books, etc.

[pellucid]

After vaguely intending to get my hands on these books, following chaila43's rec, and going so far as to endeavor to buy them, only to discover that the middle book is out of print and thus a bit difficult to find (though apparently you can get a copy from Kirstein herself!), I've finally remembered that my local library branch is quite excellent at sci fi

Comments

[pellucid]

I didn't feel like you'd been too aggressive, and so sorry if you felt like you were being shouted down from the other side. I really am interested in hearing from fans of the series about why they love the books, and so far my experience (especially with RL friends, more so than the flist) has been that most people I encounter (at least among those for whom this is on the radar screen at all) are big fans of the books and are really excited about the series. I want to be excited, too (except for my knee-jerk thing that makes me tend to want to go against the crowd when everyone gets too excited about something, but usually I give in to that and am glad I did).

But at the same time, I know that I'm ridiculously sensitive about certain gender-related things, especially. This causes me no end of problems in dealing with people at times, but it's something I can't turn off (and don't really want to turn off, to be honest, because it is something I feel strongly about, even if it's rooted in something that's much more of an uncontrollable, emotional reaction than in something that's a well-reasoned argument). And I know that some of the people on my flist--Chaila, perhaps, most especially--have a bit of the same perspective, so there's a certain extent to which I'm particularly inclined to trust their judgment when one of them says, "I think thing X will push your buttons in a bad way." But that doesn't mean that I think everyone who doesn't have similar buttons is wrong, or condoning actions I dislike, or whatever. I think we all have different points at which things become deal-breakers.

All this discussion, though, has made me more determined to give at least the first episode or two a try, so that I'm basing my opinion on my experience rather than on the advice of other people.