What Are You Reading 2015 - Page 36

On July 23 2015 05:18 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
>2015
>still subscribing to the "Tolkien is bad" meme

The brainwashing runs deep

On July 23 2015 09:15 IgnE wrote:
I just finished Anna Karenina and it is my clear favorite as far as novels go.

On July 20 2015 05:18 jtype wrote:


In what sense did it kill books for you? As in, it was so good, nothing compared to it? Or so bad that you lost your enjoyment?

Personally, I got about a third of the way into it and lost interest. I hardly ever put books down. Ever. I'm quite stubborn about finishing them, but Zorba the Greek just didn't engage me at all, and I had a lot of other stuff that I really wanted to read instead.

Does it drastically change/improve from there?

On July 23 2015 09:38 dmnum wrote:

one of us

On July 23 2015 08:16 farvacola wrote:
As a threshold matter, it is probably best to refrain from claiming that you hated Tolkien before the meme took off, as that sort of reasoning is exactly what the meme addresses.

You're making a number of arguments in absentia, i.e. claiming that something is "bad" without actually offering forth an accompanying criteria or metric. In a nutshell, 1) you think sci fi is better, 2) that name dropping le Guin and Edding is a worthwhile tactic, 3) that Tolkien's "lengthy passages of world description" are "incredibly boring," 4) that "[t]he characters are bland and one-dimensional," 5) that the fairly clear delineation between good and evil robs Tolkien's work of suspense, and 6) that you have "simply read better things."

1. This one speaks for itself; you clearly have a soft spot for the genre stylizations of sci-fi given your lack of excitement while reading fantasy. This ought to indicate to you that perhaps the fantasy genre itself is a better target for your criticisms, though you'd have to give your words a bit more teeth should that be the case.

2. Why don't you tell us a bit about why those two series of novels pop out to you among other works of fantasy? To be frank, I find the Earthsea books boring, childish, and far more one dimensional than anything Tolkien wrote, save for maybe the Hobbit. le Guin herself wrote the books after being prompted to write fantasy for "older kids" and practically every single character in her works can be boiled down into a single phrase or concept, i.e. Aihal- old, wise, quiet mage dude, Ged- cannot fail, protagonist mage dude who progresses like every single protagonist in every novel ever, and so on. So, if you're going to go down the road of suggesting that what amounts to le Guin's homage to LOTR is actually better than LOTR, you're going to have to do more than point.

3. This begs some interesting questions insofar as genre studies is concerned. There is no doubting that Tolkien's works are full to the brim with lengthy setting descriptions and world-building, and clearly this does not appeal to you. But, who is to say that this is not a strength of the works instead of a weakness? Tolkien's penchant for geography and environmental description is something I and many other fans adore, and it was Tolkien's style in this area that would go on to form a cornerstone of practically every single work of fantasy that would follow. Again, maybe you should just stick to sci-fi?

4. Archetypal characterizations revolve around the archetype existing in the first place, and it is not exactly controversial to suggest that many works of fantasy deliberately de-emphasize characterization in favor of world-building, allegory, and large-scale narrative stabilization. Accordingly, to poke fun at the admittedly stilted nature of many of Tolkien's characters is to miss the forest for the trees and take issue with what clearly seems to be a genre feature rather than a uniquely Tolkien literary decision. Furthermore, there is a discussion to be had in terms of foundational literature and how criticisms of works that form the basis for an entire movement in narrative decision-making should take such things into account. Lastly, and maybe you missed this, but Tolkien deliberately keeps the majority of his characters static so that the fluid ones stick out. I'll let you guess which race these fluid characters tend to be

5. See 4; the same criticisms apply here. Fantasy oftentimes deliberately makes the moral dimensions easy and clear so that the allegorical value of the narrative is more easily communicated. Unrealistic moral signposting is a great way to say something about the real world, you just have to look a little deeper, I think.

6. This one speaks for itself as well.

In sum, I think you just don't like fantasy

I'd love to read me some not-so-high fantasy is all... Not entirely grimdark or anything like that (JRRM is shit, deal with it). Why can't anyone write a good book in a setting like Athas for example? Post-apocalyptic fantasy world where halflings are vicious cannibals, elves are gypsy thieves and assassins, slavery is common, reading is forbidden etc.

On July 24 2015 05:33 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
>2015
>trying to delineate sci fi and fantasy

On July 24 2015 11:03 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
Sheep Chase is good, you should follow it up with Dance, Dance, Dance!

On July 25 2015 11:50 Mr. Wiggles wrote:

Yeah, I might do that for my next Murakami novel.