PlaneShift
Fan Area => The Hydlaa Plaza => Topic started by: Jekkar on March 03, 2011, 07:49:10 pm
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Let's talk literature.
What are your favourite books and why? Tell us why you've become attached to them and what attracts you in literature.
I'm a classics fan myself, with Heart of Darkness being on the top of my list. it somehow manages to capture the exact things I'm looking for, as I generally go for dark, realistic literature.
There's the Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin, which I must have gone through a dozen times now, as well as falling asleep to the audiobook versions. For those unfamiliar with the series; there's an upcoming TV adaptation produced by HBO scheduled to air in April.
I've recently begun to read Dante's Comedy, starting with the Inferno. I liked the prose translation I've read while not even getting most of what is being said (Dante's focus is on medieval Florentine politics of his time). Though I've been listening to some audio lectures on the subjects by The Teaching Company and they help a lot.
To stick with the Medieval tone, I would also suggest reading The Monk by Matthew Lewis, a bizarre book that takes the gothic style of writing and mocks it till it leaves you silent for a week when you've read the last chapter.
Steven Erikson's Malazan books are also a must get for the fantasy readers among us.
There's an annual bookfestival in Holland which I always visit, I get a whole bag full of books at an incredibly cheap price and go through those in a year.
Tell us about your taste.
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The Picture of Dorian Gray. I just love the way Wilde writes, and wnjoyed thinking about the symbolism for weeks after finishing it. It's my favourite book, quite easily.
The Gambler by Dostoevsky.
Besides that, though I enjoyed The Prince and many Norse and Greek myths, my favourites would be the much less sophisticated but wonderful Drenai Tales.
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I thought Twilight was very well written and very immersive.
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I thought Twilight was very well written and very immersive.
To each our own tastes. I've tried to get into that series, my girlfriend originally proposed me to read them, claiming they were great, promising me I wouldn't regret it. The start was quite doable but as I read on it became more and more dragging and stale to me. Though I enjoy her company I must say I've never forgiven her for this.
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I thought Twilight was very well written and very immersive.
To each our own tastes. I've tried to get into that series, my girlfriend originally proposed me to read them, claiming they were great, promising me I wouldn't regret it. The start was quite doable but as I read on it became more and more dragging and stale to me. Though I enjoy her company I must say I've never forgiven her for this.
One would indeed expect men to feel threatened by those books in that they can't possibly live up to the expectations created by them in terms of relationship commitment, romanticism and adventure.
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I thought Twilight was very well written and very immersive.
To each our own tastes. I've tried to get into that series, my girlfriend originally proposed me to read them, claiming they were great, promising me I wouldn't regret it. The start was quite doable but as I read on it became more and more dragging and stale to me. Though I enjoy her company I must say I've never forgiven her for this.
One would indeed expect men to feel threatened by those books in that they can't possibly live up to the expectations created by them in terms of relationship commitment, romanticism and adventure.
Agreed.
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I would have expected roleplayers to be interested in literature. I guess PS players aren't as cultured as they want others to believe they are ???
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Ice & Fire owns. RR Martin rocks the whole world.
Besides that as Fantasy is concerned, I've read LOTR, some of Robin Hobb's books, "Colour of Magic" (great, easy to read book) and some others, I think.
Lately I've been reading economy, history and finance books which I won't bother you with.
I'm getting Heart of Darkness once I find it.
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I'm a bookworm. mostly science fiction, Asimov, Clarke, Dick... . I tried reading fantasy but anything except Tolkien seems to me lacking something, or deja-vu.
I've recently begun to read Dante's Comedy [...]
Don't worry, Dante's Comedy is really tough to understand even in original, because of the complex historical links :) . Anyway I still remember by heart the Charon encounter... After studying it in school for two or three years, finally you can even grasp the concepts on the fly, and the rhythm is simply magnificient. I'd like to see a translation...
Edit: I've found this, great!
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/pdp/
Ah, and I've read Asimov's Foundation series... well, I stopped counting at the seventh, and Herbert's Dune series as well.
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I loved the Hyperion series actually, the only sci fi that I've really enjoyed.
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Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock.
Fahferd and the Grey Mouser, Fritz Leiber.
The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander.
The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny.
The Keep by F. Paul Wilson.
The Lives of the Caesars, by Suetonius.
The Mysteries of Paris, by Eugene Sue.
Everything by H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
To name a few... and many, many more.
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I would have expected roleplayers to be interested in literature. I guess PS players aren't as cultured as they want others to believe they are ???
Oh Planeshift's players don't even like RPing culture, because 'its racist'.
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Read James Joyce's Ulysses' ... You won't enjoy it. But if you can last the whole book, I have faith in your abilities :D
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I had a temp job once, answering the phone for the president of some company. He came into the office at about 11 am, then went to lunch, came back sometimes at 2 , stayed a half hour, then left. The rest of the workers worked their asses off , but my job was to answer his private phone (maybe a dozen times a day at most), and tell people he was not there. Two weeks!
