Books discussion

[Midnight_Carnival]

I think I have read all the Song of Ice and Fire books in the series he has written so far. They were good, but by no means the best fantasy series I have read. His characters start off rather one-dimentional, but kind of grow on you... one thing though, he still has "good guys" and "bad guys", some of the latter are just misunderstood "good guys" and some are amusing "bad guys", but you can still see if the character is supposed to be "good" or not. The other thing I have a problem with is that... Ok, I'm not against gore or porn, anybody who has read anything I've written would most certainly know that, but if you are going to put something disgusting in your story, at least have it there for a reason (other than to keep your readers interested). There are places where he could have really stomped the bottom out of the depravity barrel and he just described things factually, yet in other places he adds gratuitous smut and gore and I personally feel it detracts from his storyline...

-but then again you do get the added bonus of guessing who the next character he's going to kill off is. I apply the rule of thumb that the ones who can't/won't adapt soon die.

In my Opinion, Erikson pwns him though!

[Moribund]

Yeah he's great. I also loved Wild Cards by him.

I suppose I should get around to reading Game of Thrones and all that, but Robert Jordan really killed my appetite for "high fantasy epics".

[Hulavuta]

By the way, I finished reading Tuesdays With Morrie for school. Excellent book. I highly recommend it.

[angelabrookss]

So far it is a pretty good question !
I am reading Harry Potter right by JK.Rowling .
It is a great novel everybody must have to check it out !

[Hulavuta]

I read Prisoner of Azkaban for school, when I was in fifth grade. (Like a million years ago) I liked it. It went really well with popcorn chicken. I might read the first (and the rest) sometime.

[Mountain_King]

Currently reading King Raven Trilogy by Steven Lawhead. (re-reading actually) It's Robin Hood, but with a very unique (and refreshing) setting. IMO it's the best thing he's ever written. Quite thought-out and researched.

[boru]

Just finished Atlas Shrugged. Pretty astonishing, although I recommend skipping over any speeches that run longer than 10 pages. And all the romance parts. But there is some amazing stuff in there. Basically, it's about the end of the world, as accomplished by corrupt governments.

I need something light after this 1168 page tome, so my next will be Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

[Gwynnedrion]

I'm reading alot of stuff these days. I would advise a trip to www.wattpad.com because of the many stories you find there. Most are bad but there are some diamonds when you dig deeper.

[sur.nhm]

So far it is a pretty good question !
I am reading Harry Potter right by JK.Rowling .
It is a great novel everybody must have to check it out !

I personally dislike HP. It fells like a sha'atnez between fantasy and this trope.
OT, I read (or rather have started to) Iain M. Banks' Feersum Endjinn (no, that's not a misspelling). Good book so far.

[Iris]

Good, another person who replies to spambots. (Hint, hint.)

[Moribund]

I didn't think that looked like a spambot. In any case I think Harry Potter died somewhere around the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth. Seventh was just awful.

[Velensk]

Harry Potter is another one which I probably wouldn't be so annoyed about if it wasn't popular. During the time when it was really big people would tell me about how great it was and I couldn't help but think that there were other much better put together worlds/stories which deserved the recognition so much more. I didn't think the series changed all that much as time went on; the problems it had from the start just got worse and easier to spot as the general tone of the series got more serious.

To be on topic: I have been reading a wide variety of extraordinarily dumb manga whose names I don't care to recall (even if I could spell them) which I don't recommend to anyone with anything else to try. The reason I am doing this is that the local library hasn't gotten any new books in the catagories I like to read recently and sometimes you'll find a manga that is decent.

[NymDesertStar]

I'm reading Harry Potter at the moment. I'm a little behind. I'm on The Chamber of Secrets...

[Rigor]

I have been reading a wide variety of extraordinarily dumb manga whose names I don't care to recall (even if I could spell them) which I don't recommend to anyone with anything else to try.

WUAHAHAAHHA !!! yeah i know what you mean. i heard FF 14 is in the making...talking about stories which dont make sense...and hilarious names (lightening ? snow ? hope ? vanille ? WTH! what about currency, hedgerow, or jar instead?) i cant play that game because i just cant stand a bad story.

i am STILL chewing robinson, jeez this part where he always fears he will be eaten by barbarians is just too long. i put it away...many times but parallel im reading HERO OF AGES which i mentioned before, (thx spaceinvader what a nice book - my gf has finished book 3 already).

and i have to defend HP here. this book is dope, i devoured it! especially for a non-native speaker i loved her style. i tried it in my own language, but i was horrified. i put it away when i reached page 70 (3rd book, a re-read. very very shallow translation imho). i liked the morale part of the book, i liked the stories style, i liked the construct in general. nothing left to wish for. i hope it will be in the schools "have to learn" program soon.

[Moribund]

I just finished Xenocide and am giving Childen of the Mind a shot. Some of it I found kinda unbelievable.- but I can understand it as merely the basis for a philosophical debate. The characters are beginning to feel like they're at the point where the author is trying to hard to make the characters seem like themselves, to the point where they're caricatures of their formal selves. But there were some parts I liked, I'll reserve judgment until the end of Children.