I seem to remember a giant anthropomorphic dung beetle in that one. Who tells puns, maybe?
I seem to remember a giant anthropomorphic dung beetle in that one. Who tells puns, maybe?
Yes! And the army of little girls who take over Oz with their TWF knitting needles.
P.S. Ending of King of Elfland's Daughter is a 10.
Rereading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It's been a long while, and I wanted to know why one woman and her son thought the book was pornographic and got a teacher suspended for reading excerpts to his class. Also, there's a movie adaptation coming out next year.
Thuvia, Maid of Mars by ERB. The first couple of chapters I thought were kind of blah, but things got better when Thuvia and Carthoris arrived in the Lost City of Lothar. Adding such phrases as "Carthoris, whose blood ran with the power of John Carter, Warlord of Mars and Dejah Thoris" didn't really help ERB's already sometimes clunky prose.
Ender's Game.
I guess we are all the same, there are certain books we just don't get what the hullabaloo is about.
I've read that book and just found absolutely nothing memorable about it. I'm fairly sure the idea has been used before (The Last Starfighter in a way, maybe), though by no means am I accusing him of ripping off the idea. Some things just come around, again and again.
I'll just never get the accolades this thing gets (and it has gotten a lot).
I actually find the book quite compelling, and the final chapter is simply brilliant. I just couldn't remember anything in the book itself that would qualify as "pornographic." Looking at it with a critical eye, I still don't. Simply an overreaction from puritanical minds that see the words "naked" in books and wig out, I suppose.
Ender's Game.
I guess we are all the same, there are certain books we just don't get what the hullabaloo is about.
I've read that book and just found absolutely nothing memorable about it.
What, not even the big plot twist?
I personally thought that one thing made it totally worth sitting through all the less interesting parts.
(But yeah, I personally found, contrary to what other readers told me, that _Speaker_for_the_Dead_, and maybe _Xenocide_, were more entertaining and compelling. I also enjoyed the first four "Homecoming" books more than I did _Ender's_Game_.)
Very pleased to have picked up Joyce Johnson's memoir of life with Kerouac et. al., Minor Characters.
So pleased, in fact, I'm headed straight to the 5/5/55 thread.
What, not even the big plot twist?Ender's Game.
I guess we are all the same, there are certain books we just don't get what the hullabaloo is about.
I've read that book and just found absolutely nothing memorable about it.
What big plot twist? There were any big plot twist in Ender's Game?!
I enjoyed Ender's Game and found the world building in Speaker for the Dead (a interstellar culture with instantaneous communication but no FTL drive, the religion, etc) interesting, but felt rather cheated when the ending of the third book (What happened next? Well, one of the POV characters lived for another 90 years, but she just really didn't pay attention to offworld news, THE END!)
I guess you could say I'm on the fence about the series, but I will say this: I've got a couple of books by Philip Jose Farmer that will leave anyone who calls Ender's Game porn screaming for the touch-me doll.
I still can't recall any porn in Ender's Game... Uh, wait, weren't there some fight under the shower? Or maybe it was different book.
What big plot twist? There were any big plot twist in Ender's Game?!
** spoiler omitted **
Ah. Yes, the twist to which I referred was that matter which you, Drejk, guessed before it was revealed. Well, *I* didn't see it coming, anyway.
On the other hand, I always assumed, throughout the book, that anyone would imagine the possibility that...
EDIT: Yes, there was a fight scene in the showers. There were several crude mentions of genitalia as well. That's just the way Card writes.
[silliness] Hey, this just occurred to me. Maybe the people who complain about _Ender's_Game_ just don't like seeing the word "bugger" in print. [/silliness]
@Hitdice: You do know about _Children_of_the_Mind_, right? Just making sure.
I guess I didn't make clear the intent of my previous post. The reason I feel that _Xenocide_ wasn't as bad as Hitdice described it was that it was not "THE END". Yes, the plot and many subplots are clearly unresolved, but they get resolved in the 4th Ender book, _Children_of_the_Mind_. I thought that CotM was not such a great book (and in fact regard it as decidedly inferior to the first three books) but I will say one good thing about book 4: it neatly wraps up the plots. Even in regards to the one subplot that DOESN'T get wrapped up, the book makes clear why that matter SHOULD remain unresolved, and delivers a convincing argument on that matter.
