The Book Lair - all book talk ITT

[4score7years]

I think I read that a while ago. Romans + 'murican cavalry + modern special ops guys team up to fight superdinosaur aliens throughout time or somesuch.

It was... vaguely entertaining not-much. Nothing special, nothing hilariously bad, the sort of thing you could expect from a mediocre Hollywood writer.

Bearing in mind that I read this about 4 years ago, this review covers most of what I remember hating about it.

Lev Grossman's The Magicians was insufferable in a sense that the MC is an incel loser PoS and the story builds up to be his wish-fulfillment journey so I gave up one quarter in.

Having not read it, I thought that was kinda supposed to be the point. Harry Potter/Narnia starring an uncool depressed loser. I thought it was supposed to be like a subversion or whatever

but idk lol people say Kingkiller was supposed to be a subversion but it's nowhere near self-aware enough

[Mattias]

I know this isn't a book recommendation, but what are some of the least favored/worst books you guys have ever read?

This serves as a future warning for me to probably stay away from them.

Oliver Twist is the only book I ever found too boring to finish.

[LJ3]

Not even the Great Illustrated Classics version?

i fucking loved those

[Snow]

Having not read it, I thought that was kinda supposed to be the point. Harry Potter/Narnia starring an uncool depressed loser. I thought it was supposed to be like a subversion or whatever

but idk lol people say Kingkiller was supposed to be a subversion but it's nowhere near self-aware enough

I don't know, tbh, I saw it on some top 10 list online and decided to give it a try with no more info, so I just judging based on what I read. I believe that it maybe shapes up into something later but what I read wasn't nearly compelling enough to motivate me to trudge through the rest. I love me a good problematic protag but this one was just irritating and boring.

[4score7years]

Just finished Perdido Street Station. Weird. Excellent. But also, really, really, sad.

[Historia]

Not sure where to put this, but, they're releasing Tolkien's The Fall of Gondolin as a standalone book.

I should rebuy a copy of The Silmarillion.

[Criarino]

It is incredible how Lezhin can burn out my money.
NOTHING more in the ENTIRE INTERNET can make me spend money like this.
shit I think I have to found work

[SpoonyViking]

Finished reading Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus' "Trollhunters" novel. I liked it quite a bit, but the dissonance between the novel's supposed viewpoint of a teenager first-person narrator and the actual writing style was so jarring it often drew me out of the experience. It honestly felt like the novel was written with a standard third-person omniscient narrator and later the appropriate pronouns were hastily changed before publishing.

It's also a very different beast from the "Trolllhunters" series, so when I started watching the latter, it felt very jarring again.

[Mujaya]

Ernest Cline's Armada
Increasingly arcane video game references+boring characters I can't seem to care about (the less said about the MC, the better)+fanfic tier prose=a not very pleasant reading experience.

I know I'm not the first person to express this opinion, but Ernest Cline's works are absolutely appalling. It's just an unfortunate characteristic of an abysmal lack of talent in modern art and literature. I've known plummers with more creativity. People often ask where all the great physicists of today are. Where did all of the good writers even go?

[RoydGolden]

I know I'm not the first person to express this opinion, but Ernest Cline's works are absolutely appalling. It's just an unfortunate characteristic of an abysmal lack of talent in modern art and literature. I've known plummers with more creativity. People often ask where all the great physicists of today are. Where did all of the good writers even go?

Yeah, his stuff sounds almost unreadable. Blatant wish fulfillment on a level that'd make even Sword Art Online blush.

[castor212]

im reading Fever Series

apparently laughing and enjoying a book for being so, so bad is possible

[4score7years]

I know I'm not the first person to express this opinion, but Ernest Cline's works are absolutely appalling. It's just an unfortunate characteristic of an abysmal lack of talent in modern art and literature. I've known plummers with more creativity. People often ask where all the great physicists of today are. Where did all of the good writers even go?

Who would win

All modern literature
Twilight for Boys

Just read things that aren’t bad

[Mujaya]

Who would win

All modern literature
Twilight for Boys

Just read things that aren’t bad

Twilight for boys would win by a longshot. I do read some 20th century works, but most of them were by the great science fiction writers like Philip K. Dick. Otherwise, my heads poked into epic poetry or Dostoevsky.

[RoydGolden]

Been reading The Burning Maze, third book in Riordan's Trials Of Apollo series lately. Really good stuff. Did anyone read the part where SPOILERMedea puppeteered Helios's corpse and were reminded of F/SN Medea making Shirou into a Mystic Code in the Hazy bad end? Because let's be honest, that totally seems like the kind of thing F/SN Medea would do if she had the chance.

[SeiKeo]

Wow is Medea actually good

[RoydGolden]

Wow is Medea actually good

Not quite sure what you mean, but I've found her pretty cool so far. If you mean morally good then no, since Riordan's take on her is far less sympathetic than Nasu's (presenting her as irrevocably twisted even before Jason came along, for one thing).

That reminds me. While I really like Riordan as a writer, one of the problems I have with him is that- for how much moral ambiguity there is in the myths he's adapting- all his villains seem to pretty much end up as textbook "bad guys" with few sympathetic motives or redeeming traits. Luke from the original series was a major exception, and there hasn't really been a character like him since. Some of it's probably understandable given he started off writing for young kids, but now that he's tackling more mature themes a bit more moral ambiguity in the villains would be nice.

[castor212]

Its Helios' divine essence, excuse you

[RoydGolden]

Its Helios' divine essence, excuse you

So I take it you've read the book too then? Nice. And I literally just read the scene where Medea explained her plan this afternoon, so I wasn't entirely clear on whether it was just Helios' divine essence or she literally had his corpse stashed away somewhere. What you said makes more sense though.

[castor212]

riordan's getting stale for me tbph, i just read it cuz might as well and its not really hard to follow of a book

im more excited about the RRP project he got (new writers with indian and chinese and mexican gods sounds like a breath of fresh air), and just got my copy of the Aru Shah book.

[RoydGolden]

riordan's getting stale for me tbph, i just read it cuz might as well and its not really hard to follow of a book

im more excited about the RRP project he got (new writers with indian and chinese and mexican gods sounds like a breath of fresh air), and just got my copy of the Aru Shah book.

I can understand finding Riordan stale. I mean, he has written a lot of books on broadly similar subject matter. Personally, I find Apollo's POV livens up the whole thing enough to keep it entertaining.

The Aru Shah book does sound cool. Given how OP Indian myth is, I'll be hella disappointed if the final battle isn't some Dragon Ball Z-tier epicness with characters slinging around world-destroying Astras left and right.