Books: A Portal into A Different World

[Isaac]

Oh, I'll add one more by Dave Eggers (in addition to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), that changed my life:
What is the What

 

[prabha_friend]

Big Follet fan. On Wings of Eagles, a true story based on Ross Perot rescuing two of his employees taken prisoner by the Iranians made me vote for Perot in 1992. Perot was the reason Clinton won because Perot managed to gather 18.9% of the total votes most likely taking from Bush rather than Clinton. Perot was a real American hero who the Democrats tried to destroy by making him look like a nut and he STILL got over 18% of the vote!! Sort of like their tactics with Trump. Both Trump and Perot were larger than life characters and total outsiders. Trump took a lesson from this election and even though he was a life-long Democrat managed to run as a Republican because the road as an independent is way too hard to travel.

Any memories on Pillars of the Earth...? You know.. the Tom-the Builder, Martha and all...

 

[prabha_friend]

Currently Reading: Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
Please suggest my Next Pick. Thanks

 

[prabha_friend]

Very Happy to know about book readers here...

How many of you read books in e-Readers Here?

I have an Amazon Kindle

 

[Isaac]

I hate e-readers but I have begun to enjoy Audio books from time to time.

Both Audiobooks.com (mobile app, despite the name) and Audible (mobile app) provide 2 FREE complete books included in their FREE 30 da trial.

Again, I recommend What is the What for your 'reading list'

 

[prabha_friend]

I hate e-readers but I have begun to enjoy Audio books from time to time.

Both Audiobooks.com (mobile app, despite the name) and Audible (mobile app) provide 2 FREE complete books included in their FREE 30 da trial.

Again, I recommend What is the What for your 'reading list'

Have you tried immersive reading?
#whispersyncforvoice

 

[Isaac]

Have you tried immersive reading?
#whispersyncforvoice

I've never heard of it, now I am interested to see what it means

 

[laracroft]

I really like novels or detective stories. The last thing I read was the Italian detective Donato Carrizi's "The Teller". Of course, it is very deep, sometimes violent, but at the same time very exciting. I recently started reading a new book by the same author, "The Girl in the Mist".

 

[cassaaaauu]

I like to read novels, detective stories or fantasy. For example, I really like "Harry Potter" from fantasy. If we take novels, I really like "With love Rosie" or "The Jew", "King the songbird" and many other things.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Are the books better than the film's? I just didn't get the film's.....

You have to be able to immerse yourself in what is commonly called "the suspension of disbelief." Professor Tolkien wrote fantasy stories for his son with a backdrop of war against what seemed to be an implacable enemy. But don't look for specific parallels because there weren't any to be found. Tolkien made it clear that you wouldn't find any specific analogs to political or military individuals from the journalist's headlines.

Everybody has a threshold of imagination. Were you a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs? Did the Tarzan or Barsoom series catch your interest? Or how about The Three Musketeers? In the latter genre, there is also The Count of Monte Cristo. Or what about stories of Dracula? Bram Stoker pretty much set the standard and the movies that claim to tell "the true story" can be found, though for me the BEST adaptation was one that is hard to find now - with Louis Jordan as chief bloodsucker, made-for-TV and aired on PBS (national educational TV network). Did you enjoy the Harry Potter films, which were well-adapted from the printed stories? How about the James Bond novels and films? To me, the movie Thunderball (Sean Connery) was closest I had ever seen to a source novel. Scene for scene, it matched up.

I guess the main question is, how much of reality are you willing to release for enjoyment - for total immersion into the other world that the book's portal exposes to you? Can you ever get into another book to let your imagination soar along with others who enjoyed the story and the world behind it? Is there any genre of fiction where you CAN immerse yourself within another story?

Uncle G, it will always be a matter of whether you "connect" with the story. That can be a matter of the writer's style as well as the chosen subject matter and environment. To me, the LOTR film trilogy brought tears to my eyes several times as Peter Jackson captured certain important scenes to near perfection. The story of a group of young, innocent friends with limited - sometimes even isolated - life experience suddenly going off to war against a truly frightening foe is the perfect backdrop for a study in the meaning of bravery and adherence to duty. The aftermath of that war is even included as the lead character Frodo tries to adapt to life back in his home village after having come home with his physical wounds healed but his psyche forever scarred, forever a victim of a type of trauma we would now call PTSD.

