What do you read? - TTLG Forums

Jan on 29/10/2008 at 21:43

Quote:

Rushdie can't write for shit.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie is one of my all-time-favorites. A story about the Shah of Blah, how he lost his gift of gab and his son's (Haroun) quest to retrieve it... Absolutely amazing.

Right now I'm reading Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, a murder mystery--solved by a herd of sheep. It's very quirky and funny.

Thirith on 29/10/2008 at 22:16

Quote Posted by Jan

Have you read The Enchantress of Florence? It's no Haroun but it's probably closest to that one in that it's pure storytelling without most of the baggage he has in his other novels, and without the tiredness of his last 2-3 books.

sh0ck3r on 30/10/2008 at 00:46

Hey Thirith,

as for Rushdie, he is alright from an aesthetic point of view but I can't stand his narrative style... it seems the premise of Midnight's Children is briefly alluding to events early on and then returning to those events later in the novel in much greater detail. this is supposed to be some incentive to keep reading. but whenever he actually comes to deal with the events in detail, they are always disappointing. you almost end up feeling like he is treating the reader like some animal, dangling food in its face.... except the food sucks.

the events in that novel are arbitrary and bizarre and i'm not really into magic realism, if that's a label that can be applied to Rushdie's work.

I read Haroun and found it pretty trifling.

he knows how to sling words together but i think his books are unimportant.

Sypha Nadon on 30/10/2008 at 02:15

I finished reading my 50th book for the year last month and haven't read much since... just worn-out from books at the moment I guess. The bulk of what I read this year was literature from the 19th century French Decadence period, which while interesting was also kind of depressing. I think I might have to go and reread something that I know will cheer me up. Lovecraft comes to mind.

Random_Taffer on 30/10/2008 at 03:56

Quote Posted by fett

adult fantasy is a huge wank-fest these days

Have you ever read A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin?

It's an adult fantasy series, but I highly recommend it. Martin's prose is phenomenal as usual and it is truly the most original, non cliche piece of adult fantasy that I have read in a long time. The great thing about Martin is that he is not afraid to kill off main characters, so you will almost never guess the outcome of each situation and the books keep you in true suspense.

I'm waiting eagerly for the next installment, which is due sometime in February.

Random_Taffer on 30/10/2008 at 04:07

Quote Posted by Sulphur

I take it you've read Scar Night as well, then? How does Iron Angel measure up in your estimation?

I enjoyed it, but I may have enjoyed Scar Night a bit more.

Scar Night had a lot more action in it, but Iron Angel introduces a lot more new, extremely creative concepts and was a bit lighter on dialogue. I think it was written like that for a reason, though; to prepare the reader for all the crazy shit that's going to happen in the next installment.

So we have Scar Night, which is a great read and could easily stand on its own with no continuation.
Then we move on to Iron Angel, which seems to be an introduction to something far bigger, using the characters from Scar Night as a base.

Again, I highly recommend this series. I think that all of the new ideas that it presents are sort of a "breath of fresh air" to the Adult Fantasy genre.

Thirith on 30/10/2008 at 13:02

Quote Posted by sh0ck3r

Hey Thirith,

as for Rushdie...

Thanks for your reply. I obviously don't agree (I spent 2-3 years working almost exclusively on Rushdie), but I understand what you're saying. I definitely don't think he's a writer that every reader would enjoy, and his writing gets on my nerves at times, but I would definitely count Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses as two of my favourite novels. I greatly enjoy his inventiveness with language (whereas the sparseness of a Hemingway doesn't do much for me) and I've found those two novels aesthetically and ethically/ideologically compelling. He may be derivative (Midnight's Children could be accused of being an Indian remake of Günther Grass' The Tin Drum), but I enjoy him more than the authors he's been said to imitate. (Then again, I prefer the somewhat derivative Tom Stoppard vastly to Samuel Beckett, who he clearly imitates.)

Concerning the 'importance' of books: in what ways would you consider Beckett important, apart from the perspective of literary history? What other books or writers would you consider important?

glslvrfan on 30/10/2008 at 14:17

Im still reading the same stuff as i was 20 years ago. I just keep reading Dragon Lance and Feists Riftwar stuff over and over.

I've got the 2 newest Dragon Lance books, there is another coming out soon.

Im still waiting on Dean Koontz last in the Frankenstein series to come out also.

sh0ck3r on 30/10/2008 at 17:25

Hey Thirith,

I could talk about literature all day. In all fairness, I only got about 3/4 of the way through Midnight's Children. I don't much care for Hemingway either. Did you ever try to read Ulysses?

Beckett is important to me because in the Trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnnamable) he laid violent hands on literature, forging something new that is simultaneously hilarious, wretched and brutally honest. When people say they like Nietzsche or Shopenhauer I sort of scoff because Beckett is such a revolutionary leap forward. The same even applies to Freud or Jung.

He is the last great figure in my mind. When most people think of him they think of his plays, which I think are alright... but he believed his Trilogy was his most important work. Molloy is only about 140 pages and I couldn't recommend it more. I think that book maps out mental disorders way better than the DSM, for better or for worse. :weird: It's like psych., phil. and lit in one, plus the blackest of humour. I know Rushdie admires Beckett and wrote a good amount of criticism on him. I can certainly see Beckett's influence in MC, i.e. in the deteriorating narrator.

As for important writers in general: well, Homer; and then writers of the Augustan period (i.e. Ovid, Virgil); then Chaucer and Dante around the 1300s; then pretty much writers of the Renaissance; and then the Romantics somewhat and Modernists.

I'm writing a commentary on Paradise Lost right now.

Sulphur on 30/10/2008 at 17:44

Quote Posted by Random_Taffer

Awesome, I'll pick it up the next time I see it. One of the things that I liked the most about Scar night was its inventiveness and crazy ideas. As a protagonist, Dill was too much of a milksop, though, and he wasn't given much in the way of a personality either. I hope he's fleshed out a bit more this time around.