I'll admit it. I'm a literary snob. Every year, I read On Walden Pond, by Henry David Thoreau. My favorite author is John Fowles. I read Leo Tolstoy for fun. If I enjoy a book, I'll sometimes go to the library and look up literary essays on the subject. If I really enjoy a book, I'll sometimes write an essay of my own.
The thing is, I don't go around recommending that people read what I like to read. For example, I don't tell people that they need to read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I recognize that what I read is not necessarily something that other people are likely to read or enjoy.
Also, I don't get offended when people say they don't like what I read. For example, I don't get all huffy when my friends say they can't get through Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. I recognize that it's a dense text, and it's not to everyone's liking.
That's why I don't understand people who get all upset when I say I don't like fantasy. Seriously, I've read enough fantasy to know that I don't like the genre. That doesn't mean I look down on the people who do like it, and it doesn't mean that I think they should stop reading it. It just means that I don't like it myself.
Now of course, there are exceptions. For example, I enjoy Tolkien's writing, I like The Neverending Story, and I love Neil Gaiman's Stardust. However, as much as I can appreciate the quality of writing in an author like Ursula K. Leguin, I just can't get into her writing. To me, the fantasy in her stories is just way too high to suspend my disbelief for long.*
And that's Ursula K. Leguin! A lot of fantasy authors, I find, just aren't good authors. They write formulaic stories, with shallow characters, and they use a vocabulary that's aimed at somewhere around 5th grade. That's not to say that I think there's something wrong with people who like that sort of thing. Some people prefer stories with great plot over great character development. However, that's just not my cup of tea.
Also, it's not like fantasy novels are the only thing I don't like. For example, I don't like romance novels, either. However, people don't give me a hard time because I won't read Sandra Brown's latest romance novel. They only give me a hard time when I won't read R.A. Salvatore's. Seriously, am I not allowed to say that I don't like something without people acting like I'm throwing down some gauntlet in the name of literary integrity.?
Just because I won't read the Wheel of Time series at your recommendation, does not mean I look down on your reading, or think that my reading habits are better than yours. It just means that I have enough experience with the fantasy genre to know that I probably won't enjoy it, any more than you're likely to enjoy Rene Girard's essay, "Triangular Desires of Don Quixote."
And just for the record, I absolutely despise anyone who says that I can't read for enjoyment. I'm sorry, but I don't read Dante's Inferno in order to torture myself. I read it because I enjoy it. So let me read what I want to read without feeling guilty about not reading what you want me to read.
End of rant.
*Note: I don't know why I find LeGuin's fantasy harder to swallow than Tolkien's. I just do.
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It like me...I hate (with increasing passion) Books and Sporting Events done by others. I would Rather learn to write better Stories myself. I Loathe Watching Other people Paid a fortune to play some sport on an Oval when I could be doing it (even just for myself - if I was offered a half million a year to do something enjoyable, I think I could at least have the video sent to Internet.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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For what it's worth, I don't like reading... at all. Not reading books, anyway, especially not in linear fashion. I have no problem looking up a reference or reading blurbs on an internet forum, but to sit down and peruse a lengthy work of literature (fantasy, non-fiction, or otherwise) just does not appeal to me.
So, in essence, I understand your plight from the other side. People constantly get frustrated with me because I don't like to read ANYTHING they recommend. I HAVE read a few books in my time (Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" being the most recent) and the few books I've managed to read all the way through, I've enjoyed. I read at a snail's pace, however, finding myself unable to simply absorb dozens of pages in a single sitting. For this reason, I have a strong appreciation of classic short stories (such as those of William Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe) designed to be read in a single evening.
I never learned to read...
How ironic. :)
I never learned to read...
I recall something about monkeys, typewriters, and Shakespeare. Do ponies count as monkeys?
There are people with minimal "literacy" skills who definitely do not know how to read...not that I teach them every semester or anything...
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I've come to appreciate that fantasy is as wide a genre as any other, with a great diversity of styles over the more than 100 years in which it has been actively published. In my experience, a reader of you tastes is right to shy away from multi-book series, media and game tieins, or just about anything you might expect to find at the airport or Target.