Why does _Xenocide_ end by summing up Qing Jao's life? I thought that was pretty clear. Qing Jao would not be important in book 4, so the best place to wrap up that subplot, and sum up the rest of Qing Jao's life, was at the end of book 3. I thought that ending made a good and clear statement about some people's tenacity to their religious beliefs, providing a far more satisfying ending than one would think based on Hitdice's description.
While Card is definitely not one of my favorite authors, I clearly think more highly of some of his works than some other people on these boards do. I find it odd that no one here addresses - or even hints at - what I think is the REAL big and glaring weakness of Card's writing.
I'm finally reading George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series (I'm currently on the first book). All I can say is wow. I wish I'd started reading it sooner.
Ah, but this way you won't have to wait as long for Martin to finish the series! :)
Ah, but this way you won't have to wait as long for Martin to finish the series! :)
Heh, good point! :)
Hee hee!
I'm still holding out.
People have been recommending them to me for years, and the conversation invariably went like this:
"OMG! OMG! They're so f~+%ing good! You have to read them--NOW!!"
[forty-five seconds later]
"I've been waiting 25,000 years for the next one--I hope it comes out before he dies."
I'll wait, thank you.
Although with the DVD now available, I might have to read the first book. Or, maybe not. I haven't decided.
I'm towards the end of book 4 atm; in it there's an afterword where Martin explains that he'd rather publish two books with half the characters in each than one super huge volume split into two parts, and should have book 5 done by (he hopes) next year.
The afterword is dated 2005.
I've said before, but I'm honestly curious as to whether he'll finish the next book by the time the TV series adapts all the published material.
also, this.
Doodle, you're suppose to be reading Doomsday Book, aren't you?
Hee hee! to the Martin article.
As for, Doomsday, you can make me live in a kennel, Lord Dice, but you can't tell me what to read!
Unless Kirth hates it. Then I'll read it next.
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Don't know Doomsday, but I'd heartily recommend the Domesday Book (although it's gotten a bit out of date since 1086).
P.S. No way George R.R.R.R.R. Martin's gonna live long enough to finish -- unless he pulls a Steven King and throws together a bunch of halfass crap just to end the story.
Fade outs can be satisfying in music...not so much in fantasy literature.
Finished Pawn Of Prophecy. What do I have next on my stack of library books?
What do you have next on your stack of library books?
I still can't recall any porn in Ender's Game... Uh, wait, weren't there some fight under the shower? Or maybe it was different book.
Yeah, the fight scene in the shower was there, but that couldn't have been it. The only thing that comes close, and this stretches credulity, is a scene where one of the army leaders is sitting naked on a bed and has his "desk" in his lap, and makes an image of his dangling naughty bits on the screen. It was the humor of any average 13 year old. That's the only place where genitalia is directly referenced...at least where it is directly referenced and not having a knee or a foot hit it.
P.S. No way George R.R.R.R.R. Martin's gonna live long enough to finish -- unless he pulls a Steven King and throws together a bunch of halfass crap just to end the story.
why not? he could easily live another 20 years.
@Hitdice: You do know about _Children_of_the_Mind_, right? Just making sure.
I do, but after the Alvin Maker series and the Homecoming series I just couldn't read anymore; I like Card's early work (Hart's Hope etc), but after a certain point I was all, "Dude, I get it, you're a Mormon, quite trying to convince me," and an interstellar wagon-train to the promised land was a bit much for me.
why not? he could easily live another 20 years.
Have you seen the guy? That would be a minor miracle. But even if he does, it seems like it takes him twice as long as the last one to finish each new book. If we're already up to 7 years, that means Book 6 in 2026, and Book 7 in 2054. Except he also keeps adding books to the total number, so by then there'll be a predicited 3 or 4 more of them.
why not? he could easily live another 20 years.Have you seen the guy? That would be a minor miracle. But even if he does, it seems like it takes him twice as long as the last one to finish each new book. If we're already up to 7 years, that means Book 6 in 2026, and Book 7 in 2054. Except he also keeps adding books to the total number, so by then there'll be a predicited 3 or 4 more of them.
Indeed; I'm also honestly curious if book "5" isn't going to be split into 6 and 7.
Don't get me wrong, I like Martin, I've been reading his stuff since I was a tween. Let's just say that that Fevre Dream and Armageddon Rag had a certain brevity to them, which he appears to have forgotten.
Also, "The Monkey Treatment" is just about the funniest short story I've ever read.
