Which book are you reading now? Volume XI

[Arakhor]

David Eddings wrote the entire Belgariad/Mallorean based on very obvious fantasy clichés, but he knew how to make characters interesting.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

My sister's ex-boyfriend was a huge fan of Terry Goodkind. I'm really not sure why, but I made myself read the whole series waiting for it to get good enough to justify that opinion. Instead it kept getting worse.

(Actually the last Sword of Truth novel, while still garbage, was an improvement over the couple before it. There he finally learns the lesson that should have been obvious much earlier when he instead decided it as best to be an [censored].


Who was it who said he had "read a wide range of fantasy literature, from the good kind to the Terry Goodkind?"

---

Currently I'm reading Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind; Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion."

 

[Antilogic]

How's the science in that one?

Anyway, Super-Resolution Microscopy Techniques in the Neurosciences, edited by Eugenio F. Fornasiero and Silvio O. Rizzoli. Title says it all.

I worked in a lab that does some animal testing, so the lingo was familiar. The premise is that an engineered viral agent, called R-7, was able to attack cancerous tumors. It's not the craziest thing I've ever heard of, but the author does paper over the scientific details in favor of the characters' inner monologues. Spoiler for, well, a plot spoiler:

Spoiler :

The fraud is relatively simple to understand: the post-doc had a test group of about 30 or so mice, and the number that went into remission wasn't statistically significant. However, the post-doc excluded about several mice from the report to get a 60% remission rate, and the preliminary data was stuck in a grant proposal, and the media got involved, and stuff goes from there.

 

[Snerk]

Currently reading Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson. Part of the fantasy series The Stormlight Archive. I like but I'm looking for something different now. Just not sure what yet. I'll keep at it to I find it and then perhaps take a break from it.

 

[jackelgull]

My sister's ex-boyfriend was a huge fan of Terry Goodkind. I'm really not sure why, but I made myself read the whole series waiting for it to get good enough to justify that opinion. Instead it kept getting worse.

(Actually the last Sword of Truth novel, while still garbage, was an improvement over the couple before it. There he finally learns the lesson that should have been obvious much earlier when he instead decided it as best to be an [censored].


Who was it who said he had "read a wide range of fantasy literature, from the good kind to the Terry Goodkind?"

---

Currently I'm reading Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind; Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion."

I'm so sorry you had to read that series. It is only good when it is hilariously bad, and most of the time it is just awful. It is an immature narcissistic power fantasy, which I wouldn't mind so much if it didn't have such abhorrent morals and awful one dimensional characters.

The best moments (In the so bad it is good way):

In which Kahlan heroically battles an evil chicken (that is not really a chicken)
"But this was no ordinary chicken. This chicken was evil manifest."

In which Richard inspires a revolution by building a statue of himself being awesome.

There, all you need from that series.


Sorry, I tend to go off on rants about the Sword of Truth series, because it is one of the objectively worst series I've ever read. I've had series I've hated more and felt like more of a waste of time, but this was bad on so many levels.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I see that Arakhor and Jackelgull are choosing death

suddenly, a war broke out

this is mandatory reading

 

[Paul in Saudi]

No More Champagne, a financial biography of Winston Churchill.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Oh my god I had almost forgotten about all this

In one book, Goodkind creates a nation of pacifists (led by a small boy) as a strawman argument to display why Pacifism is Wrong. The pacifists stage a peaceful demostration to stop Richard from going to war; Richard slaughters the protestors, who are "armed only with their hatred for moral clarity." Richard also kills unarmed council members.

this is so ridiculous

EDIT: oh and also, goats are the most noble of creatures

MORE EDIT: Good summation of the series, I think:

Richard: Everyone is allowed to believe what they want to believe.
Random Guy: I don't agree with you!
(Richard kills Random Guy)

 

[jackelgull]

Have read a lot of mediocre fantasy/adventure stuff. The best book I recently read hasn't even been released in English, so little sense in mentioning it.
However - I have a particular book to warn anyone from reading it.

Terry Goodkind for sure produced the worst fantasy novel I have ever read. That "Terry Goodkind is the true inherent of J.R.R. Tolkien" graces the cover in silver letters has been a constant itch and juicy irony every since I started to read it.

Without making any kind of cohesive effort I am going to guess by page 300 out of a thousand that he did everything awful and wrong one can do with a fantasy novel.

Generic story of the chosen hero defeating the evil - Check

Dull plot of travel group facing soulless easily replaceable monsters like in a computer game - Check.

Stereotype dead template characters - Check
- complete with dead template means to convey their emotions - for instance the warrior seems to automatically string up his muscles when anything carrying some kind of tension happens (not just a physical threat - which would barely make sense - but any kind of emotional tension). How convenient. And how utterly nonsensical.

A consistently inter-personally forced narrative focusing on things such as how special a person is or how friendly different persons with each other are without any consideration for the the actual human condition and its complexities.

