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Post by N3B on Jul 29, 2009 23:40:56 GMT -5
Over half-way through with Dune -- it hasn't been as riveting or engaging as I would have liked.
I get easily frustrated with both Jessica and Paul's inner monologues and how cliche and redundant the Bene Gesserit thing has started to feel. It doesn't feel very well implemented or a part of the "World" the book is set in, seems like mere coincidence and miniature Deus Ex Machinas scattered in than actual plot devices or merited writing.
Also, Herbert says the words "Presently" and "Prescience" perhaps way too often, and uses the former perhaps inappropriately. That really boggles me.
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Post by Draxas on Jul 30, 2009 8:45:33 GMT -5
The Dune books can be a painful slog if you're not getting into them. This didn't happen to me until book 5, but there's no shame in not liking them. The books are long, somewhat convoluted, and especially as the series goes on, get hung up on certain concepts they probably shouldn't.
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Post by N3B on Jul 30, 2009 17:07:25 GMT -5
I would be seriously tempted to give up on it, if I weren't half-way through. My brother has tried to convince me that the book gets good when Paul joins up with the Fremen, which I'm quite literally on the verge of.
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Post by Draxas on Jul 30, 2009 17:35:27 GMT -5
Oh! You haven't made it that far yet? I realize it might be draggy for a while, but yeah, that's when things really pick up.
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felix9
Regular
"Aura guide me."
Posts: 292
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Post by felix9 on Aug 2, 2009 13:49:47 GMT -5
Well however rare it may be I found a book I can't put down. Clive Cussler's Atlantis Found. I feel like a dork but I love the ancient civilization things, and this one is amazing. Set in present day once the book really gets going they find a remnant of an ancient civilization that was wiped out at the beginning of the last ice age, which Clive proposes was started by a comet impacting earth. With most of the advanced civilization of the time destroyed the few remaining survivors from those civilizations were forced to mingle with the neanderthals of the higher altitudes that escaped the ravaging tidal waves and natural disasters. I haven't gotten much into the actual meat of the book but so far it's been amazing, and from what I've heard about this author he writes his stories in a way that the discoveries and major events are entirely possible, even if they are unlikely, such as an ancient culture being as advanced as hinted at. but still it's fun to think of in my own mind.
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Post by N3B on Aug 11, 2009 19:05:38 GMT -5
On Dune:
I wasn't very impressed. Almost every scene was dialogue, which itself was well constructed, but then most scenes boil down to characters standing around talking (as in, not actually doing things).
What I like in a novel (or any other form of narration) is a progression like a sine wave -- rising action, climax, falling action, rising action, climax, falling action, which all gets gradually bigger as the stakes go up. Dune, on the other hand, was like a very slow-moving train moving along a straight line and, weeks later, it reaches the pinnacle but it's been moving so slowly you don't really notice.
Still don't care for the Bene Gesserit thing because it boiled into too much coincidence. How many times did I read ".... due to his/her Bene Gesserit training"?
The inner monologues also got irritating. Just got sick of how pronounced people's thoughts were, and some of them just didn't seem natural.
On Harry Potter:
This book is really not as good as I remember it. Read both of the first two and found that the descriptions were practically non-existent and limited themselves almost entirely to adverbs. There are literally pages where dialogue flows as such: "sad Harry angrily, said Hermione inquisitively, said Ron sarcastically, said Professor Dumbledore triumphantly, said Snape slyly, said Hagrid boomingly."
Basically anyone who said that the HP books were so well-written doesn't know what they're talking about or have never read anything better. Weak writing strategems coupled with cliches, sentimentality and lackluster descriptions don't equate to good writing.
It's also not that imaginative because, simply put, the lack of descriptions and bland, straight-forward telling (ie, "show, don't tell") never gave my mind the chance to imagine much of anything. It was just a matter of plodding along what felt like detailed summaries (more than story narration) until I got to the next big event, rather than dwelling on descriptions and imagination.
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Let's see, what next? Got Ender's Game, Neuromancer, The Color of Magic, Catch-22, Nightwatch, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep on top of my computer rack. Few others lying around which I'm less enthusiastic about reading, though. Ooh, I could read the sequel to A Game of Thrones as well.
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Post by Draxas on Aug 11, 2009 21:22:01 GMT -5
Both Ender's Game and Color of Magic are excellent books. If Nightwatch is one of the Discworld books (as opposed to another book with that title), then that's also excellent, but you'll probably want to get some of the earlier books under your belt first.
I wasn't terribly fond of Game of Thrones, so I can't endorse that.
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Post by N3B on Aug 12, 2009 3:36:01 GMT -5
Nighthingych should read as "Night watch" (one word), but I guess there's a censored word in there (somehow) which turns part of the word into "thingy." Nighthingych by Sergei Lukyaneko.
