to know you better, thus avoiding similar misunderstandings in the future, 10 posts later he's not a newbie anymore.
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I was actually bothered by it as well. It's one thing to say "I don't like this author" or "I haven't really enjoyed any of his books recently" and another thing to say "This author can't write worth crap."
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I still havn't heard more than one TMBG song, so you could say I'm even later to discover them, having not done so yet.
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I still havn't heard more than one TMBG song, so you could say I'm even later to discover them, having not done so yet.
I was going to proclaim that not listening to TMBG was sacreligious....
But then I envisioned a religion based around TMBG and I was weirded out.
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I think the only TMBG songs i have heard are the ones Gemm sent me.
I think it's safe to say, Entropy, that you are the only one on this site bothered by OutKast's comment.
And your point is...? It still bothered me. Should i muzzle myself in the name of the common consensus? Sorry, communism ain't my thing.
All you had to do was say, "yeah, I've been reading Pratchett for years and I love him."
That being what i said anyway.
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Ah, forum life!
*Spriggen sits down to enjoy the show*
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Entropy, if you muzzle yourself, what fun will the rest of us have?
And as for actually reading books, I ordered a few off half.com to celebrate the end of the semester and getting a job!
How's this for catchy titles? Dr. Laura Schlessinger's book "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands"
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soul music, best one IMO
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I just read Cryptonomicon. I liked it. Snow Crash, eh? I'll have to check it out.
Immediately after that I read Conrad's Time Machine by Leo Frankowski. It made me wonder if his other books are as really as good as I remember them being. The writing in this one was just bad. All the characters sounded the same, there were huge stretches of dialogue with no description, and the wish-fulfillment fantasy was at greater levels than ever before.
I opened up one of my boxes o' books to try to find something I felt like rereading, and discovered A Canticle for Leibowitz. It's an old used-book type copy, and I have no idea how it got in that box. I must have acquired it at some point. I never read it before but always planned to someday. So now I'm reading that, about halfway through.
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if I remember class discussions accurately, I enjoyed the book, but it enraged Fuzzy.
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Many things enrage me, but I don't think Canticle was one of them. It depressed me, as I recall. But I could be wrong.
Perhaps I was enraged because I dislike authors who are so nihilistic.
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Nope, it enraged me. It was the most depressing book I've ever read, and it made me mad too.
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I thought it was you that was enraged, Brenna, but I have such a hard time picturing you enraged over anything other than someone you love being messed with. ;)
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ok, i guess what i remember is vociferous dislike.
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Well, I finished it. I liked the first part. Didn't so much like the second and third part. Overall I don't think I'd recommend it as a must-read.
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lol, Fuzzy. Yeah, I don't get enraged over much. Which is probably a good thing, in the long run... :)
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I just finished rereading Cyteen by CJ Cherryh. If you didn't know, it was a Hugo winner, and reading it again reminds me why. The book is about psycological cloning, raising someone's clone with the same sorts of influences the original person had in order to make their mind capable of the same pattern of thought.
It's in the same universe as another of her Hugo winners, Downbelow Station, and makes reference to another book, 40,000 in Gehenna. Downbelow Station is a great read and also highly recommended, but I actually have never read 40,000 in Gehenna for some reason. I'll have to correct that eventually. But not reading it doesn't affect appreciation of this book (there are no shared characters).
The universe these are all in is the Alliance-Union universe; Downbelow Station is about the war between Earth, its star colonies (including the fledgling breakaway republic Union--based on the planet Cyteen--which has soldiers grown in artificial tanks and trained from birth using subliminal tapes, and which also was the home of the scientist who invented FTL in Cherryh's universe), and the merchanter ship families who just want to make an honest living trading from station to station. The book Cyteen happens a few decades after the end of the war and involves the scientists and politicians of the company on Cyteen that's responsible for the tank-gestated and tape-taught people. It probably doesn't matter which order you read them in. They're very different and don't have overlapping characters either.
