Books!

[Ragnarok]

*whispers*
Game of Thrones
*runs*

[IKEA]

*whispers*
Game of Thrones
*runs*

Is it really any good? I've heard so much about it but have always been put off by all the rape, sex, incest and more rape. Are these elements as pronounced as I've heard? (Disclaimer: huge Wheel of Time fan so series length isn't an issue).

[Ragnarok]

The show? Definitely.
Less so in the books. I paid a lot more attention to the politics and battles.

[Róisín]

The books are better. You get a lot more of background, history, character development and motivations, and many more subtle hints about precisely what is really going on. And the description is great.

[urbicande]

The books are better. You get a lot more of background, history, character development and motivations, and many more subtle hints about precisely what is really going on. And the description is great.

I bounced pretty hard off the books.  I very quickly said the Eight Deadly Words.  I've never seen the show.

The Eight Deadly Words are "I don't care what happens to these people."

[LooNEY_DAC]

Not to derail the current discussion, but in the pg 491 comments, mention was made of Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead (aka The 13th Warrior). Now, I personally dislike most of Crichton's oeuvre for the same reason I dislike most of Asimov's oeuvre: not from any defect in workmanship, but because I dislike the main characters.

Do any of you have authors whose writing you like except for the characterization?

I bounced pretty hard off the books.  I very quickly said the Eight Deadly Words.  I've never seen the show.

The Eight Deadly Words are "I don't care what happens to these people."

…Maybe my question isn't so derailing to the discussion after all.

[IKEA]

Arthur C. Clarke. His ideas were great but I cannot remember a single memorable thing about any of his characters, or even any names besides Dave Bowman. HAL-9000 doesn't count; I mean human characters.

[Róisín]

As my husband said when I asked if he had read 'War and Peace' (which I enjoyed): "I asked myself whether I would care if, in the next chapter, every character developed the purple spotted plague and died. The answer was no. So I stopped reading." There are some characters in 'Game of Thrones' that take me that way: Sansa, Littlefinger, that stupid boy king, for example. On the other hand, I find myself caring what happens to Bran, Arya, Tyrion, Brienne, Jon Snow and Sam. I know many people stopped reading when the character they liked best went down.

Stephen Donaldson is another writer whom I find 'good in parts'. His prose is a delight. The giants are a marvellous creation. His landscapes sing. But Thomas Covenant....if I want to read an annoying main character, I'd prefer Hannu. Covenant rouses in me the impulse to pick him up by the scruff and shake him out of his self-indulgent whining. It quite spoils the story for me.

[Purple Wyrm]

Stephen Donaldson is another writer whom I find 'good in parts'. His prose is a delight. The giants are a marvellous creation. His landscapes sing. But Thomas Covenant....if I want to read an annoying main character, I'd prefer Hannu. Covenant rouses in me the impulse to pick him up by the scruff and shake him out of his self-indulgent whining. It quite spoils the story for me.

Couldn't agree more! There's an edited Thomas Covenant cover floating around the interwebs somewhere, retitled as "[Nasty-word] Leper Hero" which sums it up pretty well.

Some of Donaldson's short stories are brilliant though. Reave the Just and Animal Lover have stuck with me for years.

Edit: Oops! Didn't realise that was a forbidden word. My bad!

[Ragnarok]

Clarke, and a few of Stephen King's books. Also most of the YA books I read. The Maze Runner being the worst offender.

[urbicande]

Arthur C. Clarke. His ideas were great but I cannot remember a single memorable thing about any of his characters, or even any names besides Dave Bowman. HAL-9000 doesn't count; I mean human characters.

Other than Karellen, yeah, me neither.

[Róisín]

Thing about Asimov is that in his stories the Idea is the hero. The people are just supporting characters, there to let the Idea work. Whereas a writer like Ursula le Guin or David Brin writes characters from whom the story flows. There's an interesting discussion over on the Writers' thread about plot-driven versus character-driven writing, and how the styles shape stories, that may be relevant here.

[urbicande]

Stephen Donaldson is another writer whom I find 'good in parts'. His prose is a delight. The giants are a marvellous creation. His landscapes sing. But Thomas Covenant....if I want to read an annoying main character, I'd prefer Hannu. Covenant rouses in me the impulse to pick him up by the scruff and shake him out of his self-indulgent whining. It quite spoils the story for me.

I've often said that if you took all the repetitions  and variations of "Leper outcast unclean!" out of the first Thomas Covenant trilogy you'd have a single, good novel.


Oh, another book that everyone should read is John Myers Myers' "Silverlock"

[Athena]

Lately I've been reading the Leviathan trilogy, by Scott Westerfeld. It's also filled with some pretty awesome illustrations by Keith Thompson. I don't want to give too much of the story away, but it's basically a steampunk-ified alternate history of WWI, and starts off following the story of an Austrian prince named Aleksander. I'm on the second book now, Behemoth, and I just started reading it yesterday and am past halfway already...

[Ragnarok]

Very fun, but a bit biased in favor of the Darwinists, IMHO. He only applies physics to the mech guys haha