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Muckraker  Posts: 275 Joined: 13 Mar 2008     | |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2693 Joined: 6 Jun 2008     |
Like God Emperor of Dune? The best sci-fi book ever. Someone said avoid Redwall books. I say, read Redwall and Salamandastron. Redwall is of course the first book with copypaste story edit names format (so you don't get the copypaste impression) and Salamandastron is the only one I read without the copypaste format. I also say avoid David Eddings, unless you want to read the Belgariad and the Mallorean. For the love of God don't read the everything after he made Sparhawk! |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 444 Joined: 20 May 2008    | star wars books uhhhh lets think avoid the brian jaques series nice books for a younger audience but for older readers they are addicting and i ended up spending alot of money buying every new book that came out. otherwise i dont know any other series as the literature i like comes in a single book line up |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1268 Joined: 14 Oct 2007    |
Bear in mind that frankenstein was written by a NINETEEN(prob. twenty) year old girl. That's a feat in itself. Modern horror remains trapped in the mind of a young unassuming girl. A big "Eat that," to the sexists out there(This last line not directed at you Mnemophage, in case of confusion). |
Paperboy Posts: 33 Joined: 23 Aug 2008   | Cirque du freak series by darren shan and the eragon books. chris paolini is a fucking biter |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1146 Joined: 27 Aug 2008    |
No flame from me, I get this question a lot. I'm not a big fan of anything I've read by Terry Goodkind largely because he writes like I did . . . when I was 16 and depressed and stupid. I'm not saying you can't like his stuff, it's just that I find him aesthetically intolerable. If I'd read him 12 years ago I probably would have been like, BEST BOOKS EVARR!!11!!!1 I think the main problem is that all of his conflicts are horribly contrived and to compensate for this fact he goes straight for the stomach to induce a sense of flinching awfulness. It's sort of like if you took Armageddon (the movie) and made it into a novel. The books I like now head for your emotions via the intellect instead of via the gut. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1146 Joined: 27 Aug 2008 |
Well, the title kind of explains it all, really. It's fundamentally a book about depravity--but not just that, about how ALL men are ONE STEP AWAY from becoming depraved monsters of the worst sort. I won't argue that depravity exists in the world, but it is not *all* that exists and reading Heart of Darkness was like drowning in sewer water. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1146 Joined: 27 Aug 2008 |
I don't actually think he started out as a bad writer. The first three books were very grim but they were also extremely suspenseful and fascinating. Then he took a ten year break and wrote A Feast For Crows where he completely ignores half of the story. At the very end he writes this smug little explanation about how he just kept writing and writing and he found he couldn't fit everything into one book so he's going to write the same time period from different perspectives in two books, which means waiting for TWO MORE BOOKS to find out WHAT HAPPENS. The allure of WHAT HAPPENS was all that kept me suffering through the ever-growing and encroaching spiritual horror of those books. If Mr. Martin can't get it through his head that he's telling a story and not creating a universe in some godlike act of literary masturbation well enough to engage the services of an editor, he can go f*ck himself, I'm not reading any more of his stupid books. *ahem* Anyway, that's my opinion. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1146 Joined: 27 Aug 2008 |
What specifically about the ending did you dislike, if I may ask? I really enjoyed the books, also, so I'm wondering if it's that the children had to separate at the end or was it something else that bothered you? |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 385 Joined: 12 Sep 2007  | "Feast for Crows" and "Dance with Dragons" should have been compressed into one sentence: TEN YEARS LATER... But nnnnnoooo, he had to drag that one sentence out to about three thousand fucking pages. Ugh. |
Muckraker Posts: 235 Joined: 4 Aug 2008 | I wouldn't recommend starting any unfinished series. They are the bane of my existence. Even good series piss me off. I mean, I started Wheel of Time about...ten years ago. Here I am, waiting on the last book that is going to be written by some other author. Really, really sucks. So yeah, just read things that are finished works, not works in progress. It may also change your opinion on them as you can just read them all at once and not spend any time waiting. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1146 Joined: 27 Aug 2008 |
I would also say this with the caveat that if the author *knows* how many books are going to be in the series, you *may* be able to risk it. There are also series out there which are infinitely extensible, HOWEVER each book is a self-contained unit, like Discworld or the Vlad Taltos books by Steven Brust. Those are also okay. However finding a series of this nature is difficult. I think the fundamental reason why I liked Harry Potter so much is that J.K. Rowling knew where she was going from the beginning and she GOT THERE. I won't say that the books are works of great literature, but they're good books and I get depressed when I hear people panning them simply because they were so popular. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2851 Joined: 20 Jul 2008     | The Bounty Hunter Wars Trilogy By K.W. Jeter. Just total crap from page one of book one to the last page of the third book. |
