Better? How? Or do you mean Pike resonated more with you?

Stine's book were much more formulaic. They were fun to read, mind you. But they were all fairly shallow entertainment, and largely unmemorable. There's something killing teenagers, and our hero and/or heroine eventually finds out who it is. Every short chapter ends with a cliffhanger, be it artificial or genuine.

Pike's books, on the other hand, were longer, just to start. His characters were more diverse. His ideas were more original and far more interesting. I love his Last Vampire series (and, actually, you might want to check out the first book, at least), because it's the only place I've ever seen vampire mythology integrated into Hindu mythology. He goes back to the time of Ram, Sita, and Krishna. It's so fucking cool. I always had this theory that he was Indian and writing under a pseudonym, because nearly every one of his books had something Indian about it, either an Indian character or someone randomly eating Indian food. Pike's books weren't always supernatural, and he had a lot of great books where the murderer was just a psycho. He also wasn't afraid to let his protagonist die. One of his books ended with the protagonist dead, but having left behind evidence of the killer's identity. And finally, when Pike wrote books for a more adult audience, they were really fucking good, whereas Stine's adult book was kind of crappy.

I reread Remember Me a few months ago, the first time I'd read a Pike book in a few years, and while the prose may not be stellar (it's for a young adult audience, after all), the book was still as good as ever. He's one of my favorite authors, and I'm still waiting for the bloody sequel to The Cold One.

I love his Last Vampire series (and, actually, you might want to check out the first book, at least), because it's the only place I've ever seen vampire mythology integrated into Hindu mythology.

Short answer: they resonated more with you.

Short answer: they resonated more with you.

That's unfair to Pike. His books are just better, period. More complex, and oh yeah, he's one of those authors you know actually does research. The first book of his I read showed knowledge of diving technique and the science of the bends, and The Listeners incorporates a lot of Egyptian mythology. Yeah, I thought the Indian things were cool, but he would have been great regardless. The majority of his books were cool for their own sake. I mean, the VCR that recorded tomorrow's news! The author whose muse was a troll creature in the closet...or something, I know that was in one of the book somewhere. They were better, deeper...and oh yeah, there was more sex.

That's unfair to Pike. His books are just better, period. More complex, and oh yeah, he's one of those authors you know actually does research.

No, it's not unfair to Pike. How could it be? I haven't read either of them and I'm not judging either of them.

But you're laying a value judgment on them as storytellers, and I wanted to know whether you'd read them from the perspective of a kid gobbling down a good story, or whether you were trying for the crit attitude. I found enthusiasm for the element of using your own particular culture as part of the trope - perfect personal resonance. The crit stuff comes from the older perspective, or so it seems, and as such, is irrelevant to what I was looking at - unless you're saying that you sat down at age ten with Goosebumps and thought all that stuff about knowledge of diving technique and complexity and whatnot.

And honestly, I would have trouble believing you did, at that age. I'd have trouble believing anyone at that age did. And if they did, I'd like want to smack them for being too precocious.

I mentioned this recently, that one of my favorite CJ Cherryh books is, I admit, not her best work. I've read and appreciated some of her best work, and it is layered and dense and full of metaphor and that other thing I'm blanking on--allegory, and socio-political commentary. All that wonderful stuff that makes your brain go Ah! And So! But my favorite of her books makes my heart go Yee! and Oh, dear. It appeals to me on a gut level, and while the others do also, they do so to a lesser degree than my favorite.

DH loves most of her work. He hates my favorite. It doesn't resonate with him at all, except to repel him.

I think most intelligent people can agree on the quality of someone's writing. What they can't do is judge the value a particular work has to someone else.

ETA: This is merely an observation, and not aimed at anybody. It sounded a little preachy on reread, and that wasn't the intent. The discussion just nudged me.

I think most intelligent people can agree on the quality of someone's writing. What they can't do is judge the value a particular work has to someone else.

Now, if they would just teach this in school and to those snooty lit crit reviewers in newspapers.

I think most intelligent people can agree on the quality of someone's writing. What they can't do is judge the value a particular work has to someone else.

Yes, this, exactly - it's what I was trying to articulate and don''t seem to be able to. What I was looking for was whether P-C's use of the word "better" was based on his reaction as he first read them - presumably as an adolescent, which is their target audience - or on his more adult perspective looking back on them, which is more likely to be tinged with a critical eye.

And the one thing that seemed to jump out - with his emphasis - was the gut reaction to Pike's incorporating a beloved element into a cultural thing that P-C, for one, could personally resonate with. Everything else in there read like an adult perspective.

I remember when I was reading R. L. Stine's books as a kid, I liked them for a little while, but after awhile started to get kind of bored with them because there just weren't all that many different stories that he used -- although, when you're looking at what I'm guessing is at least 100 Fear Street books, where all of them have a premise of something along the lines of "supernatural presence of some sort terrorizes teenagers," and they all take place in the same small town, there probably is only a certain number you can read before most of the plots start seeming the same. I think the last ones of his that I read were the Fear Street Saga ones -- I'm not sure why I never went back to his other books after that, but I didn't. I don't know whether the getting bored with them was because they really were that repetitive or just that they didn't seem as cool at 12 as they had at 10.

I think I liked Christopher Pike a bit more just because he wasn't quite as repetitive -- he was more likely to put stories in other places or other times, so I didn't get the same feeling of knowing what was going to happen once I got through a few chapters. Also, Christopher Pike books gave me far more nights when I had to sleep with the light on.

what I'm guessing is at least 100 Fear Street books

Also, just to keep in mind (and unless I'm totally wrong) many of Stine's series books were eventually written by ghostwriters/packagers. He may have had input on storylines or helped to pick the ghostwriters, but he didn't actually write every single Goosebumps book.

Read both, and Stine wins out for me on memorability. It's been over a decade and the "Madelaine came to my house!" taunting of the Goode family ghost from one of the Fear Street Saga books still pops into my brain as cause of much of my insomnia in the fifth grade.

[insert segue here] one of my resolutions is to actually sell some writing this year as I'm too often roped into donating things to the new 'zines of friends and appearing in publications where I know the editors and I can't see where the nepotism ends and the integrity of my piece begins... Problem is I write a lot of slice of life humour and it seems there's no (paying that I've found anyway) market. Anyone aware of any humour-centered fiction mags that may have escaped my attention?

It feels like I'm living in some sort of bizarro world because the only writing success I've had lately is academic (read: the stuff I dredge through on autopilot) or ramblings in my lj. While the idea of getting a paper on Alfie (1966) vs Alfie (2004) published strikes me as pretty damn cool, it also seem damned hypocritical given my need to attack the ivory tower in every single paper I'm forced to write (even in the aforementioned one, in fact).

edited b/c I apparently have Gertrude, and not R.L. on the brain.