The title kind of says it all. I’ve never actually seen this done, except as some sort of joke or subversion in the face of the well-known trope.
I already adored her Fantasy work (The World of the Five Gods), but now I’m binging her Sci-Fi Vorkosigan Saga and oh my god, guys.
She is OUTSTANDING.
I’ve certainly seen her discussed here before, but IMHO it is not often enough. How has her work not been adapted?! The dialogue, the characters, the action, the setting - plus it reads as incredibly progressive and modern despite most of it being written 20-30 years ago.
She is truly one of our greatest living writers.
Hello. First time poster here.
To clarify something right off the gate, I have never read a Sanderson book yet, but I am interesting in reading them.
I get it’s an internet thing for people, specially YouTubers, to either absolutely love something or absolutely hate it without any middle ground because middle grounds don’t bring views.
But I wanted to ask the people have actually read his books where their opinions on them are because I wanted to explore a bit of why Sanderson’s writing specifically seems to be the focus of so many divisive opinions.
I’ve seen videos and read comments of people saying that Sanderson’s works are very well written and masterfully crafter, while others argue that the books seem to be written less like books and more like movies or screenplays. Some say he is great at worldbuilding, other that he is terrible at worldbuilding. Some say he is good at writing female characters while others say all of his female characters are …
Alternatively: the power of fantasy.
Like, seriously. I’m a grown ass woman, I’ve been reading books my whole life, begging my father to teach me to read even before primary school, and a life without literature is simply unimaginable for me, from my private life to my studies and career to my home interior. Books of every genre have shaped me, me and my identity. They still do. However, the seriousness of reading started for me with fantasy—fantasy doesn’t just happen; it takes something to find your way into those worlds—, and now I’ve found it again. It took me well over fifteen years though.
Ever since I started studying literature, I have come to approach books differently. On the one hand, that was good, useful even, because I learnt a lot about the craft of reading and also writing, and I wouldn’t change it even if I could—but it became more and more difficult to read more than what seminars and the world literature canon dictated with the limited …
Do you have quotes from books that have entered your vernacular? Where is just sayings you’ve picked up or guidelines you now live your life by?
They don’t even have to be perfect quotes. I know I’ve messed up some of my favorites and still love them.
I have a few, like Tamora Pierce quotes:
“Good question, next question.”
“I’m true and honest as dirt. And I’m more charming than dirt.”
“What’s that got to do with the price of peas in Persepolis?”
Or
“It never hurts to be polite to strange gods.”
Or from Patricia C Wrede’s books
“By night and fire and shining rock Open thou thy hidden lock Alberolingarn.”
What are yours?
I recently noticed that the main character in the book is rarely my favorite character. For example,
I like Frodo, but I like Aragorn more.
I like Katniss, but I like Finnick more.
I like Harry, but I like Fred & George and Snape more.
I like Darrow, but I like Severo more.
The list could go on.
So, that makes me wonder–are there any main characters who are your favorite?
I read A Child Called It when I was in third grade. As an adult looking back on my reactions (as well as the content of the book itself), it’s made me very thoughtful of how children handle things they can’t quite understand.
I also read White Oleander when I was 11 or 12 and took entirely the wrong points away from it.
I apply the same rule to movies and shows that I watch because time is an irredeemable asset and I’ll be damned if I waste away my leisure reading or watching trash.
I just picked up It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover because a friend of mine recommended it and I can’t even finish the first chapter. I swear I have read wattpad books better than this, as someone who used to love them when she was 15⁄16. In what world is an adult woman who meets a stranger on a rooftop at night going to tell him practically her whole life story while she barely knows more than his works struggles under the guise of ‘bonding’.
And oh wow we need to be reminded every 3 sentences how hot he is, how his biceps are too big for his shirt, how the way he scrunched his nose and bites his lip lights a fire in her I mean come onnnn. It’s just so on the nose and cliche it’s really starting to fall over the border into cringe. I’m surprised I even got that far but I …
We get it. Men really don’t have a clue about what women go through pretty often. But they can’t all be terrible. There are definitely strong women that have been written by men that must exist. So let’s talk about them. Who are they? What makes them strong? I wonder what makes men better at writing women than others? What makes a good female character? This was inspired by reading the 9000th comment today about wheel of time and how Robert Jordan can’t write females. I’m currently in the middle of book 9. I am also of email and I don’t see a huge problem with it. They may be may not be as dimensional as Robin Hobbs female characters, for example. But they definitely have got something going for them I think. So I’m curious to know what makes a well written female character for you and who among the male authors does it best?
It has been ages since I fell into a book as hard as I’ve fallen into the Earthsea series. Lately life has felt like a whirlwind, too much happening all the time. In an effort to slow down and savor things, I started commuting via the bus, and have been reading again to fill that time. The Wizard of Earthsea was the fourth book I’ve picked up since this change, and it is one of those books that feels like it clicked into place somewhere inside me.
