I know that this sub is inundated with discussions of Sanderson, more so than any other big ticket author, so bear with me on this, because I hope it’s slightly different to the usual merry-go-round of whether he is over/underrated, which spirals off into endless sub-beefs and then a meta post about how we should all shut up about Brandon Sanderson and stickied mod comment reminding everyone to play nice^(4). If you finish this and still think I should shut up about Brandon Sanderson, well, I won’t hold it against you.
What I want to argue is not whether Sanderson is a good or a bad author, but that he is an astoundingly competent one who is exactly as good as he needs to be, and no more.
Damned With Faint Praise
If this sounds like a criticism, I suppose it is. I don’t think he is a great prose stylist, but neither do I think he’s a bad one. I don’t think his characters are searing originals, but I don’t think they’re stereotypes either. I …
I feel Fantasy can feel quite male dominated a lot of the time, author and fan wise. But I do know there is a lot of women out there enjoying these books.
We have had appreciation of the female authors but what about the fans and what they like, is it different to the top authors we see all the time (I understand many people have different tastes and gender doesn’t totally equate to that, but I’m curious)
So yeah Female Fans of Fantasy what are your favourite books/authors?
In 1997 (24 years after JRR Tolkien died), NASA and the European Space Agency joined forces to launch a probe called Cassini into space. This probe was designed to fly all the way to Saturn and send photos back to Earth of the magnificent planet and its largest moon Titan. I mean there was probably more to it than that, but a significant part of this mission involved Cassini taking some incredible photos of never before seen mountains and hills that make up of Titan’s geography.
Now what does this have to do with Professor Tolkien? Well, when these photos were relayed back to Earth, some NASA scientist had the all important job of giving names to these extra-terrestrial mountains. And whomever this awesome scientist was, they looked to Tolkien for inspiration.
So on the surface of a moon not much smaller than the planet Mars, which orbits Saturn 1.2 million kilometres from Earth, there are mountains called Taniquetil, and Moria, and Erebor, and Angmar, and even the Misty …
Recently, I put up a new bookshelf in my office space and I was telling my coworker that I didn’t have enough books to put up on the bookshelf and he casually told me to just buy fake books and fill the space or buy books by the bunch sorted by color on Etsy. He also admitted that that’s exactly what he did in his office and has no intention of reading them. I don’t know why but that pissed me off a bit. I personally refuse to own any books that I will not read. I have given away, such books in the past. I like to keep my bookshelf filled with books/things I treasure. I hate the idea of using books for just aesthetic and decor. It seems to lack character. And I unintentionally lose respect for the people who never read books and only buy them to decorate their house. Like stop faking a lifestyle that you are not willing to commit to.
Thanks for reading my rant, folks. Have a good day!
I think the most frustrating thing for most readers on this sub is that when they read a book that so many people love and realize they are part of the group that doesn’t like the book. They can’t share the feeling without having fans hang the noose around them. We muat be able to let readers share their HONEST opinions on a book without riduculing their feelings.
If at this point you are protesting my thoughts thinking they are nothing more than that of unlearned individual. Than I’ll share the opinion of a very educated man who has probably read more books than you will ever read in your whole life.
“Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover’s besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls ‘the mad pride of intellectuality,’ taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same …
I used to read loads when I was little, but now I barely read anything. I much prefer to watch TV and I was wondering if anyone else has this problem.
I feel like reading is something you have to do, whereas watching TV is something that’s being done to you. I feel like depression is sapping my motivation to do anything, so I generally prefer to just sit back and watch some mindless TV.
There are books that I actually want to read, I just lose motivation really easily. I was excited to get a book from the library and when I started reading it I only read up to page 5. There was a highly recommended book from my favorite genre and it still took me a month to get to page 100. I could spend 6 hours a day watching TV and think nothing of it though.
Has anyone else experienced something similar?
Thank you for the rewards and suggestions everyone!
First off, yes this is in response to the Brandon Sanderson thread. And no, I’ve never read Sanderson, this post is more an observation of this subreddits general attitude and current state.
Why do we have to have so many “overrated” posts? We all have books/authors we like and dislike, why do we need to focus on the negative? It seems like we’re making it to the front page with posts that slam some famous author or book more than anything else. Yes, not many people like Catcher in the Rye, can we all just move on?
Why not more “underrated” posts? What are some guilty pleasure books of yours? Let’s celebrate what we love and pass on that enthusiasm!
Edit: I realize we have many posts that focus on the good, but those aren’t swarmed with upvotes like these negative posts are.
2nd Edit: I actually forgot about this post since I wrote it while under the weather (glug glug), and when I went to bed it was already negative karma. So this is a surprise.
