Is Shakespeare predictable? Sure, because we're all familiar with the story. Romeo and Juliet come to a bad end. But it's still great literature.
R&J is another one that's failed to live up to its hype for me. In fact, I hated it until I saw a good friend of mine play Romeo, which was when I learned that R&J is supposed to be funny too. I'm still not enamored of R&J, but I respect it now.
Reading as a pastime, GRRM is good. I'm reading A Game of Thrones now, and enjoying it. Lots of fun stuff, but it doesn't bring to mind the great philosophical questions. Yep, there's some bad people, and some good people, and some people mixed up in a 'realistic way.' But there's not a whole lot of new ground. Reading this stuff is not a mind-expanding activity. I don't leave the story thinking I've learned anything new about the human condition. I haven't been imparted some great understanding about how the world works.
You read novels to understand the world and the human condition? And here I am reading novels to pass the time. The last time I learned something about the world from a novel was The Great Gatsby in the 9th grade. And what did I learn? That some writers need to listen to their editors. ;)
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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If you are used to someone like Terry Goodkind that churned out worse and worse books on a regular schedule as the series went on just to fulfil some editorial quota, then Martin's "I will finish it when I am happy" is hard to put up with, but you know the sugar is gonna be good.
What, you mean like the end of the Dark Tower series? /snark
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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Consider the Dictionary. It is designed to provide conformity for a group, however if it is to be truly accurate then we must consider A,B, C, D...Z to infact be a 26 base number system with which we allocate a number to a concept.
THe Dictionary in its idealized form is in fact a catalogue of ideas - given a number that uses a 26 base number system (27 if you consider the ZERO as the blank Space).If we truly desire conformity and accuracy then we might as well simply lay out our dictionary on the assumption that they are numbers and allocate our numbers thusly:
A0000000000000 : A, The Letter
//
AARD0000000000 : A Dutch/Boer Term for 'Earth'.
//
AARDVARK000000 : A Dutch/Boer term for Ant eater.
//
AARDWOLF000000 : A Dutch Boer term meaning 'Earthwolf'.
//
B0000000000000
//
BARD0000000000 : A Musician of ancient times, a great poet or playwright
//
C0000000000000
//
D0000000000000
//
E0000000000000Not only will it allow us to computer generate all our Dictionaries we will be able to allocate all the un-used numbers. Languages will become meaningless as an assortment of different numbers will refer to the same concept. What we called languages will be meaningless and stored in a common dictionary. The idea of French, Chinese, Russian, English will Give way to Terran.
Pronunciation, dude. HowTF do you say "AARDVARK000000"? If it's "ard-vark-o" then how do you differentiate between "BEAR0000000000" and "BARROW0000000"?
If you are used to someone like Terry Goodkind that churned out worse and worse books on a regular schedule as the series went on just to fulfil some editorial quota, then Martin's "I will finish it when I am happy" is hard to put up with, but you know the sugar is gonna be good.What, you mean like the end of the Dark Tower series? /snark
Heh, I am sure I would get the sarcasm there if I had read the Dark Tower series..I am guessing it falls flat in the end?
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Sorry, book 4 was very subpar.
And at times seriously felt like it was written by anyone but a perfectionist.
If you had a eatten an awesome hamburger and then 2 years later you had it again and it was just as good, and 2 years later you had it again and it was even bigger (one of the biggest you ever ate) and it was still good, and then for 5 years you had to eat at Taco Bell and finally you got to try that Burger again, well I would spend an evening driving around New Jersey and riding on a cheetah to eat that burger..and you you finally bit into that lucious peace of meat you wouldn't care what Neil Patrick Harris did to your car because even if the Burger wasn't cooked as well as before, it was still way better than chowing down on a taco bell value meal.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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Heh, I am sure I would get the sarcasm there if I had read the Dark Tower series..I am guessing it falls flat in the end?
1st book is brilliant. Last book is a crying shame of a letdown. There are high (Wizard and Glass) and low (Song of Susannah) in between. Generally, later = worse.
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Pronunciation, dude. HowTF do you say "AARDVARK000000"? If it's "ard-vark-o" then how do you differentiate between "BEAR0000000000" and "BARROW0000000"?Consider the Dictionary. It is designed to provide conformity for a group, however if it is to be truly accurate then we must consider A,B, C, D...Z to infact be a 26 base number system with which we allocate a number to a concept.
