No worries, G! :D I love and welcome differing opinions. To be honest though, nowadays, I only reread the whumpy bits of Anansi Boys, rather than the book itself. As for American Gods, my LOVE knows no bounds for the entire thing. It's gotten so bad that I'm considering "borrowing" my mum's card to reserve my copy of the new, "definitive" (and much longer! YAY! :D) version of it that Neil's putting out later this year.
The Dark Tower series was a huge letdown at its end what with the reset/duex ex machina/cop out of an ending. And it all started so promising as well. *sigh* HOWEVER, I still say you need to read The Talisman. I think the fact that it's co-authored - with a strictly fantasy guy named Peter Straub - helped to temper some of King's most annoying tendencies, instead channeling him down more interesting pathways. If it weren't for The Talisman and Black House (the co-authored sequel to The Talisman) though, I'd prolly have written off King completely as just the shock jock of writers and not much more.
So, even though King might not be up your alley, because of The Dark Tower, I still think you should at least try and read The Talisman, written in 1984, & coming just two years after the first Dark Tower volume and three years before the second D.T. volume was published. It's a fascinating read that ALSO HAS a unique and statisfying ending. :)
As for Harry Potter? I didn't actually know the books even existed until my high school creative writing teacher assigned the first two books to us in both 11th and 12th grade (2000-01 and 2001-02) to help spark our own brand of classroom creativity. And nowadays I have much older friends (I'm 28 this year, & they're all in their mid 30s) who are heavily into Harry Potter as well.
So, in preperation to see each of the movies (as they have come out), we ALL periodically re-read the books so we can pleasently AND accurately nitpick the films for leaving out or changing stuff. ;)
So, all this basically just goes to show you that ya don't have to be worried about people thinking less of you for still reading or wanting to read Harry Potter or other things of its ilk. After all, it's NOT just a good kiddie series. It's a good ANY-AGE series as well. :)
The Dark Tower...I still have kind of mixed feelings about it. It does feel a lot like a cop out of an ending, but there is a nice symmetry to it all as well as a certain, horribly fatalistic sense of things. I do wish he had at least told us what was in the Dark Tower, at least.
To be fair, King has the occasional nice book- Misery is the first one which leaps to mind, though it is pretty visual.
I might've actually read The Talisman before, way way back when I was in middle school or something haha. I'll do a double check on it whenever I get to stop by the bookstore again.
Misery? Is that the one with the very possibly certifiable "nurse" who breaks the writer's legs with a bat or crowbar after first mending him from an unrelated car accident....just because she didn't want to leave since she's his biggest fan??? (And the movie has James Caan and Kathy Bates, as writer and nurse, respectively.)
I've read AND liked that one, but it put me off writing for a while, because I was prolly too young and impressionable, and so I thought that this could happen to me. I even had nightmares that pulled from the scenerio of that book. Only, IIII was the writer in question. So, yeah...
I also liked his 'Hearts Of/In Atlantis' novel, the particular short story collection (though I use the term 'short' loosely) that, amongst others, included the novella that would later become a modern film classic called The Shawshank Redemption. And then there was It, The Dead Zone, Carrie, and Firestarter, all of which I also really liked. :)
As for the HP front? Harry Potter rocks all the sox out there off! :D In fact, I think the only other fantasy series that can compare in quality to it would be Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, which, to me, is a bit like a grownup version of Harry Potter, only set in the big American city of Chicago (aka urban fantasy), and not set in some school out in the middle of the Scottish countryside (aka coming-of-age/school-centered fantasy).
(And, yeah, if you're wondering about Twilight? I'll be quite frank. NONE of those books are ever even gonna be in the same conversation, room, building, or galaxy. I don't care how many people profess to love them and think of those 4 or 5 books as the best thing since sliced bread. Aside from Jacob being hot and shirtless most of the time, I could care less about either version of that series...)
