I loved The Hobbit, but I couldn't get into The Lord of the Rings.

This is me. I got through Fellowship of the Ring, and then lost the book under the couch in the middle of The Two Towers and realized that I didn't care, since I already knew how it would end and the writing just wasn't interesting enough to me.

This is basically me! In junior high, I loved The Hobbit, and I read Fellowship, but then the library didn't have Two Towers (or maybe ROTK), and I never finished and apparently didn't really care that much. When the movies came out, I read the books again and, man, it was a slog to get through that last book.

t sits with Ginger

I really dislike Hardy and James. I rather like Hemingway, though, despite the hypermasculinity. He can tell a story, and his sentences don't go on for pages.

Jilli, you will be happy to hear that my book club, in honor of Bradbury's death, is reading Something Wicked This Way Comes this month. And I must admit that I'd forgotten how fabulous his prose could be. The small calliope inside the carousel machinery rattle-snapped its nervous-stallion shivering drums, clashed its harvest-moon cymbals, toothed its castanets, and throatily choked and sobbed its reeds, whistles, and baroque flutes.

How splendid is that, after all?

sighs happily

It's such a wonderful, lush book!

I think one of the reasons I cherish Something Wicked This Way Comes so much is that Charles Halloway has always, always reminded me of my dad.

How splendid is that, after all?

'Tis splendid. But horribly inaccurate! The musical instrument in a carousel isn't the calliope, but a band organ, which is basically like a giant player piano/organ with added percussion and tootling horns. It runs off a giant, folded up piece of paper (like the paper rolls on a player piano).

I'll guess we'll let this one slide, Mr. Bradbury what with you being a genius and all and the book being so awesome, but a little research didn't hurt anybody.

A proper calliope (pronounced Kally-ope) is a steam driven organ - usually (though not exclusively) on the circus train that's so loud it can be heard five miles away. It's there to announce the arrival of the circus and drum up business. It can also be on a large truck with an attached steam power.

A band organ at play.

t /circus geek

A proper calliope (pronounced Kally-ope) is a steam driven organ - usually (though not exclusively) on the circus train that's so loud it can be heard five miles away. It's there to announce the arrival of the circus and drum up business. It can also be on a large truck with an attached steam power.

Or a steamboat. And I can attest that you can hear it from quite a distance, but that one also has the river to bounce off of. [link]

Sorry, didn't mean to be a Bradbury buzzkill

But somebody was wrong on the internet in the fantasy canon!

I rather like Hemingway, though, despite the hypermasculinity. He can tell a story, and his sentences don't go on for pages.

That makes at least two of us. Wonder if there are any others. In my experience most Buffistas loathe Hemingway.

I like Hemingway. Not enough to want to find and read everything he wrote, but what I have read I liked fine.

It always tickled me to hear the calliope playing on the river when I was on Calliope St.

During my brief encounter with Hemingway, I found him kind of tedious--I'm definitely an utter whore for elaborate, positively rococo literary style and to the best of my recollection his sentences seemed to plonk along leadenly. Which is, of course, itself a very conscious literary choice, but not one that especially resonates with me. Or, resonated -- I mostly read the fishing stories, mostly in high school. I should give him another try.

I think all writing is cilantro. I mean, there will be people who actively resist and resent any writer because it's not their cup of tea. That's to be encouraged, I guess.

I think the biggest divide is that there are people who read for plot and people who read for character and people who read for language and people who love it in various percentages. Most readers, myself included, are plot readers. We are the reason for the success of thrillers and Harry Potter and almost all bestsellers. We plot readers love to know what is happening next, even if the characters are a bit flat.

The people who love the character development are different creatures. They are the ones who don't care if nothing happens. They don't mind the flawed asshole characters. They dig the nuances. (Shakespeare, IMO, excellent character development with ludicrous plot).

The language people are the ones who often stop to admire the beauty of what is written. They read Franzen and are arrested by the way he uses words. They don't care that the characters are foolish and the plot (is there one?) is thin.