Behold, my navel!
Literature. Aka books, and stories, thus also films.
I read Terry Goodkind's "Wizard's First Rule" yesterday, and read "The Rule of Four" by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason today. I think they're both relatively well written, but have left me thinking more about what I like about books.
Or, more exactly, what I enjoy in a story. Why I like certain things ("Empire Records"), loathe certain others ("Sin City"), and *love* others ("The Fifth Element"). And I didn't intend to simply write films there, but I guess that's symptomatic of the whole thing.
Like most guys, I'm very visual (or so the cliché goes). A good book has to suck me in, but once I'm really into the book, I'm no longer reading. I'm watching the story unfold, incorporeal in the midst of the story, actually *there* as it happens all around me, only vaguely aware that I'm reading somewhere else. It's happened on more than one occasion where people have roared and shouted at me, whilst I read, to no effect and only got my attention after roughly shaking me for a couple seconds. Terry Practchett is a very visual author.
And yes, I don't like books that get bogged down in the descriptions. Tolkien can spend over two freaking pages describing a forest when "It's a forest" would suffice (if ultra-minimalist). Or at least a small paragraph would do instead. Douglas Adams is fairly visual too, but his story is somewhat lacking in the *story* department, and pads it out with tangent after tangent.
I try to think what novels really endeared me. What ones I read over and over again. Isaac Aasimov. Terry Pratchett's Discworld (not the early stuff). Mel Odom (The "Threat from the sea" trilogy).
Nothing modern. Nothing historic. Nothing 'real world', even if fiction.
The "Rule of Four" is clever, but abstract, with charactors I can't really connect with, mainly as they appear to be fairly dumb. Oh sure, they're in Princeton, and uncovering this puzzle that has baffled people for 500 years. But still fairly clueless. It's like writing a fantastic background for a charactor, then being unable to play what you wrote......
Why does Fantasy or Sci-Fi click with me so much?
I mean, either charactors are well-written, or they're not. I have seen "Empire Records" over 30 times. Give me a comfortable couch, some beer, and I'll happily watch it again tonight. And next week, and again and again. There's minimal plot, but the charactors are *real* people. I have yet to find the book-equivilent of "Empire Records".
Then again, books set in the "real world" usually try to be "real". No-one is heroic. No-one is willing to sacrifice themselves in the same manner as they are in a Fantasty novel. I mean, who'd pay the bills? Or look after their pets? What, ditch all my plans and follow you to Egypt so we can just see the world? but I have a *degree*!
Dull.
I guess I don't like reading it because I don't like living in it......
If certain people said to me tomorrow "Brian, I've got two one-way tickets to Java/Egypt/Cambodia, leaving on Monday. Coming?"..... I'd think "well... I have a massive debt to pay off" for about 0.5 seconds. Follow their lead? Sacrifice my 'life' to chase their dream?
In a heartbeat.
But no-one is that self-empowered in a modern novel. The modern novel is filled with the drudgery of modern living. We know too much about it to neglect the dull and dross details. Sure, people don't go to the toilet, but they have bills, and university debts, families and mortgages.
In the city of Waterdeep, all that's between a Sahaugin's claws and Jherek is his sword, and his friend's.
One of these worlds isn't 'real'. The other, I don't want to read about anymore.......