This isn’t some hate piece. Whilst in the cinema I understood the film was objectively near perfect in achieving what it set out to do / the tone and mood it set out to evoke. It was stunning to watch and clearly there was a lot of love and respect for the source material.
But I didn’t connect emotionally to any of it.
I think it might have been the music. I imagine the brief was ‘make the music setup the tone and world building’ which it nailed but there were no character motifs and no memorable and emotionally stimulating tracks of any sort (to my ears) such as you get in LOTR, Potter, Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Marvel and even Game of Thrones. Even in Thrones when the music was dour, it was connected to a character - think the song about Tywin - or the Stark theme. The music in these IPs is iconic. You can hum them and they are often associated with a character and go on as much as a journey over the films as those characters. Dune had a lot of …
Books have plot holes. Authors mess up. Authors also tend to be overly critical of other authors, ignoring their own faults in the process.
We, as readers, are allowed to point out inconsistencies and call out authors for their mistakes. Though we should always remember to be reasonable in our commentary and not hate on an author just because we can. That being said, fans have every right to defend their favorite authors and stories.
However, every time someone mentions that Tolkien is hard to read, or points out Martin’s hypocrisy and Pullman’s delusions when it comes to their comments on Tolkien (yes, I see my own hypocrisy), throwing a tantrum is just ridiculous.
There are a thousand things I love about Terry Pratchett but one of those which has little to do with him personally is the inclusiveness of his fandom. Sometimes we nerds can be a bit gatekeeperish and will prevent others from enjoying what we love if they don’t love it in exactly the same way or to the same degree we do or aren’t the right kind of nerd. Terry Pratchett fandom is not that way.
When I meet another Discworld lover, we are brothers/sisters. If they rank the books from best to worst differently than I do, I can respect that. If they feel Rincewind is better than Sam Vimes, we can still embrace as fans. If I feel their hand slowly creeping down my back toward the banana I have was saving for lunch and I look up to see he is, infact, a yellow fanged orangutan, I will remain still as he leans in a whispers “Ook” quietly into my ear.
I am blown away….. easily the best thing I’ve read in a decade. I can’t believe the last instalment is nowhere in sight yet! I can tell this story is going to live inside me for the rest of my life. Any one else feel the same?
Just finished The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki in about 1000 AD. Here are the key learnings I’ve taken away through constant repetition. I hope others will find this as useful as I have:
(In case you were wondering, yes I liked the book.)
Edit: I wrote this more to poke fun at the recurring features in the book rather than start an argument over what is or …
My pops died in a motorcycle wreck about fifteen years ago. He was my best friend, and I get my love of all things sci-fi and fantasy from him. The year or so before he died, I remember him getting a new book series from a work buddy. It was WoT. He devoured it. He would miss his sleep schedule (he was a shift worker) reading WoT. In fact, he was so consumed by it he quit playing World of Warcraft for months (fifteen years ago, you can imagine how serious that was). But he never got to finish.
I still have his copies. You can tell where he finished by the tinge of tobacco stain from chainsmoking Marlboros while he read in bed (it was a different time). I haven’t had the heart to read them. Not sure if it was from fear of disappointment or avoiding old memories, but I finally picked up Eye of the World and started reading it to get ready for the series to come out.
Long story short, it’s the fastest I’ve ever finished a book of that size–even as an avid epic …
I’ve been a stay at home mom for nearly 5 years, and have struggled to find the time and energy to read books since my daughter was born, despite a deep love for the written word and an aspiration to write books myself. By the time she’s in bed, my eyes and brain itch for sleep. Even when she did nap for a couple of blessed years, I’d prefer to spend that time either doing chores or resting, too exhausted to focus on a book. When I did try, my weary mind would wander no matter how much I enjoyed the book, my eyes struggling to focus.