So I read:
War and Peace
Brothers Karamazov
Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Magus (John Fowles- magnificent, eerie book)
Daniel Martin (another Fowles novel, I was on a roll)
All of Shakespeare's comedies and sonnets
Metamorphosis
Plato's Symposium
Remembrance of Things Past
Ulysses ( and yes I liked it and yes it was kinda hard to understand until you get it then it's like mystical singing, and so sexual/sensual)
most of Tom Stoppard's plays
and ... well, who knows what else.
Best temp job of my life!
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the tale of peter rabbit :-[
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The hitch hikers guide to the galaxy
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Remembrance of Things Past comes in at 1.5m words.
Shakespeare's plays (his plays only, not including his sonnets) stands at 928,913.
Warand Peace stands proud at 560,000.
The Brothers Karamazov is a mere 366,653 .
Ulysses stands at a comparatively anemic 265,000.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a measly 180,242.
This comes to a total word count of 3,800,808. This doesn't include any of Tom Stoppard's plays, or Plato or Kafka or John Fowles or "who knows what else".
The higher end reading speed for an English speaking adult is 250 words per minute (a higher speed is not possible for any length of time owing to impaired information acquisition). Assuming you were achieving this high end reading speed, and assuming you were locked in a room and were reading non-stop for 24 hours a day, without pause, without sleep, without food, those 3,800,808 words would have taken you 15,203 minutes, or 253 hours, or just under 11 days.
Yet you managed to do this while working, and while reading a lot else, in just 14 days. Amazing.
I think he meant to say he read the Cliff Notes. Or possibly the Cliff Notes' summaries.
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Just a quick reminder to all the posters in this thread: this is the Hydlaa Plaza forum, the superpower skills your character possesses in order for them to read 4 million words in 2 weeks should not conflict with the real life matters we post here.
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Buy and read any H.P.Lovecraft and E.A.Poe book you can find.
You are welcome.
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Buy and read any H.P.Lovecraft and E.A.Poe book you can find.
You are welcome.
Seconded on Lovecraft.
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Fav. Kids books?
Black Beauty
Harry Potter
Dracula
Count of Monte Cristo (shorter edition)
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The Shockwave Rider (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockwave_Rider)
Stand On Zanzibar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_zanzibar)
Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_stigmata_of_palmer_eldritch)
A Scanner Darkly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly)
Battle Circle Trilogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Circle_%28novels%29)
Omnivore Trilogy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Man_and_Manta)
"The Stone God Awakens" and "The Wind Whales Of Ishmael" by Philip Jose Farmer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Jos%C3%A9_Farmer)
So many more....
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::| pretty sure dracula isn't a kid's book
i liked the redwall series, his dark materials, harry potter, the hobbit, and those narnia books... that's all i recall.
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I feel somewhat in-between these epic classics and much younger books, but I stand proudly with Orson Scott Card, Isaac Asimov, Tolkien, Robin Hobb, and, of course, Terry Pratchett.
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??? Oh ye of little reading ability! Have ye no faith? :o
No not cliff notes- I've actually never read cliff notes for anything I can remember.... :-\
and I admit I had read Brothrs K and W&P before, in high school, so those went pretty fast.. :woot:
Stoppard is a page turner, :detective: as are willie's plays, and since my previous job had been at a summer shakespeare theatre I skimmed through most of those except Troilus and Cresida, why anyone would want to read that, I have no idea, it's unintelligible to modern readers...
And
I make no claims for remembering anything really except Ulysses, probably because of the sex. :thumbup:
RR
Hydlaa bookworm and rl nerd
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Hmm. I keep a running list of the books I read and in going through it, I thought the following were pretty good:
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Don't Lets Go To the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Harry Potter, LOTR and Chronicles of Narnia series.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon
There are others I think are good, but it would make this list too long.
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Hmm. I keep a running list of the books I read and in going through it, I thought the following were pretty good:
Cry, The Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Don't Lets Go To the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Harry Potter, LOTR and Chronicles of Narnia series.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Sarum by Edward Rutherfurd
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon
There are others I think are good, but it would make this list too long.
Anything by Ken Follett is amazing. I'd read his puke :P
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the fountainhead
johnny got his gun
slaughterhouse five
siddhartha
catch-22
watership down
the divine comedy
for whom the bell tolls
einstein's dreams
out of the silent planet
a stranger in a strange land
metamorphoses
a brief history of time and the universe in a nutshell
the riftwar saga
the ender series
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At last a decent thread is revived! Or reincarnated at least. Maybe a slightly bland list to some - but unless it's star wars (old republic) or swords and magic based I probably won't read it.
Already mentioned but simply the best fantasy author around, Steven Erikson... Seriously, people need to have read mbotf, (As well as Ian Cameron Esslemont's contributions). (http://i.imgur.com/JW2sE.jpg)
Brandon Sanderson, who as most that care will know is finishing up WoT, his Mistborn Trilogy is brilliant though
The Black Magician trilogy by Trudi Canavan, as well as it's prequel book and sequel series (I've heard good things about her Age of Five series too).
