Yeah, Anne Rice wrote the “Vampire Chronicles” series begining with “Interview With The Vampire.” The books usually begin and end strong, and I always felt satisfied after completing one of the novels. My biggest gripes with the series is no main character I can identify with and waaaaaayyyyy too much homeroticism. Most of the vampires are a bunch of whiny bitches who just need to man the fuck up.
Gabrielle (Lestat’s mother) is the only character I really like. Mostly because after gaining immortality she decides to go on an extended African safari. Sleeping in the dirt by day, chasing lions by night. Thus she doesn’t make much of an appearance in the books.
The books usually follow a standard format:
Phase 1: Woohoo a new book. Vampire vs the Devil. I can dig it!
Phase 2: Holy Cow! Do these undead emos ever stop bitching and moaning. And why do I have to read another sex scene between two undead dudes?
Phase 3: Finally someone grew some balls handled their business. The end.
I read the first 6 books in the series before deciding I had had enough.
I enjoyed the “Dark Tower” series from begining to end. It’s probably my favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy tale to date. I read the series in 2006-2007 so all the books were published. I imagine my feeling might be quite different if I had read “The Gunslinger” back in 1982, and had been waiting on each subsequent novel for over 2 decades.
I can certainly understand how some are put off by the twists the story takes and I know the ending irked more than a few readers. Then again I always enjoyed stories that zigged when I would have zagged.
[quote]Bujo wrote:
I enjoyed the “Dark Tower” series from begining to end. It’s probably my favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy tale to date. I read the series in 2006-2007 so all the books were published. I imagine my feeling might be quite different if I had read “The Gunslinger” back in 1982, and had been waiting on each subsequent novel for over 2 decades.
I can certainly understand how some are put off by the twists the story takes and I know the ending irked more than a few readers. Then again I always enjoyed stories that zigged when I would have zagged.[/quote]
Dark Tower SPOILERS
I don’t think it was so much the twists as trying to pile on so much stuff so fast. All those freaken Harry Potter things and then the vampires and the rat people and the chicken people and the pig people and Stephen King freaken putting himself in the story (kinda cool actually) and the spider birth and the weird castle dreams and going back and forth and back and forth to NYC and the breakers and shit I can’t even remember half of it.
The part of the books that I like was when it got good and simple again, like when Suzanne and Roland were dealing with the cold at almost the end.
It’s probably just me, but I liked the simplicity and the mystery of the first 3 books. I mean I really really wanted to know what the Tower was like. Wizard and Glass started to get a little odd in Kansas but the flashbacks were great - I liked it as a more pure Western.
Then in the final 3 books I knew it was losing me because I started to not particularly care what the Tower was like. Which is probably for the best because I don’t think a battle with the EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!! guy was particularly good.
…Although I got to give King points for LITERALLY pulling a deus ex machina.
I read C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia” series to my nephewettes over the course of a year or two. It was a great experiance for the three of us, and with any luck maybe the bookworm bug will be instilled in the youngins. The two movie adaptatoins were done very well and I enjoyed watching them.
I wasn’t so impressed with the “Golden Compass” movie, so I Wiki’d it. After reading the wikipedia info on the series and it’s author I decide to read the “His Dark Materials” series for myself. Having Christian fundamentalists boohoo the books in movie provided additional incentive. Being roughly Christian myself I approached the books apprehensively, knowing the author to be a devout aethiest, but by the end of the series I was quite pleased. I read thru all 3 books much quicker than I originally intended, kudos to the Mr. Pullman.
I beleive much of Pullman’s grpies with Christianity stems more from Catholic doctrine and dogma rather than faith in a higher being itself. Or that’s how it came across to me in the book. Pullman wanted the series to be an aethiest allegory counter to C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, to me it was more anit-Catholicism than pro-aethiesm. So, if you do have faith in God then there is no reason to be weary of this book. I think it is a great read for children and adults alike.
On the Dark Tower subject, you are in for a treat once you get the final 3 books. I was very happy to finally complete the series.
It was like a kick in the guts to finish a cycle I’d started when I was 10 years old, but it was well worth it.
Just consider King’s Afterthought carefully.
Huh I thought the final 3 were very poor. I cared less and less the more I read. When it came to the end I just didn’t really care at all.
I thought it fell apart at the end too. Very disappointing.[/quote]
Didn’t King rush the last book or two after his near death? I don’t remember the details.