Many great points made in this …
Now, I realize that this may be an unpopular opinion, as Sanderson seems to be one of the most popular fantasy authors out there. That’s actually the reason I picked up his books to begin with. I’m not an avid reader of fantasy by any means. I’m a big fan of Tolkien, GRRM, Robin Hobb, Neil Gaiman, Gene Wolfe and Joe Abercrombie but that’s mostly the extent of my experience with the genre. During the last year or so of the pandemic, I’ve been gravitating towards the fantasy genre a lot to get my mind off of the crazy shit going on in the world. Sanderson is a recommendation that came up numerous times, so I thought I would finally give him a shot.
My opinions on his work are based on what I gather are his two big trilogies – Mistborn and Stormlight. I read the initial Mistborn trilogy, the 3 Stormlight books and part of the 4th one. I feel like that is a lot of reading to do to form a pretty concrete opinion on an author.
And honestly, I’m really underwhelmed. Maybe my expectations …
Last week I suddenly remembered I had a gift card for books. I never had it with me when I needed it, so it went unused for ‘bout 2 years. I put it in my backpack, so I would have it with me when I needed it. A few days later I had to wait for someone at the train station and went to peruse the books in a shop there. The only one book that really caught my eye was The Discomfort of Evening (de Avond is Ongemak) by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. It’s the first time a Dutch author won the Booker Prize! The moment I read the discription I got the eary sence of deja vu. It is about a family who lose a child. The parents are so caught up with their own grieve, that they basically forget there are 2 more children that need them and that also need to grieve. My blood ran cold, because this is exactly my dad’s story… He was the youngest of 3 when his sister of 16 died. It ripped their family apart from the inside out. 5 lives were distroyed by one death. It happened in the …
Hello everybody! I absolutely love these two books. Something about mutating ecology and mysterious areas really sucks me in. I’ve also read some ‘big dumb object’ books like Rama. Anybody have any recommendations in the vein of what I’m after?
So I just saw that other post looking for “Something like the Reapers from Mass Effect,” which is a series of recommendations I’m going to check out later because I actually do like the handling of the Reapers (in the first two games). But seeing that thread also reminded me of a rec request I’ve been meaning to make for awhile: Sci-fi with the political and inter-cultural/racial/organizational interactions of Mass Effect without mechanized eldritch space gods or another kind of apocalyptic threat. My favorite parts of ME have always been learning about the different cultures and navigating the galaxy they share more than stopping the Reapers.
Or to put it another way: I prefer the diplomatic/political episodes of Star Trek to the high-concept ones. Klingon politics over Q, Bajoran-Cardassian tensions and the Dominion War over the Prophets and Pah-Wraiths, navigating Goa’uld warlord conflicts over Ancients and Ascension. In The Expanse books I read I …
I liked his prose style a lot initially, all abstract metaphors and silky smooth sentences that just flow.. and I loved the first section of the book that lasts about 40 pages, the one set in the Ninsei area. I felt it was very atmospheric and gave me a great visual picture of what the world looked like. There was also quite a bit of action there. I understood almost everything upto about page 76 (the first heist) but after that.. while it isn’t strictly “slow”, so many events just happen and while I think I get the gist of it, I feel a lot of pleasure is lost to me because I am definitely missing quite a bit that’s below the surface level. I have also come to loathe the writing style by now (I’m at page 225). It’s good in small doses but Gibson does not describe anything except the strangest of details, he will go into the minutae about some character’s tattoo but forget about setting the basic scene. Of course, this isn’t always the …
Anything like I have no mouth and I must scream
So, regardless of how you feel about *Mass Effect*’s ending, the first game’s narrative portrayed a very chilling depiction of what cosmic, high-level, intelligent alien gods could be. I’m interested in this idea and I want to see it explored more fully. What would a civilization that advanced look like? I’ve read Revelation Space already, which I thought was good. I like xenoarcheology and the overall concept of discovering ancient alien remnants. Rendezvous with Rama did this really well. Any suggestions?
TL;DR: I’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the long-running fan theory that Michael Bay’s The Rock is the last chapter of Sean Connery’s run as James Bond 007, and have come up with a full narrative that is completely consistent with the continuity of the six Connery Bond films, Connery’s backstory in The Rock, and actual world history.
If you’d rather watch a video than read a 3000 word essay on Reddit, then you can do that here: https://youtu.be/9FdnevXjqdc
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The Rock was released on 7 June 1996 – exactly 25 years ago (greetings from New Zealand time). To mark this anniversary, I decided to go through the evidence – in WAY too much detail – that supports the fan theory that Sean Connery’s character in The Rock (John Mason) is James Bond. You have probably seen the odd article about it like this one, or this Reddit thread, or this entry on FanTheories.com, but trust me when I say that NO ONE has looked at this theory in this much detail and there is WAY more evidence than …