/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2962350]

I was sparked to read The Wheel of Time series and I picked up the first 2 books, not the prequel. Is this length of a story worth it? I know its not finished yet once I start a book i finish it. It's a respect thing. but thanks for the help?!?!
has anyone read it?

[/sp/ Expatriate !Noy5sI6il. No.2962361]

Series tanks around the 4th book. I'm told it revives a bit when Sanderson takes over. There are more fulfilling books you can read that are less of a chore, for what its worth.

[Anonymous No.2962363]

ninety percent of the first book are such an ridiculous copy of LotR that its not even funny. srsly, its scandalous, its fucking lotr all other again in almost every detail.

however

I thought it got really good at the end - the plot starts to go its own way, the characters get more interesting and really interesting stuff happens. so I (somewhat reluctantly) continued to book two and found that it gets even better. will buy book 3 in a few weeks.

based on this my advice is to at least finish the first book, dont give up too early if you think it sucks, it really gets better in the end and the second book improves on almost all levels. have fun!

[Anonymous No.2962370]

I've been trying to find a copy of this EVERYWHERE in Raleigh. It's pretty much the only book of the series I don't regularly find in used book shops.

[Anonymous No.2962376]

>>2962361
ah thanks, I'll read the first two and see how I feel about it. What Dreams May Come is also at my local indie bookstore but its expensive for some reason, ~$15. This store has a section just for william gay and cormac mccarthy. This is coming from my, I sold a lot of my books and need new ones to feel better.
>pic is my wall because so many feels

[Anonymous No.2962382]

>>2962363
I'm reading the first two because I have them and it was suggested to me so why not, I just wanted to know if all 13 was worth it.
>>2962370
That sucks im sorry, if I could ide send it to you but I need to read it. :(

>pic is my tattoo idea, I want this statue thing above my left elbow.

[Anonymous No.2962384]

>>2962363
ALSO, ive never read LOTR, or seen all the movies completely, I know basic huge plot points but thats it. This this would help improve the book to me?

[Anonymous No.2962404]

>>2962384

definitely.

[Anonymous No.2962514]

There is no reason to read these books. It's a total waste of time. Jordan was a terrible writer, and these are terrible books. Read LOTR, Gormenghast, Malazan, ASOIAF instead.

[Anonymous No.2962529]

>>2962350
>It's a respect thing.

More important is to respect yourself and not waste dozens, perhaps hundreds of hours reading derivative, poorly written shit like this series. It is an addictive time sink that will just leave you feeling (quite rightly) that you wasted your time. Use that time to read real, varied literature and you will thank yourself for it once you are done.

[Anonymous No.2962532]

>>2962514
>Gormenghast

Ma nigger

[Anonymous No.2962536]

>>2962529
>>2962514
Give me an example of some well-written fantasy, then. A Song of Ice and Fire isn't too great, and Tolkien isn't a great author either.

[Anonymous No.2962546]

>>2962536
See
>>2962532

If you don't like Tolkein don't read Tolkein derivatives.

[Anonymous No.2962554]

>>2962536

[Anonymous No.2962561]

>>2962529

All fiction is a time-sink, you retarded elitist faggot.

There is no more value in reading Proust than in reading GRRM (who is fucking awful, by the way), other than the value ascribed by various groups. It's utterly situational - you'll get no kudos at a Song of Ice and Fire convention for being able to recite Swann's way by heart.

Additionally, critical theory can be applied to all literature, if the post-modern experiment taught us anything, it's that there is no good.

> In the delineation of differance everything is strategic and adventurous. Strategic because no transcendent truth present outside the field of writing can govern theologically the totality of the field. Adventurous because this strategy is a not simple strategy in the sense that strategy orients tactics according to a final goal, a telos or theme of domination, a mastery and ultimate reappropriation of the development of the field.

[Anonymous No.2962568]

>>2962536

>Give me an example of some well-written fantasy, then

Borges, Marquez, John Barthes, Mervyn Peake, China Mieville, Milorad Pavic. Just the ones I can think of from the top of my head.

Oh, let's put Burroughs in there as well - he wrote mostly sci-fi and westerns.

[Anonymous No.2962583]

>>2962561
>if the post-modern experiment taught us anything, it's that there is no good.

In that particular sense the Post-Modern experiment has been a failure.

There is objectively more to be gained from an understanding of Proust to an understanding of GRR Martin. One will deepen your understanding of the human condition, the art of writing itself and hopefully help spring new ideas you never realised you could think in yourself (as well as help you understand the context of many other great works, and engage in deeper conversation with other people who love to read literature), A Song of Ice and Fire will give you a deep understanding of dragons, fake heraldry and teenage girls shitting themselves.

There is not inherently anything wrong with fantasy. However, some series are written almost willingly without any real content other than their own fictional universes, and will only reveal the laws that exist in this imagined worlds, with characters so poorly written as to reflect back nothing on reality. It is not because they are fantasy books, it is because they are poorly written.

A rich, well written novel can do all the things ASoIaF can do and on top of that so, so much more, that no-one would argue ASoTaF has the ability to invoke. While you -can- just spend all your time reading pulp fantasy, or sitting in your room masturbating to furry porn, the original point was the respect you should have should not be for the authors of these works but for yourself. If you invest time in something that will benefit you, and not just eat up your time, you are showing yourself more respect as a person.

[Anonymous No.2962593]

>>2962583
I kinda like the analogy this anon had at the end. Big fantasy epics are like wanking to porn. Or may be they are like eating fast food or chocolate? It is elitist to say you shouldn't be able to do these things imo. But maybe a healthy diet is what we need?

Like it is okay to masturbate a lot if you actually have sex sometimes as well. Sometimes masturbating all the time is what messes up your sex drive and stops you from going out and finding some-one. This is totally an analogy.

[Anonymous No.2962611]

>>2962583
Have you actually read the Song of Ice and Fire series? It is actually very well written with well written characters and themes that are very relevant to the world we live in, not just dragons and heraldry. I would suggest reading things before making assumptions.

[Anonymous No.2962614]

>>2962568
It depends what you mean by fantasy. Many people just mean Tolkeinesque fantasy, which limits it totally. But why should stuff like Lewis Carroll count? T.H White definitely counts.

What are stories like all the different versions of Doctor Faustus down the centuries, or German fairy tales, but fantasy? Wagner's Ring Cycle is what LoTR was directly lifted from, so does that count? What about the Norse mythology it is based on? Hell, most classical writers involved fantastical elements in their stories, it was normal. Considering things like the Poetic Edda and the Odyssey are the foundations of most of our fantasy, do we include them or not?

[Anonymous No.2962613]

Read the first three books and stop there. It becomes horrible pretty fast after that.

[Anonymous No.2962620]

>>2962611
I've read the first two, and it's mostly the dialogue that's just...cheesy. And the vast majority of the character arcs don't seem to convene at all. Little overarching plot by the end of CoK.

[Anonymous No.2962626]

>>2962620

Little overarching plot except literally everything that happens in the books, also you stopped before the best book in the series.

[Anonymous No.2962628]

>>2962611
Unfortunately yes. It has some of the most wooden, unbelievable characters I have ever read in my life. Most children's books are better written than this stuff.

The only salvageable elements in the books, and I think this is why they are popular, is the overall drama of the "Game of Thrones", and the titillation/fantasy porn. He writes good fluffy backstory, putting on his best Tolkein hat, and fairly involving narratives.

Its like a series of crime fiction, but thousands of pages long, all to tell one long-winded story. Better writers get that amount of narrative tension explored and resolved in a tiny fraction of the time, and accomplish far, far more with it.

[Anonymous No.2962652]

>>2962583

I don't entirely agree with you, and I question your use of the word "objectively", but I think you missed my main point.

I think you're basically defining "fantasy" as "stuff about elves and shit that I don't like and it's a waste of time" while I'm saying that most literature is a waste of time, time-sink, and also that fantasy has a much broader definition. (although I said that in my next post >>2962568 so fair play).

There's no objectively better literature - if someone reads A song of Ice and Wossname and then can write a brilliant analysis/deconstruction/philosophical treatise that will change all our lives, then that's that - it's the way it works.

Likewise, lots of people thought Gargantua was just a load of escapist bollocks about a giant wiping his arse and pissing all over the shop. Swift was just writing a load of old bollocks about some mental geezer on a boat. Mandeville, Mandeville what the fuck was he on? No merit there, mad cunt with his headless men.

Fiction is just something to pass the time - the derived meaning comes from the reader.

I've never read a song of ice and fire, for full disclosure, and although I'm not fond of Proust, I'm a big fan of French 18th century Naturalism. I'm just not prepared to say it's inherently better than "fantasy".

[Anonymous No.2962661]

>>2962652
That's completely incorrect. Gulliver's Travels was one of the finest works of literature that we read in college. I wrote my dissertation on it. It was certainly not at the level of modern fiction. It had quality, rather exceptional, that doesn't exist today.

[Anonymous No.2962664]

>>2962626
There's an overarching plot, but half the characters don't have ANYTHING to do with each other. They're just tangentially related.

Anyway, I've heard that books 4 and 5 are terrible, so I really don't have any reason to continue. I plan to read book 3 though.

[Anonymous No.2962665]

>>2962661

You're so quick to jump on your high horse that you missed the point entirely - I wasn't saying Gulliver's Travels is bad. I'm saying it's fantasy. Which it clearly is, unless you wrote your dissertation on the basis that it's a genuine traveller's narrative. Which you're well within your rights to do, and I applaud such independent thinking.

[Anonymous No.2962668]

>>2962652
You only really skimmed through my post, didn't you?

I explicitly said the opposite of what you are inferring. Lemme quote:

>There is not inherently anything wrong with fantasy.

See? My favourite novel is a fantasy novel, part of a series of books, long-winded, no less. I don't think there is anything wrong with the genre at all. However, it does sometimes attract a certain type of laziness, and there are a few authors (GRR Martin being one of them) who succumb to this. He is abysmally bad.

[Anonymous No.2962672]

>>2962668

[cont]

The nonsense you say about total relativity in literature is just that, nonsense. Great works are not seen as great because once, one person wrote an article. It is certainly true that some great works are overlooked in their lifetime, but the very fact we value some works over others _at all_ invalidates your argument.

A bad writer uses phraseology he accidentally borrowed from other writers, his over-all form is derivative and accomplishes what it sets out to do in an inefficient way. A bad writer's characters are normally poorly-concieved projections of some half-baked notion of "what a warrior is like, what a princess is like", or just copies of other characters (A good writer can write a character that appears truly human and expresses a depth we would expect from a real person, and is borne from a real talent in noticing other people, and what is vital in them, and expressing that in words).

What you seem to be suggesting is that there is no craft whatsoever in writing, all novels are the same, and the best ones are randomly picked. This is patent bullshit. Novels like GRRM's do have their particular strong points, and do give some kind of positive experience, but the point is well written literature offers something _better_, more lasting, more vital, and that will help you understand yourself, other people, and literature as a whole in a new light.

[Anonymous No.2962677]

>>2962668

I was more concerned with you saying Proust was "objectively" better. If an idiot reads Proust, he's going to get less out of it than a genius who reads GRRM, who I already agreed is fucking diabolically bad. I don't understand why he gets all the money and pies. I pray he doesn't get the women. Imagine that looming over you making it's "o"-face.

[Anonymous No.2962690]

>>2962661
>You're so quick to jump on your high horse that you missed the point entirely - I wasn't saying Gulliver's Travels is bad. I'm saying it's fantasy.

It was most certainly not at the level of fantasy today. Gulliver's Travels is serious literature. It has a quality not comparable to anything in modern literature.

>Which it clearly is, unless you wrote your dissertation on the basis that it's a genuine traveller's narrative.

Of course I'm not suggesting that, indeed, Gulliver's Travels is a traveller's narrative, which at the time would have been written for traveler's who actually traveled like Gulliver in Gulliver's Travels.

What I am, however, suggesting is that modern literature does not in any way compare to the gems of the past. To say that Gulliver's Travels was a traveler's log or a log for modern traveler's to guide them in their travels like Gulliver the traveler is idiocy.

Can't you people just put down your trash fiction and read something profound, like Gulliver's Travels, which was not a travel log, like you suggest, but a book about a traveler traveling his travels, Gulliver!

[Anonymous No.2962712]

>>2962690

There are plenty of modern fantasy writers who have used the genre for social satire in the way Swift has. Ursula K. LeGuin isn't one of my favourite authors, but her work is the basis of a lot of critical study. William Golding, Margaret Atwood and Jim Crace are a few other writers who've used the genre to their own ends. More recently there are China Mieville and Nick Harkaway who are exploiting the genre.

Your elitist attitude and simplistic defence of Gulliver's Travels doesn't say anything about the book as much as it reveals you to be an insecure and inexperienced reader who will eventually expand his horizons, hopefully.

it's Travelogue, not travel log, btw. ;)

[Anonymous No.2962716]

>>2962712
>Ursula K. LeGuin isn't one of my favourite authors, but her work is the basis of a lot of critical study.
>basis of a lot of critical study
>critical study
That's not a good thing. Critical Theory, which I assume is what you mean given her pandering to those retards, is about as intellectually rigorous as Gender Studies.
mfw she ruined Earthsea with that Tehanu retcon bullshit

[Anonymous No.2962719]

>>2962716

> is about as intellectually rigorous as Gender Studies.

said some teenager on the internet today. And now here's Trish with the weather.

[Anonymous No.2962720]

>>2962677
Proust is objectively better. Being able to read Proust involves the skill of being able to read at an advanced level. It is completely analogous to being able to read in a certain language.

I don't actually like Proust, but there you go.

[Anonymous No.2962724]

>>2962719
Most people with any insight into the field doesn't respect it thankfully. It and its anti-intellectual proponents are probably one of the major reasons why the humanities have suffered a blow to their respectability in the modern era. It really should just be renamed Political Pandering 101: Neo-Marxist edition.
Gender Studies could get a new name too, some candidness with its clear ties to Freudian Pseudo-science wouldn't be amiss.

[Anonymous No.2962725]

>>2962720
> It is completely analogous to being able to read in a certain language.

And that language is French, because if you read Proust in translation, you didn't read Proust at all.

[Anonymous No.2962726]

>>2962554
>>2962554
>>2962554
>>2962554
>>2962554
THIS

[Anonymous No.2962728]

>>2962712
>There are plenty of modern fantasy writers who have used the genre for social satire in the way Swift has.

Are you daft? Modern fiction writers have in no way matched the wit of its predecessors, such as Swift, among others, who wrote about travelers.

First, Swift was not writing fantasy. He set out intentionally to write a great work of literature, and he succeeded remarkably well. The traveler is an archetype. If you don't know about such things, read outside of your narrow intellectual field of study, which is obviously limited to modern trash like LeGuin, the type of fantasy that has dumbed down the whole of literature and taken it from a pinnacle to the fathomless depths of ignorance, stupidity, and the kind of daftness evident in your predilection for hacks like LeGuin.

I'm making the obvious point that fantasy is not literature and that modern fantasy does not belong in the category of literature because it's written for entertainment. Gulliver's Travels was not, as you keep saying, a travel log, but rather a discourse on the society of Swift's time. How often do you see that in today's world? Certainly not in LeGuin, who writes of science fiction worlds and lazer guns. Lazer guns do not a political work make.

They're entertainment for a Hollywood audience, such as yourself, who probably grew up on comic books, fantasy fiction, and knows nothing of what is true literature, such as a travel log about a giant.

[Anonymous No.2962731]

>>2962728

> a travel log about a giant.

OK, you got me, you're a troll. And I've been wasting my time.

8/10 good job.

[Anonymous No.2962798]

>>2962664
>I've heard that books 4 and 5 are terrible

Plebeian opinions

[Anonymous No.2962860]

>>2962728
10/10

[Anonymous No.2962874]

If you're okay with reading epic fantasy that's not grimdark, WoT is a series you can probably enjoy, despite its many flaws. If you dislike reading epic fantasy, or if you are only interested in edgy/grim/dark/adult epic fantasy, you should probably not read it.

>>2962514
You may say that Malazan is better than WoT; to some extent, it's a question of preference, and de gustibus non est disputandum. But it's essentially in the same order of things; it's not markedly better or anything. Same shit, different flavor.

>>2962536
Tolkien is a great author, sorry bud

>>2962561
>There is no more value in reading Proust than in reading GRRM (who is fucking awful, by the way), other than the value ascribed by various groups

Yes there is.

>>2962728
There's no reason fantasy can't be literature. But keep making judgments about an entire field of work that are blatantly and obviously founded in your complete fucking ignorance of it.

Why can't there be a political work with lazer guns in it? Is it is simply a priori impossible? Certainly, I'm not arguing that WoT is literature - it precisely is entertainment. But there are things within fantasy that only a fool would say are not literature. You're really an idiot. Is it really that unreasonable to think that someone should refrain from making a judgment about something - particularly a hyperbolic and over-the-top one - when they clearly have no knowledge or experience of the thing they're talking about?

[Anonymous No.2962898]

>>2962568

Burroughs? As in William S Burroughs? I tried to read him and he was either too experimental, or the book comprised of the same few gay sex scenes repeated for 200 pages, with a few instances of heroin thrown in.

[Anonymous No.2962922]

>>2962898

You sound like my grand-dad. That's almost exactly what he said about Burroughs.

[Anonymous No.2962926]

>>2962922
you grand-dad is cool

[Anonymous No.2962931]

>>2962677

A $5000 bike is not objectively better than a $100 bike. If some obese kid rides the $5000 bike he won't be able to go as fast as Lance Armstrong riding the $100 bike.

[Anonymous No.2962934]

>>2962922

Am I missing something? I've read Naked Lunch, The Wild Boys and The Place of Dead Roads and that was how they all were.

I attempted to read Soft Machine, but gave up about 30 pages in. And yes, all the talk about teen boy erections and rectal mucus was prevalent in that one as well.

[Anonymous No.2962953]

>>2962874
>There's no reason fantasy can't be literature. But keep making judgments about an entire field of work that are blatantly and obviously founded in your complete fucking ignorance of it.

Your idea of literature is founded on an education built from the remnants of a civilization dead in its tracks and addicted to television, Hollywood, and Los Angeles, USA. I'm from Peru.

>Why can't there be a political work with lazer guns in it? Is it is simply a priori impossible? Certainly, I'm not arguing that WoT is literature - it precisely is entertainment.

Your view of what is entertainment and what is not entertainment is entirely corrupted by the society you live in, in which there is nothing else but entertainment. Your best works of art are nothing but trash.

>But there are things within fantasy that only a fool would say are not literature.

This is only because your view of literature is corrupted by your entertainment philosophy. For example, a child's book is good for children, but not for adults, and you like children's books written by adults!

>You're really an idiot. Is it really that unreasonable to think that someone should refrain from making a judgment about something - particularly a hyperbolic and over-the-top one - when they clearly have no knowledge or experience of the thing they're talking about?

Because you're read some foolish stories about giants and elves? You think that's literature, but your society has dumbed down your culture until there is nothing left but morons and idiots, and you think you have attained culture when you read about elves!

[Anonymous No.2962962]

>>2962953

>Peru
>white

[Anonymous No.2962963]

>>2962953
lol. you're being ridiculous. glorious peru, the bastion of civilization.

seriously, though, the fact that a book has elves in it is no reason to think that it cannot be art, you haven't read any of the books you're dismissing, and you're a ridiculous hypberolic crazy person.

[Anonymous No.2962982]

>>2962963
You've been horribly brainwashed and misguided by your entertainment culture. And now you insult my culture? What did I ever do to you to have you stoop so low as to insult my culture as uncivilized? Are you jingoist?

[Anonymous No.2962991]

>>2962982
> What did I ever do to you to have you stoop so low as to insult my culture as uncivilized?

Uh..... you implied that everyone in my culture, including me, was a brainwashed thoughtless zombie with no understanding of art? That's, I mean, that's most of it.

>You've been horribly brainwashed and misguided by your entertainment culture

You realize that it's possible for most of us to access things that don't come from the 'entertainment culture' - to experience art and writing and thought that comes from other perspectives, other countries, other time periods, right? And that I'm completely capable of differentiating between entertainment and art?

[Anonymous No.2963019]

>>2962991
You are hardly capable of perceiving the differents between entertainment and art. Your society has dumbed you down so much that you can't even differents between thought and drivel. Tell me, then, what is your idea of thought and art? I can only assume it's Tom Cruise and Elizabeths Taylor. Oh, yes, I love Tom Cruise's novels and hairdo.

[Anonymous No.2963038]

>>2963019
I'm honestly not even sure how to respond to this...

>You are hardly capable of perceiving the differents between entertainment and art. Your society has dumbed you down so much that you can't even differents between thought and drivel.

Well, no, that's wrong.

>Tell me, then, what is your idea of thought and art? I can only assume it's Tom Cruise and Elizabeths Taylor. Oh, yes, I love Tom Cruise's novels and hairdo.

Yes, I think that Tom Cruise is a great writer. That's literally what I think, you're so smart for figuring this out.

The difference between entertainment and art, as far as I can mark it, is that entertainment is something which, whether thrilling or sad or frightening or whatever, is essentially pleasurable - its basic function is to be enjoyed, to take you out of yourself, to be fun. Art, although it's notoriously tricky to define, is to me comprised of things which are distinctively beautiful and which remind us of and inspire thought and reflection about fundamental truths of the human condition, often truths which are profoundly unsettling or uncomfortable. That's as cogent a definition as I've been able to formulate.

[Anonymous No.2963070]

>>2963038
Your idea of thought and culture, therefore, is entertainment and beauty. Typical Western ideology from your popular culture of mindless drivel. And you insult my country? What gives you the right! I would not insult your country for entertaining beliefs that it is cultured and beautiful by telling it that it is green!

[Anonymous No.2963094]

It's a great series. It is slow at parts (sometimes very very slow) but the series overall is very good.

[Anonymous No.2963100]

>>2963070
what the fuck is wrong with you seriously

[Omar B No.2963302]

>>2962350
Worste mistake you could have made was asking what most of these people think of a book. What matters is if you enjoy it, you've got two, read them and see if you want to move on.

[Anonymous No.2963315]

1-4 are phenomenal and really set the tone that make you want to read the rest of the series.

5-7 are also good

8-10 are pretty slow, and not nearly as good as the first 7.

I havent read past Crossroads of Twilight (10) but I've heard that things pick back up when Sanderson takes over.

I'm currently working my way back through the series (at #9 atm), once you come this far, might as well finish up.