[Slow Ben]

Didnt you read that? It was no mere chicken.....it was wickedness incarnate.

[stone monkey]

If I may be so bold:

IGNORE EVERYTHING ANYONE HERE SAYS!!!

Go online, or to a book shop (even better), and just pick up books that look interesting to you. It's not homework, it's reading for pleasure. If you like the look of it, read it.

There is something to be said for reading around the classics of a genre to get the idea of what's out there, but life's too short; especially if you've started reading later in life. Read lots, read often; your taste will develop. If you like a book, it's a good book for you. The End.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 26 January 2018 - 08:59 PM

[End of Disc One]

stone monkey, on 26 January 2018 - 08:55 PM, said:

If I may be so bold:

IGNORE EVERYTHING ANYONE HERE SAYS!!!

Go online, or to a book shop (even better), and just pick up books that look interesting to you. It's not homework, it's reading for pleasure. If you like the look of it, read it.

There is something to be said for reading around the classics of a genre to get the idea of what's out there, but life's too short; especially if you've started reading later in life. Read lots, read often; your taste will develop. If you like a book, it's a good book for you. The End.

Life's too short, so judge books by their covers instead of making informed decisions?

[stone monkey]

Looking at a book generally involves a bit more than just looking at the cover, if you ask me: reading the blurb, opening it, maybe reading a bit. And then maybe purchase (or borrow - Public Libraries are great things) if it appeals to what moves/interests you personally. If you spend your life going by what other people say on a matter of individual taste then you'll never develop your own.

As pretty much anyone who knows me could attest, I could make a recommendation list as long as your arm, but we've all had recommendations of "great!" books that turned out to be rubbish (or not right for us, at least). Find your own way to what you enjoy.

For example, I've lost count of the number of people who recommended I read Dickens... Dickens is bloody awful. But he's right for some people. I would recommend House Of Leaves 'til I'm blue in the face, I love it. I suspect there aren't that many humans on earth who would actually enjoy it too.

As I said, it's not homework. Read things because you like them, not because others say you should. And some of my favourite books are ones I've picked up on a whim.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 26 January 2018 - 09:33 PM

[worry]

[quietly deletes post recommending you only buy books with covers depicting warrior women in metal bikinis called like My Mistress, the Galaxy, Thus Beheld]

[Esa1996]

Macros, on 25 January 2018 - 10:01 PM, said:

Esa1996, on 25 January 2018 - 05:24 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 25 January 2018 - 04:02 PM, said:

Um, right. I forgot LOTR as essential, a yeah "Wars of Light and Shadow" would definitely fill the "heavy reading" requirement.

I have to give a major WTF about Sanderson, though. "Stormlight Archive" is many interesting things, but "really good characterization" is DEFINITELY not one of them (imo. After reading the first 2 books). I'd go as far as to say the poor characterization is the main thing dragging this series down for me from an "insta-buy" to a "wait until the mmpb edition is released a year after the initial release" .

Sanderson CAN write characters okay (the Wax + Wayne novels are a great example of evolving characters), but Stormlight is definitely not a good example of that.

Both Wheel of Time and Sword of Truth are huge, and likely influential, but I've read so much about them on this forum over the years that I really don't feel to actually read the books themselves. Also something something ridiculous evil chicken something something.

I've only read Stormlight from Sanderson, so I can't comment on Wax and Wayne, but I've always liked the characters in TSA. Most series I've read, even most series in my recommendations list, have some boring POVs in them, but even the worst POVs in Stormlight are quite decent IMO.

As for Sword of Truth, those evil chickens were a big part of what I wanted to see when I began reading the series By the time they came along I was quite addicted, and besides, they weren't nearly as cheesy as I'd feared, so they caused me no problem.

I'm serious. When I began reading the series I was expecting something truly awful and thus the first three books were FAR beyond anything I expected. The evil chickens were one of the things that had been talked up as truly awful and thus I was quite interested in how said part would turn out. I really liked the first three books, found the 4th one to be decent and had quite some trouble believing that after 4 books of mostly very good stuff, the author would truly write something as ridiculous as what people here had been describing. Well. Eventually I did get to said part with the evil chickens and while I agree that it was pretty silly, it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be.

