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For lack of a better title, The Book Thread!
happybirthdaygelatin:
I've read Ender's Game. I'm not sure about continuing with the series though just 'cause it feels like it was going of into some sort of weird direction in a similar fashion as the Dune series.
deborah:
i agree with aphi about the belgariad/mallorean over the elenium/tamuli.
i was really really creeped out by sparhawk marrying ehlana and it took me ten years to finally go, "eh. i guess i can read the tamuli, despite the fact that sparhawk's a damn pedophile"
i just finished a nifty book by catherine orenstein called red riding hood uncloaked: sex, morality, and the evolution of a fairy tale
it's kind of a gender studies thing, and i think she probably used two of the chapters as a dissertation, but it's pretty readable for being a gender/women's studies book.
also, when i was in junior high, my favorite fantasy/humor author was robert asprin and his myth series. those kicked seven kinds of ass, and i got to meet him once when he was still living in ann arbor michigan. he looked like he could be awkward silence and omar's dad. and he was trying to quit smoking, so he was sucking down some capris, and he shrugged and said it was like smoking a q-tip.
right now i'm going through a virginia woolf phase. i'm re-reading a room of one's own, and i'm also plowing through common reader and moments of being. her writing makes me hap-hap-happy.
plus i agree with anyone who recommended salinger, especially franny and zooey or his other short stories (like teddy). i used to say catcher in the rye was overrated, but i think it depends on who is reading it. it's like the glass family, except for normal people. each one of the glass children is an extreme of one human characteristic - they're like five fingers on a hand, and holden is those fingers and hand balled up in a fist. he's like the watered down combo version of the glass kids. i prefer the exaggerated personalities of the glass family myself, but i know a lot of people who think catcher is a universal novel, and i can see their point too.
has anyone read any joyce maynard? the only thing of hers i ran across accidentally was that movie to die for, and i haven't ever bothered to read any of her stuff. i'd like to see what kind of expose she wrote about salinger though
Oerdin:
--- Quote from: JP ---I felt like Anna Karenina was overall very good, but sometimes I felt like I was literally reading a minute-by-minute account of the characters' lives.
--- End quote ---
Tolstoy is like that. He is an intensely detailed author who loves to tell you everything about the characters & the back drop right down to the design of the shoe buckles and the texture of the wall paper. I sometimes find it boring but the truth is one could not ask for a more detailed explination of life in Tsarist Russia, how the social caste system worked, how they dressed, how they interacted, etc...
Garcin:
Oerdin: Funny thing is that Tolstoy was (historically) very heavily criticized among historians for warping historical facts to fit the theory that he champions: that inevitable social forces and not great men shape history. Most famously, he gave a very revisionist portrayal of the Russian general Kutuzov.
Khar: I'm fond of Eco, but I can't say that I'm a fan. Name of the Rose (which I think was his first novel!) was of course incredible. But Foucault's Pendulum, I thought, was unforgivably baroque with an ending that, as ironic as it might have been, was completely unfulfilling. Haven't read the most recent novels nor any of the short stories, I was so peeved. But I will certainly seek out Granita, I'm intrigued.
Aphi: I remember, years ago, going through the Eddings phase, reading all four cycles (the Tamuli as it came out) and then the Belgarath & Polgara prequels. The prequels were unforgivably bad cynical attempts to cash in, and I don't think there's any debate about that. As for Tamuli/Elenium vs. Belgariad/Malloreon -- weren't they all pretty much the same? I mean . . . same plot (large group of heroes have to chase something or someone dies/the earth is destroyed). Same characters (the funny one (Kalten/Silk), the silent & sturdy (Durnik/Kurik); the mother figure (Polgara/Sephrenia) . . . etc. Same godlike powers given to half the party. As into it as I was, in retrospect, the whole series seems like a well-edited fanfic of a better series.
I'm not going to say that Harry Potter is psychologically complex -- but at least there's some uncertainty about what's going to happen. Whereas at the end of the Tamuli you had Sparhawk (god), his daughter Aphrael (god), his animated stone Bhellium (super-god), the Shining Ones (extraordinarily powerful, good friends with a god), Sarabian (emperor) . . . . How many advantages does this guy need? And the ending -- through the god-stone into the mouth of the angry monster?
And it's not as if Belgariad/Mallareon was any better. Ending to Mallereon was hinged on the Seeress picking good over incredible evil. Was there anyone reading that thinking to themselves "Gee I hope she doesn't pick Zandramas because . . . you know . . . she might be into bitch demon-queens allied with hell . . ." I mean, 30 incredibly cool characters with special abilities are neat, and I'm sure that Eddings could make a great FF style video game, but at a certain point don't you start craving -- I don't know -- themes, moral ambiguity, and maybe even a little uncertainty.
Also . . . resurrecting Durnik?? And replacing Kurik with his son who was like him in every way? Gimme a break.
Seriously, put that junk away and read 100 Years of Solitude. It's full of fantasy, and awesome.
Sorry for the rant :).
--Moiche
elcapitan:
--- Quote from: Aphi ---If ever there was a good /character/ writer, it's David Eddings.
--- End quote ---
If ever there was a /wrong/ statement, that was it.
I'm sorry, but Eddings is a mediocre writer (characters or otherwise) when held against, gosh, most of the fantasy that has been published in the last twenty years. His worlds are oversimplistic and lacking any kind of believability, and his characters are wooden, one-dimensional, and cookie-cutter versions of each other to boot. (Zakath vs. the emperor in the Tamuli? Polgara vs. Sephrenia?) Eddings serves as a kind of Dick And Jane primer to real fantasy - he has his place, but that doesn't make him amazing.
If you want a REAL character writer in fantasy, you should read Assassin's Apprentice, by Robin Hobb. That, or A Game Of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin.
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