Books: A Portal into A Different World

[The_Doc_Man]

I merely think that a deus ex machina exit is a stylistic trap that is a too-easy way out of an overly complex situation. It's the "Alexander slices the Gordian knot" solution. Personal preference, maybe.

As to the dinosaurs, a few Browning M2 .50 caliber machine guns should have taken down the thunder lizards. If not that, then the Stinger missile. The big lizards were tough, but their scales weren't like plate-mail armor. That's what I meant by "overpowered." Just as a comparison, in the dinosaur flick Godzilla (Matthew Broderic version), small-arms fire didn't stop the big ugly beast, but a few jet-launched missiles that ripped big bloody holes in its skin were enough to bleed it out. There was potential parity.

I guess I'm saying that it is OK if the bullfighter doesn't always win for each battle, but in the long run the bull is going to get butchered.

 

[prabha_friend]

Any Ken Follet Readers Here? Pillars of the Earth, Hammer of Eden, Fall of Giants?

 

[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

 

[Pat Hartman]

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.

 

[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...

 

[Pat Hartman]

It was an excellent series. The mini-series didn't do it justice.

 

[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.

 

[Pat Hartman]

I just read his "Micro". The story was excellent. The ending sucked big time.

There are many books that have drawn me in. The world Ken Follet created with Pillars of the earth. Jean Auel's Earth's Children series. The first book, "Clan of the Cave Bear" was made into a movie. There was no dialog because these people didn't have a verbal language. The series follows Ayla as a child of 5, separated from her people (Homo sapiens) during an earthquake and adopted by the Clan of the Cave Bear (Neanderthals) as she grows and leaves the Clan and ultimately discovers people like herself and then travels across the known world.

But the only movie that ever drew me in to a world was Pandora. I saw it on IMAX. It was stupendously beautiful. For the next three days, I felt like I was still immersed in all that beauty.

 

[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.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Yes, JA does ramble but I think part of it is mood setting and drawing you into Ayla's world. Her later books are much more repetitious than the earlier books. Disappointingly so. If you read the first four books and stop after "Plains of Passage", you won't miss much of the story although you will be looking forward to the next installment. The last two books don't measure up but I bought them and I read them. I even bought hard copies so I didn't have to wait another year for the paperback to come out.