THe Dictionary in its idealized form is in fact a catalogue of ideas - given a number that uses a 26 base number system (27 if you consider the ZERO as the blank Space).If we truly desire conformity and accuracy then we might as well simply lay out our dictionary on the assumption that they are numbers and allocate our numbers thusly:
A0000000000000 : A, The Letter
//
AARD0000000000 : A Dutch/Boer Term for 'Earth'.
//
AARDVARK000000 : A Dutch/Boer term for Ant eater.
//
AARDWOLF000000 : A Dutch Boer term meaning 'Earthwolf'.
//
B0000000000000
//
BARD0000000000 : A Musician of ancient times, a great poet or playwright
//
C0000000000000
//
D0000000000000
//
E0000000000000Not only will it allow us to computer generate all our Dictionaries we will be able to allocate all the un-used numbers. Languages will become meaningless as an assortment of different numbers will refer to the same concept. What we called languages will be meaningless and stored in a common dictionary. The idea of French, Chinese, Russian, English will Give way to Terran.
You would pronounce it as ARDVARK. 0(ZERO) is the space - the unpronounced phonetic. But because BEAR0000000000 and BARROW00000000 are numbers allocated to the concepts we think they are...we must conform to the idea of 'cataloguing' numerically. That way when we fill up the spaces and work our way down to [ZZZZZZ00000000: A Misconception of the sleep sensation] and [ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ: The inevitable state of ones philosophical standpoint before total system failure]
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Heh, I am sure I would get the sarcasm there if I had read the Dark Tower series..I am guessing it falls flat in the end?1st book is brilliant. Last book is a crying shame of a letdown. There are high (Wizard and Glass) and low (Song of Susannah) in between. Generally, later = worse.
For me it got consistently better through the first three books, and fell off seriously after that. I finished it more out of stubbornness and a sense of obligation than for any enjoyment. And even so, the ending was horribly anti-climactic.
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For me it got consistently better through the first three books, and fell off seriously after that. I finished it more out of stubbornness and a sense of obligation than for any enjoyment. And even so, the ending was horribly anti-climactic.Heh, I am sure I would get the sarcasm there if I had read the Dark Tower series..I am guessing it falls flat in the end?1st book is brilliant. Last book is a crying shame of a letdown. There are high (Wizard and Glass) and low (Song of Susannah) in between. Generally, later = worse.
Certainly not one of Stephen King's better works.
Sorry, book 4 was very subpar.
It lacked the action-adventure elements of Books 1-3 and the pacing was seriously screwed up, that's for sure. Some elements of the Brienne story were also redundant (the apocalyptic aftermath and its impact on the common folk was better-handled in Arya's thread in the preceding book) and there was unnecessary POV creep. We only needed Asha as a new POV among the Iron Islands (and maybe that one Victarion chapter at the end) and Arianne for Dorne. The rest were not needed, even if Areo Hotah's was one of the best-written in the series.
On the flipside, it was thematically the most coherent book in the series. It dwelt on the aftermath and ruins of war with the survivors picking over what prizes they can drag out of the rubble and what happens when certain characters get the power they have craved for the entire series. It also - vitally - begins the process of tying the Wall and Daenerys storylines closer to the Seven Kingdoms storyline, which was essential at this point in the series if there is any hope to see the series concluded in seven volumes. AFFC certainly achieved what it needed to achieve in terms of narrative goals, but compared to the preceding three books those goals were modest, making the book appear somewhat inert in comparison, even though a fair bit does actually happen if you made a list of the major events and story beats.
It is definitely the weakest book in the series, but certainly is not entirely devoid of merit.
And at times seriously felt like it was written by anyone but a perfectionist.
The book was the product of a series of severe compromises, some of which I know GRRM now regrets. The circumstances of writing this book were extremely complex (it was never meant to exist, for a start, and Martin had no plan for it in his notes; the story was supposed to pick up 5 years later in A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, completely skipping the events of AFFC, but the flashback structure needed to make that work was unsuccessful) and it was the result of Martin abandoning his usual perfectionism.
If you had a eatten an awesome hamburger and then 2 years later you had it again and it was just as good, and 2 years later you had it again and it was even bigger (one of the biggest you ever ate) and ...
This analogy is...strained. Especially as the first three burgers you ate took a lot longer than 2 years each to produce (ah, the joys of writing years and years before you start publishing).