I used to read tons of scifi and fantasy, but as some point it all just lost meaning. I felt like I was reading to keep up rather than to savor things. The Earthsea books felt like eating a chocolate mousse. Rich but light. The plot wasn’t anything terrible complex or crazy, which used to be what I looked for in a book, but I really found that I didn’t mind. I was more interested in LeGuins writing, and the narrative that she was weaving than anything else. Reading about Ged’s development, and especially …
I absolutely love Samuel R. Delany. Babel-17 is one of my favourite sci fi stories ever written, and The Einstein Intersection & Nova are up there as all-timers as well.
I decided to read Dhalgreen. I like massive dense books - I’m a huge fan of Pynchon and DeLillo, I love weird lit like Mieville, I love Delany - it all sounded perfect. It’s just so bizarre.
It feels a little like I’m not supposed to have a sense of what exactly is going on, or it’s significance, for sizeable portions of the novel. It’s a Joycean, hallucinatory, mess of a tome.
The actual fragments of the novel are gorgeous. The writing is beautiful, and it has some ridiculously evocative descriptions that remind me of some sort of mix of Le Guin & Cormac McCarthy rolled together. I just can’t really get a sense of why anything is happening or what I’m supposed to get from it.
What is everyone else’s experience with this book? Did I miss some sort of key to …
A while ago, around 2009 to 2010, I found this random list online of the fifty best first contact books ever written. I used to plan a whole year’s worth of reading at a time, and this is how I’d do it: find a random list online of the best books about any subject that interested me (post-apocalyptic, psychological horror, first contact, historical fiction, etc.) and check them off throughout the year. I think my favorite year of reading was going through the first contact books. Some of the ones that really stood out were Rendezvous With Rama, The Sparrow, Mote in God’s Eye, Eifelheim, and The Forever War (maybe more military sci-fi than strictly first contact, but still one of my all time favorites). That being said, I’m willing to bet there have been some fantastic books written about the subject since I read those books. Looking for suggestions! I’d even appreciate suggestions that you just think we haven’t heard yet, first contact is my favorite sci-fi subject.
Like iv heard the main dune series ends weird due to Frank’s death , rendezvous with Rama’s sequels are mid,etc
So what are some series that are objectively great throughout and have a satisfying ending?
My favorite TV show of all time is Dark and I am really craving something similar. I want a complex convoluted time travel novel full of mystery and a large cast of characters which deals head on with the paradoxes and science of time travel. If this sounds like anything you have read please let me know. Thanks
Recently reread Spin by Robert Charles Wilson looking for something similar.
Ultimately, looking for a hard science fiction book that doesn’t break suspension of disbelief. Characters that have complex inner lives and motivations. Something that really explores some thought out themes like Spin does with it’s climate change allegory. And most importantly end with a wow moment like the final reveal in Spin.
I’ll throw out Singer Distance (2022) by Ethan Chatagnier as a recent book that fits this mold.
Now I know the whole the alien non-interference clause aka the prime directive was created to prevent other races from interfering in another’s social, technological, and cultural development. But personally I think a policy of complete non-interventionism is pretty immoral. Take the Rwandan Genocide as an example. Over 500,000 people were murdered by a fanatical regime and, forgive me for saying this but, I feel like the West’s inaction over this makes them partly responsible. Furthermore some like Isaac Arthur argue that if such a policy was implemented it would be disastrous because there will always be a few individuals that will act against it and once the primitive aliens obtain interstellar flight they will be pretty peeved at us for just standing by and observing while they suffered through numerous wars, famines, disasters, and genocides.
In any cases what are the best works of science fiction that deconstruct, avert, or defies the alien non-interference clause? …
To put this into perspective, this kind of impressive streak is generally achieved only by actors of Tom Cruise caliber. Tom Cruise has a very similar number of roles under his belt, and all of them (I’m pretty sure) are proper wide theatrical movie releases.
But Tom’s movies are generally critically acclaimed, and his career is some 45-ish years long. He’s an A-list superstar and can afford to be very picky with his projects, appearing in one movie per year on average, and most of them are very high-profile “tentpole” productions. Statham, on the other hand, has appeared in 48 movies (+ 2 upcoming ones) over only ~25 years, and many of those are B-movie-ish and generally on the cheap side, apart from a couple blockbuster franchises. They are also not very highbrow and not very acclaimed on average. A lot of his projects, and their plots, are quite similar to what the aging action stars of the 80s were putting out after their peak, in the 90s, when they …
In Last Crusade, when Elsa volunteers to pick out the grail cup, she deceptively gives Donovan the wrong one, knowing he will die. She shoots Indy a look spelling this out and it went over my head every single time that she did it on purpose! Looking back on it, it was clear as day but it never clicked. Anyone else had this happen to them?