Copy Clerk Posts: 57 Joined: 28 Apr 2008     |
That, and the author is dead. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1146 Joined: 27 Aug 2008 | I think Brandon Sanderson has been tapped to do the next Wheel of Time book (I find the idea of bringing on an understudy to finish a writer's novels to be kind of sick, but oh well). I don't really like his work very much, and I've read all three of his books so far. The man cannot write suspense to save his life. What he writes is actually the opposite of suspense--you, the reader, figure out very quickly from his ENDLESS HAMMERING approximately what is going to happen, and then he drags on and on and on before the characters figure it out. Towards the end of Well of Ascension, in particular, I was ready to start yelling "GET A CLUE, ALREADY!!!" When you're shouting at people who don't exist, you've got problems. |
Beat Writer  Posts: 156 Joined: 11 Jun 2008    | Books n' series to avoid aye? Possible spoilers I suppose if you actually take the time to read this. "Julie of the wolves". I had interest in this book at first, but it slowly dwindled. Seriously, the "eating regurgitated food a wolf ate" seemed pretty sickening in my opinion. That was bad, but that wouldn't kill the book. What did was the ending. I never knew there was any sequels, and still don't plan on reading them when I finished with that... Thing. >.< "The wings of a falcon", by Cynthia Voigt. I kind of have empathy for the book, but here's a great way to end the story: The main character dies, his best friend gets what he earned through his lifetime, and gets his possible love interest. His friend is now the new main character. YAY! The "Time Spiral" series, for Magic: The Gathering. I'm sorry, but when you grow attached to major heroes from expansion after expansion of the card game, then have them just die? I mean what the hell? Magic has always been overly violent and loves to just murder character after character, but DAMN. The freaking Invasion series was bad enough (it has a part for you guys who love those S&M torture sequences that I'm hearing so much about), but jesus christ, this is gettng old fast. I must say it was the worst series out of all of the MTG books I've read. And what happens normally is something bad happens, and then something good happens. It makes a balance. This series has no balance. Everybody just dies.
I'm afraid I really did enjoy the golden compass; it kicked off great, but it just fell apart soon as I started reading the subtle knife.
I must agree on the silmarillion. When I first tried picking it up, it felt almost as if I was interpreting the Bible. Except I can tolerate the Bible. I still have trouble pronouncing that book's name... o.o |
Red Guard Posts: 3610 Joined: 27 Mar 2008    | Pretty much anything that gets stretched into a whole series is usually worth avoiding. -- Alex |
On the Record  Posts: 5973 Joined: 7 Feb 2008   | Can we put a veto on overly opinionated overarching statements like the one above? It's clearly fallacious. |
Vault Legend  Posts: 2205 Joined: 30 Jul 2008    |
Aye. Hear hear, all in favor? |
Web Developer  Posts: 840 Joined: 6 Jun 2007     | Speaking of the Dune universe, avoid anything written by Frank's son and that Anderson hack. I stopped way back at House Harkonnen, and I would have figured someone, somewhere would have demanded they slow down and put some quality writing in there. They're stamping out 500-600 page travesties, one a year, like keeping a deadline was the most important part of writing a book. |
On the Record  Posts: 5174 Joined: 3 Mar 2008  |
If my sister says that dreaded word one more time... Seriously, there's got to be a Twilight cult out there. Why did they have to make a movie? Besides that, 'Kidnapped' by R.L. Stevenson. I loved so many of his books, but I just despised this one. 'The Keys to the Kingdom' series. he thing about Garth Nix is that he has a brilliant beginning to a story, but just can't seem to end it right. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 672 Joined: 8 Nov 2007    | Lustbader's Pearl Saga is a wreck, avoid at all costs. paulgruberman:
Aye. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1113 Joined: 19 May 2008   | Book versions of popular movies. This is just wrong. To clarify: If it wasn't a good book before it was a movie, it never will be. For a book about vampires, Bram Stoker's Dracula is dreadfully boring. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3587 Joined: 6 Aug 2008 |
I liked those... In my defence before they became popular, about 1-2 years ago so does that make it a bit better? Read all the Harry Potters. Liked them but they are way overhyped, think of all the GREAT books that haven't been movies which could have been made with the Harry Potter money. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2663 Joined: 20 Jul 2008     | 'arry Potta books. Like a slowly unfolding version of Bully and Morrowind. |
Beat Writer  Posts: 219 Joined: 28 Aug 2008 |