Then, a couple of months ago, I got some Bluetooth earbuds and decided to pick up audiobooks. I downloaded the Harry Potter series as a venture into audiobooks as they are familiar to me. I’m now on The Deathly Hallows, and I feel like I’ve absorbed more through this manner than reading them traditionally. I listen when Im doing dishes, cooking dinner, driving in the car, weeding, or any other chore that doesn’t require …
I’m talking “New York Times Bestsellers” books that have sold millions of copies with errors, not a self-published novel on Wattpad. It drives me nuts!! I question how many eyeballs read the same thing and skipped over it. Idk, I just feel like if you are a successful and widely published author, you’d have better editors.
Edit: hey this got way more attention than I thought it would!! Sorry for the mistakes in my post, I’ll leave them up for fun haha. The whole reason I posted this was because the current book I’m reading (“The Guilt Trip”) left out a quotation mark at the end of a character’s one sentence dialogue and I was like ??? Lol but I tend to get caught up on the errors like that.
My dad and I collected and read these over the course of many years, and the library recently moved to its new home at my house. The top row is mostly sci-fi anthologies, while the lower shelves are sci-fi (and a little fantasy) organized by author last name. It has mostly stopped growing since we each got kindles, but there are enough classics in here to keep anyone interested for a long time
Its a classic, but somehow didn’t run across it for all these years, and wanted to recommend for anyone else who hadn’t picked it up yet! Its so funny and thought provoking at the same time.
It’s set in the aftermath of a cataclysmic nuclear war. The survivors blamed science, and killed intellectuals and burned all the books they could get their hands on. A monastery in the desert of the western US is one of the few places on earth to preserve any knowledge, and the book follows the monks of the monastery in three sections over the following thousand years.
The monks are witty, wry, and funny as hell, and they make the book into an incredibly fun read.
It’s an amazing exploration of the nature and duality / conflict between knowledge and religion, and also suggests the cyclical nature of society as the monks and their world progress through what is effectively a second middle ages. The book also feels like an incredible window into the time it was written, in …
begin rant
There is SOOO much crap in scifi books right now. Any idiot can write a book and self publish, get it on amazon and sell a couple hundred books. Problem is i’d say 70% or higher of scifi being written right now is straight garbage. Publishing companies were hamfisted when it came to getting someone a pusblishing deal, but more often than not it resulted in the truly talented writers giving us their best.
Right now we have rehashed ideas, no character development, one sided characters, and the inability to write a book without the intent of just running a series into the ground. I go on audible to try and find something interesting but all I get are thousands of romance novels masquerading as scifi, military scifi that are just copy and paste from others of the genre, and honestly tons of just horrible writing. You have to wade through so much crap before your able to find something really good.
Please for the love of god, write something original, have actual …
So, just finished reading the Bobiverse books, and I absolutely loved them. I think they straddled a perfect line between soft-SciFi with humor and Hard-SciFi with philosophical questions.
However, I think my favorite, albeit way too small, part was when >!Bob talks to ANEC-23, the AI controlling Heaven’s River!<
There is something very cool about an AI being curious about other AI (i realize Bobs aren’t), space-faring humans, or interstellar technology.
Please, let me know! I also loved this in Murderbot Diaries throughout (other Sentries, Miki, ART).
edit: I love this subreddit, so many recommendations to fuel my binge reading!
I know this probably gets asked a lot, but I wonder if people’s answers would be different knowing the asker knows very little about any of the lore and only watched a game or two take place.
I’m definitely not interested in the game (no offense) but it always looks like I would be into the lore side of things. Is Horace Heresy the best starting point?
This movie should have a far higher rating than what it does. I don’t know why it doesn’t. It’s one of the best cross overs between action snd campy sci-fi I’ve ever seen.
It also makes me wonder why there isn’t a UHD release of this movie.
“What seems to be your boggle fellow patrons?”
It’s not only for Sandra Bullock, Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone in it in their prime. It also has the perfect blend of action, sci-fi and humour.
It’s also surprisingly accurate at this point in time and a black comedy on artificial intelligence, driverless and electric cars, and virtual assistants.