AGOT was pretty enjoyable when I read it a few years ago, though I wonder if I'd still appreciate it now as much as I did then. Might be worth reading the sequel just to see how it stacks up now.
EDIT: aha. the letters between and including the two Ts in "Night Watch" form a slang term for a female organ.
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Post by Draxas on Aug 12, 2009 8:52:13 GMT -5
Which is why I despise autoscensor. It's useless for anything other than the most obscene terms.
*Goes to change it AGAIN*
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Post by Notesurfer on Feb 11, 2010 10:12:39 GMT -5
On the topic of books: I recently picked up a collection of all 5 (6? 7?) books in the H2G2 "trilogy" from Barnes and Noble. Apparently the have these Leatherbound Classics - essentially collections of famous works, and their selection is excellent. I've also got my eye on the Poe and H.G. Wells editions. Anyway, I can personally vouch for their extremely satisfying feel/weight/overall aesthetic. Also, has anyone here read House of Leaves?
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Post by N3B on Feb 11, 2010 14:59:23 GMT -5
Haven't read anything in the interim since my last post. Started Titus Groan but stopped, putting me up to three books which I'd really like to finish but can't seem to get around to (including Cryptonomicon and Neuromancer).
Aint never heard of no House of Leaves.
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Post by Notesurfer on Feb 12, 2010 9:14:53 GMT -5
Aint never heard of no House of Leaves. There was an xkcd comic about it, which got me interested. Ultimately I . . . well I'm not really sure how to react to the book itself, which is why I had hoped someone else had read the book and was maybe more coherent about it than I was. I feel like it was wrought of both genius and insanity, with heavy doses of both intermingling.
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Post by N3B on Apr 6, 2010 16:52:11 GMT -5
I checked the Wiki briefly on House of Leaves, and it definitely looks intriguing. Like you say, it's probably a mix of both genius and insanity, and part of me is tempted to dismiss it as extravagant show-boating -- doing something intentionally unorthodox just to create controversy and curiosity. I admit it's working and I would like to read it at some point, but it might be the type of thing I'd prefer to do in an academic setting with guided discussion, rather than try to decipher entirely on my own.
I recently read i,Robot by Isaac Asimov. The idea of "robots as living" and robots being indistinguishable from humans was brought up in an astronomy class and I decided I might try to write a paper on it. I figured the book would be good inspiration, and indeed it helped pose and structure a lot of questions, even if most of the answers and situations are strictly hypothetical and science fiction. The book itself was enjoyable; it was concise and relatively light, yet each chapter was thought-provoking with its logical puzzle.
I also bought a collection of HP Lovecraft stories (my primary interests were with Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow Over Innsmouth); a collection of stories and poems by Edgar Allen Poe; Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (I hear good things about it, and I enjoyed Starship Troopers); and The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov. I'm quite anxious to read these in particular over some of the others on my shelf, but I'm busy enough with school and other stuff.
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Post by Notesurfer on Apr 6, 2010 21:15:57 GMT -5
House of Leaves is worth a read, but only if you are willing to invest an insane amount of time/brain power into figuring out what exactly is being said. I definitely came away with the impression that the author was engaging in social histrionics to some degree in order to fabricate a philosophical reaction to things he may not even have addressed.
Also, if I may, what is the main attracting force in the H.P. Lovecraft fiction? I have read some of his stories, but I was never massively impressed the way I expected. I'm sure my expectations were set far too high, as his notoriety seems to have grown disproportionately large to the extent that he is now the standard for horror.
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Post by N3B on Apr 6, 2010 21:40:24 GMT -5
I haven't read much of Lovecraft beyond a few paragraph quotes here and there, so I'm not really convinced just yet. What I understand from what I've read and heard, his writing style is fairly plain and straightforward -- he doesn't make tension like a typical pulp horror novelist. His stuff is more conceptual than emotional.
There are two ends to the horror spectrum: Freud and Lovecraft. Frued's "Uncanny" is when something is familiar and normal enough that the audience can relate to it and understand it, but something is just slightly off, enough to disturb the audience's preconceived notions and ideas and the fact that this thing is a little weird makes us uncomfortable. Lovecraft's horror is that something can be so alien, so far out there, that it just extends beyond human comprehension; the concept that something exists that we cannot hope to fathom is enough to drive us madly insane.
I'm very familiar with the uncanny, and mostly I'm hoping to see how effective Lovecraft's style on horror works. I don't imagine I'd feel genuinely tense or horrified while reading it, but if he can convey the sense of what the narrator is experiencing well enough, that I can understand how the narrator feels even in his dis-comprehension, and if it's intellectually stimulating, then I'd consider it a success.
But, I'll have to read a few stories first.
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