back on topic: What I Lived For is a long-ass book, but I didn't realize how much of an impact it had on me until i realized that a year after I put it down I remember the imagery and events in the book quite vividly. Joyce Carol Oates is a pretty incredible writer... not like I'm the first to say that of course.
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Originally Posted by Think
At the moment i'm reading Dan Brown's new book The Lost Symbol.
Almost finished, and it's looking like it's 2nd to Angels & Demons. Really fantastic.
Anyone else a Brown fan?
I read the books but will only call myself a fan because I am totally bemused by how he can capture the attention of huge numbers of people, including myself, with such shitty writing
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I'm intrigued as to what you think constitutes "shitty writing". Surely if he can captivate an audience, as you said yourself, then it's written well?
I'm not gonna pretend to know or be an expert on what is or isn't good writing, i'm simply not that well read. I'd like to know why you say what you say, though.
okay well first, Dan Brown is just making an old idea bigger. The secret is bigger and more abstract and the trail is more improbable.
Secondly, Robert Langdon is perhaps the most underdeveloped character ever. His only character traits are a slight sense of claustrophobia and a mickey mouse watch.
Like The Da Vinci Code, the baddie is physically unusual. And he has a computer controlled wig (okaaay....)
The object in the story appears very early and the rest of the book is essentially a very long chase scene, with cars, helicopters, tunnels and secret chambers, with some twists, turns and chilling revelations to keep it readable.
The writing itself is shoddy. Browns vocabulary seems to be limited to "astonishing" and "incredible" which appear on nearly every 2 pages
The whole thing is held together by the fact that it is fast paced and hectic.
Don't get me wrong I was titillated by the whole charade.
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well i'm not fabfunk but it is worth pointing out that you just used a variation on the "if it's popular, it must be good" argument
dan brown's books are good the same way michael bay movies are
but I don't like any Michael Bay movies
(point taken)
I just started reading it and it's pretty standard Dan Brown fare. I'm not the biggest fan, but you have to give the guy credit - he knows how to pace a novel, and the speed in which it takes place and the story flows is probably his biggest draw. I mean, he's horrendously guilty (and famousesque for) of Not Doing the Research on the finer points that end up being the ones holding his story, but it's a usually a fun little thirller read. I like action movies, but I don't put them on pedestals (except True Lies that movie was fuckin awesome).
I'm enjoying more than I should considering I just finished Gayn Rand
This is my assessment. Everyone I speak to who reads his books say essentially the same thing, "same shit, new wrapper."
It's cool he does some research, but if it's as predictable as people say it is then there will probably be a betrayal from a "close friend" and some other shit.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
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http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/langu...es/000844.html
Read a bit of that. It raped my brain. And he only examines the first page.
This is definitely an eye-opener. Sadly, while i'm reading his books i'm surely going to notice these sorts of things now... but that doesn't mean i'm not gonna enjoy it immensely.
Like I said earlier, i'm certainly no expert, but if he can keep me as interested as he does... then I couldn't care less whether he uses proper names in his first sentence.
Also, some of the things he mentions just seem incorrect to me.
Is his mind so trapped in what is and isn't proper that he can't imagine a voice can have the feeling of being close without being next to your ear? I'd like to think this was what Brown meant.A voice spoke, chillingly close. "Do not move."
On his hands and knees, the curator froze, turning his head slowly.
Only fifteen feet away, outside the sealed gate, the mountainous silhouette of his attacker stared through the iron bars. He was broad and tall, with ghost-pale skin and thinning white hair. His irises were pink with dark red pupils.
Just count the infelicities here. A voice doesn't speak —a person speaks; a voice is what a person speaks with. "Chillingly close" would be right in your ear, whereas this voice is fifteen feet away behind the thundering gate. The curator (do we really need to be told his profession a third time?) cannot slowly turn his head if he has frozen; freezing (as a voluntary human action) means temporarily ceasing all muscular movements. And crucially, a silhouette does not stare! A silhouette is a shadow. If Saunière can see the man's pale skin, thinning hair, iris color, and red pupils (all at fifteen feet), the man cannot possibly be in silhouette.
Also, seeing as the book isn't written in first person, I don't see what it matters how far away the character is from the characteristics described. It's not like the book says "Sauniére took note of the man's pink irises" either, it just describes the character in the scene. Surely that's not wrong?
I'm clearly not an english teacher but that's the way I view it.
Last edited by Mang; 09-26-2009 at 09:47 AM.
