I, too, am reading Mark Reads, and it's hilarious! (I wonder how much more I would pick up if I actually read shit slowly instead of being all "MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NOW NOW NOW"). I keep laughing at the repeated "OMG SHIT IS GETTING REAL" comments from him. He has no idea how real shit will get.
Man, you just get darker and darker, and the weird thing is, your aura? Beige.
Host ,'Why We Fight'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
meara - Dec 04, 2010 10:38:30 am PST #13068 of 28277
DavidS - Dec 04, 2010 10:47:07 am PST #13069 of 28277
"Look, son, if it's good enough for Shirley Bassey, it's good enough for you."
JZ followed Mark Reads all through the Harry Potter books and it's pretty fun also as he hits the big HSQ moments.
Jesse - Dec 04, 2010 11:23:09 am PST #13070 of 28277
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
(I wonder how much more I would pick up if I actually read shit slowly instead of being all "MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NOW NOW NOW").
Yeah, I can't even remember where the second book ended. I might re-read it right now.
Volans - Dec 04, 2010 11:37:16 am PST #13071 of 28277
move out and draw fire
OK, I guess I have to read it. I bought it back when, and the DH read it and very much didn't like it, so that plus me being kind of ooky on the premise meant I haven't read it yet.
Liese S. - Dec 04, 2010 11:45:16 am PST #13072 of 28277
"Faded like the lilac, he thought."
I don't know how to read slowly. The SO's family were all gawking and marveling at me this holiday over how fast I read. I was all shruggy about it. "Do you...enjoy it?" "Yes, I just enjoy it faster than everybody else."
Rayne - Dec 04, 2010 12:19:15 pm PST #13073 of 28277
"Oh no! Has falling sky liquid once again caused you the sadness?" -Starfire
Thanks for the link to Mark Reads! I think I might enjoy reading that almost as much as I enjoyed reading the books!
Consuela - Dec 04, 2010 1:14:30 pm PST #13074 of 28277
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix
DH read it and very much didn't like it, so that plus me being kind of ooky on the premise meant I haven't read it yet
I don't think the series as a whole pays off that well, but the first book in particular is written in that OMG CANNOT PUT THIS DOWN kind of way that makes for best-sellers and movie franchises. And if you read it fast enough you won't notice all the world-building problems.
The premise, though, is definitely ooky: it's a dystopia, even more so than Westerfeld's Uglies universe. Which I think is all-around a much better series, but doesn't have quite that insane narrative drive THG does.
Ginger - Dec 04, 2010 1:37:35 pm PST #13075 of 28277
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda
I just finished Mockingjay, and I didn't see the ending as being particularly bleak, except in that Panem is still a pretty damn bleak place. Everdeen, however, rejects the role as pawn she was forced into by the revolutionaries. The world can change. The games are over; people know about the other districts and what the Capitol did.
If you want compelling and the absolutely anti-bleak, go with Connie Willis' Blackout/All Clear.
Consuela - Dec 04, 2010 8:48:24 pm PST #13076 of 28277
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix
I have a slowly growing list of writers I used to love whose narrative tics are making me no longer love them. Okay, for "list" I mean: Connie Willis and Guy Gavriel Kay.
But Passage was full of those miscommunication-confusion-chaos bits driving the narrative, and it annoyed me, and apparently the new duology is more of the same. Not sure I can deal with it, especially not for 800 pages or whatever it is.
As for Kay, waaay too much ungrounded foreshadowing and playing hide-the-baby with the reader.
Kate P. - Dec 05, 2010 5:43:49 am PST #13077 of 28277
That's the pain / That cuts a straight line down through the heart / We call it love
Suela, I felt very much as I expect you'd feel about Willis's new duology. (And it's more like 1,000 pages -- maybe more!) Way too much of the plot, and too many of the individual scenes, hang on a missed connection or communication gone awry, and in the second book, I nearly lost it when a character from 2060 has to go back to the 1970s to read archived newspapers. Do internet archives no longer exist in 2060??? There were definitely things I liked about it, but I felt like it was a 400-page book screaming to be freed from the 600 pages of unnecessary interior monologues and narrative trickery surrounding it.