I only have one problem with Cyteen the book, and that is that there is only about half a page of denouement at the end. It just builds and builds up to a final bang, and what happens next is left entirely up to our imagination. It gives hints of possible sequels directly involving these characters, but there's been no sign of such a book coming since then. Cherryh has written many books after that, some of them in the same universe, but none from the Union point of view. Currently she's been writing sequels to her novel Foreigner, which is not connected to the Alliance-Union universe (though I think she could have connected it without too much difficulty; many of her other books are more loosely connected to the universe though perhaps thousands of years along the timeline); I think she's on the 8th book in that series right now--you can follow her blog with "today's word count" at cherryh.com (though it seems she's spending more time learning to ice skate right now than write). But I do hope she revisits it in the future.
Cherryh is one of my two favorite writers (the other being Lois McMaster Bujold) and the writer who is most represented among my collection of hardback books.
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That's kinda sad; a good denouement is a very nice thing, assuming the author does it right, and I can spell it right. Otherwise it's just a denouncement. ;D
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/me whispers to fuzzy... Your sig is a Slant quote, not Gemm.
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*shakes head*
Ok, since that's the SECOND time I've done that it has to be the avatars. Gemm, find a cool avatar.
Though you have to admit, it does sound like something gemm would say...
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I like my avatar.
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So... now that classes are over, what am I going to be reading? So glad you asked. I had a little Half.com binge to celebrate the end of my college career, and to mourn the end of Half.com which is coming in August.
So this is what's on my reading list:
The Horse of Selene - Juanita Casey (I actually know little about this book, but Jacqueline Carey said it's her favorite book and I love her writing, so....)
Alice in Quantumland - Robert Gilmore (excellent book. Not actually fiction, really, but I love it)
The Romulan Way - Diane Duane (Yep, a Star Trek pb, and one of my favorites. I had a copy, but it apparently decided to take a Dutch leave, and I figured it's better to have 2 copies than none)
Dog is My Co-pilot - (a collection of essays about dogs, which I bought soley for the essay by Pam Houston, since NO library has this book, and I'm dying to read it.)
The Battle of Evernight - Cecilia Dart-Thornton (because I figured I ought to finish the series eventually)
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I'm currently on chapter 2 of Lord of the Flies (for school). It's alright, so far, but at least the action picks up faster than that slow moving novel Great Expectations...
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I remember reading Lord of the Flies, I also remember going out and renting the movie instead of finisheing it.
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heh, Jeffe and I used to go by "Jeffneric" which people with LotF knowledge will find at least vaguely amusing.
"KILL THE PIG! BASH ITS HEAD! SPILL ITS BLOOD!"
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What's disturbing is that, though I read Lord of the Flies and enjoyed it, (as much as I enjoy that kind of book) when you say that, all I think of is Stephen King's "Hearts in Atlantis".
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well, WotC sent me four novels.
Only three of them are D&D novels though. The other one is a Magic: the Gathering.
I'm gonna keep one of the Dragonlance ones, it's a collection of short stories.
The other one I actually already own. Weasel's Luck, which is volume three of the Heroes series -- each book of which is an independent story. Jeffe took volume 2 off my hands, I'm not about to force this one down his throat unless he wants it.
The last one is another part 3 of a trilogy. "War of the SPider Queen." Lloth is just used far too often by these guys, imo.
So, anyone want them? First come first serve. I'll even pay the buck and a half it would cost to mail it.
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isn't the spider queen one a R.A. Salvidore? I know the city of the spider queen adventure is based off of it, and that the D&D Underdark soursebook makes refrence to the series.
Also SE you should probaly note, if you take one of these books you are required to reveiw them.
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en't seen anything yeah, it's Salvatore. I've been sent a reprint of the first Drizzt novel, and he's a better writer than the last one I read, but I'm not sure I want to keep reading D&D books.
ANd yes, if you take a free book, you have to review it.
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Now here's (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0787668397/qid=1083081187/sr=1-326/ref=sr_1_326/102-9137819-9104160?v=glance&s=books) a book I think I would most definately like. Minus a small detail that could throw me off.
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270 dollar pricetag right....
Just go to the closest library and check out A day in the life of Ivan Danisovich
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I'll take Weasel's Luck if you haven't had any other takers yet.
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Stacer already claimed it. Sorry.
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I'm currently reading Isaac Asimov's Prelude to Foundation. a very interesting book if i may add. I saw commercials for a movie based on one of his books, I, Robot. Will Smith, i think, was not the best choice of actor...
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I just started on the Foundation Series. Kind of dry, but really well written.
