Be Excellent To Each Other

i kinda liked "the prisioner of azkaban" film (wasn't it the 3rd?), much better than all the others. The last one i've seen was the one with the bulgarian sweeping team, and i fell asleep. I really did.

I gave up part-way into the fourth book. Frankly, the entire Potter thing as a phenomenon annoys the piss out of me anyway. The exact same people that look at my 30-something self as being partly juvenile for —shock!— reading some comics quite happy go on about how wonderful the Potter books are. "Oh, they're not like children's books at all!" Er, yes they fucking are. They're a step along from Meg and Mog, but they're hardly the Best Books Ever.

I think the problem is that a lot of people stopped reading any books with imagination and fantasy in them, and therefore got swept along by the Potter stuff. Personally, I think that when it boils down to it, The Journal of Luke Kirby was a hell of a lot better than anything I've seen or read from Rowling.

The best book, with the best director.. it's not a big surprise.

Absolutely. The books are OK. There's nothing particularly genre-defining about them, and they're not the best-written kids books out there.

I actually enjoyed reading most of the Potter books, although the last one was truly awful and should never have been publishe. However, they aren't exactly deep, I could probably tell you about 10 characters in them, and virtually nothing of what happens in a single one, they are just inoffensive fluff. And as has been said above, in desperate need of a serious editor. Half of them don't even make any sense.

I listened (via audiobook*) to all of the Harry Potter books, and even though I wasn't actually reading them couldn't be bothered to even finish listening to the last one, it was so dire and tedious. She ran out of steam at about the third book (which, yes, was the best).

I think it has to be remebered that they are childrens' books, so maybe shouldn't be expected to be full of high concepts and beautiful prose, BUT I think her ideas are unoriginal, characters are often tired and cliched and her writing style is pedestrian and a little, er 'cheap'. Again though, remind yourself she is writing children's books.

My judgement may also be clouded by the whole dislike of the Harry Potter phenomena and the mania that surrounds it. In last book (I think) there is a mention of a character called 'Beadle the Bard' (a sort of wizarding Hans Christian Anderson). Put in because, god bless her, Rowling was running out of years where Potter could stay on at school, there's now a 'Tales of Beadle the Bard' spin-off book in the pipelnes. Must... eek... out... every... last... penny...

*Yes, I did read them just becuse they were read by Stephen Fry and I enjoy his voice. How sad am I?

I like Lord of the Rings, but would never get into an argument about why I shouldn't or why anybody else should.

I think we can tell by your name

A superb analysis if not for the fairly fundamental flaw she isn't going to make anything off said book.

Ppffttt, well, well, well... Ok, that's different then.

Maybe I am being harsh.

I still don't think she deserves the level of success that she has found, though.

Yes you would.

Not rising. *looks at wormy hook*

*continues to dangle for a few moments; shakes it a bit; gets bored and goes back to reading newspaper*

Oh not debating that.

And suing people for writing about your work is LOW.

I agree with the various sentiments above re: Ms Rowling, but come on - what man seriously hasn't wondered just how filthy she'd be in bed, eh?

I think the HP books are, as someone's said, okay, but nothign special. They're kids books though, and we all know they are, so I did used to get amused by the people on the Tube reading their "adult cover" verisons....

I fear for the sanity of anyone buying an "Adult cover" one. That's just denial.

I own them all, with the proper covers, we all know what they are, we all know what you're reading. You'd have to be incredibly insecure to want to hide it and very, very stupid to think the adult cover achieves that.

All of

The only difference is the cover.

They did the same for Northern Lights a few years back. They're arguably more of a teen book than a children's book, but the principle is the same*. If you want to read a kids' book, just do it. There's no shame in it; many children's books are far more imaginative, clever and thought-provoking than those aimed at adults.

*and the covers are rubbish, too.

There's been much children's fantasy produced since such stuff was invented. Potter is massive because it does have characters people love in situations they find interesting. That's why people bought them, and that in turn is why Hollywood optioned the films, in turn generating new fans.

