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Kalium
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Post by Kalium » Sun Feb 04, 2007 2:35 am

godix wrote:
starcat09 wrote:I finally restarted my efforts to read Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett. I got bored the first time I read it, but now I'm getting into it. Unless I overlooked something, this is the last of the Discworld novels for me to read until the next one comes out.
Equal Rites always bored me. Some of his early works are real kak. Never EVER tried reading anything of his outside discworld either.
Good Omens is amazing.

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Post by starcat09 » Sun Feb 04, 2007 12:54 pm

Kalium wrote:
godix wrote:
starcat09 wrote:I finally restarted my efforts to read Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett. I got bored the first time I read it, but now I'm getting into it. Unless I overlooked something, this is the last of the Discworld novels for me to read until the next one comes out.
Equal Rites always bored me. Some of his early works are real kak. Never EVER tried reading anything of his outside discworld either.
Good Omens is amazing.
Seconded. :D GO convinced me to give Neil Gaiman a try - still haven't read American Gods or Anasai Boys (probably spelled that wrong) but I've got a collection of short stories that I really love.

Equal Rites isn't my favorite Discworld book but it's not my least favorite yet, either. (I didn't like Eric or Sourcery, both of which were early works.) He definitely gets better with time as more characters show up and play off each other.

Not sure what I'll read after this. Equal Rites is short and I'm pretty far through it. I get to go to the bookstore today, though, so I'll have options.

On the subject of Terry Pratchett's other non-Discworld books: There are three or four books (depending on if you count his latest) that are marketed for a younger audience that take place in the Discworld, but aren't always listed as such. These are worth checking out, except maybe The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, which is probably more just my personal taste. Retold fairy tales are one of my favorite sorts of book. The other three are all related and would be good if you like the witches. They run closer to the other Discworld books, especially the latest.
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Post by godix » Sun Feb 04, 2007 9:21 pm

Kalium wrote:
godix wrote:
starcat09 wrote:I finally restarted my efforts to read Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett. I got bored the first time I read it, but now I'm getting into it. Unless I overlooked something, this is the last of the Discworld novels for me to read until the next one comes out.
Equal Rites always bored me. Some of his early works are real kak. Never EVER tried reading anything of his outside discworld either.
Good Omens is amazing.
Yes, mostly because of Gaiman though. If you know both authors you can tell which did what. The pratchett touches are obvious but the main storyline and quite a lot of the situational humor is pure Gaiman. What I actually meant though were Pratchett solo works outside of discworld. Stata was barely worth finishing. The Carpet People was tolerable. I never did force myself to finish The Dark Side of the Sun. His Johnny and the... series are kids books, and unlike the Tiffany Aching series they aren't the type of kids books adults would like.
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Post by godix » Sun Feb 04, 2007 9:32 pm

starcat09 wrote:Seconded. :D GO convinced me to give Neil Gaiman a try - still haven't read American Gods or Anasai Boys (probably spelled that wrong) but I've got a collection of short stories that I really love.

...

Retold fairy tales are one of my favorite sorts of book.
You'd probably like Gaiman a lot then. His more fairy taleish type works are Stardust, Neverwhere, Sandman (comics), Anansi Boys, and quite of few of his short stories (collected in Smoke & Mirrors and Fragile Things. You may run into a collection called Angels and Visitations but 95% of that is also in the other two). American Gods is the oddball. Reads almost like Gaiman was mimicking someone else's style. If you get into comics his Black Orchid, Books of Magic, and Miracle Man bits are good as well.

Tiffany Aching is the child I want if I ever do have children. Her 'Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short' line made me laugh so hard I couldn't get back to reading for like 10 minutes.
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Post by starcat09 » Mon Feb 05, 2007 6:13 pm

I haven't quite gotten into non-Asian comics yet. (I'm getting there slowly...slowly, but surely.) I will definitely keep these recommendations in mind when I finally pick things up. :D I have Smoke and Mirrors, and I believe I read Fragile Things from the library --but it was a while ago, and I can't quite remember.