[Gorefest]

stone monkey, on 26 January 2018 - 08:55 PM, said:

If I may be so bold:

IGNORE EVERYTHING ANYONE HERE SAYS!!!

Go online, or to a book shop (even better), and just pick up books that look interesting to you. It's not homework, it's reading for pleasure. If you like the look of it, read it.

No offense, SM, but I so much disagree with the above statement. There are some great books that I would never even have stumbled across if it wasn't for recommendations from friends and people that I knew shared my taste. There is such a huge amount of literature on offer and a lot of bookshops and libraries only carry a specific selection, that you are likely to just skim the edges. Heck, I got GotM as a birthday gift from a friend, otherwise there is a good chance that I might never even have picked it up in a bookshop.

Sure 20 people will give 20 different lists of recommendations. But there will always be works that are recurring on those lists. So those can form a great starting point and from there on in you can discover which people appear to have a similar taste and then focus on those recommendations. It is such a better way of discovering new and exciting books than to just read book blurbs or look at covers. Because they are often pretty useless.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 27 January 2018 - 09:41 AM

[polishgenius]

Yeah, I used to pick books by the 'flicking through in a bookshop' method but I had enough complete misses that nowadays even when I do see a book that looks interesting I note it down and check out some reviews before I plunge.

[stone monkey]

Each to their own, I suppose. To my mind, what you get by explicitly going from recommendations are safe choices that will never get you out of the "reviewers love this" or "everyone says this is good" ghetto. If you want to live there, that's a fine and comfortable place to be, it's also kind of boring.

I can understand the urge to read books for variations on the comforting familiar - which is arguably why a lot of people do read particular genres of fiction. But that seems both limited and limiting to me; hence my disagreement with going the recommendations route.

Is a book good because lots of people like it? I would say, not necessarily.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 27 January 2018 - 03:30 PM

[polishgenius]

I honestly find the take that we only recommend books that we are comfortable with kind of baffling. If anything reading reviews and recs took me more out of my comfort zone because I'd have been far less likely to read the likes of Mieville and Hal Duncan back in the day if they hadn't come with good recs from reviewers or people whose opinion I'd already come to respect.

Eta: for example, I know that mine and Baco's tastes align quite well, so when he mentions a book that I hadn't considered and might not have, I'm quite likely to give it a look based on that. Whereas mine and QT's tastes don't line up that strongly but we talk about these things and I know where we line up and where we differ so when QT recommends a book I can usually tell fairly quickly whether something he recommends is going to be up my street.

And if it does turn out to be a book we both like, of course, then you know it's worth looking at.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 27 January 2018 - 04:14 PM

[Andorion]

Gorefest, on 27 January 2018 - 09:38 AM, said:

stone monkey, on 26 January 2018 - 08:55 PM, said:

If I may be so bold:

IGNORE EVERYTHING ANYONE HERE SAYS!!!

Go online, or to a book shop (even better), and just pick up books that look interesting to you. It's not homework, it's reading for pleasure. If you like the look of it, read it.

No offense, SM, but I so much disagree with the above statement. There are some great books that I would never even have stumbled across if it wasn't for recommendations from friends and people that I knew shared my taste. There is such a huge amount of literature on offer and a lot of bookshops and libraries only carry a specific selection, that you are likely to just skim the edges. Heck, I got GotM as a birthday gift from a friend, otherwise there is a good chance that I might never even have picked it up in a bookshop.

Sure 20 people will give 20 different lists of recommendations. But there will always be works that are recurring on those lists. So those can form a great starting point and from there on in you can discover which people appear to have a similar taste and then focus on those recommendations. It is such a better way of discovering new and exciting books than to just read book blurbs or look at covers. Because they are often pretty useless.

stone monkey, on 27 January 2018 - 03:19 PM, said:

Each to their own, I suppose. To my mind, what you get by explicitly going from recommendations are safe choices that will never get you out of the "reviewers love this" or "everyone says this is good" ghetto. If you want to live there, that's a fine and comfortable place to be, it's also kind of boring.

I can understand the urge to read books for variations on the comforting familiar - which is arguably why a lot of people do read particular genres of fiction. But that seems both limited and limiting to me; hence my disagreement with going the recommendations route.

Is a book good because lots of people like it? I would say, not necessarily.

