A work friend handed me Enders Game to read. I had already consigned Card to my don't bother I disagree with the authors politics and beliefs bin. In return I handed him the Chronicles of Amber.
Being polite I promised I would read it, unfortunately for me I dislike the book because where I would be able to forgive laziness, stereotypes and a predictable plot, because I have a soft spot for any scifi, I find myself bringing a very harsh and critical eye to the book.
I do find some characters interesting enough to finish the book, then I might spoil the rest of the series by reading the synopsis on wiki. So I don't have to wade through more books.
I find the use of the word bugger jarring, it has a few different meanings in Australian English, that in different contexts can be a term of endearment or a deadly insult much like the word bastard.
Has anybody else had outside influences make the works of an author or series of books difficult to read? Did you put them down or struggle on? Was it worth it?
One of my ex-roommates, a rather sketchy dude to begin with who then inheirited a couple hundred thousand dollars and decided to become a junkie, tried to get me to read Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
It wasn't bad, and, actually, now that I think about it, I wonder how it turned out, but back then, I really f#~%ing hated that roommate and that hatred spilled over into reading the book and I didn't get very far in it.
In other news, I saw the trailer for that Seventh Son flick and I was all like, "I don't know, I might have to break the boycott for this one..."
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I generally keep my personal biases out of things I read. Only time it becomes an issue is when the author is clearly shoving his political views in your face until you just wanna scream at them to just write a story and leave their opinions out of it.
On a side note, totally unrelated, anybody here read the Sword of Truth series?
I have read all kinds of books before they got controvertial (at least to me)
I read Ender's Game and never found anything wrong with it.
I Read L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth and part of Mission Earth Dectology before I even heard of his Scientology.
About the only series I can think of that someone said I really should read is Lord of the Ring or Foundation. Both I found boring and never finished.
There have been lots of books that I have picked up myself. If I didn't get past the first page, I put it back on the shelf.
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On a side note, totally unrelated, anybody here read the Sword of Truth series?
I've read the whole series. Started good, got political, ended badly, hated the screwball ending.
So far, I haven't had to deal too much with baggage. Generally I have either read a book before the author became controversial (Orson Scott Card, Dan Simmons), or I got turned off from the book/series by the content and writing, not from the author's real life politics/personality.
The Sword of Truth definitely fits into the latter. Pretty sure I gave up after the fourth book? hard to tell. I know I stopped reading before the politics got really bad, but even before that I was aggravated by the poor characterization and all the ripping off of Robert Jordan. Granted reading about the series later there were points other people picked up on but I didn't.
Laura K. Hamilton is another. Not for politics, but just because I started reading it as an urban fantasy, didn't care for the increasing shift toward Harlequin romance. By the time I gave up it felt like "Oh look, there is a werepanther, I better have sex with it" Ugh
Actually...as soon as I hit enter I did think of another example.
R. Scott Baker. I remember hearing reviews of his fantasy series which complained of the sexism in the series. Still haven't read his fantasy books, but did pick up Neuropath. I admit that going into the series hearing complaints about his treatment of women...well...influenced how I interpreted his writing for the negative. Still remains one of the most unsettling horror novels I have ever read.
Oooh, I don't know, what's Dan Simmons' baggage?
"We are at with Eurabia, we have always been at war with Eurabia!"
I remember while reading The Terror thinking it seemed like he went out of his way to make the two sodomites the only bad people on the ship.
[Shrugs]
Good book, though.
I don't have a problem with an author's politics, unless the book shoves it in my face. Chine Mieville is a communist (a belief system that I find highly objectionable) but I can still enjoy (some of) his books.
9/11 sent him off the deep end into severe Islamophobia. I won't bother looking it up, but he's got a short story online about a time traveler coming back to warn the narrator about how Europe is going to turn into Eurabia, with Sharia law for all.
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IIRC, that story also suggested we were to soft on Islam and should have gone full genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Genre authors, ESPECIALLY Science fiction authors, seem to usually have or develop belief systems that are probably not in line with the mainstream. But good authors can usually keep those views from unduly influencing the work.
I stayed away from Dune for 30 years because the movie was so confusing I assumed the book would be too. Finally read it, wasn't confusing but I found it mediocre.
All this hoopla about Frank Herbert and I was utterly dissapointed.
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"We are at with Eurabia, we have always been at war with Eurabia!"
I remember while reading The Terror thinking it seemed like he went out of his way to make the two sodomites the only bad people on the ship.
[Shrugs]
Good book, though.
I liked the Hyperion/Endymion books, though the ends of the two duologies were kind of soft.
