Mediocre fast food books/book series you like

[Steve Contra]

PD went off the internet for like a fucking month to avoid spoilers to a shitty kids series.

[Phoenix Dark]

PD went off the internet for like a fucking month to avoid spoilers to a shitty kids series.

brehs, Triumph was trying to pay Cheebs for my address. Drastic actions had to be taken.

[Kara]

Snape kills Dumbledore.

[Joe Molotov]

PD is a fan of Creed too.

[Phoenix Dark]

The biggest HP travesty was Prisoner of Azkaban winning the Hugo best (fantasy) novel award over fucking Storm Of Swords in 2000.


PoA is one of the better HP books but come the fuck on.

[Kara]

Srsly.

Abkhazia's legal status might be questionable, but it's hardly fantasy.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

for cheap fiction thrills I really like Charles Stross' Laundry files.

Hackers x Cthulhu x James Bond x British



they're dumb airport fiction but always enjoyable

[Phoenix Dark]

for cheap fiction thrills I really like Charles Stross' Laundry files.

Hackers x Cthulhu x James Bond x British

(Image removed from quote.)

they're dumb airport fiction but always enjoyable

the cover is like a religious collab between 5 Percenters and The Watchtower.

[Phoenix Dark]

Not much of a Malazan fan but it doesn't belong in here imo. Erickson is a good writer. Bit too scatterbrained for me though, but I'll finish it one day.

Deadhouse Gates tho

[Phoenix Dark]

Gormenghast

[Human Snorenado]

Gardens of the Moon is an ok book; it doesn't really get good until the last 1/5 or so when all the shit hits the fan.

Anomander Rake tho



I think the general consensus (to which I agree) is that Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice are the best books in the series, so you have those to look forward to next. It's funny how he'll have someone that you think is a minor character in an earlier book come back and play a big part in a future book.

[chronovore]

Up to around 2008 I had read almost every DnD and Drizzt books that R.A. Salvatore had written. Legacy of the Drow, Hunter's Blade's Trilogy, Icewind Dale Trilogy, Dark Elf Trilogy. Epics about an emo ass dark elf who loves redheads.

 

Several friends recommended Drizzt stuff to me before, and I couldn't think of anything more lame than reading something that had fallen off the Dragonlance wagon. Then, this month, a collection of Drizzt stories went up available for free on Audible, and I'd been hankering for something generic and full of swords, and goddamn it if I'm not hooked now. Really fun, well-paced, and actually approaches some interesting moral, class, and race issues with a surprising amount of awareness.

I have a big neckbeard hankering for these even if the last few installments have been subpar af. The dresden files. Shit started off as like a goofy episodic wizard film noir mystery affair and then turned into a more fleshed out overarching plot. I think the author fucked himself over by expanding with too many new series and other shit. Shame, because it was one of my faves up until White Night. Been reading these since i was like 12.

It also had an AWFUL SyFy tv series adaptation. Just appalling.

(Image removed from quote.)

I read the first of these, and the protagonist came off as a total fedora and trench coat "m'lady" type. I've been told that the character improves, and that the meta-story is pretty great, so I may go back to it.

[Kara]

On another note, my teacher(yes an arab teacher) once recommended I read Atlas Shrugged cause I spoke the best english and he thought "I was smart enough to understand it".

He was right, I was smart enough to understand it's garbage.

A friend of mine was a fellow "I read Ayn Rand's oeuvre in my early teens" and we still laugh about Ragnar Danneskjold on the reg.

I'm sure the prose is but We the Living isn't like her other books which is why I've kept it for all these years. It's like a YA romance novel that's so Russian (even down to the frequent references to Primus stoves) mixed with John Le Carre, "Fuck your feels, lich, imma rip yo heart out now."

TBH since I'm in a #sadboys reading phase I'm morbidly tempted to pick it up and blow through it but it'll probably hit too close to home for me in certain respects.

On kind of a tangential note, I thought it was sort of funny (as I was reading it) that my favorite book ends the same way as We the Living... come to think of it, the protagonists are of a similar ilk too.

On a related note, I noticed Google's doodle for today had Count Vronsky in it. Tragic hunks of Russian literature.

[Kara]

Dug up some choice passages. Shit is amazing.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

Kira with the patented PD handshake date close.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

 

[Human Snorenado]

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

[Kara]

[benjipwns]

I don't even have any Ayn Rand books. 

That said, We The Living shouldn't even count as owning one. It's like it's not even written by her other than the rough sex obsessed female character. It's the only one that doesn't lose its plot for diatribes.

