Comments | cedarlibrarian: Not fulfilling your fantasy

cedarlibrarian

Not fulfilling your fantasy

Aug 02, 2007 16:24

Annoyance of the day:

The Baltimore County Public Library posted its If You Liked Harry Potter, Try... list today, and it was picked up by librariansindexThe list is ENTIRELY fantasy. Lord of the Rings. His Dark Materials. Faerie Wars. The Dark is Rising. Etc ( Read more... )

harry potter, rants

Comments 14

ashfae August 2 2007, 20:30:25 UTC

Grrrrrrrr. I love fantasy, and I'm annoyed by that. Baaaaaaah. Points for trying to encourage to read books other than Harry Potter, but bleah! HP is as much adventure as fantasy. Why not encourage people to read Bloody Jack or such instead? That's a great book.

imaginarycircus August 2 2007, 21:15:10 UTC

Not to mention other boarding school books! The Secret Language or even A Little Princess.

buymeaclue August 2 2007, 21:59:00 UTC

This is exactly why I'm reluctant to make "books you should read" lists. I understand why libraries, etc., find 'em useful and I've used them myself at times, but man, "If you liked this...?" is missing great giant holes without a following up of, "What did you like about it?"

imaginarycircus August 2 2007, 22:16:11 UTC

Not to mention a reader might like something totally different too! :D

Thread 6

ex_greythist387 August 3 2007, 00:12:13 UTC

Ack! And they misspelled Pierce's given name. Minor quibble (because I totally agree with the annoyance): Diane Duane's series is not fantasy but sf--borderline hard sf, in places--and Billingsley's Folk Keeper is not very fantastic in feel, esp. when compared with the rest of the list, which ACK.

ex_greythist387 August 3 2007, 00:13:10 UTC

Also, all best with the deadline. *cheers you*

sihaya09 August 3 2007, 01:38:38 UTC

So I was in a Baltimore County library yesterday.

It sucked.

That said, I eagerly await your reasons why.

(The comment has been removed)

capt_pituitary August 3 2007, 15:06:10 UTC

Ooh, geek moment. The Hobbit had goblins. This was changed (nearly 30 years later) to just be "Orcs" in LOTR. No real reason was given by the author - and none was needed as far as he was concerned. Chalk that up to maturation of his own ideas of the story as it was.

Another interesting point: Tolkein disliked the use of magic as a literary device. He wanted the people to effect change. I can count the number of times Gandalf "cast a spell" on one hand.

mark356 August 3 2007, 06:59:06 UTC

I look forward to your reasons-- I generally like those lists.

(That said, this list kind of annoys me too: it looks like its compilors have read neither Harry Potter nor any of the books on the list.)