From the book Language of the Night:
Critics have been hard on Tolkien for his “simplisticness,” his division of the inhabitants of Middle Earth into the good people and the evil people. And indeed he does this, and his good people tend to be entirely good, though with endearing frailties, while his Orcs and other villains are altogether nasty. But all this is a judgment by daylight ethics, by conventional standards of virtue and vice. When you look at the story as a psychic journey, you see something quite different, and very strange. You see then a group of bright figures, each one with its black shadow. Against the Elves, the Orcs. Against Aragorn, the Black Rider. Against Gandalf, Saruman. And above all, against Frodo, Gollum. Against him–and with him.
It is truly complex, because both the figures are clearly doubled. Sam is, in part, Frodo’s shadow, his “inferior” part. Gollum is two people, too, in a more direct, schizophrenic sense; …
So smart in fact that I managed to miss out Book 4 without even realising it.
Book 5 was fine but Book 6 has had me scratching my head, trying to remember how certain plotlines had developed to where they are in this book. I just chalked it down to Malazan being Malazan and that, sooner or later, the dots would be connected. In the end, I skimmed back through my Kindle library, just to check, and found Book 4 unread.
Anyone else ever done anything similar? Anyone? Please?
It’s a big pet peeve of mine, because even if you dislike something, it’s a good exercise in empathy and also in understanding your own tastes, to be able to examine what aspects of a book that others might resonate with, even if you didn’t.
Mine is “political intrigue” 😭
I might be a bit late to the party, but I’ve finally delved into Discworld after hearing rave reviews on Reddit and other platforms. Just finished my first book, “Guards, Guards!” this week, and I’m already completely hooked. The blend of references and humor was utterly brilliant—I couldn’t resist sharing some excerpts with friends, even though they’re not familiar with Discworld either.
The portrayal of dragons in the book was particularly captivating, and Carrot might just be one of my all-time favorite lighthearted characters from any book I’ve ever read.
Unfortunately, I’ve got university exams looming on the horizon, but I suspect that as soon as I have a moment of free time, I’ll be diving right back into the world of Discworld with more books.
So I’ve been thinking of this viral TikTok that has been going around in the past few days. It’s a girl who is annoyed that books don’t come with a list of tropes at the beginning of the book so that the reader knows exactly what they’re going to get before actually reading the book.
I’m not sure how widespread this line of thinking is, but it gave me pause because it sounds incredibly dystopian. Is that what the art of writing is being reduced to? Having to place your work within neatly packed boxes so that the reader cannot be the least bit surprised by what they’re about to read? Are people that scared of getting out of their comfort zones every once in a while?
I get that this kind of thing sells since it makes it easier and simpler for marketing purposes (want enemies to lovers? Get this book!) but it does make me worried about the future of publishing. I’m afraid that new authors will feel like they need to be strictly confined to a set of checkboxes if they want to have any …
Very short article, but still interesting. Rushdie believes AI is more threatening to film and television writers as they often rewrite the same story. (It fails to look at whether they’re specifically asked to reproduce the same story.)
https://www.barrons.com/news/salman-rushdie-ai-only-poses-threat-to-unoriginal-writers-5406c49e
I mean “American Psycho?” What?! “Portnoy’s Complaint”. Huh?!
The list was terrible. See for yourself
Here are some books that are truly funny: Wells’ “The Murderbot Diaries,” “Mama Makes Up Her Mind,” by Bailey White and just about everything by Robert Fulghum.
I’ve read Blindsight recently and started Starfish, both by Peter Watts. While I enjoy Watts’ concepts, I find his writing to be frustrating, characters are very flawed yet hardly understandable, their internal dialogue leave me feeling left out, like the writer is purposefully trying to sound smart and mysterious.
In Blindsight the mc is a passive and boring character, and the story leaves you asking: What the hell happened? Did I miss something?
In Starfish particularly (SPOILERS), besides the confusing narrative, the small cast of characters hardly give you any hints of their motivation.
The main character somehow built a close connection with a pedo, while suffering PTSD from her abuse. She also randomly decides to be with an older man whom She is seemingly afraid of. The cast is passive and hardly distinguishable, not sympathetic in the slightest. The underwater experiment is explained by confusing little hints of internal thoughts of the characters, again with the …
There are a lot of famous sci-fi books where our heroes explore an enigmatic alien megastructure. The first one that comes to mind for me is Larry Niven’s Ringworld:
There’s also Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, which I’ve lost my copy of, but which Denis Villeneuve is apparently making into a movie! And the genre’s still going: arguably Iain M. Bank’s 2008 book Matter) falls into this same category.
A bit less well-known than these is John Varley’s inventive Gaea trilogy, the books Titan, Wizard, and Demon:
These three books have a very different take than the other “exploring the huge alien thingy” stories I mentioned above. In Rama, the whole plot (spoiler …
Don’t get me wrong I love a ton of the classics, but even across the same authors’ works I tend to like some of the less celebrated novels. Partly this might be due to the ambitious storytelling structure of truly groundbreaking books, whereas I prefer a more traditional narrative arc. Another thought I had is maybe I make this distinction when I feel like things are going over my head or I’m missing references, (ie I have never reads Canterbury Tales or Keats so I can’t fully appreciate Hyperion).
For example, my list of the best sci-fi written might include these:
Anathem, Neil Stephenson Hyperion, Dan Simmons Xenogenesis series, Octavia Butler
Whereas my sci-fi favorites might look more like this:
Cryptonomicon, Neil Stephenson Altered Carbon series, Richard Morgan The Patternist, Octavia Butler
Is it just that the classics are less accessible? Do you find your self doing the same?
It’s a heavy time for me and I’ve sort of bounced off of some of my normal reading, and I find myself returning to my all time comfy-sci-fi favorite, Perilous Waif. It’s an over the top ridiculous rule of cool fun sci-fi story, and I want more like it. You have something with fun rules or a fun setting and a character who just goes on a fun adventure or journey? I’m in. It can be sadder, I mean comfy more in how you feel about your read than the character or setting.
So i just watched The Menu for the first time on Disney Plus and i was amazed, the script and the performances were sublime, and while the movie looked amazing (thanks David Gelb) it is not overloaded with CGI crap (although i thought that the final s’mores explosion was a bit over the top) just practical sets and some practical effects. And while this only made $80 Million at the box-office it was still a success due to the relatively low budget.
Please PLEASE give us more of these mid-budget movies, Hollywood!