Books?

[AlSymerz]

Only Stephen King adaptations that have been any good are ones he's had a part in and even a few of them have been average.

I tend not to worry about what Hollywood will do to fuck things up any more. Hollywood want easy, they want known characters and known story lines that they can rearrange and call new. Nothing they release these days has me excited, even the movies I actually watch don't hold the same excitement they once might have. A book from any one of a dozen different authors I can still get excited about, maybe not as much as I once did, but I do still wait for new release books and often pre-order books because I want to read them not just want to pass time.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Can't remember the last time I saw a movie trailer that moved the needle. Don't know if this is because I've become old and jaded, or because Hollywood's completely lost the plot. Maybe a combination of the two. 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

1 hour ago, FatherAlabaster said:

I loved the Redwall books too. Especially the first few. I have no idea how I'd feel about an adaptation even if it was done well, though. There were lots of little things that stuck in my head, that added up to make the first book special, like descriptions of smells and food, feelings of hunger and embarrasment, the little aside where Cluny shows his rats how to clean their teeth with pointed sticks so they don't lose them, all the horrifying vignettes where characters die alone in pain. Some books don't really lend themselves to adaptation. Dune was another childhood favorite, and after rewatching the newest movie I think they mostly did it as well as they could, but at best (if they don't beef the second half) it's an alternate version, something to appreciate on the side. Same with LOTR. I liked the Earthsea books but gosh, I don't remember them at all. It's been like 35 years since I read any of them.

I guess it comes down to whether the source material lends itself to that kind of treatment and whether the adaptation gets the time and money and talent it needs to thrive. The new Sandman series is great so far. I thought they did a great job with the streaming series for His Dark Materials, too, although maybe I wasn't as picky because I didn't read those books until I was all grown up. Wheel of Time is watchable so far. I'm a huge Roger Zelazny fan and I think I'd be stoked about an Amber streaming series in the right hands. I am also not a good target audience; if I'm a fan of a book, I want the details, all the character development, the kind of things that would probably make newcomers turn it off out of boredom.

 

Yes. Those first Redwall books were unbelievably great for a kid just starting down the road of fantasy lit. The thing is that there's a pretty clear path set out through the books on how to adapt them properly. I just don't have faith in Hollywood to do it. If it happened and the result was even half as good as the animated Watership Down movie I would happily take it and concede that my fears were unfounded. That's just not how it'd go down though.

I don't see how anybody has a problem with the Netflix Sandman series. The comics were politicized from day one and Gaiman's whole work falls very much in line with the values that Hollywood gravitates towards, plus they're excellently told stories. I'm honestly surprised it took as long as it did for them to make it. I have absolutely no issue with that particular adaptation. The Showtime series American Gods on the other hand, was astoundingly off base with almost everything it did.

Wheel of time was hot garbage. I'm really not a fan of Jordan's (or Sanderson's, for that matter) writing at all. The show made such bizarrely unnecessary changes that added nothing and completely tripped over it's own feet. How anybody could think that series had any hope past book three, where the main character is already involuntarily causing fucking earthquakes that level whole towns at a rate of power inflation that would embarrass the X-Men is beyond me. How do you not look at the complete series and say "Wait, there's fourteen of these things!" I kicked that series to the curb after that. What's in store for book six; is he going to shit pure immortality and sneeze interplanar omnipotence. It was really annoying. 

There are also a ton of cases where I have to wonder why you would try to take on the source material at all. When I saw that Jon Kransinski (Jim from the U.S. version of The Office) had chosen Brief Interviews With Hideous Men for his directorial debut I had to do a double take. Was he trying to sabotage his career behind the camera?

Then you have things like Blade Runner 2049 where the movie itself is excellent, expands on the themes of the original and does enough of it's own thing to be fascinating, but what was with the references to Pale Fire? If you've read that book there's a very surface level theme of the transfer of being human as an existential state to another life form, but that is where the thematic similarity ends. Then you've got Ryan Gosling saying in interviews that the book "unlocked the character" for him. Really? Either you didn't read the book at all or you seriously didn't pick up anything from it. And don't even get me started on premium television like the Sopranos or Yellowstone constantly name-checking Nietzche in the dumbest most reductive way possible.

Hasn't Stephen King basically disavowed the Kubrick version of The Shining? I can understand his frustrations, but that movie is a classic for a lot of reasons. It's just that none of them have to do with Stephen King.

[AlSymerz]

Kubrik's version is shit and deserves to be disavowed. King's version is so much better and worthy of the 6 hours viewing.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

9 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

Kubrik's version is shit and deserves to be disavowed. King's version is so much better and worthy of the 6 hours viewing.