I skipped Nate’s post below this since to avoid spoilers. I read the first two(maybe 3?) books many years ago and would eventually like to pick them up again and read the entire series.
Overall, I liked The Dark Tower series. I do think that King really rushed the ending and there were some very questionable plot turns in the final 3 novels. I think I can understand his want to finnish the series though, as the man started to write about The Gunslinger in the early 1970s, then published the first in the series in 1982. I believe that he just wanted to end the thing before he died, which is a valid concern, given the near fatal car accident he was involved in some years back.
I can almost sympathize with King in a sense. He has had people bitching at him to finnish the series for quite some time, and then when he finally does finnish it, everybody says the story just tanked at the end. I partially aggree with this judgement. At some point, all of the wierd shit he threw in there from other works of fiction just got to be too much.
I did like the fact that he tried to tie in almost all of his works in some way to The Dark Towers ending. I also thought that the way the ending was set up worked very well, given its similarity to Black House in this regard.
I did find his afterward at the end of The Dark Tower rather humorus.
The thing about the last few books was, everything was “moving on.” So the spit-sputter moments, the literal Deus ex Machina, the SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS**SPOILERS SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS**SPOILERS SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS**SPOILERS SPOILERS creature thing from “IT” on Odd SPOILERS Lane, and the option of which SPOILERS “ending” you choose to stop at, SPOILERS or at least accept SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS**SPOILERS SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS**SPOILERS
sense of everything fraying, that was the last little bit before the wheel turned again.
For me, I have to stop at
SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS**SPOILERS SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS**SPOILERS SPOILERS Eddie, Jake and Susannah in New SPOILERS York, so the last 14 years of my SPOILERS following this story aren’t in SPOILERS vain. But the ending wasn’t bad, SPOILERS I don’t want it to be where I SPOILERS end it.
[quote]Bujo wrote:
I read C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia” series to my nephewettes over the course of a year or two. It was a great experiance for the three of us, and with any luck maybe the bookworm bug will be instilled in the youngins. The two movie adaptatoins were done very well and I enjoyed watching them.
I wasn’t so impressed with the “Golden Compass” movie, so I Wiki’d it. After reading the wikipedia info on the series and it’s author I decide to read the “His Dark Materials” series for myself. Having Christian fundamentalists boohoo the books in movie provided additional incentive. Being roughly Christian myself I approached the books apprehensively, knowing the author to be a devout aethiest, but by the end of the series I was quite pleased. I read thru all 3 books much quicker than I originally intended, kudos to the Mr. Pullman.
I beleive much of Pullman’s grpies with Christianity stems more from Catholic doctrine and dogma rather than faith in a higher being itself. Or that’s how it came across to me in the book. Pullman wanted the series to be an aethiest allegory counter to C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, to me it was more anit-Catholicism than pro-aethiesm. So, if you do have faith in God then there is no reason to be weary of this book. I think it is a great read for children and adults alike. [/quote]
Thats awsome that you read the Narnia series to your nephews. I can remember being very young and enjoying the Chronicles of Narnia very much. I believe that those books were the first ones that I ever read on my own. I re-read the series right before the first movie came out, just to refresh my memory before watching the films. I was also very impressed with the movies.
I think I may take a look at Pullman’s work then. I did not see the movie though. I did hear a lot of negative things about The Golden Compase, but mostly from bible thumping folks, like you said. I have always considered myself a devout catholic, but who knows. I think I will give His Dark Materials a try and see where it goes.
I know this is a book discussion, but Zenescope produces a comic called Grimm Fairy Tales. Some of the stories are pretty twisied. Well twisted compared to the popular Disney adaptations, not so twisted compared to the original stories collected by the brothers Grimm. The original tales were a bit more “Tales from the Crypt” than sunshine and rainbows.
Anyway’s I just read Zenescope’s story “Return to Wonderland” where Alice has long since entered womanhood and has bared two children. Her elder daughter Calie (anagram?) has traveld back down the rabbit hole and miracuously escaped. This new wonderland is quite the psychopaths dreamland, and makes for a great horror comic. I’ve come to realize that I’ve never read the original Alice tales of Wonderland and Thru the Looking Glass. Which is the book I now hold in my hands.
Lewis Carroll’s word play makes his stories as much fun to read as Oscar Wilde. While at the book store I also picked up “The Wizard Of Oz” and Kipling’s “The Jungle Books”. While I’m on the fantasy kick I reccommend “Gulliver’s Travels” to anyone who hasn’t read it yet.
