I've considered posting in this thread again before, but I always decided against it, as I was afraid it had had its run. But now that it got revived again, and with such life, I think we can keep this thread around forever. Recently, I read The Marvels, from Brian Selznick. I read it in Dutch, but it was incredibly well translated. I would definitely recommend it: it's a bit unusual, as it starts out by dozens upon dozens of pages only consisting of drawings. And when you get to the text part, it doesn't seem to even be connected to the drawings. But I really, really like how the story develops, and it was very well-written. I'd also say it's suitable for all ages, even if you're a little more sensitive. I am, but if I took breaks after very intensely interesting chapters, I could manage. For my 18th birthday anniversary, I got two compilations of Marten Toonder's work. He might be the best writer I've read, and it's Dutch, mind you. Reading Marten Toonder reminded me why I do still want to maintain my Dutch, even if I often prefer to use English. I haven't ever seen any English translations of his works, unfortunately, and I'd consider it to be very difficult to translate, as Toonder often uses interesting and meaningful but unusual wording, many characters have got their own distinct style of speaking and vocabulary, and Toonder even introduced many new words to the Dutch language, which could be very hard to translate. To get a bit more of an idea, I've quoted a paragraph from Wikipedia (I actually prefer the English articles on Toonder and his work above the Dutch ones):
Yes! Yes! This has always been my biggest dilemma: the scale... I just didn't think anyone else was that nitpicky. I've come to the same conclusion as you reached: same scale for the sake of the story, but still significant size differences. It's a tough one, though, because of instances such as you've described.
One of my all time favorites is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It's pretty scary at some points, and I would not recommend for anyone under 16, due to some of the subject matter. (How a father and son witness others attempting to survive following the apocalypse.) I feel that McCarthy's short, fragmented sentences adds to the sense of terror that you feel for the characters as they try to survive. I personally think that this book is much better than the hunger games series. I don't want to give too much away so I don't spoil it - it's THAT good.
Some of my favourite books are the Warrior Cats series and the book Three Dark Crowns (there is a second book too called One Dark Throne)~!
Metro 2033. I'm currently rereading for the dozenth time and it's one of my favourite books I've ever read in my 17 years on this planet. I haven't read the sequels, because the ending to this one is a very nice self-contained one - it's a perfect 'oh... crap' twist. For me, at least, it raises some interesting philosophical and social questions. It's also rather well-written if you can look past a few parts where the Russian to English translation clearly isn't as up to scratch as it could be - you probably won't notice anything, but I live for spotting spelling/grammatical mistakes that slipped through publishing (I have no idea why I do it, either) and so I think I was just actively looking for them during my first read. The book follows Artyom, a young man who has lived his life beneath the Moscow Metro for most of his life after a nuclear apocalypse. He sets out on a journey from his home station to the largest station known as Polis in search of - from what I can remember - a weapon to destroy the 'Dark Ones', who are wiping out entire stations and killing Artyom's people. These are human-like beings - in fact, heavily hinted to be Homo Sapien's evolutionary successor - who can communicate through telepathy and live just fine in the radioactive wasteland above. He must evade the mutated monsters that roam the tunnels, and the various factions - ranging from religious cults, Communists, Nazis to gamblers, mercenaries, etc. - that occupy the stations. I'd also heavily recommend Looking for Alaska by John Green, the entire A Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin (18+ tho obvs bois), The Hobbit by Tolkien, and a favourite I had back when I was around 10 years old - the Changeling series by Steve Feasey. Since you probably don't know what this one is, The Changeling is about a boy who finds out he's a werewolf, and the last of his specific type - obviously, he's the strongest and most powerful of them all and can't control himself yet. It's pretty heavy fantasy - vampires, magic, demons, and the last book even had zombies (the main villain learns how to resurrect dead people and uses them as an army), but it's set in a modern day Great Britain (one was also set in Iceland and another in the US). I think I picked up a lot of the way I write from this series, so it's pretty special to me and I may be biased. But, still, I reccomend it a ton. p.s I am aware I may or may not have misspelled the word 'recommend' a few times here, I'm tired. will fix in the morning (probably not), dont hurt me
I enjoyed Robert L. Foward's Dragon's Egg and Starquake. The Dragon's Egg in the story is a neutron star inhabited by aliens. The story is the chronicle the contact between humans and the cheela and is considered to be an example of hard scifi at it's best.
Sounds very similar to Star Dragon by Mike Brotherton - though it has a biotech / genetic-engineering element that makes it a little hard to latch onto at first.
Do not get me started on books I love. The list goes on (as does my 'to read' list, but let's not talk about that). I usually stay in the YA section, simply because they always seem to have more interesting plot than the ones I find in other areas (I'm only a year older than YA age, so no judgement ). I recently finished The Lunar Chronicles, which starts with book one: Cinder by Melissa Meyer. Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless Lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth's fate hinges on one girl...Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She's a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister's illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai's, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secreats about her past in order to protect her world's future. I honestly thought it wouldn't be that good because, even though it is sci-fi, it seemed like there would be too much romance, but boy was I wrong. It's one of the greatest books I've read. The next one is Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. I recommend this one to everyone. It's so good and is completely captivating. Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught in a brutal otherworldly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages, not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out. When one of the strangers-beautiful, haunted Akiva-fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is another good one. This one is...depressing to say the least. Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, great explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies. When his father is killed in the September 11th attackes on the World Trade Centre, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father's closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to some kind of peace. Last, but not least, Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. This one, man did this one make me cry. Getting tears just thinking about it. Fifteen-year-old Lina is a Lithuanian girl living an ordinary life in 1941-until Soviet officers invade her home and tear her family apart. Seperated from her father and forced onto a crowded train, Lina, her mother, and her younger brother make their way to a Siberian work camp, where they are forced to fight for their lives. Lina finds solace in her art, documenting these events by drawing. Risking everything, she imbeds clues in her drawings of their location and secretly passes them along, hoping her drawings will make their way to her father's prison camp. But will strength, love, and hope be enough for Lina and her family to survive? I do hope if you get the chance to read any of these you love them
From reading the summary, not greatly similar in my opinion, but I suppose eachof us would have to read both to truly say.