I really like the Kubrik Shining. It does so well what so many horror movies lack the imagination to do: surprise you. It's a little indecipherable, but there's something undeniably appealing on first viewing about being trapped in the hotel with this family and realizing you have absolutely no idea where it's going to go. I can't tell you how many movies I've seen where you can almost set your watch to 'Oh, we're forty-five minutes in. Here comes the jump scare. Oh look the family dog knows something's wrong. Alright, we have a false sense of closure and security, but the movie's still continuing. That means the ghost/zombie/vampire isn't dead. Hey, the kid suffers from night terrors. Wonder if they're going to hit us with the whole 'there's another reality just beneath the surface of our physical world.

It's strange to me how horror, a genre that thrives off our very natural fear of the unknown, is almost always the most known and predictable.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Re King I’m torn, on the one hand I like Kubrick’s Shining, and Carpenter’s Christine, and legitimately believe the film ending of The Mist is superior to King’s own. On the other I don’t see how the inevitable Dark Tower Amazon/Netflix series could possibly be good. Bill Scarsgard was excellent as Pennywise though even if on balance those films are meh.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

13 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Re King I’m torn, on the one hand I like Kubrick’s Shining, and Carpenter’s Christine, and legitimately believe the film ending of The Mist is superior to King’s own. On the other I don’t see how the inevitable Dark Tower Amazon/Netflix series could possibly be good. Bill Scarsgard was excellent as Pennywise though even if on balance those films are meh.

Dark Tower's another one I had to quit. There's an all caps talking sentient train. I can't reasonably be expected to take a book series seriously when it gets to that point.

[RelentlessOblivion]

That’s fantasy though? Is it any more fanciful than an evil ring? Or a Plymouth with attachment issues?

[Nasty_Cabbage]

In terms of what is scientifically possible, they're the exact same level of fanciful, but tone is everything when it comes to this stuff and an all caps talking train just smacks of a little kid playing with friends saying "And then a giant ninja robot snake who breathes acid comes down and attacks!" It just makes it really hard to want to continue.

[RelentlessOblivion]

I’m just playing devil’s advocate tbh my jumping off point for that series was around that book too. Personally I’ll re-rad The Stand if I want a King fantasy novel.

[AlSymerz]

I did re-read the Stand when they released it with the extra pages and for me even with the extra it really didn't have the impact the second time around. I still like the book but you can't beat that first read. When it came to both miniseries they both had their short comings, there was parts dad did well with the first and parts son did better a second time around. I so wanted the TV station here to advertise the second one with Among The Living playing, not because I'm that much of an Anthrax fan but because our TV stations suck so badly when it comes to metal on TV.

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

With much of King’s work it loses a little on subsequent reads. That’s not a knock on him as much as it is testament to how impactful the first read tends to be.

[FatherAlabaster]

12 hours ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Wheel of time was hot garbage. I'm really not a fan of Jordan's (or Sanderson's, for that matter) writing at all. The show made such bizarrely unnecessary changes that added nothing and completely tripped over it's own feet. How anybody could think that series had any hope past book three, where the main character is already involuntarily causing fucking earthquakes that level whole towns at a rate of power inflation that would embarrass the X-Men is beyond me. How do you not look at the complete series and say "Wait, there's fourteen of these things!" I kicked that series to the curb after that. What's in store for book six; is he going to shit pure immortality and sneeze interplanar omnipotence. It was really annoying. 

The first few books were pretty bad. He wasn't a great writer. I had the impression when I first read them that he'd intended to wrap the story up a lot sooner, but realized it was too weak, and kept writing to try and redeem it. It got better as it went along; the writing improved a bit and the storylines got quite a bit deeper and more engaging. I was worried that Brandon Sanderson's final books would lose whatever the series had going on, but I actually wound up liking them in context and thinking they were better crafted. Low bar, maybe.

I'm a pretty voracious reader when I have the time, especially with sci-fi and fantasy, so I'll usually see something through if it's moderately entertaining. It doesn't all need to be masterpieces for me. Wheel Of Time certainly isn't; it's cheap fun. And maybe cheap IP? I am not 100% sure I see where the showrunners were coming from with the changes they made, but I can give it the benefit of the doubt for another season, because, well, it's cheap fun. I guess what's most concerning for me about the TV show is the way they brought in some elements from the later books "too early"; it makes me think they're planning to ram through as much of the plot as quickly as possible in case the show gets yanked before it's had time to flourish; that always makes for bad TV.