The point is that we're supposed to be in this experience from Saunière's point of view -- that is what the passage is telling, anyway. People are not silhouettes; it's only that one can see someone else's silhouette. If we're told that the silhouette is staring (which, in itself, as Pullum says, is not so), then we are experiencing "he", the silhouette, from Saunière's point of view, because he is only a silhouette as seen by Saunière.
"Chillingly close" is correct, but misleading. Not a big deal, to me. Fifteen feet can be chillingly close, but I don't think it's captured well.
The point is that Brown's stuff is clumsy and ham-fisted. There's no art in it, no intelligence or careful construction. He quite clearly has no love for his medium (his medium being the written word). As I said, he is literature's equivalent to Michael Bay.
That does make more sense now, I suppose. Like I said i'm sure i'll notice these things now a lot more, but it's not gonna stop me from enjoying the book.
i'm not surprised, but i didn't know it was that bad. I don't actually read dan brown so much as skim through pages for interesting bits of action. he has a lot of author's tract in his book and honestly it's boring and pointless and i hate how he sets himself (langdon is his mary sue) up to deliver ultimate mystical knowledge, so i usually don't read whole paragraphs at a time, and somehow never lose important parts of the story.
Did I travel back to 2004 again?
No but Dan Brown did and he decided to copy a book called The Da Vinci Code
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I'm just finishing the last book of the father brown mysteries
G.K Chesterton is great
lol.
when i saw your name here i knew you were reading some 19th century fag-atholic british author like wilde or chesterton.
PANDAS
If you don't like them, then get the fuck out.
ok well the last book I read was by Greene and the next book will be by Christie so I guess that's kinda fair right now
but after that I will read the satanic verses because I've planned to for ages and then you can eat your words
it sounds like i won't have to eat my words for at least a couple weeks if not a month
PANDAS
If you don't like them, then get the fuck out.
i want to punch dan brown in the mouth so hard
that whole book was such a colossal waste of my time i'm glad i only read 1 in 3 pages
no, that's still time wasted what a shitty anti-climax. the spirit he made it in (and the glaringly obvious chekhov's gun) were not surprising, but the low quality and sense of mystical wonder he tried to instill make me violently angry
I just ordered and will soon be reading Bataille's Story of the Eye.
I just read Rogue Warrior: Green Team by Richard Marcinko. It was quite good actually. I'd like to read his autobiography.
You know how a book sucks? If the best way to describe it is "experimental" and it's more known for its style than its story. There are, of course, a few exceptions, but holy shit there are so many gimmicky "artsy" books out there that just suck and get all this praise.
Usually coincide with things like "stream of consciousness."
Well, regardless, House of Leaves was experimental, in that it's the most unique book I've ever read. And it was amazing.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
like experimental as in Fight Clubs weird way of narration was experimental? I guess I just don't really understand what you mean.
well i mean
a lot of people don't think that Ulysses sucks.
experimental like the last chapter of the book doesn't have any punctuation except for a final period
PANDAS
If you don't like them, then get the fuck out.
It was banned until the '30's so I imagine it is extraordinarily morally lax
I for one refuse to read it
It does indeed "suck"
Well Cormac McCarthy doesn't use quotation marks, but I would hardly consider it experimental.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
A lot of people do think James Joyce sucks.
most of those people don't have fancy shmancy degrees
and it's not like you could have trust joyce's opinion on himself coz he didn't have a prancy enough degree either.
PANDAS
If you don't like them, then get the fuck out.
Well Finnegan's Wake is one of the most critically controversial books of the last hundred or so years.
Just finished Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. It was pretty spot on about working as a line cook.
That must be an awesome thing to write a book about.
So I'm now reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and I'm having a hard time getting into it in spite of how much I enjoy some of the stories he's sharing. I love the environment and mood that permeates his narrative, though I still can't seem to read it for longer than a couple chapters.
It is. Also gives you eater tips on when and what to eat.
Oh good because when I'm hungry I really want to consult a book to tell me what to do.
Surely this is going to outsell the bible.
oh i'm totally in the same boat
fuck cookbooks and everything they stand for, those pretentious assholes
I don't use cookbooks to tell me what I want to eat, I use them to tell me how to make it. To be honest I'm a good enough cook these days that I just don't use cookbooks.
Who said anything about a cookbook? The tips in the book are on the line of avoid seafood on Monday because most kitchens only order seafood on Thursday and Tuesday. So on Monday the seafood will be the oldest.
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