One of my ex-roommates, a rather sketchy dude to begin with who then inheirited a couple hundred thousand dollars and decided to become a junkie, tried to get me to read Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
It wasn't bad, and, actually, now that I think about it, I wonder how it turned out, but back then, I really f!@$ing hated that roommate and that hatred spilled over into reading the book and I didn't get very far in it.
In other news, I saw the trailer for that Seventh Son flick and I was all like, "I don't know, I might have to break the boycott for this one..."
That movie appears to be based on a different book with the same name, Doodles. Joseph Delaney is listed as the author on IMDB, and the synopsis didn't ring any bells.
As for the OP's questions, I'll usually finish a book even if i don't enjoy it, but won't pick up other books by an author I don't enjoy. I'm not quite sure why outside influences should be more or less relevant to whether or not I enjoy a book, though. I mean, whatever the reason I'm not enjoying a book, if I'm not enjoying it, then I'm not enjoying it.
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Well, that's good, 'cuz there's no way I'm boycotting a Jeff Bridges fantasy flick.
The dude abides.
This is off topic, but the Seventh Son (or Spook's Apprentice) books are pretty good. Forgot they were making a movie, hope it doesn't go the way of most YA adaptations.
Admittedly, I can sometimes have a hard time being uncritical when I've been told to death how great something is. This is conditional, actually.
For instance, if you tell me Moby Dick is great (I already know it is, but for example), I am more inclined to be okay with you saying that and give the book an honest read.
If you tell me the latest hinky fad-book is the greatest thing in the world, I am apt to be skeptical, and unfortunately I sometimes bring that skepticism into the actual reading of the book.
My best reads are things I get to first, before my friends can start spoiling them for me.
I loved Ender's Game. Today, I might not have, though from what I remember, I think I still would. However, an odd point of it is that I remember clearly finding suggestions of homosexual love or attraction in it, which probably wasn't intended by Card. All in all, it IS a very good book, worth reading without preconceptions. Sad part is, the ending crashes and burns compared to the rest of the book.
Most of the baggage I take into a book is due to hype the book has.
For example, I was told constantly by friends, gamers, and fantasy fans to read the Lord of the Rings. I tried to read it. Didn't care for it. I just didn't like it, though I bet some of it was that it didn't live up to the hype made over it. I did enjoy The Hobbit, however.
Maybe it is just me as a gamer. Maybe I take all my RPG baggage into a fantasy or sci-fi book, and then I don't like it because it doesn't mirror the concepts (stereotypes?) I have about fantasy and sci-fi. I check out books at the library, start them, and lose interest.
I really like Ender's Game, the same way I like 1984. The twist and the mind job are worth the read. I didn't care for any of the other Ender books.
I also like Foundation by Asimov. I haven't read the others. Probably because of my experience with the Ender books.
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Writers with baggage:
Louis-Ferdinand Celine. In 1950 the French government declared him a national disgrace. Which is pretty cool, but unfortunately, it was for being a Nazi.
Nevertheless, Journey to the End of the Night is pretty much the best book I've ever read.
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Woops. Wrong link. Fixed now.
I generally keep my personal biases out of things I read. Only time it becomes an issue is when the author is clearly shoving his political views in your face until you just wanna scream at them to just write a story and leave their opinions out of it.
On a side note, totally unrelated, anybody here read the Sword of Truth series?
I saw one volume in that series in the library today and thought of picking it up, but it was huge, so I didn't bother.
Not exactly in-depth research, but the Wikipedia synopsis suggests it has a sort of right-wing libertarian slant. Is that fair/accurate?
I saw one volume in that series in the library today and thought of picking it up, but it was huge, so I didn't bother.
Not exactly in-depth research, but the Wikipedia synopsis suggests it has a sort of right-wing libertarian slant. Is that fair/accurate?
What Jeff said.
But the first...2 or 3 are actually pretty good if you wanna try them. Just pretend the series ends after the first one or something.
When I was young I found The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe uncomfortable reading.
Only browsing through as an adult did I realise it was the preaching.
So, in reverse, I guess.
It's ages since I read Narnia and I don't recall C. S. Lewis preaching that is mentioned so many time... And I was awakening atheist at the time of reading or soon thereafter. Maybe it was too subtle for me at the time.
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It's funny, when I was young end of primary beginig of high school there was a group called The Christian Beach Fellowship( they surfed with God) who taught water safety and held barbecues, and soccer games did bible plays, mum used to pack me off to spend time with them while she was working during the summer holidays. I was playing D&D and had read everything Tolkien and Lewis had written by then, the D&D playing didn't go down well with the God Botherers so I was super surprised when I saw they had all of the Narnia books on the table of recommend reading for young Christians. I hadn't realised Lewis was preaching.