To more directly answer your original question: I REALLY liked the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and, for that matter, I liked The Hobbit trilogy (though LOTR felt less "forced" than the Hobbit.) Peter Jackson had some great movies under his belt, but that was, to me, his crown jewel. LOTR is a relatively faithful adaptation, though some minor scenes were removed from the novel - because watching the LOTR trilogy is over nine hours of your time as it is. The books are more detailed in some cases, but the big-screen visuals, in my opinion, do great justice to the underlying printed material.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

So you don't think it was amusing that the whole world dissolved because of a programming logic bug Also, the start of the book indicates that the dinosaurs were loose on the mainland before the collapse and that also wasn't as clear in the movie.

As I recall, in the ending to the Andromeda Strain, the protagonist saved the day by convincing the Air Force pilot to not drop the nuke on the little town.

I'm a bit less critical of technique although I too find certain endings unsatisfactory.

For me considering Chrichton, it wasn't that he used deus ex machina endings, but how often he used them. Once is acceptable. Twice is maybe OK. But to frequently use them is, to me, either lazy or signs of a fixation. Like I said, he's a successful writer - but clinging to a particular form of denouement becomes predictable or perhaps one could say formulaic. When that happens, the stories lose their luster.

 

[AccessBlaster]

I'm currently reading novels by Dean Koontz my first book was Devoted, my current read is The forbidden door.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Actually, Jean Auel's series is appealing even though her repetition level is very high and she sometimes gets lost in descriptions of her surroundings. To be honest, JA gives me hope. If SHE can be successful with her rambling style, I might one day find a publisher myself.

 

[conception_native_0123]

I'm reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

there's an Alchemist's lab in the NES game Dragon Warrior IV. don't know what that has to do with this thread, but NES is kind of a book.

 

[adamgrracer]

My favorite book from the fantasy novel series, J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter.
I not only read all the books, but also watched the movies. I really admire this author and this book. I am constantly re-reading and re-watching!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

J.K. Rowling demonstrates an important fact: Good writing has its own appeal. The Harry Potter series was well-written with simple concepts, good action descriptions, and relatively easy motivations. It translated well to the screen. (As proof of that fact, Ms. Rowling now has more money from royalties on her work than the British Royal Family had when Elizabeth II was still queen.)

By contrast, the Frank Herbert series starting with Dune did NOT translate well to the screen because so much of what happened was "stream of consciousness" (voice-over as opposed to dialog). A lot of the history you needed to understand the machinations of the Bene Gesserit group required an "expository lump" - i.e. you needed a history lesson to put it all together while watching the movie. Whereas the book had the history lesson interspersed with the action and dialog. Didn't translate from print to screen so well.

Another example of the "translation" issue was the D.F. Jones novel Colossus, which was made into the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project. There, the novel translated well for the most part and was an enjoyable, if chilling, story.

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

filmed so dark I couldn't see any of the action.

Also, the audio was all over the place I had to keep turning it up and down to capture the dialogue.

In the cinema, I practically couldn't understand it I just didn't enjoy it at all...

 

[CJ_London]

Just to lower the tone

I’ve recently finished a series of 10 books ‘starship for sale’ by M Forbes. A cross between Harry Potter and Star Trek. Not intellectually challenging but each book left on a cliffhanger. It has HP type magic combined with ST type technology

fun to read

another author to take a look at is Peter Hamilton who writes space operas - typically trilogies. Some are up there with Dune in my opinion

 

[CJ_London]

Take a look at eBay and similar for 2nd hand

I use a kindle most of the time- works for me

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The issue of sci-fi morphing into fantasy is really not that much of a morph if your author wants to write consistent fantasy. I.e. designs rules ahead of time and sticks with them. For instance, Randall Garret's Too Many Magicians, which is a detective/murder mystery set in a world where magic has laws analogous to the laws of physics or chemistry.