Potter was and had to be decent enough to get going in the first place, Rowling always more or less knew where she was taking it, you can't blame an author with the pressure to produce she was under for her editor's mistakes, any more than it is Giggs' fault if Ferguson sticks him in goal. The bad things about Potter were all done worse by the like of Tolkien, and yet I've read all of both author's work and thoroughly enjoyed the majority of both, with the rest a grind. No worse than I'm willing to put up with in Halo or Mass Effect though.

We're lucky to have both. And yes, there's better out there, but better doesn't draw new investment into the genre, popular does.

Having read and re-read LOTR on a number of occasions, I've come to the conclusion that I don't like it, but I do respect it tremendously.

Like Dr Who, you can't blame a book for its fans.

So you read Chaucer without consulting the notes? And Milton? And Shakespeare? Or should they all be beaten?

I think people's reaction to Ulysses is a mixture of snobbery and genuine misunderstanding about what the book is about.

Snobbery because it has a reputation as being 'difficult' and because in modern culture we expect art to beg for our attention and precious time. Ulysses clearly doesn't.

Joyce realised that the novels' time as the most popular form of communication, expression and indeed entertainment was coming to an end. Anxious about this he set about stretching the novel to it's absolute limits. Some sections are genuinely incomprehensible unless you know what is going on - but so is ballet. And opera. And backgammon. One section for example, is about the characters walking home from the pub drunk, in the form of a 'stream of consciousness' narrative. It makes little sense if you don't realise this and only slightly more when you do. That's because people often make no sense when they are pissed. Still Joyce manages to nail it on the head.

By all means - you can still go to your grave happy without reading it but it is worth the trouble if you do. It's a moving, tender and humane book and it's sad to see it dismissed by people who'd probably enjoy the experience if only they could be bothered.


Finnegans Wake however is literally incomprehensible.

Did anyone try to read the Illuminatus Trilogy?

An interesting concept made virtually unreadable by the lurching writing style (possibly down to the duel author thing) and frankly shambolic story arc. Maybe I missed something but this was a chore from beginning to end.

Are you serious? All of those people wrote centuries ago, in a vastly different form of our language. Comparing their work to Joyce's is just daft. Rasselas was written centuries before Ulysses, but is approximately seven million times more interesting and insightful, as well as being effortlessly comprehensible.



Hang on, what? Surely if anything, snobbery would be thinking it's GOOD because it's difficult to read? And what the hell are you talking about with that 'begging' line? I dislike Joyce's work intensely because it's boring to read and it's hopelessly lost up its own arse, not because I expect a book to fucking tap dance.



And yet it fails utterly the only important measure of a novel - to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it. Conceptual dicking around is great and all, but if it still results in something that's not pleasant to read, it's a bad book. Same as a shitty concept album. You may see what they were trying to do, but that doesn't mean that it excuses everything else.

[quote]By all means - you can still go to your grave happy without reading it but it is worth the trouble if you do. It's a moving, tender and humane book and it's sad to see it dismissed by people who'd probably enjoy the experience if only they could be bothered.

I gave Joyce several hundred pages. The only thing that's rivalled those pages in terms of tedium so far was Heart of Darkness, and at least that had the mercy to be short. Can't be bothered? Did you miss the part where I mentioned reading Don Quixote or something? I'll bother with a book if it's not so tedious and boring to read that it makes me want to kill the author with pliers, but beyond that, why should anyone?

I really liked it, but the authors were quite clearly 3 sheets to the wind the entire time they were writing it.

10: Ulysses – James Joyce


Read it while being in ireland, so did a bit of the route of the day, i personally think it is more of a riddle than a book, but it was a great experience battling with it, especially if you've got a good annotated edition..

It really is an experiment what you can do with the artform, as craig says.. SA, i don't agree with that being an enjoyable read is the sole purpose of a novel, it may challenge you, but has to manage expectations, i mean everybody who starts Joice 102 years after Bloomsday should know by know what to expect, shouldn't he?