Really, the allegory is there but I always thought it was pretty unobtrusive.
I never got the sense that he was "preaching".
I don't know that it's "preachy," per se, but the allegory is pretty heavy-handed. As in, whack-you-over-the-head-with-a-bit-of-wood obvious.
Yeah, but I never thought it interfered with the story. And this is coming from a guy who was in his early teen "So I'm not a Christian any more, religion is stupid lol" period of his life when re-reading them the last time.
It's ages since I read Narnia and I don't recall C. S. Lewis preaching that is mentioned so many time... And I was awakening atheist at the time of reading or soon thereafter. Maybe it was too subtle for me at the time.When I was young I found The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe uncomfortable reading.
Only browsing through as an adult did I realise it was the preaching.
So, in reverse, I guess.
It's not that bad until The Last Battle, at which point Susan is barred from heaven because she wears lipstick (female sexuality is the devil, so only pre-pubescent Lucy gets in), and Aslan cheerily tells the kids that it's all good because they died in a train accident and are now in heaven!
To me, most of the previous books felt like fantasy by an author who happened to be Christian and was drawing from his tradition to tell stories.
The Last Battle felt like he'd sacrificed storytelling in favor of evangelism, and had a particularly mean-spirited slant to it as well.
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Knowing that the "heroes" wind up being horrible monsters while the narrative doesn't bother to notice has been enough to make me steer clear of Sword of Truth and Eragon. Just....ugh.
At least the Eragon guy has the excuse of having been like 9 years old or so when he wrote his. That Sword of Truth is Wheel of Time that replaced the braid tugging with Ayn Rand is just inexcusable. Or inexcusible. Whichever.
edit-Fifth Sorceress too. Ho-ly @#$%.
Heh. I'll admit in the last book I was kinda rooting for Ganondo-err, I mean Galbatorix-to win the final battle.
He seemed like a pretty cool guy. The series as a whole really isn't that bad. The "Eragon is a horrible person" thing is overblown by quite a bit I think, and is mostly spawned by a few events that come out of left field.
The majority of complaints stem from the same place as all the "fan theories" or whatever you wanna call 'em that try to prove Mario is a mass murdering psychopath and stuff like that (taking tropes of the genre and turning them on their head through the lens of IRL morals).
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"We are at with Eurabia, we have always been at war with Eurabia!"
I remember while reading The Terror thinking it seemed like he went out of his way to make the two sodomites the only bad people on the ship.
[Shrugs]
Good book, though.
Have to correct you on this one.
There were two gay (obviously male) couples aboard that ship - one was the abusive Little Evil Guy taking advantage of the retarded crew member - it gave off really strong rape vibes to me and I'd really hesitate to say that the retarded was within full mental capacity in that case.
The second were the old man who once took a sail with Darwin and the young man who admired him - the names are Harry Peglar and John Bridges. Their relationship is portrayed as a very positive thing in the novel.
The biggest issue I have with Dan Simmons (other than the crime that was the "Illium" and "Olympus" series) is his sex scenes descriptions. Something feels very off and violent about them, and I leave them feeling dirty and abused. This didn't happen to me with any other author so far.
Hmm, well, I stand corrected.
I don't even remember Peglar and Bridges.
Admittedly, I can sometimes have a hard time being uncritical when I've been told to death how great something is.
That's the biggest problem I have; when someone tells me, "Oh, you have to read this", I tend to make polite noises, and then run the other way as soon as his/her back is turned. My best friend's husband recommended the Recluce series to me, so I picked up the first one and promptly wished I hadn't wasted the money. That said, there are people whose opinions on books I do trust, so it kind of depends on who's doing the raving.
As far as the Narnia books are concerned, I grew up in a pretty conservative Christian family, and did a report on #1 for Sunday school; there was never any question about whether or not it was evangelical - in a very British sort of way :). The sneaky one was Madeleine l'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. I read it before I'd gotten to the age when I could really read books critically, and I didn't find out until years later that her writing was based on both faith and science.
I was sharing a bus seat with a homeless-looking dude one time, and he started talking to me about "The 4 Types of Love" (or something) according to C.S. Lewis.
I swear, Boston has the most literate homeless people.
Madeleine L'Engle is one I didn't do as a child, read the first one as an adult, decided I didn't need to read anymore.
How was Eragon a horrible person? I must've missed something...
Is it because of the messed up blessing on that little girl?
I saw one volume in that series in the library today and thought of picking it up, but it was huge, so I didn't bother.
