Ivy's comments (member since Jan 26, 2008)

Ivy's comments from the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club group.

John,

You raise some good points. I prefer finding new authors by chance and I'm happy to just "opt out" for a month if I dislike a book. Honestly, Snow Crash wasn't for me. I started it, realized I wouldn't like it, and took a skip to read other things. I'm enjoying Neverwhere quite a lot and I look forward to discussing it.

I'm in a position where I owned or could trade for every book we've done so far, and my local library is well-stocked. If I had to buy these books and couldn't afford to drop money on a book only to cast it aside after twenty pages I would want a lot more information going in.

Thankfully, there are ample reviews and discussions on this website, on Amazon, and on the Internet in general.

Which is my long winded way of saying that I'm happy with things the way they are.

-Ivy

Please let's stay with in-print books. Trolling libraries, used book shops, and book swaps can be a bit of a pain for something like this.

Pretty please.

D'oh, I forgot Lestat from the Anne Rice books. How could I forget Lestat?

A Wrinkle in Time
Citizen of the Galaxy

Raistlin most definitely.

Vanyel from Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage. I understand him in a different way every time I see him. His failed struggle to control his own life is riveting.

Lyra from the His Dark Materials series.

Hermione from the Harry Potter series.

A guy turns into a cockroach--yeah, I'd call that fantasy. :) I'm up for Kafka. Jennifer Government sounds like fun. :)

I'd like to suggest Annihilation by Jane Lebak for fantasy. It's available for free at Mindflights.com (their first attempt at publishing a serialized novel) or at Amazon in paperback. It's a war between angels and demons and it's a tense story. The author said her goal was to keep the tension going as long as she could and she succeeded. It's brilliant.

I have the book, Molly, thanks. It's from Audible. The downside is I don't know how half the things are spelled. The upside is that each book in the series has a link to the others.

Not much Ged eh? :( The protagonist is the whole point.

Oops, just found the book club edition on my book shelf.

Congratulations John, and best wishes.

This would be the first book I'd actually have to buy for this group (I had all the prior ones from Wizard of Earthsea onward and I have Wicked). I lucked out and snagged a copy on Paperback Swap.

I'm hoping to sneak Tombs of Atwan in soon though. I like Ged.

Diane, what is the title of your book?

I suspect changing Ged's color (as he is an alien they had to find an actor of a different race--namely human) was either one of those stupid production decisions ala "we can't call him 'Bruce Banner' because 'Bruce' sounds gay, so let's name him 'David Banner' instead." Or someone wasn't reading closely enough. I wonder why she had so little creative control in the production. It sounds like she sold the rights and walked away.

I thought the little animal's death was kind of meaningless and unneeded. I thought the little animal was sort of unneeded and I dislike it when bad things happen to animals. It's an easy way to pull on the heart strings but it's cheap and underhanded.

It's a great book, but this one thing stuck out.

I'll second Speed of Dark. It looks fabulous.

I am listening to the audio book version of this. By itself, Earthsea is a good book, maybe even a great book. With Harlan Ellison reading it, it becomes glorious. I think I fell in love with it about two minutes in, right around the time Ged came running down the mountain with the goats. I know I was hooked when he saved his village.

The problem, for me, is that I keep falling into a deeper level of love with this book. The scene where his ego gets the better of him and he calls the shadow makes me like the book more.

His recovery from that incident, and the skillful way it was handled, makes me like the book more.

His battle with the dragon makes me like the book more.

So I don't think I've fallen as far in love with this one as I will by the end.

This is my first time trying this on goodreads, so please forgive me if I get it wrong.

I would like to suggest the Golden Compass/Northern Lights (same book; different title) by Phil Pullman. With all the controversy surrounding the book it should stir up some lively discussion.