/lit/ - Literature

I love these books. F Gardner (PBUH) has inspired me to try writing my own series like this. I shall follow in his footsteps and write my own books too.
btw Arcade>Cherokee>Kappa>Crocodile>Cradle
They're mostly all good but that's the order I liked these books in.

Alright I'm going to check these out. Can they really be read in any order or is that just a meme?

Thoughts on the 4chan books?

Are there going to be more? I finished reading these the other night. Enjoyed them a lot. I thought Arcade was the best one but they were all good. Are there any other /lit book series?

What other books are there written by 4chan? Is this the only one?

These books! They're the only official /lit approved series. Amazing stuff.

Honestly? Not till I read F. Gardner's "Horror's Call" series.

Any of these books. Basically twist endings: the series. Call of the Crocodile is worth reading just because I don't think there's ever been another twist like this before.

The official /lit books, of course.

Let's have an actual meme free discussion here. Which of these books are the best/worst? I read Arcade and Crocodile and liked them both. Crocodile was a bit confusing but still pretty good. Arcade was better and went in a different direction than I thought it would (It's barely about an arcade)

How does F. Gardner put out work work so consistently? What other authors are from /lit? Only real answers here please

These books. You can read them in any order, which is really cool. Kind of like the modern version of a Choose Your Own Adventure type series.

These books, of course.

Ok boys. I decided to take a plunge for you all. I read “The Call” books. Some of it was painful to read due to poor editing. BUT I'm going to review all of them.

Call of the Arcade
Surprise! This one is good. This is Gardener's best book. While I did enjoy parts of all of F. Gardener's books, it's not even comparable. The reason he likely advertised this book is because it's an enjoyable B-Movie type story. It's science fiction and stands out from the rest. Characters seem better developed. The antagonist is truly despicable yet you wonder what his motives are. If you get to this part, you're probably going to enjoy the rest.

Call of the Cradle
I liked portions of it. There's more characters in this one than the others with no real protagonist. Not terrible. But Gardener re-uses some of his ideas in this one. The main villain is pretty good in this and the ending is okay....just really goofy. Gardener is at least self aware of this as he pokes fun of the ending and how it happens in the narrative. What Gardener doesn't realize is that doesn't mean it's any less absurd. One of the most asinine and silly conclusions to a book I can think of. The fact that the book points this out and is otherwise serious in nature, makes it even stranger.

Call of the Crocodile
The most complicated book of these. It's much harder to follow and constantly references The Divine Comedy and Peter Pan. The tone is also lacking. It goes back and forth between seeming like a children's book to being extremely violent in it's content. Gardener attempts to do some similar things that he did in Arcade. Weird artistic comparisons he draws form the plot. He does the same sort of thing in Arcade by drawing parallels to Faust. But in Arcade he does this MUCH MUCH better. In some ways I kind of think it's hard to believe that the same guy that wrote Arcade wrote all of these other ones. Arcade seems like it was written by a creative genius who just didn't hire an editor. The bulk of the rest of his books feel like they were written by lunatics. It's not a bad book. I would even recommend it because this one has one of the most insane plot twists I've ever seen. I won't spoil it. But halfway through the book there's this one part where suddenly all of the confusing plot turns come together and starts to make sense. I have a feeling Gardener made this book because of this idea and just built the rest of the story around it. I will give credit where it's due and say it's extremely experimental. I can't think of any other story that does the plot twist Call of the Crocodile does here. If you don't like the twist then you'll probably hate the book. The main reason I would recommend it at all is simply because the build up and delivery of the big reveal is so strange. I have the most to say about this book because of how confusing it is. It makes me wonder if Gardener's original goal with this book was to intentionally make the most confusing book ever written.