9: Lord of the Rings – J R R Tolkien


agree here, mostly, liked 'the Hobbit', but this was something i can appreciate grandness of, but it didn't really do it for me.. and the films were 2 hours too long each.

8: For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
liked it, but not too impressed.. i was dating a catalan girl at the time, and it was a good start to talk with her about the spanish civil war. Talking about that war with spaniards is an immense taboo, they haven't even begon coming to terms with it (anyone ever seen franco's large tomb in a mountain, it's very scary)


7: À la Recherche du Temps Perdu – Marcel Proust

Every sentence is a feast that makes you happy. Every analogy makes you dream. Every recollection makes you think. The booklet i have called "How Proust changed my life" might have overstated it a bit, but it is one of the books that can reach everyone of your senses, the biscuits are just the most known example..


6: The Dice Man – Luke Reinhart
5: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S Thompson
4: The Beauty Myth – Naomi Wolff

never heard of

3: War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

think i would go see the movie, but i scared away from it, read some other stuff by him, and basically he's isn't a patch on Dostoevsky, whose Crime and Punishment is about the best book i've ever read (my son isn't called Jens Fjodor Lindeman for nothing). Everyone should experience russian literiature though, it is rather unique and does away with the notion that humans are rational beings, dead souls by Gogol is another prime example of this

2: The Iliad -- Homer

The very idea that you are somehow culturally incomplete without knowledge of Homer is ridiculous.
No it isn't. Homer laid down all fundamentals of novels and poems. Many obscure references relate to him. You need him, even you find him boring (hey, i did classic greek high school, may i defend my self.. andrai moi ennepe, pollutropon hos mala.....)

1: Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
agree here, that whole austin and bronte ouevre are not that much more than school girl novels.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Read it both in Dutch and in Italian, which showed that the dutch translation is rather poor. E.g. there is a whole chapter which revolves around Trombare.. in Italian both meaning making music and south-italian (Barese) slang for f*cking. The Dutch translation manages to miss that completely (And I do wonder about the English translations, some languages just don't translate to each other well, and things I read in Italian, and then saw some English translation of (Dante, e.g.(would have expected him on this list, as I don't expect the writer of this article to get him), but as prime example Dino Buzzatti's Giro, which I couldn't find in either Italian or Dutch, and ordered the English version, with every drop of soul removed (that it was about Cycling probably didn't help either ))

Eco's novels are mountains to climb culturally at times, but he doesn't do it to show of. if you compare him with the work of Mulish (a dutch writer whose Discovery of Heaven (filmed with steven Fry as lead actor), can be likened as a mix between Ulysses and the Pendulum), you see he really has built a house, where you can find something new in every room.
Cloud Atlas by whoever it was who wrote it. It's just a collection of short stories split in two and not very good ones.

no discussion here

Atomised by Michel Houillebecq or however you spell his name. Fucking shit with a capital S.

I loved Particules Elementaires (Elementary particles?), as it really was a beautiful mirror for my dad's generation, but later on he became a bit of an angry frustrated man


Cien años de soledad - Garcia Marquez

Forgot the english title, but if you ever go to South America, please read it, novels like this, but also Jorge Amado's Gabriela, Cloves and Cinamon, are essential to get under the skin of south americans. Of course, nothing much happens, but understanding how that works here, makes you realise what Mañana really means..,read here for example

and the price, not?

Nope, same RRP in all cases I can find on play.com.

For those who haven't seen these "adult" editions. An example of both version of one book...

http://www.play.com/Books/Books/4-/3001 ... oduct.html
http://www.play.com/Books/Books/4-/1926 ... oduct.html

I've never read Harry Potter and don't really have much inclination to do so, but if I did I'd prefer the adult editions because they'd just look better on my shelf. It's got nothing to do with not wanting to appear like I'm hiding the fact I'm reading a childrens' book.