[bluemax]

I have a big neckbeard hankering for these even if the last few installments have been subpar af. The dresden files. Shit started off as like a goofy episodic wizard film noir mystery affair and then turned into a more fleshed out overarching plot. I think the author fucked himself over by expanding with too many new series and other shit. Shame, because it was one of my faves up until White Night. Been reading these since i was like 12.

It also had an AWFUL SyFy tv series adaptation. Just appalling.

(Image removed from quote.)

You might like this similarly themed book series I started reading recently called the Iron Druid Chronicles. About a druid who lives in modern day Tempe Arizona, has sex with ancient goddesses, kills fallen angels, has a werewolf AND a vampire as a lawyer. No big deal.

The biggest HP travesty was Prisoner of Azkaban winning the Hugo best (fantasy) novel award over fucking Storm Of Swords in 2000.


PoA is one of the better HP books but come the fuck on.

GURM stays losing and salty about it forever.

And since we're nostalgic about shit we read as kids, aside from stuff already mentioned (SW EU, Drizzt) I also read those Red Wall books, which were like the British kids books of the day before that wack ass Harry Potter. Mice with swords having epic battles against ferrets, weasels and stoats? Fuck yeah!

[chronovore]

vampire fiction is for girls and homos tbf

I Am Legend and Salems Lot is not homo.

Before we get into it, I should confirm: are you being intentionally obtuse about the entire sub genre of mommy porn which has flourished in recent years?

[Kara]

I don't even have any Ayn Rand books. 

That said, We The Living shouldn't even count as owning one. It's like it's not even written by her other than the rough sex obsessed female character. It's the only one that doesn't lose its plot for diatribes.

I'm here to help you feel better about yourself*.

This is just based on skimming last night mind, but I feel the terser diatribes don't sidetrack the plot because she was devious enough to make them part of the plot itself by having the author surrogate be involved in a YA-y as hell teenage feelings triangle with an ideological enemy.



*Pending FDA approval.

[Kara]

I guess it was hard to miss since the opening paragraph of the new 40K book on tape I'm listening to () had ephemeral in it, but the lexical quality of Black Library's output is probably the most smartdumb thing this side of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. I'm not even going to touch the fake Latin stuff because no one should know about that.

I bet they have a program that actually goes through submitted work and substitutes words. There's no fucking way that 10+ authors all think preternatural is an adjective worth using regularly.

[Phoenix Dark]

Order of The Phoenix is a really good fantasy book, I don't see the argument against it.

Ultimately I think the biggest problem with Harry Potter, and many fantasy books in general, is the general perfection of the protagonist. Think back: Harry is almost never outright wrong about anything. Nearly every book follows the same arc: Harry learns some secret, tries to tell everyone, and is lambasted or punished. He then breaks a variety of rules that he deems contrary to whatever truth he has discovered, and is lightly punished. And finally, after vanquishing whatever evil he warned everyone about, he is rewarded by the doubted who then proceed to apologize to him.

OOTP initially seems like the same trope is being deployed, but by the end Harry is not only wrong for once, he pays for it dearly (Sirius' death).

[Human Snorenado]

Gingers tho

[Kara]

I enjoyed reading Philosopher's Stone.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

To my sibling when they were a wee thing.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Because home was broken by then and I knew neither of our parents was going to read to them at night.

[close]

[close]

[benjipwns]

I liked the movie of Chamber of Secrets. I started watching it like a third of the way through and it was the first thing Harry Potter I had ever seen/read. It was all this crazy mystery.

So I was kinda disappointed with the rest. Prisoner of Azkaban was alright though.

[chronovore]

I liked the movie of Chamber of Secrets. I started watching it like a third of the way through and it was the first thing Harry Potter I had ever seen/read. It was all this crazy mystery.

So I was kinda disappointed with the rest. Prisoner of Azkaban was alright though.

Prisoner of Azkaban is the Empires Strikes Back of Harry Potter movies. It's got a lot more meat, stronger acting chops and actors more familiar with their characters, the characters grow more visibly over the course of the movie, and it ends on a less-than-successful note, allowing for a feeling of struggle as well as hope.

[Phoenix Dark]

It also has the best soundtrack/theme.


Legit good movie by a great director.

[jakefromstatefarm]

Read 5.5 of the HP books. I don't remember them being bad but I was in the target demo which has way more to do with how much I enjoyed them. Remember the arc ramping up starting w/ Prisoner and by the time Order came out the books were dense as fuck for an 8 year old Jake. Chamber was my favorite.

Honestly, the series is more of a timestamp than anything. I'll watch the movies and read the tvtropes page every couple years just for nostalgia's sake.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's my boy

[close]

[Kara]

I fell asleep while listening to my 40K book on tape.

Now I have to go back and find where I was.

SELF ASSESSED L BREHS