Before giving up on fantasy, I'd suggest you take a look at authors like China Mieville, A. Merritt, C L Moore, and Clark Ashton Smith, all of whom have qualities you are more likely to appreciate than your run of the mill popular fantasy.
Of course it's no skin off my back if you do t, but just as not all philosophy books are boring or not all "literate" fiction is pretentious and annoying, not all fantasy is s!$@e.
There are people with minimal "literacy" skills who definitely do not know how to read...not that I teach them every semester or anything...
Oh, you mean high school kids? ;-)
Me, I love to read! Fantasy too (yes, even Salvatore and Robert Jordan). However, my love for reading is now mostly a source of frustration, since I don't have the energy to concentrate for long, so reading entire books are now exercises in futility. :-(
I used to be a "devour several books a week" reader, but chronic depression has put an end to that. So the love and passion for it is still there, but the physical limitation puts a damper on it.
I still have a lot of "classics" I haven't read yet (although I'd also argue that some of the "classics" I have read really doesn't fit the title, i.e. they're really only "classics" because people say so, not because they're great literary works).
I never learned to read...How did you find this thread, then? And how did you type what you just said?
I'm so awesome, that this thread actually found me.
Stuff.I would like to thank you, Erik, for the Planet Stories book "Worlds of Their Own." Short story compilations are precisely my cup of tea and I hope you'll release more of these in the future.
I'll second that. I really love short story collections and I will often go searching through secondhand bookstores looking for them. I wish they were more popular these days. So many bloated fantasy stories would be better if they were told in twenty pages rather than a thousand. :) I just don't have that kind of time or attention span.
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Stuff.I would like to thank you, Erik, for the Planet Stories book "Worlds of Their Own." Short story compilations are precisely my cup of tea and I hope you'll release more of these in the future.
Hell, I'll just thank him for all the Planet Stories in general, and urge him to add even more "Planet" with some straight up sci-fi. Perhaps some A.E. van Vogt.....
A lot of fantasy authors, I find, just aren't good authors. They write formulaic stories, with shallow characters, and they use a vocabulary that's aimed at somewhere around 5th grade.
You need to try some Jack Vance, then! Most people who try him keep an unabridged dictionary handy, and refer to it 2-3 times on each page. More literate types like us marvel at his mastery of the language.
Of course it's no skin off my back if you do t, but just as not all philosophy books are boring or not all "literate" fiction is pretentious and annoying, not all fantasy is s*%%e.
And like I said, there is some fantasy literature that I do enjoy. For example, when I read The Neverending Story for the first time, it blew my mind how closely it followed Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. As a general rule of thumb, though, the genre just doesn't appeal to me.
What I find funny is that, even though I don't really care for fantasy books, I'm a total avid D&D fan. So I can't read about some guy running around in armor, but I can play one with my friends?
I also tend to like fantasy movies. For example, while I thought the Harry Potter books were okay, I really enjoyed the movies.* How weird is that?
*Except for Prisoner of Azkaban. I didn't like the book or the movie.
"It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times?! YOU STUPID MONKEY!"
Heh. That's Dickens:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it ws the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."
This is Shakespeare:
Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.
Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes
the desire, but it takes away the performance. There-
fore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator
with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him
on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and dis-
heartens him; makes him stand to, and not stand to; in
conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him
the lie, leaves him.
I love the Porter. :)
From the orginal post it seems that the point was less, "I don't like fantasy novels," than "I don't like generic multi-volume, lowest-common-denominator stuff," which is absolutely 100% fair enough. Although given it's 2009, the idea that people would be trying to convince anyone to read R.A. Salvatore as a good example of the genre is bizarre. I don't think even Salvatore himself would pretend his books are any more than brainless popcorn reads and from that perspective they are okay, but if as a reader you don't want brainless popcorn reads than you aren't going to like them very much.
Fantasy is a very wide church, of which modern epic fantasy (or secondary world fantasy) is only a relatively small subset. At the literary end of the scale you have the magic realists, including some works by authors like Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, John Fowles and others. Since these authors don't label their works as fantasy, the literary establishment feels it's safe to shower them with awards. It is funny when an author like Michael Chabon comes along who doesn't get called genre, wins some major awards (including the Pulitzer), than makes the literati critics run away crying when he starts talking about how much he loves SF and Fantasy, reveals a working knowledge of Klingon and writes a blatant parallel-history SF novel where the Jews colonised Alaska, then geeks out massively when it wins the biggest SF award around.