I actually agree with Gorefest here, because the context for this thread is giving recommendations to a relatively new reader. From my own experience, a wide array of recommendations helps a reader to get a good grounding in a genre/sub-genre and then start exploring on their own. After all you can only read outside your comfort zone when you have one to begin with.

[Salt-Man Z]

Andorion, on 27 January 2018 - 04:08 PM, said:

I actually agree with Gorefest here, because the context for this thread is giving recommendations to a relatively new reader. From my own experience, a wide array of recommendations helps a reader to get a good grounding in a genre/sub-genre and then start exploring on their own. After all you can only read outside your comfort zone when you have one to begin with.

Right. I tried to keep my list to a "foundation of the genre" thing. SFF is always in dialogue with itself, and stuff I read now is richer because I've got, say, Lovecraft and Borges percolating in my brain. (As an example, Stover's "Escape from the donjon" sequence in HEROES DIE was great by itself, but once I discovered it was pulled straight from Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN my mind was blown.)

Which is not to say any of it is 100% necessary (I was familiar with basically Tolkien and Donaldson when I first started Malazan) but when the OP asks for "essentials", that's what I'm gonna give him. I'm more than happy to add a more esoteric "Nobody else here talks about these great books" list if asked.

This post has been edited by Salt-Man Z: 27 January 2018 - 05:54 PM

[polishgenius]

Salt-Man Z, on 27 January 2018 - 05:52 PM, said:

(As an example, Stover's "Escape from the donjon" sequence in HEROES DIE was great by itself, but once I discovered it was pulled straight from Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN my mind was blown.)

Whaaaaaaat I'm really going to have to re-read New Sun again to catch that.

Speaking of tribute sequences though, props to Gene Wolfe too for writing the best of the many many many many many Mines of Moria tributes out there (and the only one that has a shout to being at least as well written than the real thing).

[Grief]

stone monkey, on 27 January 2018 - 03:19 PM, said:

Each to their own, I suppose. To my mind, what you get by explicitly going from recommendations are safe choices that will never get you out of the "reviewers love this" or "everyone says this is good" ghetto. If you want to live there, that's a fine and comfortable place to be, it's also kind of boring.

I'm not sure wandering through a Waterstones or what have you is necessarily a better road away from the mainstream. Nor am I sure this amounts to much more than literary hipsterdom, wherein the goal is not to maximise your enjoyment of books so much as their obscurity. There are many popular books that are enjoyable. There are many unpopular books that are enjoyable. There are probably enough good books in either category to keep someone occupied forever, really. I think it's rather odd to equate 'mainstream' with being necessarily 'comfortable' or 'boring' in the literary sense. A book being well-known doesn't magically make it a less challenging read. Was reading Moby Dick wortwhile just up until it's later literary popularity, at which point it became tedious?

Is a book good because lots of people don't like it? I would say, not necessarily.

[worry]

I think SM's argument isn't necessarily as exclusionary as folks are taking it. What he's getting at is, if you're focusing so much on 'catching up' with the consensus books, you'll probably like them, but you're gonna miss out on the weirdo books you might have fallen in love with otherwise. Because when someone asks for lists like these, they make hierarchies of priority -- if seven people recommend ASOIAF, it's gonna go above a series with three votes, and so on...the books with one vote aren't gonna rate, and are gonna get pushed to the bottom of the To-Read List.

Maybe most importantly: you're gonna go the bookstore with a shopping list instead of a browser's mentality, and that potentially kills unique finds.

I think it's possible to do both. Open up a Word doc and make a #ed list, put the 'mainstream' series on odd numbers, and then maybe slot the weirdos, the things you find on your own, in between them. Commit to doing things more or less that way -- like for every suggested book, buy something nobody's ever mentioned to you -- and you'll have a healthy dose of both.

[Grief]

worry, on 27 January 2018 - 11:44 PM, said:

I think SM's argument isn't necessarily as exclusionary as folks are taking it. What he's getting at is, if you're focusing so much on 'catching up' with the consensus books, you'll probably like them, but you're gonna miss out on the weirdo books you might have fallen in love with otherwise.

I'm just not sure why there's any assumption that someone is any less likely to fall in love with a 'consensus' book than a 'unique' one. Isn't it just as plausible that I wander to the bookshop and pick up 2-3 books that I notice, probably like them, and miss out on a recommended book that I might have fallen in love with otherwise?

