Kevin's Watch

Meh. It's his writing I didn't like. And that's what matters.

just bought the third volume of Planetary - thus completing my collection of the four graphic novels. now i will read them in order.

just started House of Chains today. omgomgomgomgomg I have to get through karsa again. I'm hoping the re-read follows the Felisin trend, ie it won't be as painful second time round.

I've enjoyed the Karsa beginning more each of the three times I read HoC. Especially when I read it after finishing the whole series.


Interesting difference between us, Murrin. I really like King's writing. The books I mentioned are, imo, great books. Bag of Bones, otoh, was junk. No substance. Still, it was an easy, fun read for me, because I think his style is very clear, flows, and feels natural. (Not sure what the problem with Gunslinger was. )

King was my favourite writer before Donaldson. His name still graces some of my favourite books. The ones Fist mentioned are excellent, It was great until right at the end, Eyes of the Dragon definitely deserves a mention, as does Misery...ah, there are so many . Not all of them any good, of course; Rose Madder and Cell I could cite as being damn near unreadable.

I like King's writing style in general. One particular thing he excels at is a kind of retrospective characterisation. He'll relate events happening as you read to past events in the characters history, providing both back story and context fro their reactions. One example that stuck for me (Misery spoiler):

Spoiler

When Annie chops off Paul' leg, and is burning, the wound shut with a blowtorch, Paul remembers the smell of a flame roasted pig from when he was on an island holiday

Finished A Dance with Dragons.

Pick my next read for me:
anotherplace.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/the-new/

Minus the Erikson and the Yu from the titles listed there, and tell me what I should read next. I won't be taking tally or anything, I'll just pick the first suggestion I like the sound of.

Black Company. Or Dune.

I am halfway through SwanSong and loving it so far.

Dune. In the name of all that's holy, read Dune.

Fist and Faith wrote:Bag of Bones, otoh, was junk. No substance.

true...BUT...that scene where he first drives up the drive to the cabin...freakin CREEPY in classic king style, i swear it harkened back to
the first time i read Salem's Lot (which was when it was first published in
hardback!!) and how much it creeped me out.

here's a funny thing i realized with King when listening to him read Bag of Bones on audiobook...the dude is worse than me for going on and on and on with the endlessly detailed descriptions!!! i didn't even realize he does that until i was listening to it read rather than reading it myself. bless his heart, i do love him tho. see...i think i don't read stepen king because i always like everything he writes (cause believe you me, he writes some shit sometimes, i.e. cujo, last couple of DT books, Maximum Overdrive, etc), i think a lot of the reason i read stephen king is that it's like visiting with an old friend. a friend i've known since 1974 (Carrie).

i'll probably read whatever her writes till he stops doing it.
then i'll go back and read all my favorites again.
cause he's a friend whose writing i will always read.
silly i know, but that's how i am.

Some good stuff on the link shelf...but I say Dune, too.
I'm pretty sure I posted elsewhere on Black Company...I've only read two, but thought the plots semi-predictable, which wouldn't matter except I wasn't convinced by the characters, the ideas were retreads, and the writing style wasn't interesting enough to make up for the rest.

Ok, sounds like folks want me to read Dune.

yeah but stop there. do NOT read past dune. it doesn't get any better than that first book and by book 3 it gets decidedly worse. Dune is a masterpiece tho. when i first read it it was the best world building i'd ever read, bar none.

took my dad a bit of cajoling me to get me to read it tho. he'd given me 3 authors to read, arthur c clarke, frank herbert, and issac asimov.
he said they were classics and i needed to read them. i read Foundation and Childhood's End before i read Dune. heh.

:splutter:

Reading Dune and not reading God Emperor of Dune is like getting naked and jumping into bed and then .... falling asleep.

I'm more with luci. Dune is among the best handful of books ever written. Extraordinary. GE is very good, but certainly not as good. None of the others come close.

Sorus --

Murrin -- I'm going to be the contrarian and say you should read Borges. I loves me some Borges. But if you've already started Dune, I suppose you should go ahead and finish it. Then read Borges.

I agree that Dune was the best, but I wouldn't go so far as to say stop there. It's definitely worth reading up to the end of God Emperor. Heretics and Chapterhouse were good, but the trouble with them is they made me want to read the woefully inferior sequel books by his son, just to know what happened. Those ones are definitely not worth your time- I looked up a plot synopsis on Wikipedia rather than read the last one .

Yeah, read Dune. Read at least to God Emperor, because that's almost as good as Dune. (Messiah and Children, I don't like so much, but GE is amazing I thought.)

Busy on The Drawing of the Three now. I think the DT (up to book 5) is the best stuff King has written, and Roland one of the greatest characters ever. Book 6 was a let-down, and book 7...well...it depends on what day of the week it is.

--A

Started Dune. Right now I have way too many unread books to consider buying Dune sequels, so I doubt I'll go beyond this one.

I'm also not convinced by all the hype.

Can't blame you for being sceptical. Still, imo, taken by itself, it's probably the best single book ever written. Some series (first 2 Chrons, Malazan, ...) surpass it, but it took lots of pages to do so. No individual book from them is both as good and a story that can stand alone. He could have stopped with Dune, and have achieved all anyone could ever expect. Same way I view The Matrix and its sequels.

Well so far there's a lot of shoehorned exposition.