Not exactly in-depth research, but the Wikipedia synopsis suggests it has a sort of right-wing libertarian slant. Is that fair/accurate?
What Jeff said.
But the first...2 or 3 are actually pretty good if you wanna try them. Just pretend the series ends after the first one or something.
Yup. The first trilogy is pretty standard fantasy fare, though the stuff involving the Mord-Sith is a bit on the weird side, some people might like that though. There's no heavily real-world-intruding political stuff until the character Warlord Jagang is introduced in the fourth or fifth book, at which point it becomes really heavily politically slanted.
I read through the whole series, but the political stuff gets very tiring very quickly, and the last three books (starting with Chain Fire) are a SLOG even if the politics don't bother you. There's a few interesting tidbits here and there - I really liked the character Jannsen, introduced in Pillars of Creation (book seven or so I think, it's been quite a few years),
The ending the antimagic folks got was bull though. Really the ending of the whole series was junk, IMO. Anticlimax after anticlimax. But the ending the Pillars people got was particularly dumb - voluntarily banished themselves off to Nonmagic World (read: Earth) so they wouldn't plague Magic World with their tainted, magic-immune bloodline.
But for the most part after the third book you really aren't missing much, especially if your politics differ from the author's.
John Ringo is an author who's books I've come to approach with a certain amount of trepidation.
When he's good, he's very, very good. One of my favorite authors in fact, right up there with Flint, Weber, and Drake. But he's a Fox News Republican, and occasionally he can't help but go off on an authors tract. Sometimes these are merely distractions, like a short, page-long rant about how the American Civil War was cause by an evil Northern plot to destroy the Southern economy in the brilliant Troy Rising series. But often they can be hard to take, like in Watch on the Rhine, wherein he spends the entire book giving what I will charitably describe as a rose-colored glasses view of the Waffen SS.
This isn't to say his rants themselves can't be entertaining. His strawman arguments in The Last Centurion explaining why global warming is bunk and how the election of Hillary Clinton to the Presidency will nearly destroy the U.S. are (I assume unintentionally) hilarious.
I saw one volume in that series in the library today and thought of picking it up, but it was huge, so I didn't bother.
Not exactly in-depth research, but the Wikipedia synopsis suggests it has a sort of right-wing libertarian slant. Is that fair/accurate?
What Jeff said.
But the first...2 or 3 are actually pretty good if you wanna try them. Just pretend the series ends after the first one or something.
Yup. The first trilogy is pretty standard fantasy fare, though the stuff involving the Mord-Sith is a bit on the weird side, some people might like that though.
But for the most part after the third book you really aren't missing much, especially if your politics differ from the author's.
I think it's fair to say that they do, although that never stopped me from enjoying Rush :) Still, forewarned is forearmed, as one girallon scout said to the other. Might give the first couple a go.
I remember reading a few Sven Hassel books when I was younger. Can't imagine doing that now, though I'm not sure about his actual politics...
How was Eragon a horrible person? I must've missed something...
Is it because of the messed up blessing on that little girl?
The arguments for it usually boil down to "He kills a lot of people, yep".
@Orthos: I think I stopped with the one right before Chain Fire, or maybe Chain Fire itself. I just couldn't force myself to keep reading after that one.
I did think Pillars of Creation was pretty alright though.
I have probably gotten more enjoyment on reading the commentary of the later Goodkind books than I had reading the first 3 (4?) that I did read.
I am looking at you, evil chicken
I stayed away from Dune for 30 years because the movie was so confusing I assumed the book would be too. Finally read it, wasn't confusing but I found it mediocre.
All this hoopla about Frank Herbert and I was utterly dissapointed.
How dare you! Good day sir... I say GOOD DAY SIR!
-MD
@Orthos: I think I stopped with the one right before Chain Fire, or maybe Chain Fire itself. I just couldn't force myself to keep reading after that one.
I did think Pillars of Creation was pretty alright though.
I dragged myself through the last few because I'd gotten that far, I might as well finish.
I guess I have the series to thank for one thing...it broke me of that compulsion, once and for all.
Helped me stop reading Bleach too.
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I also like Foundation by Asimov. I haven't read the others. Probably because of my experience with the Ender books.
In my opinion Asimov becomes a better writer as the Foundation series progresses. What he loses in swashbuckling derring-do he starts to make up for in better characterization and plotting. It's like I can see his evolution as a writer as I read.
That said, I must agree that Foundation didn't meet my preconception of what it would be about. I was told it was "hard SF" and when I started reading it, it didn't strike me that way at all. Yes, there is the concept of an advanced psycho-history/sociology, but the way it plays out (at least in the first three books Asimov wrote) is not at all what I would have expected.