I also think SM's argument does go further than that. Suggesting that the recommendations route results in "variations on the comforting familiar" seems like a considerable criticism of the method -- at least beyond 'you might miss out on some neat books'.

The main point where I agree with SM is that reading isn't homework. It's not worth forcing yourself through something you don't enjoy just because of a recommendation. And I would also echo Morgoth and Macros' earlier point to try to avoid recommendations heavily rooted in nostalgia.

[Andorion]

Browsing a bookstore has never really appealed to me, as most of the bookstores where I live have a very limited sci-fi and fantasy collection and honestly I know more about the stuff they have than the people they employ. There is this funny shop that turns up at the annual book fair with a very unusual connection and that is where I get most of the few hardcopies that I buy.


If you really want to get into the browsing for new books thing, then do it on the internet by trawling monthly and annual new release catalogues. An excellent way to find totally new authors.

Also recommendations are certainly not bad if you hang around a seriously bibliophiliac group. Some people here, on Westeros and on r/fantasy have excellent taste and often the discussion throws up books I have never heard of before.

[worry]

Just to clarify, 'unique' was a bad word choice on my part because it also has a content meaning, but I just meant personal finds that are separate from the canon. Maybe that came through anyway.

To the question: "Isn't it just as plausible that I wander to the bookshop and pick up 2-3 books that I notice, probably like them, and miss out on a recommended book that I might have fallen in love with otherwise?"
I do think that's less plausible because I think shelf space and osmosis will take care of that stuff in the long run anyway. You're absolutely right that the 'comforting familiar' comment is more of a critique than I acknowledged -- but I tend to think it's a valid one since that is what consensus leads to, especially when someone asks to catch up on the standards. Essentially, if someone is asking for the 'hits', everyone's gonna arrive at the same answers, and likely enough, there's already a 'greatest hits' album anyway. It's less personal than asking for 'favorite songs' or 'best deep cuts', and it does strike me as a homeworky endeavor (some people like homework though so don't take any of this as toooooo critical of the thread or OP).

In fact, I think SM's argument is a cousin to the nostalgia one, but instead of literary merit or whatever it's about comfort zones. People, maybe geeks especially, tend to seek out comfort zones. If you're fortunate enough to reach adulthood without your comfort zones cemented, e.g. reading slight variations of the same medieval sieges and sword fight stories again and again, you have an opportunity to embrace it and run with it.

All that said, obviously I think there's middle ground, people can do both, and that's what I'd personally encourage. I also think this board in particular, among nerd-fiction-centric boards, casts a much wider net than is typical and those suggestions pop up in the general Reading thread for sure -- but again, asking for the canon gets you the canon.

[worry]

(Also, sorry if I put words in SM's mouth -- obviously those posts are filtered through my interpretation via my Swiss Cheese brain).

[Grief]

worry, on 28 January 2018 - 01:29 AM, said:

. You're absolutely right that the 'comforting familiar' comment is more of a critique than I acknowledged -- but I tend to think it's a valid one since that is what consensus leads to, especially when someone asks to catch up on the standards. Essentially, if someone is asking for the 'hits', everyone's gonna arrive at the same answers, and likely enough, there's already a 'greatest hits' album anyway. It's less personal than asking for 'favorite songs' or 'best deep cuts', and it does strike me as a homeworky endeavor (some people like homework though so don't take any of this as toooooo critical of the thread or OP).

In fact, I think SM's argument is a cousin to the nostalgia one, but instead of literary merit or whatever it's about comfort zones. People, maybe geeks especially, tend to seek out comfort zones. If you're fortunate enough to reach adulthood without your comfort zones cemented, e.g. reading slight variations of the same medieval sieges and sword fight stories again and again, you have an opportunity to embrace it and run with it.

I just don't think that it's particularly fair to equate the 'hits' with being a 'comforting familiar' (or 'slight variations of the same medieval sieges and sword fight stories'). The literary canon is perhaps the epitome of the concept of 'hits'; does this mean someone who loves Auten will find Dostoyevsky a 'comforting familiar'? Popular books are popular for diverse reasons. I think it's plausible that a mass of people may in fact represent more diverse tastes than an individual will gravitate towards.