I get bored when you guys talk about Martin, so, have you read Daniel Abraham? He gets touted as a Martin protege, and I very much enjoyed his The Long Price Quartet. He's got a new series going that started with a bang with The Dragon's Path. Hopefully, he works faster than his maestro.
why not? he could easily live another 20 years.Have you seen the guy? That would be a minor miracle.
i believe he's lost weight recently.
But even if he does, it seems like it takes him twice as long as the last one to finish each new book. If we're already up to 7 years, that means Book 6 in 2026, and Book 7 in 2054.
i kinda doubt that.
Except he also keeps adding books to the total number, so by then there'll be a predicited 3 or 4 more of them.
let's say that starting with book five in 2011, each book takes five years, and the series ends up being eight books long (which is certainly possible). that would mean the final book would come out in... 2026? yikes...
Yeah, I'm going to wait until he is done writing everything, and then re-read the series from the beginning.
So I have something to look forward to in my retirement years.
So I got that going for me.
Which is nice.
P.S.
Gregory Keyes's "Kingdoms of Bone and Thorn" is like the methadone version of GRRM. 4 novels, a beginning, middle, and end.
I've given up on Sense and Goodness Without God. It's nowhere near bad, but between all the stuff in it that I already figured out and an increasingly tedious section on why to be moral where Carrier starts channeling his inner Victorian schoolmarm I was pretty fed up. Then I hit a section on naturalism and beauty in art. Erm, what? I get the connection but was this important enough to devote verbiage to? I skipped ahead to the section on politics and yeesh, bog-standard American "radical" moderatese. I didn't expect revolutionary socialism but after a book that spent so much of its time gleefully unconcerned with how it relates to the mainstream, this was a real let down.
That's ok, though. Three quarters of it was pretty damned good.
Probably going to pick up George RR Martin since I'm a book behind and keep hitting spoilers anytime I go to check my recollection of something about Westeros based on what I see on the show. That and I'm really foggy on most things that happen in the last two books except for the first POV character who is every bit as stupid and mean as we've been led to believe through the eyes of others.
Yeah, I'm going to wait until he is done writing everything, and then re-read the series from the beginning.
So I have something to look forward to in my retirement years.
So I got that going for me.
Which is nice.
P.S.
Gregory Keyes's "Kingdoms of Bone and Thorn" is like the methadone version of GRRM. 4 novels, a beginning, middle, and end.
What does that make C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series then, some sort of gateway drug? :P
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Revisiting William Gibson's Neuromancer.
Have a listen to this when you get to the part where he's hanging out with Rastas on the moon.
What does that make C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series then, some sort of gateway drug? :PYeah, I'm going to wait until he is done writing everything, and then re-read the series from the beginning.
So I have something to look forward to in my retirement years.
So I got that going for me.
Which is nice.
P.S.
Gregory Keyes's "Kingdoms of Bone and Thorn" is like the methadone version of GRRM. 4 novels, a beginning, middle, and end.
Foreigner is medicine, not a drug!!! Hahahaha!!!!
Also, a totally different sub-genre than Keyes and GRRM. Both are low-magic, multiple POV, gritty and unsentimental fantasy novels.
Foreigner is anthropological diplomatic/political hard sf....with flashes of action.
So, for those of you with young 'uns who want them to be friendly toward Darwinism, world history and transvestism (with maybe a gentle squick of hawt same-sex girl-on-girl action), I'd highly recommend the Leviathan trilogy.
Picked up a copy of Aikman's The Delusion of Disebelief last night, which claims to be a counterpoint to Hitchens' God id Not Great. I'll read them one after the other.
On the fiction side, finished Ozma of Oz and am on to Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz.
Charlain Harris Grave Surprise.
Yeah, I'm going to wait until he is done writing everything, and then re-read the series from the beginning.
ditto. there's no point in reading a few books, then having to wait who-knows-how-many years for the next one.
Yeah, I'm going to wait until he is done writing everything, and then re-read the series from the beginning.ditto. there's no point in reading a few books, then having to wait who-knows-how-many years for the next one.
I just hope we don't get Robert Jordaned.
That would suck big time.
sea of death was great! definitely my favorite "gord the rogue" book yet. i loved the twist halfway through...
Finished The Return of the King. My opinion of Tolkien has not changed. A nice solid story, but nothing to write home about these days.
Yup. Anyone claimed otherwise?!