Cairnraiser’s Comments (group member since May 27, 2008)

Cairnraiser’s comments from the The Complete Idiots Guide to the Ultimate Reading List group.

There's also a two-episode miniseries of the first two books in the Discworld series: The Colour of Magic.

It's based on the books The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. I found it pretty amusing, but I haven't seen Hogfather yet so I don't know how they compare.

Was quite some time since I read the book, but as you say it's not a small book, so they had to condense it quite a lot. And I remember thinking that it was not always obvious why people acted the way they did... motivations are explored more in the book - not surprisingly, I guess.

I thought Eyes of the Dragon was OK, but not one of King's strongest works.

For a new Gibson reader I would recommend Pattern Recognition. It's a newer book about viral marketing and deals with the internet and networking in a less "fantastic" manner.

Admittedly genre fiction does suffer from both "fan boiz" and "haterz", which can make it hard to learn to appreciate a new genre.

Then there's also the fact that sci-fi today is such a broad genre as it spans everything from near future dystopias to space opera and cyberpunk. And each of those sub-genres has both outstanding books and true dross.

Another thing is the fact that not all sci-fi ages well; I mentioned Stranger in a Strange Land. The basic story of culture shock still works, but the setting just screams of the time it was written. Neuromancer is another book that hasn't really aged well, again I really enjoy the story, but networking and computer interfaces haven't really developed in the way Gibson envisioned.

I took a look at your book shelves, and I saw you had The Road there, you might not think of it as sci-fi, but it qualifies as part of the Dystopian sub-genre of sci-fi. I'm actually a little surprised that Orwell's 1984 isn't on the list, as that's one of the finest examples of that sub-genre - it is exceedingly grim, though.

@Tera and @Shazzy: Unfortunately it seems to be so that the new readers that entered the arena with the Harry Potter phenomenon have not chosen to continue reading. A lot of them seems to have read the already published books and then waited for the next installment, instead of searching for more reading material for intervening time.

I read this some time before the release of book six I believe, I'm afraid I don't remember where but this article seems to agree.

I'm also a great fan of both The Hobbit and LotR.
However, the first time I started LotR, I got stuck and abandoned it for a couple of months. Once I picked them up again, I burned right through all three books - and have re-read them a number of times now.

I can understand why it might not be to everyones taste, though. The pacing is very different from most modern fiction.

I'd say recommendations for a sci-fi starter varies depending on the reader - or I could be snarky and tell you to look at the list for this chapter 8-)
I'm going to stay with the books from list here, though I might have chosen other books in more free-form group.

Ender's Game is one way to start with sci-fi as it has some of the staples of the genre (space flight/combat, specialized human breeding) in a neat little package, and it's an easy read to boot. Be aware, though, that Ender's Game is the first in a series, and the series changes tone quite a bit later on.

On the other hand if you're looking for books with a little more weight, Dune might be the way to go. It's an epic story with just as much fantasy as sci-fi (not a bad thing), and deals with empire building and strife between noble houses - each household is an entire planet rather than a county.

For so called hard sci-fi you might want to try Ringworld by Larry Niven, a group of travelers go to an artificial world, to find out about the builders. There are other books in the series, but Ringworld functions perfectly as a standalone novel.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein is worth reading if you enjoy psychology/sociology. On a mission to Mars the astronauts discover a young man who is the son of a couple from an earlier expedition. He's been raised by martians and taken back to an Earth he's never known.
Heinlein seems to be the kind of author people either love or hate, so he might not be your cup of tea.
It's been quite some time since I read it, but I have a feeling it might not have aged all that well - there's a very 60's or 70' feel to the earth society Heinlein describes.

Gibson basically created the sci-fi subgenre Cyberpunk with this novel.
It is still a great read, but from a predictive standpoint has not aged all that well.
Gibson envisioned Internet access through neural input, photosensitive camouflage suits in the hands of street gangs and space station variations on a Vegas theme etc.

Disclaimer: I really loved "The Dark Tower" series, even though it got pretty weird in the last two-three books. The intro to The Gunslinger still gets to me with it's simplicity: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

King throws in hints to a lot of his earlier works in TDT. The Stand is probably one of the most obvious, but King's only straight fantasy work The Eyes of the Dragon is also heavily referenced; going as far as sharing a villain (an incarnation of Randal Flagg).

The Talisman and Black House are very dissimilar even though both are King/Straub collaborations and has the same protagonist.
Jack Sawyer is a grown man in "Black House" and very little time is spent in the Territories. I probably wouldn't go as far as calling "Black House" bad, but IMHO you can skip it without missing anything.

@Sherry, I haven't seen Capote yet, but In Cold Blood has been turned into a movie twice, once in 1968 and a TV-version was made in 1996.

Capote (the movie) was about the period in Capote's life when he wrote In Cold Blood, wasn't it?

Btw, I'd grabbed both To Kill a Mockingbird and In Cold Blood from the local library at the same time, and it was only when I read the comments about the book that I realized that Harper Lee and Truman Capote were friends, and that she'd travelled with him while he researched In Cold Blood.

I personally like Neverwhere, but a lot of people find that it's a collection of interesting ideas and characters that doesn't really come together. It is an early novel and it shows, I guess.

Neverwhere is essentially an expanded novelization of a TV-series Gaiman was writing for the BBC.
He was annoyed with the way the director kept cutting out bits and pieces, so he decided to turn it into a novel where he could keep everything.

It's worth pointing out that it was based on a real case where an actual exorcism was performed on a child. However, the child was a boy.

The Mists of Avalon is a retelling of the Arthurian legend told from a female perspective.

Classic fantasy or Sword and Sorcery generally contains larger-than-life male heroes and villains in loin-cloths or plate armor and one-dimensional female characters of the damsel-in-distress persuasion.

The Mists of Avalon is the polar opposite, the women are the movers and the shakers and most of the men seem like pawns. It's a refreshing change, but I'd like to see more fantasy with believable characters of both genders.

If you enjoy Arthuriana it's a must read, though.

It was made into a TV movie in 2001.

I highly recommend Dune. It's epic sci-fi with more than a touch of fantasy.

It has feudal nobility fighting for the favor of the emperor.
It has spaceflight powered by mutated creatures able to fold space due to a mind-expanding drug.
It has religious factions fighting for control of the prophezised messiah.

David Lynch of Twin Peaks fame (among other things) made a 1984 movie based on this book. The Dune movie is clearly Lynch, not so much Herbert. It's a far cry from the book.

The Sci-Fi Channel made a Dune mini-series in 2000, which is more faithful to the book.

It's a quick and rather enjoyable read, but it has it's weaknesses.
First of all Brown has basically novelized Holy Blood, Holy Grail, an older "non-fiction" book (which has been debunked some time ago).
Secondly, I've read DaVinci Code and it's prequel Angels and Demons, Digital Fortress and I started Deception Point but gave up on that one. Every protagonist Dan Brown seems to have written is a carbon copy of Robert Langdon - even the female protagonist from Deception Point seems to be Langdon in drag.
Then there's the bizarre disclaimer at the beginning of each of his books that what you're about to read is basically true, but the names have been changed to protect the innocent. This seems particularly grinding in DaVinci Code as Holy Blood, Holy Grail as I mentioned has been exposed as either a deliberate hoax or a huge mistake by the authors.