/lit/ - Literature

>>845038

/lit/ likes a lot of sci-fi! From the literary Pynchon stuff to the cyberpunk of Gibson.

The fuck? Silmarillion is awesome.

>>845022
>/lit/ just hates sci-fi in general.

Hardly.

>>845023

Finished RWR a few days ago. Decent but I sure missed character development in that novel.

It's pretty short; why can't you go on to the end?

This.

At their best I probably prefer short stories. The best provide a succinct, focused emotional snapshot that can be as powerful as anything built up over the course of a novel.

And, personally appealing, as Frank O'Connor wrote:

>"There is in the short story something we do not often find in the novel - an intense awareness of human loneliness."

It's just a shame that really great short stories and their authors are very hard to come by. But Raymond Carver is one of my favourite authors for a reason.

>>844285

The writing is important and I think you have to look at TBC in context. The first novel was written over 25 years ago back in 1984. I read plenty of fantasy and my shelves aren't groaning with great fantasy series from that time. The previous great series was what? Earthsea which was a decade old by then?

And, as one of the cover blurbs state, TBC did bring fantasy down to the level of the grunts. The main character wasn't a powerful wizard but just a regular guy, as were most the cast. The outlandish elements in the story were minimal and sidelined. This was big step for the genre back in those days.; understand the series in its context.

>>844047

Your point on the humour we'll have to set aside as just personal taste but I do take issue with:

>I do not see how you can say this when pages upon pages are devoted solely to describing the continuous squabbling and bickering between Goblin and One Eye, let alone the continuous repetition of the jokes and arguments between everyone else, and dear lord I got sick of reading about Croaker fantasizing about the Lady. Also, the nearly endless pranks Goblin and One Eye pull get very boring. They don't have that amazing of a bag of tricks.

Again, this is sort of the point of the series. Cook deliberately skips the big battles in the series. You might read Croaker writing: "Well, after the tough battle at X blah blah blah." But that's it.

Cook wanted to get away from that and give a different point of view. No Battle of the Pelennor Fields here. The guy served in Vietnam and TBC series reflects that with the amount of time spent messing around and doing very little. The series is a reflection of his time in service.

I guess you don't like what he does but, yeah, it is intentional and the point of it all.

>>844277

Except GRRM is writing at the slowest pace possible and will soon peg it.

>>844009

I've jumped in at the deep end here, so can't say. I know they all have this great literary reputation but, whilst reading though Underworld, I wonder how much of it is deserved.

>>843988
>it practically bleeds rainbows compared to how dark it thinks it is

I really don't think TBC novels try to be dark at all. There's so much tongue in cheek humour that I find TBC one of the more light hearted fantasy series. The final book (no. 9) is the exception.

>The series also lacks in ANY form of subtlety

Sort of true, but then the series' manner of moving briskly and not fucking around is a facet that I found very appealing. Shit, a fantasy novel that gets its stuff done in 300, rather than 600 pages? I like my epic series but this was a nice change too.

>The company also has a mythic reputation for some reason.

Although it's fleshed out in later books why the company is so feared, it's still obvious in the original trilogy that the company is a shadow of its former power and relying on that reputation to see it through. Again, the whole situation and success of the company is one of the series' jokes. And just because we're omniscient as readers doesn't mean the Company's opponents are.

300 pages in, not even halfway. So much talk but so little meaning.

Time to write this one off as a lost cause?

Well, at least you probably haven't been waiting around on tenterhooks for the last seven of eight years then.

>>843318

The original trilogy was just tightly written and in avoidance of some of the big fantasy clichés.

The same can't really be said of the remaining books. It takes a long time for the "Books of the South" to show where events are heading (three or four books?), whilst the final book zooms along at a comparatively ridiculous pace.

Cook fucks with the narrative when he doesn't need to and there are startling narrative gaps that beg for explanation but which receive very little.

There's the pointless recycling of bad guys and the habit of the good guys to not kill any baddie they capture despite them voicing their, "I should so kill this person but I won't" thoughts (prior to bad guy(s) escaping).

Hey, I still read them all through and enjoyed myself (and others do too) but the faults are pretty obvious.

First three are great.

After that they're still an enjoyable read but there're more obvious problems in the writing.

So, Stendhal.

Your opinion, /lit/? I've always wondered why the guy has such a relatively big reputation when he only wrote two novels of note and even those has significant problems (TR&TB ends terribly). I don't find his non-fiction anything to write home about either.

So, again, your thoughts?

Platonov.

Need more info.

What is it you like about HoD? The written style? The themes? Setting?

Sounds nice OP, but there are more deserving people than me.

Hope you're for real.

>>831866

Last time I met my Mum I lent her my copy of Burning Chrome. She's fucking lost it now! Gonna have to buy a new one.

Have some Gibson travel writing instead:

>Singapore is a relentlessly G-rated experience, micromanaged by a state that has the look and feel of a very large corporation. If IBM had ever bothered to actually possess a physical country that country might have had a lot in common with Singapore. There's a certain white-shirted constraint, an absolute humorlessness in the way Singapore Ltd. operates; conformity here is the prime directive, and the fuzzier brands of creativity are in extremely short supply.
There is no slack in Singapore. Imagine an Asian version of Zurich operating as an offshore capsule at the foot of Malaysia; an affluent microcosm whose citizens inhabit something that feels like, well, Disneyland. Disneyland with the death penalty.

Characters.

Just finished (and made a thread last night) about Rendezvous With Rama. A prime example - plot was good (for the most part) and ticked along nicely, but it felt so hollow because so very little was done with the characters.

In contrast, short stories, with very little in the way of plot, but with interesting characters are great.

The Winter Market and Hinterlands are waaaaay better IMO.

Two truly great shorts, whatever the genre.

I was in a charity store today and saw a copy of Snow Crash.

I was tempted to buy it but whenever I flick through Stephenson's book they come across as so pretentious that I always have to place them back on the shelf.

Donatello's Mary Magdalen.