This could be a fun one and a long one too if anyone out there reads.
Good Books:
-Kiss me, Judas by Will Christopher Bear (a must read for die hard Fight Club fans!)
-Hell’s Half Acre by Will Christopher Bear
-ANY BOOK BY TOM ROBBINS
-The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
-Brave New World by Aldous Huxxley
-Metemorphosis by Franz Kafka
Bad Books
-Potentially any book written by a woman
-Anything Stephen King touches
-Anything Dean Koontz touches
-Anything Tom Clancy touches
Oh and there is an Oprah biography called ‘In my own words,’ ghost written by three people. Um?
hehe, got any good books on your shelves? Bad books?
Christopher Paolini is turning out to be an excellent young author.
I’m a fan of the wizardy dragon type books, LOTR, Harry Potter, Eragon, etc.
I loved Farenheit 451, and One Hundred Years of Solitude, there’s too many good books.
Great Books: #1)The wheel of time serie (my fave of all time) #2)The Fires Dies #3)The Protector’s War (sequel to #2)
Good Books: #1)The Clan of Cave Bear Series #2)The Stone of Tear Series #3)The House on the Prarie Series
Bad Books:
I could never finish any lousy books so I’m not qualified to says which books is bad cause my reading perferences tends to be fantasy and some history but that all.
Meh, I couldn’t suffer through the endless discriptive comments when I read the first two. The hobbit was absolutely terrific though, so don’t get me wrong about tolkein.
I totally agree here, the movies were rather disappointing for me after having read the books first. Sure, the effects make it still very awesome but the storytelling…
So, I’ have to mention Tolkien’s work here, too. Especially some of his other works, like the Silmarillion and The Hobbit.
On the other hand, there’s so much good stuff I’ve read, I can’t even list it all…
However, one of the most pleasant books was definitely “Der Schwarm” (The Swarm) by Frank Schaetzing. I just want to point that one out since it didn’t seem to be very popular in the english speaking world (from what I have heard some time ago - I might be wrong, of course).
Great Books:
Anything that was written by Tolkien
Rough Magicke by John Houghton
Any of Michael Crichton’s fiction that is not State of Fear
Books I dislike (just because I don’t like them doesn’t make them bad):
State of Fear by Michael Crichton
Most books that aren’t science fiction or fantasy
On the topic of the LOTR movies, I preferred the books a lot more than the films. I think that Peter Jackson did a really good job with them, but to make the movies accurate to what is in the books, the movies would have been at least twice as long. Tolkien did such a great job with creating an entire world that it is near impossible to include everything in the movies. I look at the movies and the books as two separate works, and I think this helps make the movies more enjoyable. I didn’t like the fact that things were changed and left out, but I understand that it happen to make the movie work. Books are almost always more detailed and therefore better than their cinematic counterparts.
Anything in the Uplifting universe by David Brin, specially the second trilogy which begins with Brightness Reef.
Black Hawk Down. The movie’s not bad either, but the running commentary that really makes the book’s not there.
War and Peace by Tolstoi – 'nuff said.
The Gambler by Dostoievsky. Another of his fantastic psychological portraits: a man trapped in a vicious circle that goes far beyond his gambling addiction.
-Anything by the following authors: Jorge Luis Borges, Isaac Asimov (ok, not anything), Ray Bradbury, Dostoievsky, Tolstoi, Mario Vargas Llosa.
Bad books (for me):
The Green Brain, by Frank Herbert (yes, the author of Dune). What the heck was he thinking?
Most “continuations”/crossovers of classic works.
The last two books in the Harry Potter series. Rowling’s getty sloppy – Lots of wasted plotlines (no, I’m not talking about the probably intentional loose ends at the end of Half-Blood Prince). Oh, and they could make your kids cry.
Anything by Dickens or Cervantes (congratulations, me – everybody hates you now). Cervantes can’t make me laugh and Dickens can’t make me cry. FAIL’D!!!1
Anything with short stories by Arthur C. Clarke. He should really stick to novels.
Speaking of which: Rama books. Gentry Lee ruined everything.
I got done with the first one and it was good but almost painfully cliched. I heard they get better, and I’m partway into book two but it’s fairly slow. When does it pick up? I’m also hesistant to get into the series because I heard the last few are just awful.
qft
BUT…
I went through about 15 of them one right after another (I listen to audiobooks while I work) and I started getting really tired of him. After the 10th book or so, he starts repeating jokes and phrases (“<insert thing> is something that happens to other people”, clever the first time, painful the 50th). I still like the Witch’s books though. Those and the Night Watch are by far the best to me, I don’t really much care for Rincewind.
Yeah, although I like a lot of his non-Dune fiction, many don’t. It’s really wordy and very intellectual and often (Dosadi Experiment) forces you to constantly stay on your toes to try to figure out what the hell is going on.
As for me…
Good:
-Thomas Covenant trilogy (the 1st one) - I’m rereading this one again. Great series
-Dune series - My favorite.
-Tolkein - A no-brainer. Silmarillion and LotR are both great. Hobbit’s pretty good too.
-Hemingway stories - For some reason I’m really into Hemingway right now
-1984 - What we just finished in school, it was good…
-A Game of Thrones - A fantasy novel with realistic characterization and plot devices? :eek:
Now the bad…
-Hunters of Dune - I won’t spoil anything, but they pretty much did a worse job than I could have if I tried to write a terrible Dune book
-Second and third Thomas Covenant trilogies - When you could have taken the second book out of the second trilogy and filled it in with a single chapter…
-Eragon and Eldest - Overrated. Too pulpy and the author’s plot devices are too transparent
-Dan Brown books - I still can’t figure out why they’re popular. They’re just not that interesting…
Well I have not really read that many fantasy books so I don’t know how cliched it is. Umm I’m trying to remember when it gets more interesting but it have been a little while since I’ve read the first few books. I’m guessing that it may be the third book that really picks up (don’t want to say anything to spoil the story). The last few are kinda slow but there is only 1 book left of the serie (it a 12 books serie) and so this last book should tie everything up and be so much more interesting. I guess that the enjoyment of these books are very personalized so What I enjoy could be very dulls for others. I hope that it’s get more interesting for you soon cause it gave me alot of things to do during my free time in the past.
Oh I wasn’t being sexist. I just have yet to read a book by a woman that left a good impression.
I don’t know, prove me wrong.I read a lot and have been around the library enough, but I havem’t found one yet.
Fantasy books are fun, they’re like Ben Stiller movies where you laugh but your not sure why, or like U2 where we all agree they are good, but deep down inside we know we hate them. I loved LOTR and there is a series by a guy named Jacques that I just got into.
Transgressional literature is the best though. You can’t beat the morbid, sordid, splatter-punk novels that are coming out today. The absurdity in their nature is appalling and inspiring.
I have to agree on the Rowling one. Every Harry Potter book is a bestseller from even before it’s even written, so why should SHE care about the quality of her books?
Give people a sad story about some marginal person rising to the top, and your sales of whatever are increased by 50%.
Oh I wasn’t being sexist. I just have yet to read a book by a woman that left a good impression.
You know, you shouldn’t make generalisations like that. I have yet to read a good book by a left-handed Parisian vacuum salesman in a pink hat, but that doesn’t mean left-handed Parisian vacuum salesmen in pink hats can’t write.
