CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Radical Dreamer (post: 1192156) wrote:The Red Badge of Courage

T_T I have yet to meet someone who has read that book and loved it as much as I did.

You know, this whole thread is a perfect example of how different people's tastes can be. I personally enjoy Dickens' writing, verbose though it may be, and I enjoy reading several authors like him that other people would probably consider overly wordy and boring. Oh well.

A friend of mine at work was talking about fantasy authors who use too many words. He said, "I don't need to read ten pages describing how pretty the meadow was."

SpoonyBard (post: 1192553) wrote:A friend of mine at work was talking about fantasy authors who use too many words. He said, "I don't need to read ten pages describing how pretty the meadow was."

Still, there's a difference between a modern fantasy author who describes this a bit too elaborately *glares at Christopher Paolini* and a classic author like Charles Dickens or Jane Austen or something. Their writing is so much better than a modern author who wants to make one of those 900-page fantasy tomes by putting it tons of description.

I think Lord of the Rings is mostly brilliant, but for the love of all things sacred, did we really need 200 pages of forest description? I mean, Fellowship is like, trees, trees, walking through the trees, look, more trees. Oh, yay, Rivendell! The end.

A couple of other books I like:

The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Both are very well-written, enchanting, uplifting stories.

The Neverending Story by Micheal Ende. This is far above and beyond the movie. It's a little slow in places, but otherwise is pretty amazing.

Books I hate:

Virtually anything by Stephen King. The man needs an editor. He has a lot of good ideas, but his writing is so bogged down with gratuitous details that I can't stand reading most of it. It's easier to watch the film adaptations. I think his best story was probably The Green Mile; however, I think the movie is better than his original novel. XD

Most modern fantasy novels. I mean, come on! Save some trees and stop printing this crap.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The other books in the series weren't anything to write home about, but were still passable. However, this one really takes the cake in terms of books I wish I'd never bothered with. I don't know how I managed to finish the freaking thing. The pacing is atrocious, the characters are irritating, and there's really no kind of payoff or reward for making it through all the crap. Needless to say, I gave up on the series after this.

Jane Austen is not a great writer. She takes a huge amount of word to say very little. I think girls just like the old fashioned/more innocent romance story found within.

Warrior 4 Jesus (post: 1192875) wrote:Jane Austen is not a great writer. She takes a huge amount of word to say very little. I think girls just like the old fashioned/more innocent romance story found within.

I think her dialogue and stories are good, but I have a really hard time with her writing style. Too heavy-handed for my tastes.

The Chrysalids - John Wyndham

It was just really boring. The only real reason I finished it was because I had to read it for school. I guess the overall idea was good but the writer wasn't

Number 1 book to burn: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. We had to analyze that freakin' book in Advanced English 2, and I wasn't the only one talking about creating a bonfire with that book. And if it weren't for the fact that it reaches people, I would want to burn some of the Left Behind movies, at least metaphorically. SO many things that were never in the books!

I would burn The Heart of Darkness. That book is just plain evil.
I would definitely burn Arthur the third book of the Pendragon cycle (Not the pendragon series. Completely different.) They just basically kill massive armies of savages, give us a graphic description of the physical ramifications of that many dead people, then despair about having to kill the next massive army. Which they then kill. Cue the graphic description.
And I like Jane Austen....

Oh, I enjoy her, too. However, I would say that Emma was insufferably long. I saw a two-hour movie (including commercials) that couldn't fit all of the plot in.

Books I Love
The DragonLance series by Margret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Shade's Children by Garth Nix
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Shadowmancer by Graham Taylor
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
The Baily School Kids series by by Marcia Thornton Jones and Debbie Dadey

Books I Don't Like
Dracula by Bram Stoker (then again, I was pretty young when I started reading it, so...)

-Mist

Books I Love:

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End Of The World - Haruki Murakami
The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys as well as Good Morning Midnight!
Asleep - Banana Yoshimoto as well as Goodbye Tsugumi
The Center Of Everything - Laura Moriarty
Incantation - Alice Hoffman
The Chronicles Of Narnia - C.S. Lewis
Maximum Ride - James Patterson
The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow (the novel) - Fuyumi Ono
Kino No Tabi (The Novel) - Keiichi Sigsawa
O'Keefe - C.S. Merrill
The Lovely Bones - Alice Seabold
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Elementals - A.S. Byatt
Blood And Chocolate - Annette Curtis Klause (This book reminds me of when I was in middle school)
The Night of the Solstice/Heart of Valor Series - L.J. Smith (now Ljane Smith)



Books I'd Love To Burn:

The Entire Robin Hood Trilogy of Lawhead by Stephen Lawhead...as much as I wanted to love it I couldn't. It will be given to our public library, maybe someone else can find the great story I thought I would find within it.

Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger..yes, I know it is a classic and I, for one love the classics but I felt Holden was whiney and when I was a teenager reading this book I could not relate in the least to his plights. Plus, the onslaught of cursing used within the story didn't add anything and was unnecessary for as often as a swear was used.

Books I Love:
Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfeld
Replica series by Marilyn Kaye
Sweet Valley High series by Francine Pascal(and a team of ghostwriters):red:
Alice books by Lewis Carroll
Ashley Stockingdale trilogy by Kristin Billerbeck(sp?)
Elsie Dinsmore/A Life Of Faith series
American Girls Collection, especially Samantha, Felicity, Kit, and Addy
almost anything by Meg Cabot
Deenie by Judy Blume

Books I Wouldn't Mind Setting Fire To(A Very Diverse List, To Be Sure, Just My Humble Opinion):
Anything by Sylvia Browne
Bridge To Terebithia by Katherine Patterson(sp?)-hated it when I had to read it in elementary school. Boring, boring, boring!
Maniac Magee(sp?) by ?-another book I hated when I had to read it in school
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte-not a bad story, but goes on waaay too long
This ultra-dull textbook I had in high school on Washington state history, I remember wishing I lived in a more interesting state historically
This one biography I have on Greta Garbo...I wanna read about her life and career, not a bunch of claims about how she went out with!
Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford
Aquamarine by ?-the worst mermaid book ever written!
Forever by Judy Blume-I like her in general, but this one I could do without