I really enjoyed reading all of your opinions on those books, Romanista!

I wondered how people felt about Nabokov's Lolita. I have not read it for eight or nine years now, but I know I loved the book when did, and I remember much about it. however, many people I knew who I lent it to or had already read the book hated it, for reasons that they never adequately explained. To me it is a beautiful piece of modern literature, and I am sure a modern classic, but I do not know i it is the writing or the subject matter that the others I knew to read it hated so much. Everyone I spoke to did not so much think that it wasn't very good, but actually said it was an awful book, but again, never gave a reasonable explanation as to why this was so.

I really liked lolita aswell, I think one of the appeals is that humbert humbert should be a horrible character but he comes across likeable and charming.

What, one of my other all time favourite books?

Looks like we are never going to agree on this one

And I really like Jane Austen as well.

I'm intrigued by 'Ulysses' now. I might have to give it a go.

This is the "manual" that I was referring to:
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/WEBSITE ... 0415138582

If you plan on reading Ulysses you may find it more useful than annotations as you can have it open alongside the book. Joyce's references to ancient Irish history, Greek mythology, the seeds of Irish sectarianism, religion, European anti-Semitism, contemporary advertising and songs etc. are all things that you have no reason to know anything about - just as you won't, for example, have much knowledge of Chaucer's references to the new medi-evil mercantile middle classes in The Canterbury Tales.

I'm a bit scared.

Man up!

I like the Harry Potter books.

They started off as very good kids books with enough going on to keep adults interested and entertained. They were short(ish) and were going somewhere. It wasn't spectacularly original, but it was well told and well imagined. The characters, while largely stock types, were drawn fairly well, and over a few books you got to know them. Also, it had a good villain and some intrigue and mystery.

The middle books, while still entertaining, needed some massive editing. Like, a hundred pages removed, minimum. Book 5 was a nightmare to read as it was Harry being an emo and being kept in the dark for 600 pages. Okay, I can buy that he's a teenager and they get sulky, but why keep the reader in the dark the whole time and remove the enjoyment? Pah!

The last-but-one book was for me a good return to form, with some unexpected happenings and a great set-up to the finale...

...which meandered around, had a couple of good set-pieces... meandered a whole lot more before having an actual enjoyable ending, with some feel of the 'epic' nature she was trying to attain. I felt sad for the characters hat died, for their families and their reactions, enjoyed the whole Dumbledore thing, etc etc etc.

As a whole, they're well-written, fairly simple, enjoyable books that are often badly edited, or edited in fear of Ms Rowling.

They certainly appeal to me more than Dan Brown!

Though it's annoying that they are making TWO films of the last book. FFS! Just cut out the boring hiding parts!

I agree with Curiosity. I pretty much enjoyed the whole harry potter series. Yes some of them were a bit over long with utterly irrelevent sections, but they were very easy to read. If you asked me to read through the Harry Potter series or Lord of the Rings I would side with the young wizard any day.

I love big rambling books.

My favourite novel ever is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. And my favourite non-fiction book is Peter Ackroyd's London.

I therefore have no problem with the big doorstop Potter books.

One film would make less money, silly! Now they get to charge the public DOUBLE. Hurrah!

You're welcome, it became quite a blog post, didn't it. Literature is the artform i feel most passionate about*

I wondered how people felt about Nabokov's Lolita. I have not read it for eight or nine years now, but I know I loved the book when did, and I remember much about it. however, many people I knew who I lent it to or had already read the book hated it, for reasons that they never adequately explained.
[/quote]

always felt a bit uncomfortable, although appreciating it.. bit like reading that great biography about Mussolini..

* when one doesn't count video games as art..

I always wondered if that's why so many people happened not to like it (Lolita) because of an un-ease with the subject matter.

I have no opinion on the book as I haven't read it, but I would be a bit worried if I read it on a train that someone would scream at me 'BAN THIS SICK PEDLO FILTH!' in a Daily Mail stylee.