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Hey everyone! I've been very busy for some time...and will be in the near future so I'll probably post like every once in a while...anyway, I don't want to spend my time sifting through all the posts so sorry if this has already been said but I'm reading Angels and Demons, prequel to The Da Vinci Code, and I'm loving it! Actually, I just finished it, and I honestly thought it was better than its sequel.
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Haven't read that one, but I have read The DaVinci Code. I wasn't highly impressed with the puzzles--they seemed too pat. And the plotting, except for the subject matter, was just like any John Grisham-esque mystery. But it was a fun read, and I quickly turned around and sold the book on a yard sale for half what I paid for it, so it wasn't a waste of money, either. I should read Angels and Demons someday.
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I heard that was supposed to have Mormons in it.
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Kije reviewed it for us (http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=743&dep=7).
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I just finished reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a book about punctuation that manages to be very funny, very prescriptivist, very descriptivist, and an international bestseller at the same time. It's worth reading just for the sentence examples.
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I've seen that book and was curious; (we sell it on Overstock.com).
I'm also interested in checking out a book titled "Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay"
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I saw it in the bookstore, noticed the title ommitted the crude (and therefore funny) word "roots" from the well-known joke, and so immediately dismissed it.
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Um, the version of the joke I heard my whole life doesn't have that word in it.
You're missing out.
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Yeah, I think there is the Australian version of the joke and the American version. The Australians on the childlit list I'm on had the same complaint, that it changed the word.
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I have no idea what you people are talking about so it must not be that funney, if it was I would have heard it.
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I'm not entirely sure what they're getting at either.
root can be a verb, but I'm nost sure what dirty meaning or wholistic perfection it would bring to the joke.
Unless you pronounce root more like "rut" and then it's a rhyming pun having to do with procreation. But that's pretty weak considering that all the others are direct puns without having to alter the spelling to get the other meaning. Sure "roots" fits, but JP said it was crude, and it isn't by itself, and it isn't as directly workable as the "shoots" and "leaves." What kind of animal roots without an object? If it's a plant, what kind of plant can shoot? (and the plant makes "leaves" less funny).
Have I ruined it for everyone yet?
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I have heard 'root' used to mean 'rut' before so it seemed fairly self-evident to me.
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ya, that is pretty lame SE.
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To root is to have sexual intercourse. That simple. In the version of the joke I've heard, the bear takes an extra action before leaving the bar. It's more funny that way, because it's rude.
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Not really. Dirty jokes are a dime a dozen. Clean jokes that are acutally funny are rare. This one is funny without the sexual aspect.
Dirty aussies.
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actually, that's what "to rut" means.
after consulting three dictionaries I still can't find one that provides that meaning for "to root" so it must be a misuse thing.
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Or a specifically Australian thing, since they're the only ones who a) expected to see the word, and b) thought it was dirty.
Anyway, as Fuzy pointed out, you're missing out if you pass off the book simply because it uses a different version of a bad joke as its title. The book itself is very good.
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I picked up 3 books friday (a little gift from authors to me). I got the Spider-Girl graphic novel (because well, it has to do with Spider-Man), Good Omens (because it was written by Gaiman, and that other guy), and The Color of Magic.
Now, I've read the first part of Color of Magic and I must say, Prachett is really rather good. Sure there are some grammatical areas I would have done a bit differently than he, but que sara. And the other thing I'm having a hard time with is his use of !'s and ?'s. Why does he just put "'?' said the stranger."? What is with that?
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I think he does that where the listener doesn't understand the language but can detect its a question. Or he just puts it in for the fun of it. It is prattchet after all.
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I was rather disappointed with The Color of Magic. It has a random ending (and I usually enjoy non-sequiturs) that lacks a resolution.
My favorite Pratchett is The Truth. It's especially funny if you're involved with publishing in any way. Even more so if you work in the newspaper biz.
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uhm. old one, I think what you did was type some text, then highlight it, then chose the "Italics" button above, am I right?
The board isn't htat smart. You have to click the Italics button, then in between the tags created you need to type the text to be italicized. sorry.
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Ach! That's what I get for not previewing my post.
*bangs head on the keyboard*
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The colour of magic's ending was a cliffhanger. It got resolved (admittedly not very well) in whatever the next book was called.