I was a little disappointed at first when I realized last year's Pratchett wouldn't be a "true" Discworld book but then I realized that Tiffany Aching is awesome enough to technically have her own series. Reading Equal Rites, I can see a bit of Tiffany in Esk -- but not enough. I don't quite think I'd be comfortable with Tiffany Aching as my child, to tell the truth. She's fun to read about but I'd be a bit unnerved as her parent. (I do love that line though.)
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Post by SarahtheBoring » Mon Feb 05, 2007 6:37 pm

starcat09 wrote:I haven't quite gotten into non-Asian comics yet. (I'm getting there slowly...slowly, but surely.) I will definitely keep these recommendations in mind when I finally pick things up. :D
Oh, my God. I have to second it. Sandman was the second English-language comic I read*, and it's still my second favorite.**

Of course, that assumes that you like that kind of mythic, rambling, otherworldly story. And have money to burn. :oops: (I borrowed it; that's also recommended...)

* after The Maxx
** after Fables

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Post by godix » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:05 pm

starcat09 wrote:I haven't quite gotten into non-Asian comics yet. (I'm getting there slowly...slowly, but surely.)
Most of them suck. A very few don't. Exactly like any other medium I guess. I never liked the stereotypical muscle bound moron stories and in the early 90's all the decent series that weren't that seemed to have died.
I was a little disappointed at first when I realized last year's Pratchett wouldn't be a "true" Discworld book but then I realized that Tiffany Aching is awesome enough to technically have her own series.
I don't see that much difference between the aching series and regular discworld. Slightly less blood. Younger main charater. General storytelling, themes, difficulty of reading, etc. are the same though. I love discworld but lets face it, it doesn't feature complicated stories. There isn't a single discworld book a literate 10 year old couldn't understand or that contains things a 10 year old shouldn't read. Well, maybe some of the night watch books. Vimes is not a kid friendly character but even so you'd have to be mighty overprotective to not let a kid read it.

Anyway, something else I just remembered. If you like rewritten fairy tales then look up Ellen Datlow. She's put together several anthologys of fairy tales rewritten for adults. The two I can remember the names of are 'Blood Red, Snow White' and 'Black Thorn, White Rose'. There were more than that, I just don't remember their names. They all followed a 'adjective noun, adjective noun' name format though. I first ran into this because some of Gaimans short stories were written for it. Gaiman also put a few fairy tale like short stories on his <a href="http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/sho ... website</a>.
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Post by godix » Mon Feb 05, 2007 7:45 pm

Oh yeah, one more thing. Speaking of stories put on the web Terry Prachett has several discworld ones. This <a href="http://members.fortunecity.com/bookdepo ... l">site</a> contains all expect one, which is avalable <a href="http://www.lspace.org/books/dawcn/dawcn ... sewhere</a>. The Sea and Little Fishes is a fight, of sorts, between Mrs Earwig and Granny Weatherwax (the witch trials in A Hat Full of Sky is as much sequel to this as it is part of Tiffanys story). Theatre of Cruelty is a night watch story and it really helps to know what a Punch and Judy show is to understand it. Troll Bridge is a Cohen story. Death and What Comes Next is, obviously, a Death story.

AFAIK these are legal copies. I know for a fact that second link is with Pratchetts permission and the first link is stories that I've seen him say are ok to have online (his exact quote was "I don't want to see it in distributed print anywhere but don't mind people downloading it for their own enjoyment") so hopefully the mods won't bitch slap me for linking to them.
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Post by Shazzy » Mon Feb 05, 2007 8:44 pm

godix wrote:If you like rewritten fairy tales
Then definitely look into Robin McKinley's work. Deerskin, Spindle's End, Beauty, Sunshine, Door in the Hedge, and some others are all rewritten fairy tales.

Her original Damar series is excellent too. It's fantasy that actually develops a good plot instead of drowning you in setting. In other words, there's less "the valley shimmered beneath the bright orb known as the sun as Lord Valdemere Gronigan of the Third of the Kingship of Lear looked over his lowly vassals" garbage...
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Post by Kusoyaro » Tue Feb 06, 2007 2:11 pm

I went back and reread a couple of Piers Anthony's Xanth books, which I absolutely adored when I was younger


My god are those books terrible :roll: Even the earlier ones, which I had remembered as being more serious high fantasy, as opposed to the pun-filled messes of the later books. Nope, not really :?
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