[Mail4bugg]

Hi, I started as teen reading Andre Norton and Piers Anthony. There is no way you could get me to read either of them. Edding does nothing for me.

[Tif the Barber Boy]

Binder of Demons;172153 said:

To follow up on that load, I also had the misfortune of reading TIMELINE by a certain Mr. Crichton. Now I should have known better after my previous experience, but I was in a forgiving mood. Now, i think it's a good exercise to look at the plot of this novel about a group of scientist who use a time travel machine to go back and study the middle ages and then get trapped there. then compare this to the plot of Connie Willis' HUGO and NEBULA award winning novel, THE DOOMSDAY BOOK, about some time travelling scientists/historians who get trapped in the middle ages. DOOMSDAY was written 6 years earlier at least. Aside from the strong sense of deja vu while reading the Crichton book TIMELINE, I think the greater problem was the crap writing and lack of suspense, or ecent characters etc.

Timeline was the worst book I've read in the past few years. It was so awfully, terribly, stupidly written. The funny thing is the first chapter or so is interesting - set out on the Indian Reservation where a messed up dude who's been time travelling too much shows up. Then we get to the historians - including the historian who knows medieval french, how to joust, archery, how to ride a horse in full plate armour, swordfighting etc. And is actually better at all of this than everyone back in the middle ages.

Doomsday Book was pretty good. It was a little slow to start off with and one feels that the author sometimes over narrates some stuff, particularly in the 'future' segments but it really draws you in.

Kudos for The Doomsday Book. Consign Timeline to the flames...

[Kurt Montandon]

Tif the Barber Boy;179202 said:

Doomsday Book was pretty good. It was a little slow to start off with and one feels that the author sometimes over narrates some stuff, particularly in the 'future' segments but it really draws you in.

Kudos for The Doomsday Book. Consign Timeline to the flames...

I've never read The Doomsday Book. The only Connie Willis book I've ever read is To Say Nothing of the Dog, which was friggin' brilliant, and hilarious at points, if you like a certain kind of dry, not-obvious humor. Which I do. I highly recommend it, but suggest reading some Gaiman and Pratchett to prepare you for the British humor - not to mention having at least a slight grounding in Victorian era history. Just to help make the jokes work.

Oh, and it's something of a jumble towards the end, but tolerably so.

[Binder of Demons]

Yeah, To Say Nothing of the Dog is a great read. And I found it really amusing too.

The Doomsday book has nothing like the feel of ..To Say Nothing of the Dog, but it is a fine novel in it's own way. It is a well thought out, well executed novel, but it might seem a little dry in comparison.

But these two books just go to reinforce my opinion of Crichton's work as a pile of $h1+. At least when Connie Willis decided to revisit a theme, she improved on it, and added some flair, and humour, and produced another award winning book. And yet which author gets the big money, and movie deals. Aghhhhh!!! It does my head in.

[Kurt Montandon]

Binder of Demons;180006 said:

But these two books just go to reinforce my opinion of Crichton's work as a pile of $h1+. At least when Connie Willis decided to revisit a theme, she improved on it, and added some flair, and humour, and produced another award winning book. And yet which author gets the big money, and movie deals. Aghhhhh!!! It does my head in.

Chrichton is an airport author - that is, a guy who writes the type of potboilers that are on the racks in an airport shop. The kind of books that someone can pick up without any real feel for the genre, and read moderately quickly during a long plane flight, without having to think too hard ... but at the same time get the illusion they're learning something, because of the simplified, distilled info-dumps.

Chrichton's earlier works aren't like this, but he's really perfected the art, along with people like John Grisham, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz.

Not entirely by coincidence, these sorts of books make good movies ... they're written with very visual elements in mind.

[Darkwatch]

The First Jurassic Park Movie was great, never read the book though.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

kmmontandon;180102 said:

Chrichton is an airport author -

Chrichton's earlier works aren't like this, but he's really perfected the art, along with people like John Grisham, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz.

Not entirely by coincidence, these sorts of books make good movies ... they're written with very visual elements in mind.

While I agree that that some of King's writing fits into this category, I have to say that some of his stuff is better than that, and can actually be considered "real" fiction, not airport fiction. For instance, The Dark Tower series is a masterpiece. The stand? Great book. Unfortunately, he does also write some crap. His crappiest book, however, is better than the best that Koontz has ever written.

Also, most movies based on King's books aren't very good. Partly because they are often low budget, I'm sure. The Shining was good, but I think we can give Kubrick credit for that.

[Astra]

Raymond Luxury Yacht;180119 said:

His crappiest book, however, is better than the best that Koontz has ever written.

Disagree
Did you read False Memory?

[Kazz D'Avore]

the Mallorean and the Tamuli by Eddings and the Wit'ch Fire series by James Clemens(the most godawful thing ive ever read)

[tiam]

Raymond Luxury Yacht;180119 said:

While I agree that that some of King's writing fits into this category, I have to say that some of his stuff is better than that, and can actually be considered "real" fiction, not airport fiction. For instance, The Dark Tower series is a masterpiece. The stand? Great book. Unfortunately, he does also write some crap. His crappiest book, however, is better than the best that Koontz has ever written.