I'd say the biggest strike against modern epic fantasy is that it is, by its very nature, dependent on story and plot development (which you need a lot of to fill up eight 1,000-page volumes or whatever) to the exclusion of other factors. If you are a fan of more literary fiction, than these factors, although important to some degree, are usually secondary to the quality of the prose and thematic development, of which you will find precious little in the works of Salvatore/Goodkind/Eddings/Paolini/Weis & Hickman/Brooks/Lackey/Feist/etc.
There are some authors who buck this trend. China Mieville has excellent prose, has some fascinating things to say and doesn't skimp on either the literary or entertainment ends of the spectrum. He's one of the few authors who has a solid, wide-base appeal. Someone like Graham Joyce or Christopher Priest (both of whom critics have argued aren't SF or Fantasy writers at all, always a good sign) would also fit into that bracket.
You need to try some Jack Vance, then! Most people who try him keep an unabridged dictionary handy, and refer to it 2-3 times on each page. More literate types like us marvel at his mastery of the language.
I support this statement. I also keep thinking of Roger Zelazny's LORD OF LIGHT as a possible companion suggestion, except I got the impression the OP didn't really want this to turn into a suggestion thread.
I heartily recommend "Jonathan Strange and Mr.Norrell" by Susanna Clarke. It is fantasy for people who like wit and erudition.
Wikipedia entry on the novel in question.
I have little tolerance for bad fantasy. I loved Eddings and Gemmel when I was ten. By eighteen, I was more into Kundera, Burroughs, and Turgenev.
A lot of fantasy authors, I find, just aren't good authors. They write formulaic stories, with shallow characters, and they use a vocabulary that's aimed at somewhere around 5th grade.You need to try some Jack Vance, then! Most people who try him keep an unabridged dictionary handy, and refer to it 2-3 times on each page. More literate types like us marvel at his mastery of the language.
Michael Moorcock has a lot of fantasy fiction that works on a much deeper literary level as well, and has the added bonus of being on the fabled Appendix N from the AD&D DMG, right next to Vance.
I heartily recommend "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell" by Susanna Clarke. It is fantasy for people who like wit and erudition.
Amen! Another of my favorites -- it reminded me quite a bit of Jack Vance, in fact, in the use of complex language, multi-page footnotes, cultural foibles, and ironic asides.
Hearken to the Mona.
For that matter, one may judge differently in cases of different works by an author one loves. I love Eco's Name of the Rose, but I wanted to fly to Milan and beat him with my big fat copy of Foucault's Pendulum...what a wasted opportunity.
And Gentle Giant, 13th graders... :S
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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I have little tolerance for bad fantasy. I loved Eddings and Gemmel when I was ten. By eighteen, I was more into Kundera, Burroughs, and Turgenev.
I assume by Burroughs you mean William S. And not Edgar Rice. I was listening to Dead City Radio last night, and reflecting to myself that a remarkable amount of WSB's work could be classified as fantasy or SF.
When I was eighteen, the only Burroughs I had read was Junkie, and Queer. Naked Lunch is certainly counterfactual.
To the growing list of unsolicited recommendations, I must add:
Heh. There's a lesson to be learned here: If you complain about people insisting you read things, they will inevitably insist that you read things. Some good recommendations, btw...
I'm surprised that no one mentioned C.J. Cherryh. I can only envy the casual erudition of her prose.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Law school killed my love of extracurricular reading, but I did pick up a collection of Grey Mouser and Fffffhrd (you know the guy, lots of consonants in his name, very few vowels) short stories and they were not only good to read, but really gave you a respect for the roots of the game. It's amazing to read the books that are the foundation for D&D. The stories I read laid out a bunch of genre staples, including the idea of the thieves guild, thieves cant, the various thieving skills (OL, PP, CW, etc), and a fantasy word that is both gritty and magical.
Side question for Erik since he's following this thread: what was the inspiration for the name Planet Stories? And don't go telling me you just rolled it on a random name generator and ruin my image of you as an archivist of fantasy and game literature with an encyclopedic memory.
