Memes and Babylon 5

[hamsterwoman]

I'm feeling lethargic and irritable, so let's have a meme.

(I finally finished responses to the last one, btw; links (sorta, multi-comments screw everything up) under the cut for the curious:

Comments

[asthenie_vd]

Oooh, I should be in bed by now, but these types of meme are too much fun!

2) sounds an awful lot like Slaughterhouse 5

7) sounds like Discworld witches, but I've no idea which specific volume this could be.

9) is the Odyssee?

18) Back to the Future.

21) Temeraire

22) Could it be Hot Fuzz?

[hamsterwoman]

You are very good at this! :D Correct on all counts (and, yes, #7 is a Discworld Witches book). BTW, all of the Temeraire descriptions on Better than it Sounds are golden! I had a hard time picking out just one to use :)

[asthenie_vd]

Yay! :D Though looking up the Discworld book it's one I haven't read yet (the witches aren't my favourites I'm ashamed to say), but I do own a copy should get around to read it this yes.

[hamsterwoman]

Witches Abroad/Lords and Ladies are my favorite of the Witches books (and I do think Lords and Ladies is one of those rare examples where you sort of do need to read the predecessor to be able to enjoy the book fully, kind of like I wouldn't recommend somebody starting the Watch books with Night Watch), so I very much hope you enjoy it when you do read it! (If you've been reading Witches books in order, I think they really hit their stride with Witches Abroad, so you might find you like them more. And the Tiffany books, though they're YA, are also pretty great, I find.) Of course, I admire Granny Weatherwax to a ridiculous degree, so my opinion may be somewhat biased, heh.

[gehayi]

2) Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

7) Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett.

8) Avatar: The Last Airbender.

14) The Midnight Mayor (Matthew Swift #2) by Kate Griffin.

17) The Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher.

21) Temeraire by Naomi Novik.

23) Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

25) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

27) The Princess Bride by William Goldman.

[hamsterwoman]

Correct for all! (And I didn't realize you'd read the Codex Alrea books as well as the Dresden Files -- I don't know very many people who have!)

[gillo]

6 is Fawlty Towers.

19 is Futurama

20 is Chicken Run.

25 is Brave New World.

26 Tristram Shandy?

[hamsterwoman]

Right on all counts, including Tristram Shandy :) (And isn't the chicken Run description great? :D)

[gillo]

The Chicken Run description is perfection. The Tristram Shandy description really is the entire plot in a nutshell.

And don't mention the war.

[hamsterwoman]

And don't mention the war.

I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right. :D (We quote so, so much from that episode! Including the "we have meat here in zee building" line in my icon :D)

The Tristram Shandy description really is the entire plot in a nutshell.

It really is! This was one of those Better Than It Sounds descriptions I'd never been able to appreciate fully before, since I just read Tristram Shandy late last year :)

[pax_athena]

2. Sounds like Slaughterhouse Five.

10. Make me think of Charlie Stross "Laundry Files", albeit I only read the first novel of the series.

23. Ender's Game.

Hmmmm ... Now curious how much of the rest I know but did not get from the description :P

[hamsterwoman]

#2 and #23 are correct :)

#10 is something else -- I've not read the Laundry Files, though they've been recommended to me a couple of times. (I've only tried one thing by Stross and was not impressed with the results -- the Family Trade books, which just read like half-assed Chronicles of Amber homage to me, and I was very meh about the writing. But I like his blog posts whenever I've read them, so it's one of those awkward cases where I apparently like an author's informal writing a lot more than their fiction... :P

Some of these are probably quite hard to guess from just the description (I cheated and looked at the answers before I picked them / read the descriptions, so I'm not sure how many I would've gotten). I'm actually impressed that some of the ones like Ender's Game have been guessed already more than once!

[pax_athena]

Haha, I feel the same. I like his blog a lot, but his novels have so far been all "meh" - I've read the first novel in "Laundry Files" and "Accelerando". I do tend to enjoy hi stories, but I haven't read an actual collection by him, just some of those collected in Gardner Dozois' "Year's Best" series.

Hmmmm, maybe I should play it on my LJ, too ... Hmmm ... But TV tropes is evil, I always spend too much time there!

[hamsterwoman]

Ooh, I haven't read any of his short stories, that I can recall; maybe that's a medium I'll like more. Shall have to keep that in mind!

It's a really fun meme! But, yeah, it does require venturing onto TV Tropes, and that can be fraught -- I always end up wandering for hours, too, especially as new stuff keeps being added.

[ladymercury_10]

Is 10 Rivers of London?

[hamsterwoman]

Sorry, no :) (that one's proving more elusive than I expected!)