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I just finished readin' The Catcher in the Rye, and I really don't know how to describe it. I guess I liked it...full of "catch 22's" and what-not...
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I;m reading "the fundamentals of physical metalurgy" it's a whimsical tale about lots and lots of atoms that are stacked in different ways and the world in which it is set is truly surreal... the sequel to the color of magic is called "the light fantastic"
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I am currently reading among others.
Dune, Atlas Shrugged (second time), The Golden Compass (second time), and Through The Looking Glass
Hey Sminja, I am not trying to criticize your taste however this may sound, but how did you like that book?
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Well, Archon, to tell you the truth, I don't know if I liked it or not. For now, I'm gonna say it was mediocre, kind of boring, but I'm sure I'll appreciate it more as the years go by and I start to understand it better.
btw, I thought The Golden Compass was a good book.
Attention to everyone who read The Da Vinci Code and liked it, read Angels and Demons! The prequel to the prior title I mentioned, very good (I liked it better than TDVC.
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yeah I like the Golden Compass too. As for the Catcher in the Rye, I just thought that he was too...whiny. He kept going on and on, and he used the same phrases repeatedly, like "he really was." It is supposed to be a classic but I dont see the appeal.
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I hated Golden Compass, but then, I tend to dislike any book that kills and hurts little kids. Actually, I think I also just hate Philip Pullman. I'm reading A Gentle Madness which is about bibliophiles and bibliomaniacs. It's amazing what some people will do for a good book.
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I dont care for phillip pullman either.. ya know what lets just all hate on pullman...
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Sigyn, that seems, at best, a hurried judgement. I thought that it was a very descriptive book. One of my favorite parts was when Serafina Pekkala was talking to Lee Scoresby while they were in his balloon and she talked about the differences between witches and men and how the witches could experience greater sensations than men could because they did not get bothered by cold. I thought it was a very good book, and although not as much as its sequels, thought-provoking.
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Just finished "Halloween: What's a Christian to do?" I always get a kick of seeing how Halloween is made to be the Devil's holiday.
Currently reading "Carter Beats the Devil" which is about a stage magician in the 1920s.
Over the summer, I started reading some of the original stories from Doc Samson and The Shadow. Great stuff!
There's no such thing as too much pulp :)
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Books for Thursday (Victorian children's literature class):
Swiss Family Robinson
Robinson Crusoe (still need to find it...)
Treasure Island
The Children of the New Forest
The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne (still need to find it too--not in the college bookstore, even)
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I read Heroics for Beginners by John More. on my way home yesterday. Yeah, the whole thing. It's an easy read.
Anyway, I liked it. THe satire is nothing unexpected or original, but it amused. And he does an incredible job of bringing out funny things. Then bringing these funny things back up at a completely unrelated time, but in a way that reminds you of the first time. I liked that a lot. Now if he'd just focus and write something less contrived.
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I have Robison Crusoe in a large paged childrens type book form. I can't remember if there are pictures in it, but I presume there would be. Since there is a large picture of a Crusoe, or someone like him, on the cover.
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Problem with Robinson Crusoe (and many of these books) is that they're only available in an abridged form. I need to read unabridged works, and there it gets dicey. I'm going to have to take tomorrow off work to be able to read any of them to any depth, but I don't think they'll allow it. My boss's door has been closed all afternoon, so I haven't been able to discuss when my last day is. Sooner than later, at this point, works for me. I don't want to start off behind.
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I'm in the middle of The Difference Engine by Gibson and Sterling, which I plan to follow with Barnaby Rudge by Dickens. If you can't tell, I'm into an Industrial Revolution phase right now (as part of my research for the book I'm working on).
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Ah, the difference engine. if you actual figure out the point to that book, please tell me. I liked it, but I manged to miss the majority of the plot.
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That's because there is no plot. I finished it today. It's pretty typical Gibson--clever ideas, stunning visual description, and no cogent story to speak of. I found it even more aimless than his other books, however, so I'm inclined to pin a lot of the blame on Bruce Sterling, who I have never read before. In essence, though, "The Difference Engine" is a casual assemblage of ideas in which the only conclusion or climax comes from a subplot that is never developed "on screen."