And as an abjectly awful bonus: The author employees an by me never before seen style of telling whatever little trivial uninteresting and totally irrelevant thing is happening in a given scene in a series of choppy sentences.
For instance: Telling me that somebody has a lamp on a table, while telling me in the next sentence that somebody removed that lamp from the table.
Relevancy? Zero. Thanks for the info! It becomes easy to reach over 1000 pages this way.

Besides this the novel is full of implausible character behavior in the service of the toddler-minded plot.

The novel is called "Wizard's First Rule"

What a piece of garbage.

Shame on you. Read Walter Moer's City of Dreaming Books as penance.

I recommend Walter Moer because he is good at writing non traditional fantasy. I don't know what he smokes, but I want some. I swear he must have some kind of connection to a dimension of infinite creativity to come up with the half the stuff he does. However, he tends to be over descriptive, but that is part of his charm. You either like it or you don't.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Yamamoto: The Man Who Planned Pearl Harbor, Edwin Hoyt

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Read Walter Moer's City of Dreaming Books as penance.

I plan to

And it is very nice to finally find myself far from alone in looking down on a piece of literature.
I don't understand what is wrong with people who are a huge fan of this. That one likes the simple story elements, granted. I can understand the appeal of something simple.

But it is also so badly written!

 

[jackelgull]

I plan to

And it is very nice to finally find myself far from alone in looking down on a piece of literature.
I don't understand what is wrong with people who are a huge fan of this. That one likes the simple story elements, granted. I can understand the appeal of something simple.

But it is also so badly written!

I don't get why people hate on shallow books so much. Not every book has to be a full course meal with groundbreaking plot, characters, or ideas. Sometimes I just want to snack on that quick apple. Still, Terry Goodkind isn't even a good apple. He's shallower than an apple, more like already chewed bubble gum that's been dragged through the mud.

I suppose he's popular with libertarians because he's like a more accessible Ayn Rand. She's one of his heroes you know.


Anyways, I want to mention the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,because I believe the book deserves a mention. This book knocked my socks off. It was truly a pleasure to read. The scale and scope of the story is somehow as large as Puerto Rico, and as small as an individual.

It is hard for me to pitch this story to others because trying to explain what this story is about is a mess. It is about curses, it is about human evil, it is about love, it is about the fate of Oscar Wao, no actually about his family, no it is about the Dominican Republic, or perhaps all these stories are one and the same. Perhaps this story is about love, or maybe it is about the good in people, or maybe it is about choice and destiny.

 

[Arakhor]

Ayn Rand is a personal hero of Orson Scott Card, I believe, also apparently such a nice person. Maybe it runs in the philosophy.

 

[jackelgull]

Ayn Rand is a personal hero of Orson Scott Card, I believe, also apparently such a nice person. Maybe it runs in the philosophy.

If you think Terry Goodkind is bad, you should meet his fans.

Here are some choice quotes from the moderator of his official forums:

As we all know, I have been saying for awhile that the boards were going to change.
Well today is that day.

Everyone must keep in mind that this is an official site. It is dedicated to and should reflect ideas of the author and the series.

This is not just some random fan site.

So the rules as far as the SOT forums go.

Those forums are to ask questions about the series and to discuss the books. Any post stating that the books or the author sucks will be deleted. IF you have some constructive criticism, that is fine, but you must be polite.

Think about what you write before you post it. If I do not like it, it will be removed.

Also, these are not your typical fantasy books. In fact Terry does not consider them fantasy books at all. They are books about the nobility of the human spirit, which happen to have some fantasy elements.

With that in mind we are not going to be posting threads leek, "who is hotter, Kahlan or Cara.";"Who would win in a fight, Zedd or Nathan" These are frivolous threads and do not belong on this site.

 

[Arakhor]

The nobility of the human spirit? Well, that just proves that no one believes themselves to be the villain of their own story.

 

[Mouthwash]

Ayn Rand is a personal hero of Orson Scott Card, I believe, also apparently such a nice person. Maybe it runs in the philosophy.

That surprises me, given how OSC despises capitalism.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Well, that just proves that no one believes themselves to be the villain of their own story.

I do, at times, in some ways.
And it IMO really is not hard to come by if you make a little honest effort being honest to yourself.

It is a very wise saying, I think, telling us much about ourselves and how your perception is shaped. But it isn't literally true unless you are a bit dim-witted, I think.

Moreover, there is also some joy in openly embracing arseholery. You don't need to think that what you do is right to enjoy doing it, and sometimes, to think the opposite can make all the enjoyment.

 

[Paul in Saudi]

I gave up on the Churchill biography in about 1938. It was simply repetitive.

So today I started Hitler at Home, which examines Hitler's various apartments and so on in terms of interior decorating. The author views this as another side of Hitler's deliberate manipulation of his pubic image.

Hitler, weird dude. He liked to sleep in very cold rooms, by the way.

 

[Antilogic]

He was also a vegetarian. Just sayin', as I do whenever some PETArotic veggie-nazi tells me I shouldn't eat meat because it's delicious.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I am waiting for SevenEves from the library. Neal Stephenson.