Oooh Watership Down, I love that book. I'm currently reading The Land of the Painted Caves, last of Jean Auel's Earth's Children series.
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SciFi Nerd
- Thread starter TheAlchemist
- Start date
Oooh Watership Down, I love that book. I'm currently reading The Land of the Painted Caves, last of Jean Auel's Earth's Children series.
I didn't know she had a new one. I read them so long ago (1989?).
There's a theatrical production of Watership Down that I hope to see next month, so I'm doing my homework...
There is a total of 7 - Clan of the Cave Bear, Valley of the Horses, The Mammoth Hunters, The Plains of Passages, The Shelters of Stone, and The Land of Painted Caves. Tbh - I'm not enjoying this last one, it just doesn't seem to jive with the rest. Her work is still some of my favorite though and she is partially why my entire upper back is tattooed with the cave paintings of Altamira, Lascaux, and Peche Merle.
After looking at my bookshels, others I really liked:
The Wreck of the River of Stars totally different kind of sci-fi, it's a space tragedy so it's pretty interesting trying to figure out which characters will LIVE
A fire upon the deep and a deepness in the sky by vernor vinge
good stuff all of them
The Wreck of the River of Stars totally different kind of sci-fi, it's a space tragedy so it's pretty interesting trying to figure out which characters will LIVE
A fire upon the deep and a deepness in the sky by vernor vinge
good stuff all of them
<sigh> I must admit, I did not enjoy reading a lot of the "classics" I've laid my hands on. I at least liked Watership Down better than Bonfire of the Vanities or Gone with the Wind or the original Dracula... Not wanted on the Voyage was dreadful, as was The Red Pony by Steinbeck, and I loathed anything by Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler and a lot of what they made us read in English class, I think Wyndham's "The Chrysalids" was the only school novel (after Charlotte's Web) that I genuinely enjoyed reading that made me go read more of his work because I liked it, rather than because I couldn't believe that I hated the work of such a reknowned writer so much... Only thing worse than the novels were the short stories, "The painted door", "The Lottery" and "Death of a Salesman", you'd think they didn't WANT us to get an interest in reading! Ugh!!!
However, I did buzzsaw through Jean Auel as fast as I could get my hands on them when I was a kid, along with any other historical fiction my mom was reading at the time (Diana Gabaldon, anyone?) although I have only read up to the Plains of Passage (I like to think I may have made up for lack of continuing by reading the first three at least five or six times each through high school, I think Clan of the Cave Bear I first read at 12)... haven't heard good things about the latest one, either, what I heard is that her style of description has gotten even more voluminous so you read for three pages before she's done describing the shape of the leaf and all the possible uses of the plant that they just walked past...
Fantasy: Charles De Lint. I had totally forgotten, it's been so long since I've read his stuff, but it did the rounds with my group of friends once upon a time... I believe he lives in Ottawa and can occasionally be found jamming with local folk music groups
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I recently introduced my two children to the original Star Wars, and, yep, another generation is hooked. If I do not have a lightsaber duel 5 nights out of 7 then something is wrong. Of course, I get Vader's red saber and I "have to" die. It is great.
Stephen
Stephen
Bonfire is one of the rare books I just put down midstream and never picked it up again. Couldn't finish Joyce's Ulysses despite doing a geographic/literary pairing (read it in Ireland). Started reading Auel on the campo in Bolivia in 1989, sou you might could consider that a geo/lit pairing as well...
Loved Dracula, though, listened to Andrew Lloyd Weber's Requiem while I was reading it, seemed a perfect match, painful tender sweet bits and dark disasterous bits all seemes to synchronously coincide...
Love Walker Percy for his existential pathos, off the SciFi subject...
When I am tired from work and I end the duel "too quickly" (sorry for the Princess Bride theft), my son tells me that I am doing it wrong--he has to win. So, we re-duel and I die a great death. Of course, we do this in a darkened room so the lighsabers really show-up nicely.
Both of my kids are reading now, so I am excited about the future when they can tackle the following: Starship Troopers, Princess Bride, Hitch Hiker's Guide, The Hobbit, ect.
Stephen
Both of my kids are reading now, so I am excited about the future when they can tackle the following: Starship Troopers, Princess Bride, Hitch Hiker's Guide, The Hobbit, ect.
Stephen
Princess Bride is one of my all time favorite most-quotable-ever films. Haven't read the book though.
Agreed love this movie! Also have not read the book. My three year old makes me have tea parties so I think you lucked out on your light saber fights... Then again she does like the plastic axe and helmet i got her from how to train your dragon.
Aaah three of my favorites there - Starship Troopers (I even love the godawful movie, even though it is NOTHING like the book), Princess Bride - the book is BRILLIANT, and Hitch Hiker's. Just <3
@CG: Don't feel bad about the classics, they don't transcend generations AT ALL and really just become books for self proclaimed English lit snobs to feel superior intellectually 'cause they "get it"
In high school I did an English report on why I didn't finish reading the Great Gatsby, why I was swore I never would (finish reading it), and why anyone who actually thought it was good writing was a complete moron....I got an A
In high school I did an English report on why I didn't finish reading the Great Gatsby, why I was swore I never would (finish reading it), and why anyone who actually thought it was good writing was a complete moron....I got an A
Me either. Same with Starship Troopers. Those are books I should go read though...
Yeah, I did an essay on how Mordecai Richler couldn't write a balanced female character after suffering through Duddy Kravitz and backing it up with The Acrobats, the only marks I lost on that essay were for my penmanship.
Oh, the only thing worse than reading the Great Gatsby was watching that horrid movie...
gaah, now I'm gonna need some Mercedes Lackey to get to sleep tonight!
Starship Troopers the movie is probably one of the books-to-film world record holders for having almost nothing to do with the book!
The book is good, I didn't like it much the first time through, lots of neat ideas and parts but it felt like a short story that for some reason was stretched into a novel and didn't quite make it.
Then an SF literary buff I know told me to read it again, but looking at it as a utopia story - totally made it make sense.
The book is good, I didn't like it much the first time through, lots of neat ideas and parts but it felt like a short story that for some reason was stretched into a novel and didn't quite make it.
Then an SF literary buff I know told me to read it again, but looking at it as a utopia story - totally made it make sense.
Directly from the special features on a movie that shared the title and not much else with the original book, author: "Hi, I'm Tom Clancy and I wrote the book he ignored."
director: "Oh, come now, I didn't change everything!"
Mr. Clancy: "Well, I suppose you used the title..."
If only I could remember which one it was... they detonated a dirty nuke in the 'states somewhere...
"But you're not supposed to like the characters! It was a book about nothing to draw light to the do-nothing socialites of the time!"
So lemme get this straight, a book that has no discernible plot, goes nowhere and has characters that you can't hate or like and thus don't give a S--- about? And this proves he's one of the all time great writers? I'm pretty sure all of that proves F Scott Fitzgerald is the most overrated author of all time (The rest of his works while slightly better still suck so bad as to bend light, space and time)
Oh, no, I hated them all. Same problem I had with Gone with the Wind, and Dracula... if I hate all the characters and hate everything they do, why on earth am I reading this?
Oh, and unfortunately Ann McCaffrey has been the only author I've gotten a chapter into without finishing the book... I don't know why that was, either... Well, her and one rather long short story in Piers Anthony's Anthonology, three pages and you're out...
Wheel of Time... I tried three of the Wheel of Time books and always stall half way through completely bored.
