Book Thread Continued

[ZeronHitaro]

Personally I think books should be treated like movies. If you have a large story to tell; do it in three parts. If it requires more than that; you've got far too much padding/filler. More writers need to take a leaf out of comic books and side step the whole 'I want to build this massive world/tale, ergo I must write tons of books for this single tale' and just adopt the principle of inter-universe continuity. That was you can continue to write for your world, without any one tale getting too dragged out, and still have nods/follow ups to previous stories that 'work better' if you've read all the previous works but aren't a requirement in order to fully appreciate what's going on.

I.E: To directly use my own work- Birth of a Succubus works as a stand-alone but has a scene that holds far more weight if you've read Sakuri; yet isn't 'What purpose does this serve?' if you haven't.

I mean imagine how tiresome the Marvel movies would've been; in example, if they were all one 'epic tale' rather than individual parts interconnected by a whole. I think if The Avengers was called (and prior films treated as, in a straight-path continuity) 'Marvel Heroes 6'; it wouldn't have gone over as well. This same theory applies to books. 'Dragon Slaying Knight of Clichedom 8' is far less interesting/acceptable than 'Dragon Slaying Knight of Clichedom 1; has ties to 'Dude Running Through the Sewers Killing Rats 2 & 3', if you're interested'.

[Tooker]

Over the past few days, I read Stephen King's 11/22/63.  It was a really fast read for some reason.  I liked it - mostly even the end, where King usually struggles/fails completely.

(In case anyone doesn't know, basic plotline is that a guy from now goes back in time to try to stop JFK from getting killed.)

I liked the realizations of "well crap, I wish I had my cell phone now," or "how do you find this stuff out without the internet?"  I think the main character starts out the book at about 30, so he would have had some experience in school of researching things without a computer, but he would have definitely gone through high school and college with the web.

[Yoda]

In high school I used the internet like twice and one of those was checking out hamster dance.

I'm 30. I'm not trying to be a jerk about that though, it's just amazing how quickly it took over. The year after I graduated I went back to my HS to get transcripts and they just finished installing a huge computer lab. They had some when I was there but I don't think I ever used it.


At a charity auction I won a collection of books, all graphic novels:
persopolis
unterzakhn
the cardboard valise
the hive
habibi

[Tooker]

it's just amazing how quickly it took over.

You ain't just whistlin' dixie. I started college in fall of '93, and I had text-based email (yay telnet!).  I went to El Salvador at the end of '94 and came back at the end of '96, and everywhere I looked, I saw "www.whatever.com."  I had to ask people what the heck it meant.  At some point within those two years, the web went from being something hardly anyone had heard of to being all over.  Granted, websites were still pretty primitive, and many folks didn't have internet access yet, but the addresses were on billboards, magazine ads, everything.

[Starmongoose]

it's just amazing how quickly it took over.

You ain't just whistlin' dixie.

That is adorable. I don't know what it means, but its precious.

[Tooker]

Sorry - forgot to class it up for the Scot. I don't know how to do that, so here's the British version.

it's just amazing how quickly it took over.

Indubitably, my good man. When I joined the university in the autumn of 1993, they granted me access to their text-based electronic mail system, which utilised a piece of software known as "Telnet."  One year later, I took a two year sabbatical, during which I journeyed to the wilds of El Salvador to convert the heathens.  Upon my arrival back in the colonies, imagine my surprise when I saw unintelligible strings of letters such as "www.ISayOldBean.com" whithersoever I cast my gaze.  Indeed, I was so bewildered by these scrawlings that I was forced to ask those around me for their meanings, as though I were some country bumpkin, unaccustomed to technology.  It seems that during my missionary work, the internet had swelled enormously in popularity and accessibility, and had now become quite ubiquitous.  It must be said, of course, that the sites available to one in those early days were nothing compared to the sophistication one sees in the modern times in which we now live, and that a very significant percentage of the population still had no means by which to view said sites.  However, despite these issues, it was clear that the corporate world had grasped the potential offered by the internet, as they placed addresses to company websites in all manner of advertisements.  (That is, of course, to say, "ad-VER-tiz-ments," not "ad-ver-TIZE-ments.")

Better? ;)

[Starmongoose]

What wouldn't be made better written like that? I love the effort.


10/10, would read again.

[Tooker]

Thanks - I have to admit, I kind of want to start a review now by saying "It was the best of games, it was the worst of games."

[beLIEve?]

Thanks - I have to admit, I kind of want to start a review now by saying "It was the best of games, it was the worst of games."

LOL, it also sounds like the title of a thread about games you love to hate or hate to love.

[(Tunnels)]

Ender's Game.

Despite my misgivings of Orson Scott Card's views, this book was pretty damn fantastic. I don't really care for child characters, but everything about Ender and the world he inhabited was fascinating. Not hard sci-fi, and really, the sci-fi was second to the human drama centered around war (both on global and personal levels) and what costs were we willing to pay in order to win war.

[D-Rider]

I have been on a MAJOR Zelazny kick this summer.  It started out innocently enough with a reading of Lord of Light, then I went on a crazy spending spree.  I bought and read:

• The Last Defender of Camelot
• The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth
• Creatures of Light and Darkness
• Changeling (which sucked)
• Dilvish the Damned

And now I'm tearing through the Amber novels, which I already owned.  Book seven, I forget the title.  The second of the Merlin books.

That's a lot of Zelazny.  I think I'll be done with him for a while once I finish off Amber.

[GrimReality]

I finished A Cavern of Black Ice by J.V. Jones.
My review:
    This turned out to be way different than I was expecting. It was incredibly well-written, with a wonderful sense of pace and tension throughout. It's a very demanding read.
The ultra-generic fantasy name(Sword of Shadows? Really?) of the series had me thinking I was going to get a lighter, hero and a sword type fantasy book. What I got was a dark, even disturbing at times, story, with well-drawn characters. I also like how the story bounces around to be told from the differing perspectives of the characters. Even the "bad" ones, which we learn are no more bad than our supposed heroes.
I look forward to continuing the series, but I'll definitely be reading something a little less draining in between. Great stuff.

I'm now reading The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You.
I have Titus Groan and Book 2 of the above series for after that.

[Yoda]

You watch a ton of movies and read a lot. Where the heck do you find the time? I must suck at time management.

[GrimReality]

You watch a ton of movies and read a lot. Where the heck do you find the time? I must suck at time management.

Well, it rained all day yesterday, so I wasn't gardening for a change. This allowed me to finish my book.
Generally, the average book can take me a month or more to get through, so I don't go through a lot of books. This is mostly because I only end up getting 30-45 minutes of reading time a day.
I have my "me time" most nights from 9:30-11:00, after my wife and son have gone to bed. I break this up between gaming, movies, and reading. Plus, my wife and I almost always watch some type of movie on Saturday nights. So this results in me seeing 2-3 movies a week. I have a Blockbuster online subscription that keeps them coming. I love it, because I've caught up on so many greats and classics that I may never have seen otherwise.
Funny thing is, I never do any of this when the weather is nice. I'm totally an outdoors kind of guy. So, yes, it's a finely tuned schedule at this point.

[Esper_Crusader]

Going through the Dark Tower books again. I'm on book two. "The Drawing of The Three". Still one of my favorites.