[SurgicalBrute]

14 hours ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Wheel of time was hot garbage. I'm really not a fan of Jordan's (or Sanderson's, for that matter) writing at all

Just to chime in here, while I never bothered with the Wheel of Time series (as you said, there are 14 of those things and they're all thick as a dictionary) I have to defend Jordan a little bit here, as his Conan pastiches, while hardly deep, were pretty damn entertaining. If I remember right, it was his books that basically kicked off TOR's line of original Conan stories that were my introduction to the character. Though I get that some people might not consider that a good thing 😁

[FatherAlabaster]

1 hour ago, SurgicalBrute said:

there are 14 of those things and they're all thick as a dictionary

They're pretty fluffy so they go by quick. The series doesn't require a lot of parsing. You're not missing out on a ton if you don't read them, but you could do a lot worse* if you're looking for something fun and you can get through the first three or four without gagging.

*By "a lot worse" I mean something like those Terry Goodkind books that started with "Wizard's First Rule". Absolute aimless dreck that makes Robert Jordan look gifted and disciplined. Or Robin Hobb's "Soldier Son" trilogy, which seemed almost like a pop-literary exercise in futility. Or the "Expanse" books.

[SurgicalBrute]

1 hour ago, FatherAlabaster said:

They're pretty fluffy so they go by quick. The series doesn't require a lot of parsing. You're not missing out on a ton if you don't read them, but you could do a lot worse* if you're looking for something fun and you can get through the first three or four without gagging.

It's funny,one of the things my father-in-law and I have in common is that we both enjoy fantasy novels, and back when GoT was still just a book series we were talking about how it had stalled out, so I'd mentioned Wheel of Time to him even though I'd never read it myself and he ended up really enjoying it.

I'll probably get around to it at some point in my life, but fortunately I've got more than a few novels lying around the house that I haven't even started yet, not to mention a few authors waiting in the wings that I've been meaning to try out. I've heard good things about John Gwynne, Howard Andrew Jones, Scott Oden, and James Alderdice

2 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

*By "a lot worse" I mean something like those Terry Goodkind books that started with "Wizard's First Rule". Absolute aimless dreck that makes Robert Jordan look gifted and disciplined.

Oh man...those books are like the opposite of what you were saying about Jordan. The first couple were decent, but my god, he'd climbed completely up his own ass by the time I'd bowed out.

[RelentlessOblivion]

As far as Fantasy and SciFi go I could do with more recommendations, though I’m about to have far less time to read. Speaking of I just wrapped up the Darth Bane trilogy, by far the best thing to come from the old EU, but Star Wars isn’t exactly Great Expectations.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

 

Magda Szabo - The Door

This book is worthy of attention simply as an example of how to write a strong and admirable character who's not flawless. The relationship (platonic) of the two women in this film is a master class in the study of class, and the lives you leave unlived if only for the happenstance of being when, how, and whom you were born. The book obviously very deeply admires Emerance; the other half and housekeeper to the narrator Magda, which is why the book cannot afford to spare her the same judgmental eye it turns toward Magda. Throughout the narrative Emerence reveals to us how she's the glue that holds the small Czech community, and she enters into a years long dialogue with Magda mercilessly exposing Magda's position of privilege and the fakery of moving among the rarified air of academia. Emerence's illiteracy and complete detach from such doesn't short circuit her as a lesser novel would have done. She is simply a force, but a force that someone like Magda would seek to use as a source of comfort in the evergreen illusion that her work has meaning, and that the best in us would seek to better the lives of people like Emerence.

Emerence herself is intransplantable and assured with such a severity and functional rightness that no moral system, faith, or promise of comfort can reach her. It leads her through life with such utter conviction that every ounce of good she does is, even when it does harm to herself and others, is simply the way to act, and that life is what it is, was, can only ever be. there can be nothing else.

The titular door in question is another matter entirely and something of a nuanced McGuffin. We know what's behind it, and everything is all the more bitter for it. This feeling of knowing without having seen is horrifying. We dread to look, but know that we must.

It would have been incredibly easy to fall into the trap of making the book an examination of class struggle, but the reason The Door so effectively avoids this is Emerence's flaws and stupidity. We've all, from time to time, been hit with accusations and epithets meant to humble us saying we're simply trying to seem smart. By staying on the target of these two characters and deeply understanding their personal lives The Door begs the question; would it be better if such accusations were correct?