I have to read the first book in my young adult lit class and when the professor mentioned it, all the girls started swooning and I said, "You guys do realize that Edward Cullen is a fictional character, right?" They all stared at me in abject horror. Then started in on all the ways he's perfect. Um, he's a vampire...how is that attractive? I'm pretty sure the fact that the book's "heroine" wants to sleep with him is necrophilia as he is indeed dead and I don't understand why he has to marry her. He's a vampire and so he can't exactly walk into a courthouse and file for a marriage license. Seriously, it's Anne Rice for the emo-set. Danielle Steele with fangs, if you will. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1540 Joined: 6 Apr 2008   | Just read Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka. Metamorphosis was good, a nice short piece, which as they say, I found to be rather Kafkaesque. Good stuff. Then I move onto the next one: The Great Wall of China. I swear I was struggling to not put the book down. Really...really dull. And that's a problem I seem to be having with a lot of old classics. I can rarely enjoy the language used, and only occasionally find myself enjoying the story of said classics. for example, Brave New World was listed as an example of a book to avoid. And while I don't really agree with that, I can still think of plenty of reasons why one -would- avoid it. One the primary one's be the language used. I mean...the way everyone talks, you assume everyone came from that era in American movie history where everyone talks ever so politely and dignified. And indeed, keeping in mind that the books are supposedly set in the future, which of course Huxley probably did envision as a future, of at least the one he occupied, as of course a lot of science fiction writers did, and still do today. It still left a weird, if not exactly awful taste on my mind. The opposite problem occurs in other sci-fi, where the language is -too- different than what a modern audience would be used to, where the author has gone out of their way to put in made up words and slang to make things sound futuristic. And while, yes that does make some kind of sense, after all, will people really be saying sh** and f**k in 4000 years? Or call a piece of ground transportation a car? Or a spaceship a spaceship? But..I've yet to read anything that does this right. Some like Iain M. Banks does this a lot in his Culture and other Sci-Fi novels like the Algerbraist. Others, I think, like Gene Wolfe with The Book of the Long Sun series comes close to doing it well, but, as with a lot of Gene Wolfe stuff, the wierdness tends to overflow. Dune was another example where I thought in kinda worked, as for the most part, a lot of the terms were actually explained within the confines of the book. |
On the Record Posts: 5174 Joined: 3 Mar 2008 |
I haven't exactly read the book; I read the first chapter and threw it away. What exactly was the plot, besides some vampire being a girl's love interest or vice-versa? |
Beat Writer  Posts: 132 Joined: 24 Jul 2008 |
the silmarillion is brilliant, i must have read it a million times, but then i take what tolkein wrote as word of god, so its probably a personal thing. books to avoid imo are thrillers, and i mean the whole genre. i mean sure you read just one of them then its awesome, but all books end up with one guy being chased by the whole world and whatever and just everyone is too good a strategist for any sustained suspension of disbelief. |
On the Record Posts: 5174 Joined: 3 Mar 2008 |
Really? "Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox?" What went wrong? I was seriously anticipating reading it. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3664 Joined: 21 Jan 2008   |
I agree with you Mythbhavd; I loved those books, and can't really see how anyone could not. It's a scary reminder of what could happen if we let the government take too much power. |
Beat Writer Posts: 219 Joined: 28 Aug 2008 |
That's basically it. Just her whining and complaining that he won't sleep with her and him saying they have to be married. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1540 Joined: 6 Apr 2008 |
Well, drug addled as they may have been, I didn't find Brave New World's vision -too- depressing, I mean, sure they were what one could consider intellectually dead (at least the common populance), but, they were happy right? Although, that doesn't make you feel any better for the 'Savages'. |
Anonymous Source  Posts: 6 Joined: 3 Sep 2008  | There were a few i read which were just horrible and have no idea why i was even interested in them. The Age Of Five trilogy by Trudi Canavan. A complete waste of time. Her other trilogy was good though, The Black Magician books. |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 659 Joined: 10 Aug 2008    | The bible and other religious books as such. |
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I didn't get into George R.R. Martin right off the bat, as it was too heavy and tragic for me - I got halfway through the second novel, skipped ahead a bit and found out that, yes, everyone was still killing each other and all my favorite characters were still being traumatized, disfigured or deleted. Didn't help that I LOVED Eddard Stark and with what happened to him, and how early it happened, kind of put me off. But going into it a second time was a lot easier, and I enjoyed myself more.
I also read and disliked The Da Vinci Code. The text was practically soaked in an unpleasant musk of smug adoration of the author's intelligence. And, for all the womb-worship propagated throughout, he couldn't write a realistic female character to save his own, well, book.
I got a whack of old horror books last Christmas, and while I very eagerly gobbled through and adored Dracula and the collected works of Lovecraft and Poe, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was painful. It wasn't just bad, but stupid - the titular character goes through heaving wracks of emo nonsense over absolutely everything and everything, and while I've come to understand that as an earmark of the time, all that remorse and disgust very frequently plays his actions against not only reason but common goddamn sense. It takes a lot for a book to actually get me angry. Frankenstein pissed me right off.
While I'm sure his work was excellent for the comic medium, anything I've read by Neil Gaiman disappointed me. While many authors make the mistake of not putting enough exciting flashy action into their novels, Gaiman goes the other way, becoming obsessed with coolness and meandering about the story. I liked Good Omens, but Pratchett's humor dimmed Gaiman's flair down to acceptable levels.