Started rereading Anne McCaffrey's 'Dragonriders of Pern' series - something I hadn't touched since high school. While the events of the series are intriguing, more and more I find her writing style difficult to latch onto. This was the same issue I ran into with 'To Ride Pegasus' as well. Honestly, it's made me start to question why I enjoyed her books the first time around... On a more positive note, I do highly recommend author Dave Creek. I recently finished a collection of short stories set around the 'doomed' world of Splendor, and they were an absolute joy. Of particular interest is the way various alien cultures feel well-developed and established 'right out of the box,' without needing an encyclopedia of backstory to flesh out characters and motivations.
So, for a while I thought I'd just let this thread die... but then I realised threads don't die in this era of Empire Minecraft. Like, seriously. In 2013, and I think before too, we often had threads that got less active after some months, and then after some months of inactivity someone would create a new, very similar thread. But nowadays we've got many threads that have been going for years, and are still in frequent use. I like that! Edit: I just realised I've got another post describing this on this very page. Anyway: I read the Geronimo Stilton version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer recently. For those who don't know: the Geronimo Stilton series are Italian books written for children. Geronimo Stilton is a mouse, and obviously a pseudonym, but the books themselves are written by different authors, I'm certain, as dozens of books, in different series, come out each year. One of those series consists of retold classics: I've read a lot of them, and can say that they are very well-written. The stories stay very close to the original (with the exception of substituting humans with mice), and for the books where I've read both the Geronimo Stilton adaptation and the original version, I can say that the adaptation was remarkably faithful. So, that was my introduction. I described the series, here, so you know that the books and stories are generally faithful to the original novels; as I haven't read the original The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But I do think I know the story and characters well, now, through reading that Geronimo Stilton book. Well. On to my opinion. I thought the plot was rather shallow. Lots of passages seemed unlikely at best, and quite nonsensical to be frank. I also couldn't find much of a theme/thread throughout the entire book; it was more of a collection of stories. Another issue I had while reading was not being able to connect with the main protagonist. I mean, in the end, it does seem like this dude Tom Sawyer's got some kind of feeling inside his heart, but most of the time he's inconsiderate, uncaring and reckless. At first I expected some kind of message for the people reading it to come out of that... but not really. He stayed like that mostly, and it didn't really seem to be a problem. But it was to me, because someone who's being rude and thoughtless time after time as a main protagonist needs some interesting character trait to compensate for that, to make reading about him fun. But he didn't have any. He was just an ordinary, disobedient, boy. So yeah, I really didn't like it in any way. Has anyone here read the original novel? What do you think of it? Because I have surely heard of this book before, I think, and yet there isn't even a 'Reception' section on Wikipedia.
I definitely read the novel, but it was years ago... I came to like Tom Sawyer more in that book, honestly. I have a feeling it was better written than the Geronimo Stilton adaptation. However, overall the book was a bit boring and slow, in my opinion.
I tried to see if anyone wrote about it yet but I couldnt find it so. My favorite book throughout growing up and even today is called " the tale of despereaux" (they made it into a movie but its bad soooo bad just dont). No matter how many times ive read it this book has always drawn me in and I will love it forever. Another book i love is the old Bunnicula series, I always thought it was adorable that instead of blood the bunny had to live off the coloring of vegetables.
Bunnicula! I loved those books (although I read them 'backwards,' with Return to Howliday Inn being my first). So much fun, and gloriously silly.
Oh my, where to begin? I love books. Doesn't matter if it's Lemony Snicket A Series of Unfortunate Events, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Diana Gabaldon or James Patterson's Maximum Ride series. I read a lot. I guess for the older crowd and not the kiddo's I would suggest The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. I actually have a set of 1 editions all autographed (got very lucky with those) or anything by Anne Rice (aka Anne Rampling).
Oh, and by the way, I felt similar things, but to a lesser degree, while reading The Wizard of Oz. I've heard quite a lot about that, but I found the story weird, and quite illogical. But I guess it might be the musical that made it popular to such an extent as it is know now? I did like the concept of the character The Wizard of Oz, and the other characters were also interesting at their core, but the story didn't make much sense to me.
It's supposed to be weird. Interesting fact though, as with many of that author's books, it's actually an allegory–The Wizard of Oz represents the political situation with populism at that time. The yellow-brick road was the gold standard, the silver slippers the silver standard, the scarecrow the farmers, the tin man the industrial workers, the Wicked Witch the forces of nature, the Cowardly Lion William Jennings Bryan... heck, even "Oz" is short for Ounces. Everything from the flying monkeys to Toto represented something, which may be part of why it's weird.