Also, most movies based on King's books aren't very good. Partly because they are often low budget, I'm sure. The Shining was good, but I think we can give Kubrick credit for that.

Yeh Kings Dark Tower Series (for the most part eg Songs of Susannah was a bit crap) absolutely brilliant. Havnt read anything else. Also theres a (seemingly) good KIng film coming out called 1408. Its got Samuel L Jackson in t so ill probably go an watch it.

Also asto the theory that airplane books are bad i walked into WHSmith the other day on a train platform and bought Brethren which i admit was exactly what you on about. However whilst in an airport i found GOTM and the King beyond the gate by David gemmel so dont judge a book by its cover

By cover i mean where you find. Tiam the king of cleches ba dum bum

[iscariot]

Because I don't believe in burning books, is it OK if I burn the Authors instead?

George R R Martin: [Yes, yes, I know, heresy] I loved the first two books of a Game of Thrones, but by halfway through the third I got sick of him killing everyone off. Now, the odd, main charqacter death is great - all for it - but it seemed that it went beyond movning the plot forward and into the land of contrivance; sorry, but that just makes my teeth ache and my eyes bleed.

Hal Duncan deserves to be immolated for the unreadable mess that is Vellum, in fact it's the most unreadable thing I've tried to read since...

...Umberto Eco's 'Foucaults Pendulum', which sounded great until one actually tried to read it; chopping through the Amazon with a machete would be easier.

Feist's 'Flight of the Nighthawks' actually deserves an award for taking the concept of being an incoherent mess to whole new levels of awfulness; your average adult film has more plot than this excuse for...well...whatever it's claiming to be (it sure as shit can't claim to be a book).

...[/venom]

[williamjm]

iscariot;187355 said:

Because I don't believe in burning books, is it OK if I burn the Authors instead?

No, we're not going to let you burn George R.R. Martin. If you ask really nicely we might let you burn Terry Goodkind, though.

[Wiggles]

iscariot;187355 said:

Because I don't believe in burning books, is it OK if I burn the Authors instead?

George R R Martin: [Yes, yes, I know, heresy] I loved the first two books of a Game of Thrones, but by halfway through the third I got sick of him killing everyone off. Now, the odd, main charqacter death is great - all for it - but it seemed that it went beyond movning the plot forward and into the land of contrivance; sorry, but that just makes my teeth ache and my eyes bleed.

Hal Duncan deserves to be immolated for the unreadable mess that is Vellum, in fact it's the most unreadable thing I've tried to read since...

...Umberto Eco's 'Foucaults Pendulum', which sounded great until one actually tried to read it; chopping through the Amazon with a machete would be easier.

Feist's 'Flight of the Nighthawks' actually deserves an award for taking the concept of being an incoherent mess to whole new levels of awfulness; your average adult film has more plot than this excuse for...well...whatever it's claiming to be (it sure as shit can't claim to be a book).

...[/venom]

Marry me and have more of my children? please? Martin and Eco are boring/bland hacks.

[Ezgara (the insect)]

I am cursed with some obsessive curiosity streak and once I've read one book of a series and I liked it somewhat...I just have to read the rest because I can't take not knowing what's gonna happen. Examples: Sara Douglass' Axis trilogy, Crown of Stars heptology, Robin Hobb and Carol Berg and of course Terry Goodkinds book. I really enjoyed reading the first two books (maybe I was going through a phase...), but after that....Good thing is that the last couple of books were so extremely uninteresting that they cured me from my curiosity: I really don't care anymore about is gonna happen to the chars...unless of course they all explode or get eaten by crazy chipmonks...I would like to read that.

Oh, and I truly considered burning my Eddings book. Due to another obsessive streak (I paid for this book, I must read it) I did actually read one...I forgot the title, but I remember it was poorly written, the plot seemed non existent, the character were boring and shallow...

[Abyss]

Popcorn and airport novelist he may be, but once upon a time, Koonz had some really cool ideas, involving, variously, superintelligent dogs, timetravelling nazis, dimensionally teleporting serial killers, super-powered split personalities and the odd government conspiracy or mad scientist.

Intersperced around these were some spectacularly bad books (involving more or less the same ideas, and/or clowns). Sadly, over time he's sort of become a self-parody, recycling the same ideas with vague changes to the plot ("okay, so this time the renegade secret agent is a hermaphrodite instead of a collie and the conspirators are ex-FCC instead of FBI, and they're using timetravel to get to other worlds, instead of diemnsional travel to get to other times, and, umm.... lesbians, yes, random lesbians! Mwahaahahahahaaa...").

- Abyss, woof.

[Deornoth]

A couple of days ago I burnt my copy of 'Danse Macabre' (Laurell Hamilton), it sure felt a lot better than it did reading the damn thing! :cool: