/lit/ - Literature

Check out "Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell". Presents magic as kind of stodgy scholastic affair requiring lots of tedious study of old esoteric philosophical charts and texts in Latin.

> /lit/ in a nutshell

A lot of people like it & you will almost certainly enjoy it. It definitely fits the profile of what you're looking for.

>>2239979
>>2239979
>>2239979

+1

WoT still does it the best.

I think the author of Mistborn is actually working on the next WOT book.

Twilight is better.

>>2240148
yeah, he is

WoT was his inspiration for writing

>>2240052

Does what the best? Being a bloated piece of shit series that the author turned into a pay-per-word tediumfest?

It's one of the best series I've ever read.
Hands down, best magic systemS in anything I've ever seen.
Brandon Sanderson does everything in Mistborn that I want to do in my own fantasy.


Also, there's a sequel to Mistborn out that takes place several years into the future of the world called Alloy of Law.

>>2240171
the only people that say that are the retards that don't have enough the intelligence to understand significant detail

go back to reading your plebeian action movie

>>2240413

>>2240435
No, really. I understand that the books get really slow at times, but the overall series is amazing. Even some of the "useless" scenes end up being important, it's just something you have to live with and get through.

I wont deny that there is shit in those books that feels like a waste of space and useless filler, but overall the ideas that the author develops over time if you pay attention are excellent.

There is something that gets lost when other authors try to chop up their story so that they can somehow pull you along. Jordan made sure things made sense and it's one of the staples of his work.

>>2240449

Are we even reading the same series? I read up to the one after they cleanse the taint and then...nothing happens.

I stopped in disgust. Seriously. Once the last book comes out I'm going to read the synopsis on Wikipedia and be done with the whole damned mess.

Enjoy it if you want, I won't judge you, but the whole series is a clusterfuck of good ideas bogged down in women tugging their braids and bitching about men.

>>2240449
Let me put it this way: I agree with you but I doubt the wisdom of arguing the point. And I think you're exaggerating a little bit about how better it is than other fantasy.

But yeah WoT till i fucking die.

>>2240449
Let me put it this way: I agree with you but I doubt the wisdom of arguing the point. And I think you're exaggerating a little bit about how better it is than other fantasy.

But yeah WoT till i fucking die.

>>2240456
pretty much everyone in the fandom will agree that CoT is terrible + nothing happens. It's the low point of the series.

>>2240474

Does it get better after the mormon takes over?

I've been waiting for this shit to end since I was sixteen goddamn years old.

>>2240456
You just can't focus on the negative. The worst of that shit stops around Knife of Dreams. I have a feeling your impression left off with Crossroads of Twiligh or around there, which is agreed by everyone to be the worst book in the series exactly because *nothing* happened.

It's all just part of the story. If you get through it, the new books are really quite good. Sometimes the detail can be quite good too. I never knew what I "spit dog" was before reading those books. Google that, it's just an interesting bit that show Robert Jordan knew about what he was writing, filling in every bit of story that he thought of.

It's a writing style that you have to approach with an appreciation for history ("the flame and the void" is a form of "one-point meditation"). "The Wheel of Life and Death" is "The Wheel of Time". Aspects of the world come from King Arthur. Etc...

>>2240485

I might check out the book after the one I stopped at, but there's no way I'm reading through all the braid tugging again.

I also need to finish Philip K. Dick's library before I even consider it.

>>2240474
Taken as a whole, I learned a lot from the books and I enjoyed them because of that.

I also don't mean to come across as "WoT is better than your shitty fantasy." Everything is a wealth of information if you have the tools to understand what it means. That goes for any fantasy book, and some are easier than others. That by no way makes a hard book better or an easy book worse, they are both necessary when it comes down to it.

WoT is what it is, with all it's flaws and brilliance.

>>2240480
Yes, the first book that he wrote I thought was easily the second best in the series after the first one (maybe even equal).

>>2240489
Take your time. I even found that re-reading the first book revealed how much of the story RJ had in mind before he even started to write. There are things in the first one that we still don't know about and, in some cases, we can't truly understand until the fourth or fifth book (the prologue, for example).

Knife of dreams is still a bit lagging (it's the last book RJ wrote before he died). The Gathering Storm really pulls the series out of the slump though.

The only thing that I worry about is the capability of Sanderson to understand what RJ wrote about, and it might reflect a little in the writing. Large portions of the books Sanderson writes are heavily influenced or written by RJ though, because he left a massive amount of notes and recorded conversation before he died.

RJ also wrote the ending of the series, so Sanderson wont be making it up or anything.

I honestly don't get WoTfans.

The series isn't well written. It has poor prose, laughable pacing, unrelateable characters and lacks any depth. Compare it to something like Gormenghast and it doesn't feel like it's worth the paper it's printed on.

Also, it's not even pulpy enough to be entertaining to the GRRM or Jim Butcher crowd. Nothing happens in the entire series except the girls bicker about the boys and the boys have to save the girls.

I just don't get it.

>>2240639
Oh, I agree that it's nothing in comparison to Gormenghast, or the work of many other non-epic fantasy authors. I've read a lot of fantasy. What I like about WoT is that the characters are, to me, quite good for epic fantasy - they're relateable, likable, interesting. They go through changes and develop. I like the characters a lot. The gender politics, I don't want to get into, but I think it's not as bad as people make it out to be & most of the female characters are among my favorites (Nynaeve is the best) (Elayne sucks, though). It's also a really interesting world (for epic fantasy) and Jordan for all his verbosity does have moments of real talent in his writing.

It also probably helps that I was probably around 11 or 12 when I started reading the series.

>>2240639
This. Furthermore, Jordan feels the need to repeat every mundane detail over and over again because he assumes that his readers have the memory of fruit flies.

If you are interested in Brandon Sanderson at all, read The Way of Kings.

>>2240647
I read the first book of WoT many, many years ago and actually liked it. My favorite part was when Rand is talking to the ship's captain and basically says something akin to "Yo niggam know any good places to go 'splorin'?" and the Captain responds "Yes madam. There's blah blah blah..." and proceeds to list of really badass,mysterious sounding places. I didn't continue the series for whatever the reason and I asked my friend who had what actually ends up happening. He basically replies "Uh, nothing". This was around 2006.

I recently picked the first book up again and tried but I could just not get into it. It was cliche, I hated the characters and the pacing just sucked.

>>2240669
>It was cliche, I hated the characters and the pacing just sucked.

Sums up genre fiction, fantasy, pulp.
Grats on growing up

Re: Mistborn

Is this Young Adult book, or for more mature audience?

>>2240639
I believe you have a poor understanding of the books. Prose is only a device, it has no substance in itself. Same with pacing. Unrelatable characters stem from a general lack of understanding human beings. Depth is in all things, the only thing hiding it is ignorance.

>>2240673
All things are cliche when you become familiar with them. The more you know, the more patterns you recognize. It is for that reason that we can classify any genre. How WoT arrives to it's "cliche" points makes it unique.

>>2240725
>Prose [...] has no substance in itself.

This is what genrefags actually believe.

>Depth is in all things, the only thing hiding it is ignorance.

And this is how they actually speak. holy platitudes batman

>>2240737
It is a shame we can't have a proper discussion. Could I implore you to consider giving proper refutes to my arguments, or is it simply a waste of time?

>>2240753
lmao, what arguments? which, your unsubstantiated laughable statement that prose is "only a device" or your vague platitude about depth being in all things (thus negating the existence of meaning for the term 'depth' by lack of exclusion criteria)]?

you've presented no arguments to refute.

>>2240753
it's a waste of time duder

>>2240760
Prove to me prose is more than a device, and I will agree with you. The real substance of the story, the lessons that the story provides, are not dependent on the prose. Pros simply aids in understanding an idea if you are more prone to comprehending things a certain way. It's largely petty semantics if you like the prose or not.

I don't know how you are defining depth. My statement about depth simply means that, if you arm yourself with the proper knowledge, you will be capable of deriving information out of anything, due to the interconnected nature of the universe. I don't erase any meaning for the term, I just elaborate.

>>2240794
But prose can be beautiful surely? Even the prose in speculative fiction is beautiful at times.

>>2240725
Prose is to stories as cinematography is to movies. Also, I understand people, I just couldn't relate to the characters in WoT because they're all morons and/or children.

There is nothing redeeming about WoT. There is no message, no greater meaning. It's books like these that give fantasy and scifi a bad name.

>>2240798
I could memorize a poem and you would only have to say the title to trigger that memory and subsequent understanding. There is no need for elaborate prose there, but the beauty of the idea comes out nonetheless.

>>2240810
>There is nothing redeeming about WoT. There is no message, no greater meaning. It's books like these that give fantasy and scifi a bad name.

I disagree - it's good for what it is and not entirely thoughtless - but I respect your opinion.

>>2240817
Again, the poem can also be beautiful in its form, in its use of words and technique.

>>2240794
Again, you have no arguments. You're simply stating things. Look:

>Prove to me story is more than a device, and I will agree with you. The real substance of the prose, the musicality and rhythmic aspect, are not dependent on the story. The story simply acts as a vehicle for wordplay. It's largely petty semantics if you like the story or not or not.

The point is: the plot is incidental to prose. Plot is just a side-effect of performing an exercise prose. You don't need a hundred thousand words to tell me about HOW you blew up a bridge. You can just tell us what happened without the prose getting in the way of story. There's no art to story. There's no beauty to "this happened then that happened." It's clear that the real point of the work is the style, the presentation, the word-choice, the overlay. Plot being incidental to prose Is just one of those self-evident truths that pretty much everyone takes for granted.

>>2240794

I agree with this guy for the most part. Pretty words are nice and everything, but the way something is written doesn't deepen understanding of the core ideas or anything of any real importance. Unless of course the book is aiming to do that. And if it is then I know its a Joyce fetishists jerk off aid and I stop reading.

I read things for the story and the concepts, and I enjoy the fuck out of what I read. I read Metamorphosis, and I loved it. Then I read Nabokov's analysis of it and laughed at how pretentious and useless it was. Is that what you look for when you read >>2240760 ? Simple ideas overworked so they appear deep? Metaphors and similes so needlessly convoluted that you think understanding it makes you clever? Literature doesn't actually teach you anything that you can't learn through common and simple life experiences, so why do people like you go on about how deep this pretentious drivel is and repeat that I should feel bad about reading GRRM and Sanderson?

Why do so many people hate the idea of reading a book for the story?

>>2240824
Because stories can also be beautiful. And beauty is valuable in itself. I do read things for the story as well as for the aesthetic experience, but the way you describe reading seems almost mechanical, a process of extraction in which the story is broken down, meaning taken out, story left behind in the trash. I don't know, man.

>>2240824
I read books for entertainment/plot. I just don't want it to sound like I'm being told the story by a high schooler.

>>2240810
I believe there is greater meaning and message, the subject of the books is The Wheel of Life and Death. I just think it's meaning lies in a different area than you might be used to.

Well if you want to read a book where everyone is a superman like you are, be my guest. But a significant theme in WoT is the ability for characters to make mistakes. I can certainly relate to being fallible. Not sure if you are the same way.

>>2240824
>the way something is written doesn't deepen understanding of the core ideas or anything of any real importance
>Literature doesn't actually teach you anything

How vulgarly pragmatical; don't you have any appreciation for beauty? People can find beauty in words, just as you enjoy "story and concepts".

>why do people like you go on about how deep this pretentious drivel is and repeat that I should feel bad about reading GRRM and Sanderson?

I didn't and don't, I just took offense at:

>Prose [...] has no substance in itself.

but nice work pigeonholing me.

>>2240841
It's not about being infallible. The characters in WoT are extremely retarded whenever the plot demands it.

>>2240820
Well, lets say a rainbow then. I can understand the idea of the rainbow if I simply see it. Prose is a device we invented to convey that "rainbow" to other people. Even prose itself came from somewhere, so it's understanding is not dependent on itself.

>>2240822
"You don't need a hundred thousand words to tell me about HOW you blew up a bridge."

But the detail in WoT allows me to vividly picture every scene as I read. Compared to a more dense book, I can actually speed through this without having to chew on the condensed bits another author might give. To many, the act of "chewing" that information might actually be entertaining because of the little "puzzles" that you work through as the author gives them out (James Joyce comes to mind).

For me, the "chewing" bit of WoT comes after I have stopped reading and have time to contemplate the book.

>>2240831
Lower level writing is not always bad, it's just the type of communication the author decided to use. It is a bit hard to roll back after reading some more complex materiel, however.

>>2240853
I can see where you are coming from, and I disagree, but it's difficult to have that conversation without looking through the actual books. I would like to believe that the characters follow logical paths throughout the novels. For now I would agree to disagree.

>>2240864
>Well, lets say a rainbow then. I can understand the idea of the rainbow if I simply see it. Prose is a device we invented to convey that "rainbow" to other people. Even prose itself came from somewhere, so it's understanding is not dependent on itself.

Even if prose is basically mimetic, it can also be beautiful in itself - in the same way that a sculpture or a painting, although representing reality, is not beautiful only because it represents reality. When I look at a Toulouse-Lautrec, I am not admiring the beauty of a scene in a Parisian nightclub which he has more or less accurately reproduced; I am admiring the beauty of his reproduction of a scene in a Parisian nightclub.

>>2240876
But I also feel beautiful prose, while being part of the story, can be isolated. The mathematical beauty of the construction of a sentence is special in itself. The story does not need to teach a lesson or impart any wisdom other than a beautifully constructed sentence. Right now, I am imagining a very sophisticated Dr. Suess.

>>2240864
None of that is relevant to the topic. None of that is an argument in favor of your thesis that "Prose [...] has no substance in itself." I don't care about what you picture or not. The reason why we can't have a proper discussion is because you don't know how to have one. Also, if you think people find Joyce's heavily layered prose entertaining because there are "puzzles" to be solved, you didn't even miss the point-- you're in an entirely different reality than the point.

>>2240884
This guy knows what's up too. Coherence is not a requirement for beauty.

>>2240886
Well, some people enjoy solving puzzles, something that Joyce likes to make (thought puzzles, anyway). But, of course, I recognize that there is an entire level of social commentary that people might also read his books for.

On the prose front, I was proven wrong. Prose does indeed have a mathematical beauty. I guess the confusion came in as to what the "substance" was that I mentioned. Beauty is substance, but I had more of an educational sort of substance in mind.

>>2240909
>Well, some people enjoy solving puzzles, something that Joyce likes to make (thought puzzles, anyway). But, of course, I recognize that there is an entire level of social commentary that people might also read his books for.

You missed the "his prose is beautiful" demographic, which is, you know, the biggest. The so-called puzzles just deepen the ways he uses prose, by having several meanings, the way his words cross over each other's meaning. People don't solve his puzzles: most just take a course or buy a guide to not have to struggle to find the entire repertoire of meaning in his prose.

>>2240921
Of course, the beauty of the prose is nice. But, beauty of prose is not something I focus on. Words will build no walls, and I tend to read for application because of that.

>>2240936
I was just pointing how you missed the biggest portion of Joyce readers for some reason.

pragmatism is so vulgar

>>2240939
Thank you for showing me a different perspective, then.
It was a good conversation.

>>2240950
i agree, pic related

I am on book 5 of WoT and it is good so far! You have to have patience though. I heard the series starts to slump around book 6 but I enjoy living in RJ's world so much I do not think I will mind.

On another note, if you are into Sanderson read Way of Kings. Huge scope and very ambitious. Great action and all around awesome story. Will leave you wanting more at the end as it is planned to be a 10 novel long series though. Anyone have any idea when book 2 is coming out?

Way of Kings is the best book I have read of Sanderson. Waiting eagerly for the 2nd....

When you highschoolers are done with something you shouldve put down 8 years ago, let me inform you that there is a new, awesome fantasy series.
It's called The Prince of Nothing (by Scott Bakker) and it's a truly intelligent fantasy.

people never feel Meh about the wheel of time, you either hate it or love it, for me it's the later

yes OP go read Mistborn, although I'm loving The Alloy of Law taking the magic system up a notch by advancing technology so now you have not only mixes of the three magical systems in Mistborn but you also have people creating iron bubbles around them to deflect bullets of certain metals, warping time, it's very very interesting, probably the most interesting magic system I've ever read

But Sanderson doesn't write cheap anime scenes he makes good stories and great characters, and it's because of them that you really get into the books.

Mistborn is a VERY good epic fantasy trilogy, my god that ending.It grew on me as I didn't particularly care for the first book.It's exactly what you're looking for.
And again, AoL has a few excerpts online and he managed to blow my mind by using the same universe only writing it better.

And that's what I like about this author is that he improves with each book, if he keeps up the quality in WoK he'll be really well remembered.

>>2240990
I've read PoN

you must not have read many books in this genre if you think other series aren't "intelligent"
>>2240972
he's finishing the WoT series first I think