And Gentle Giant, 13th graders... :S
Oy vey! Well, not really that surprising, I think literacy in general has taken a deep dive in the younger population over the last 15-20 years.
To the OP: are you perchance a Johnnie?
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Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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Side question for Erik since he's following this thread: what was the inspiration for the name Planet Stories? And don't go telling me you just rolled it on a random name generator and ruin my image of you as an archivist of fantasy and game literature with an encyclopedic memory.
As long as we're discussing literary fantasy authors, I may as well give a tip of the hat to Gene Wolfe. LeGuin once dubbed him the Melville of the fantasy genre. I'd tend to agree.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Side question for Erik since he's following this thread: what was the inspiration for the name Planet Stories? And don't go telling me you just rolled it on a random name generator and ruin my image of you as an archivist of fantasy and game literature with an encyclopedic memory.
Gracias, your cyclopianess.
Hee-hee!
Funny and apropos.
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i can try to read a bit of everything... except of course cientific texts or school books... anything related to math and physics would undobtedly sent my to Morpheus.
But I admit, i have a liking gaming leterature... whcih much of it is just popcorn enjoyement...
again, whenever I have the chance and the courage I will reach for Eco's "el nombre de la rosa" (the name of the rose)... which is marvelous... but force to much work as to read as I have accostuemd in this last years (a few hours every once in a while).
OP: I know this is NOT a "give me tittles to read" thread, nor are you asking for them... and actually it has been an entertaining discussion..., but to the unsolicited recommendations I can only offer "Castle Otranto" (snif, I forgot the Author's name!), beautiful gothic short story, and for longer reads and character developtment read "A Game of Thrones" by GRR Martin... its all about character development... es the story is runnign all along, but the story will run anyway, its just a medium to tell the stories of quite different characters...
quite sad and shociking when someone you thought would be a mayor character... suddenly dies... Martin almost looks like an evil GM sometimes :P
Horace Walpole's?
I've been wanting to read that.
I'm often in the same boat as the OP. A lot of my friends read fantasy and scifi books that I just can't get into. D&D fiction tends to be the worst (I can't stand R.A. Salvatore.) I also have the ironic tendency to get into a fantasy or scifi movie or TV show more than I can in the books. I guess my expectations are different. In a book, I expect good writing, deep subjects, and innovation - I'm putting a lot more effort into it. In a TV show/movie it's more of a visceral pleasure I'm after and I can forgive poor dialogue every once in a while (although I'd just as soon skip cliched lines line, "Let's move out," and "Cover me!")
I've no doubt there are brilliant fantasy books out there, but it often feels you have to wade through so much chaff. However, I second Hoyle's recommendation of Calvino and Borges. Both brilliant. Calvino's Invisible Cities is a great inspiration! And I've written adventures based on Borges' scholarly labyrinthine stories. I'd add to all that Mervin Peake's Gormenghast trilogy.
And Gentle Giant, 13th graders... :SOy vey! Well, not really that surprising, I think literacy in general has taken a deep dive in the younger population over the last 15-20 years.
Beep! Not true, though every generation will think it. It just so happens that kids who like learning and reading, in a genuine way not because its popular are always the minority, so they dissappear in the crowd. You may have known and recognised at your own age, but you won't see it as much in younger alien generations.
Similarily most generations think younger generations are lazy, etc. Its a natural human thing. But don't mistake it for a fact. Flynn effect may or may not be fact, its impossible to tell if people are getting smarter. But unlikely that their getting dumber. :p
Mostly, I'm turning 21, and I read just fine, so do most of my closest friends.
I'm guessing, not in the community college crowd?
I still think there's been a decline in the ability to read older English.
I refuse to accept such a ridiculous opinion.
I refuse to accept such a ridiculous opinion.
I refuse your ridiculous refusal!
P.S. Did you mean you think it has fallen in Community College, or it hasn't. Is Community College basically College without the fees?
Because I couldn't say, though I'm in university, ans have nerdy friends, but kids who like to read generally do alright in the academic system, despite its flaws. So if Community College has a lower academic standard for admission, and people are growing more and more able to get into fee-requiring Universities, maybe thats why the proportion if good readers in community college has fallen.
It'd sadden me if my generation was truly less literate, just as if Navier-Stokes never got solved and human advancement just arrested.