Scott Lynch, Over Christmas I read: The Lies of Locke Lamora + Red Seas Under Red Skies. Meant to be a 7 part series but he has 'issues', so we'll see. Shame if more don't come out though. Medieval type setting + con artists.
Brent Weeks' Night Angel trilogy, two thumbs up. Have not had the time for black prism yet.
Nathan Fillion fans should get hold of the Castle spin off books too!
Plus so many more I'm too lazy to right about.
As for hitchhikers I'd recommend the originals over the books.
I'm going on holiday on Sunday, I'll either be reading Sanderson's Way of Kings, Weeks' Black Pirsm or making a start on Joe Abercrombie's trilogy depending on what the book shops are willing to sell me.
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I love to read. I've found good reads in many books and there's really nothing like being completely engulfed by the story of a great book.
Some of the books I can recommend (some others have as well, but worth re-mentioning):
C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy
Kafka's The Trial
Francesco Colonna's Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream (to spark curiosity if you're not sure you want to read it: The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason)
Jules Verne's Mathias Sandorf
J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels
John Grisham's The Innocent Man (his fiction novels are also great, but this nonfiction really got to me)
Jo Nesbø's The Harry Hole novels
Tom Egeland's Circle's End, Guardians of the Covenant & Gospel of Lucifer (unnamed novel series)
I could go on and on, but I'll leave it there for now :)
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(http://torimgrajeda.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/the_gas_we_pass.jpg)
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Lovely, Sarras :P
Most of my books are already listed here, Koios nailed a good few of them ;)
My all time favorite would be the Circle Trilogy by Ted Dekker.. Following along with that, I'd add Thr3e, Sinner, and Saint, by the same author... Several of those books have had large impacts on the way I've written my characters, and one or two of my characters personalities are based heavily on characters from these books, my main, Caraick, included :)
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Siddartha's a beautiful book. It's a not a story, its the chaos of thought subtly put into intelligible reading format. It's on a league of its own... For anyone who likes thinking about life, that is.
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There is seriously no possible way I can list even a fraction of the novels I love, so this will have to be a very disjointed and by no means all inclusive list. I read 2-3 novels per week on average, and if I like a book, I will read it hundreds of times.
Currently within arms reach I have 2 of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, 3 by Micheal Crichton, and 1 by E. A. Wallis Budge. Both the HP novels have probably been read about 50 times. I think JKR did a phenomenal job of creating her characters and the world they act in. Crichton was a genius with the research and scientific believability he put into his works. And Budge wrote such a fascinatingly boring tome on the ancient Egyptians, specifically with regard to burial rituals, that I am currently choosing to fill a gap in my knowledge base.
Other books/novels/etc I like:
The Metamorphosis, Kafka
The Divine Comedy, Dante
Anything written by Alexander Dumas, but The Count of Monte Cristo is such a wonderful insight into the human mentality of revenge and forgiveness.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, but I do love all of her other novels as well.
The Discourse on the Method, Descartes
I suppose I would by lying if I didn't say I read trashy romance novels too. :-[
I collect StarWars novels
Basically... if it is written... and does not run away... I will read it.
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Uh, most of what I read doesn't count as "literature" per se. I end up reading a lot of entirely forgettable fantasy novels halfway through and then shelving them. Anyway, I'll just list what comes to mind:
Neil Gaiman's work. I'm on The Graveyard Book at the moment.
The Hunger Games trilogy - absolutely brilliant; I can't wait for the movie.
The Inheritance Trilogy (Eragon/Eldest/Brisingr) is my guilty pleasure. It's not particularly well-written, and very stereotypical, but I love it anyways.
Redwall and Mossflower; you've read one you've read 'em all really, but I'd like to read The Long Patrol.
Narnia, got me into reading.
I actually didn't enjoy the LotR books. Too wordy, liked the movies better, which is crazy coming from me.
Harry. Freaking. Potter. I worship the air J.K.Rowling breathes.
His Dark Materials
City of Ember. The rest of the series isn't so good imho.
Looking For Alaska and Will Grayson, Will Grayson, both by John Green (well, half of Will Grayson, Will Grayson is by John Green anyway)
The Fables comics, Sandman, Blankets, and the Flight anthologies, if comic books count. <333
Non-ficiton stuff related to the film/animation industry (the list is not very big yet as I haven't been purchasing the books for long) - How Not to Make a Short Film, The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, a couple of those overpriced books of concept art from movies. I'm also on a mission to find the Preston Blair books and The Illusion of Life in a brick-and-mortar store, but I may just have to give up and order online, though I'm loathe to wait for shipping.
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"Redwall and Mossflower; you've read one you've read 'em all really, but I'd like to read The Long Patrol."
disagree! read them all, in those books lies the etymology of my use of this nick ;)
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Awww....Drey means home. Love it. :).