Thing is that almost any book series that has more than 3 books usually loses focus and doesn’t end as well. I think it is kind of like Christmas. When you are a kid (start of series) Christmas fucking rocks it is magical, your out of school, etc. When you get older (end of series) it’s like “fuck I don’t know what to buy people” and it isn’t quite as magical as your childhood memories.
Anyone else read a lot of World classics like the Iliad, Odyssey, The Ring of Recollection, Genji, Arabian Nights, etc.? I like most of them but the Iliad pissed me off. It was so fucking boring, least my version. Hey George son of Frank son of Dillweed son of Billy son of Goat, etc, etc, etc. yells in angry Lewis Black voice He is only mentioned when he dies we don’t need to know this shit. If they had cut out a lot of this extra garbage the core story is pretty good. Epic battles, jealous gods, heroic characters, etc.
[quote]GhorigTheBeefy wrote:
I like most of them but the Iliad pissed me off. It was so fucking boring, least my version. Hey George son of Frank son of Dillweed son of Billy son of Goat, etc, etc, etc. yells in angry Lewis Black voice He is only mentioned when he dies we don’t need to know this shit. If they had cut out a lot of this extra garbage the core story is pretty good. Epic battles, jealous gods, heroic characters, etc.[/quote]
I have no idea but I had this professor from Greece who said the reason we have The Iliad around today is because there were so many preserved copies. And the reason for that is The Iliad was used in schools to punish children by making them read it.
[quote]PonceDeLeon wrote:
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! is wicked funny. Easy to read and an awesome look into a brilliant mind. Very unorthodox autobiography, if it was even meant to be one.[/quote]
I’m sort of reading that right now. It’s good to see someone else who appreciates what a brilliant, eccentric mind Feynman was. I also read his Six Easy Pieces, and even though the material is pretty basic, it’s still an interesting read, because he had such deep insight into things.
Two I’m reading right now are Morris Kline’s Mathematics for the Nonmathematician and John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Professor Kline’s work is extremely enjoyable to me. I feel very fortunate to have found it, because I stumbled on his books purely by accident, just wandering around the mathematics section at the book store. He was very intelligent, but was so good at explicating what many would consider to be very dry material and conveying his enthusiasm for the subject that his intellect never appears daunting or “mystical”. His very clear and user-friendly presentation also helps. He never comes out with any derivations or conclusions that make you think “OK…where did that come from?” like some math books will. He also relates a bit of history of mathematical development that you don’t hear too much about.
John Locke’s Essay is also intriguing to me. I like it because it gives you a window into the thought of a society that was just on the cusp of the scientific revolution, but before any extensive knowledge of biology or chemistry was available. Locke was very perceptive, and I wish sometimes that we could bring people like this back into the present day, because they would so appreciate being able to learn the things that we take for granted. Also, the book arguably “ushered in the modern conception of the self” and more or less laid the foundation for modern psychology as well. This in his spare time.
[quote]GhorigTheBeefy wrote:
I really like the Wheel of Time series even though Robert Jordan really started losing focus, never responded to my inquiries of autographing my books, and died before completing the series.
[/quote]
I really liked the first few books of that series, but as it wore on I lost interest. I know what you mean about Jordan losing focus. There were too many characters in too many different situations. I made it to the beginning of the 12th book, at which point I just couldn’t read it anymore. The first 6 books are killer though.
[quote]timbofirstblood wrote:
GhorigTheBeefy wrote:
I really like the Wheel of Time series even though Robert Jordan really started losing focus, never responded to my inquiries of autographing my books, and died before completing the series.
I really liked the first few books of that series, but as it wore on I lost interest. I know what you mean about Jordan losing focus. There were too many characters in too many different situations. I made it to the beginning of the 12th book, at which point I just couldn’t read it anymore. The first 6 books are killer though.
[/quote]
4 sho! So many fucking characters that each time a new book was released I had to go back and reread the entire series. First 3 are great, 4-6 are good, then it gets really hit or miss.
The books are good when it focuses on the original main characters however you can go 800-1000 pages without one of them being really active in the story. Also, Perrin used to be my favorite character then he got all pussy whipped =(. Rand’s psychotic episodes were always amusing as well.
I just finished reading Dante’s Inferno…the literature I had available only covered his entrance through exit of hell and not purgatory or heaven. It was a decent read but like most religious writing there are some big holes in the story.