Get back to me on The Talisman though, when you get a chance. :) If this helps you to remember..It was about a kid named Jack Sawyer who must travel across the country to retrieve a giant gemstone that should cure his mom, Lily Cavanaugh, of terminal cancer. Along the way, he "lights out" to an astral plane that mirrors ours, but is contrastingly nightmarish in scope and environment, and meets a wolf-human Changeling named Wolf, who becomes his friend and companion, and battles either his uncle or what used to be a very close friend of the family, who, previously to the story's current time, had succeeded in getting Jack's dad killed in a way that made it look like an accident...It all sounds quite a bit grim, when distilled like that, but it was soooooooo NOT a grim experience at all to read: heartwreching-yet-hopeful-in-the-end, yes, but grim? No.
The Dark Tower series was a huge letdown at its end what with the reset/duex ex machina/cop out of an ending. And it all started so promising as well. *sigh* HOWEVER, I still say you need to read The Talisman. I think the fact that it's co-authored - with a strictly fantasy guy named Peter Straub - helped to temper some of King's most annoying tendencies, instead channeling him down more interesting pathways. If it weren't for The Talisman and Black House (the co-authored sequel to The Talisman) though, I'd prolly have written off King completely as just the shock jock of writers and not much more.
So, even though King might not be up your alley, because of The Dark Tower, I still think you should at least try and read The Talisman, written in 1984, & coming just two years after the first Dark Tower volume and three years before the second D.T. volume was published. It's a fascinating read that ALSO HAS a unique and statisfying ending. :)
As for Harry Potter? I didn't actually know the books even existed until my high school creative writing teacher assigned the first two books to us in both 11th and 12th grade (2000-01 and 2001-02) to help spark our own brand of classroom creativity. And nowadays I have much older friends (I'm 28 this year, & they're all in their mid 30s) who are heavily into Harry Potter as well.
So, in preperation to see each of the movies (as they have come out), we ALL periodically re-read the books so we can pleasently AND accurately nitpick the films for leaving out or changing stuff. ;)
So, all this basically just goes to show you that ya don't have to be worried about people thinking less of you for still reading or wanting to read Harry Potter or other things of its ilk. After all, it's NOT just a good kiddie series. It's a good ANY-AGE series as well. :)
Reply
To be fair, King has the occasional nice book- Misery is the first one which leaps to mind, though it is pretty visual.
I might've actually read The Talisman before, way way back when I was in middle school or something haha. I'll do a double check on it whenever I get to stop by the bookstore again.
Harry Potter is just awesome on all levels :D
Reply
I've read AND liked that one, but it put me off writing for a while, because I was prolly too young and impressionable, and so I thought that this could happen to me. I even had nightmares that pulled from the scenerio of that book. Only, IIII was the writer in question. So, yeah...
I also liked his 'Hearts Of/In Atlantis' novel, the particular short story collection (though I use the term 'short' loosely) that, amongst others, included the novella that would later become a modern film classic called The Shawshank Redemption. And then there was It, The Dead Zone, Carrie, and Firestarter, all of which I also really liked. :)
As for the HP front? Harry Potter rocks all the sox out there off! :D In fact, I think the only other fantasy series that can compare in quality to it would be Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, which, to me, is a bit like a grownup version of Harry Potter, only set in the big American city of Chicago (aka urban fantasy), and not set in some school out in the middle of the Scottish countryside (aka coming-of-age/school-centered fantasy).
(And, yeah, if you're wondering about Twilight? I'll be quite frank. NONE of those books are ever even gonna be in the same conversation, room, building, or galaxy. I don't care how many people profess to love them and think of those 4 or 5 books as the best thing since sliced bread. Aside from Jacob being hot and shirtless most of the time, I could care less about either version of that series...)
Get back to me on The Talisman though, when you get a chance. :) If this helps you to remember..It was about a kid named Jack Sawyer who must travel across the country to retrieve a giant gemstone that should cure his mom, Lily Cavanaugh, of terminal cancer. Along the way, he "lights out" to an astral plane that mirrors ours, but is contrastingly nightmarish in scope and environment, and meets a wolf-human Changeling named Wolf, who becomes his friend and companion, and battles either his uncle or what used to be a very close friend of the family, who, previously to the story's current time, had succeeded in getting Jack's dad killed in a way that made it look like an accident...It all sounds quite a bit grim, when distilled like that, but it was soooooooo NOT a grim experience at all to read: heartwreching-yet-hopeful-in-the-end, yes, but grim? No.
~Sharma
Reply
Leave a comment