Edited August 3, 2023 by Nasty_Cabbage
Typo

[karaya]

On 9/14/2011 at 10:46 PM, NTNR said:

I personally despise reading, even about things I enjoy; but my wife turned me on to a killer book series called 'Monster Hunters'. We're on the third book and it's a mixture of romance, action, horror & comedy. It's a Romaxihorridy. Check it out here: http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/mhi-sample/ if you dig fantasy in the Lovecraft vein but with a modern twist you will like what you read! I have been working with an Android app development companies for the past six months and I am very satisfied with their services. They have a team of experienced and skilled developers who can handle any kind of project, from simple apps to complex ones. They also offer flexible pricing and delivery options, as well as excellent communication and support. They have helped me to launch my app on the Google Play Store and to reach a wider audience. I would highly recommend them to anyone who is looking for a reliable and professional Android app development partner.

I have read many programming books, but one of my favorites is “The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery” by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. This book teaches you how to be a better programmer, not just a better coder. It covers topics such as design, testing, debugging, automation, teamwork, and more. It also has practical tips and exercises that you can apply to your own projects

[Nasty_Cabbage]

5 hours ago, karaya said:

I have read many programming books, but one of my favorites is “The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery” by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. This book teaches you how to be a better programmer, not just a better coder. It covers topics such as design, testing, debugging, automation, teamwork, and more. It also has practical tips and exercises that you can apply to your own projects

I took a few courses in coding some time ago just to keep my skillset adaptive and add a little leverage if I ever found myself interviewing again. My problem with programming and coding was never the coding itself when we actually got to it. Once I had the basics of a few relevant languages it basically reduced to a problem solving exercise. 

Everything else in those classes, though, ranged from mildly irritating to mask off insulting. They'd bring in whingeing speakers from employers who recruited tech dudes for their industry and sometimes not even that. I remember listening to airport-terminal bookstore level motivational material being presented to us with such a snide and condescending disregard for anything that even remotely resembled the way people actually talk and interact they'd start to take the form of a Japanese bento box vending machine in my mind. I never had the stomach for the whole "self-actualization" "part of the family" linked-in influencer tier horse shit you get fed under white collar employment. Prior to those courses I honestly wondered if there were people who could push those mental self flagellating "team building" terms through their brain to the point of actually uttering them out loud with a straight face. Unfortunately I discovered that these former human beings not only exist, but are prolific and more numerous than any Huxleyan nightmare could have speculated. The message was clear though: Buy into the insufferable business jargon and HR generated rap sheets heart and soul or be prepared to struggle to find employment. Then, on top of all of that they had a rep for Goldmann fucking Sacchs come in and pitch the post recession reinvention of their brand to us as though they'd been holding families together and donating Sunday church hats to old ladies for the duration of the recession. What a fucking nightmare.

Anyway rant over. Currently re-reading the Cairo trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz. Excellent books, but since Proust is the primary jumping off point for most western readers, they can be similarly trying. These books reward patient and careful reading with a wealth of depth. It's pretty hard to tell anybody starting to read it to just "stick with it" though. It would be incredibly easy to lob the blame for this at the ever shortening attention spans and TikTok to the main vein type of rapid information processing we engage in today, and there'd probably be some truth to it, but more than anything I'd probably tell somebody waving the white flag of surrender to set it down and return to it after a few years. It's honestly probably best read for college courses though, and even then there are far better choices of torture out there to subject your students to.

[AlSymerz]

I used to like going through code, looking for Easter eggs, or even weirder trying to fault find.

I still don't read much other than bios and novels these days. I haven't found too many bios that have interested me lately although I have just finished Billy Connelly's latest. I've also finished reading all of Brad Thor's spy/black ops books. I'm trying to get back in Jack Ketchum's books and I've recently started the novels which were the basis of the Rizzoli and Isles TV series.

[Thatguy]

7 hours ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

What a fucking nightmare.

Excellent and to the point rant.

Amongst other things I'm currently reading a biography of Eugene von Neumann. It covers his intellectual milieu and his work more than the events of his life. I can't say I understand that much of it, but the author makes an effort to help the non-mathematician and it makes me think.

[AlSymerz]

No idea what that book is but I love the Adam Spencer maths books, and the Dr Karl books.

[RelentlessOblivion]

I really should try and make more time to just sit down and read, well okay in my case, sit down and listen to an audiobook, but you get the idea. I was, for a time, reading through the song of ice and fire series by George R.R Martin, but with no sign of the pen ultimate book coming any time soon it seems increasingly likely that tail will never get finished and, as someone who really needs to know how things finish. Once I’m invested that’s not going to work for me. It’s the same reason I finished the Game of Thrones show even though blast three seasons were absolutely abysmal. 

[AlSymerz]

I've never felt the need read the type of books many refer as classics. Books by Tolkien, Cornwell, Dickens etc. I've read only one of Martin's and although I thought was ok it didn't see me rushing to pick up any more. I have read all of Lovecraft's books, but only because they are in the public domain and free downloads.