More than the plot, though, the thing that really bothered me is that they seemed to be on autopilot for most of the book. They had a chance to do something stunning with setting and speculation--to show what might happen in a world where computer technology arrived so early--but apparently it's just the same things that happen when computer technology arrives on time, just dressed in different clothes. While that may be accurate, I found it disappointing; I was expecting something more, I suppose, than just another cautionary tale about the loss of identity in a technological society.
In other news, I decided to go with Bleak House instead of Barnaby Rudge. I initially picked up the latter because it dealt with riots and violence, and I wanted to see how such things were handled in that period, but as it turns out The Difference Engine had plenty of riots and violence, so Barnaby Rudge seemed redundant. Bleak House, however, is quite good, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
(I enjoyed Difference Engine too, as far as that goes...I just thought it was pulling too many punches.)
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Don't blame Sterling...he has a kidna touch writing style (For me anyway), but he certainly doesn't pull punches in his literature. Go and read Schismatrix, it rocks.
Just to be annoying, I'll point out that the other day in the Shower I decided that the roots of postcyberpunk is in Schismatrix, since he approached the ideas with a positive attitude far ahead of it's time.
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Next week from EUOL: A review of a cyberpunk novel! (Okay, well, it's actually postpunk. However, it's rather good.)
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triad
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Ok, I can't wait. Especially if it's of a novel i've never heard of. I also like to hear about awesome new punkage.
Please be noted, however, that if you die or something before next week and it doesn't come, your life is forfeit.
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His life is forfeit if he dies? Seems kinda late, doesn't it?
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That's the *joke*
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yes, the joke is that he can't even threaten anyone who isn't dead. and even THOSE threats are weak.
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Argh. It's not like I don't have a sense of humor. I *did* know it was a joke. I was just giving you a hard time. ;)
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So I've had a goodly bit of free time and have been reading as much as I can. My recent conquests:
Wicked: The Life and Time of the Wicked Witch of The West - Very entertaining, whimsical, and fun. Pokes fun at just about everything you can imagine.
The Anita Blake: Vampire Slayer series - Trashy romance mixed with Buffy. The author keeps using the same literary tricks to try to add consistency, but it just ends up trite and tiresome. About the only thing that kept me reading was that it was set in St. Louis. Avoid if possible.
Song of Fire and Ice - Despite how popular this series is I've managed to avoid reading it until now. I'm sorry I did. These are some of the best fantasy books I've ever read. I'm devouring them. I got A Game of Thrones last week and now I'm already nearly finished with A Clash of Kings. I just can't put these down.
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The Anita Blake: Vampire Slayer series - Trashy romance mixed with Buffy. The author keeps using the same literary tricks to try to add consistency, but it just ends up trite and tiresome. About the only thing that kept me reading was that it was set in St. Louis. Avoid if possible.
According to her publisher she only has something like, 3 books coming out in the next year in that series.
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Geez.
They wouldn't be so bad if she didn't nearly cut and paste a descriptive tagline for each recurring character. I guess it's easy to put out so many books when you cut and paste so much.
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but that's how homer described characters! You can't give her grief for following epic tradition!
ok, yeah, I guess you can.
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Mr_Pleasington: Have you read any other books by the author of Wicked? I recently finished Lost which was really good. Not at all what I thought it was going to be from the jacket blurb. Still need to get to Mirror, Mirror and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.
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Gregory Maguire, by the way.
Confessions is quite good. I've started Wicked before but hadn't been able to get into it, but then I'm not a big Wizard of Oz fan. And I just haven't gotten around to looking at Mirror, Mirror.
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Yeah, I was just too lazy to look it up :) Wicked can be hard to get into even if you're a fan. I've never read Oz but I'm guessing it deals more with the book than the movie.
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No budget for new books until the beginning of November. So I'm re-reading "Beggars in Spain", which is one of my favorites. Thought the other two books were crap, though.
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So, I'm in a non-fiction phase for the next year. (well, it's been a few months so only until next May.) Is there a place to post reviews of non-fiction books? I've found some good ones and would like to hear of others.
But, then, is this site the proper forum?
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Quite a few people have reviewed nonfiction before.
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Yeah, we've done a few history books. Just submit it and put it in the "book" category
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a heartbreaking work of staggering genius by dave eggers