BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Kchama posted:

Rothfuss wearing that Joss Whedon shirt sureeee takes on a different meaning after the whole revelations that Whedon was never a true believer in feminism and just did it to bone young actresses.

Atlas Hugged posted:

"It's beautifully written" is the lamest, laziest way to praise the book.

Karnegal posted:

"well, Lin-Manuel Miranda is brilliant at music, but he also thinks Patrick Rothfuss can write, so we can't just assume talented people know what the gently caress they're talking about."

Chuck Buried Treasure posted:

I posted this in the PYF bad book thread not too long ago but my favorite Eragon thing is that large sections of the sequel were dedicated to Paolini jacking himself off about how smart he is for being an atheist, with one particular part having the ancient wise sage dragon explaining to Eragon that there is no afterlife because consciousness is a process of the physical body and there’s no existence outside of that material body.

Paolini was in such a rush to enlighten us that he had apparently forgotten that the villain of the first novel was a necromancer whose powers were derived from the spirits of the dead.

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Stephen King is wonderful

Evil Fluffy posted:

I think I've said this before but in a country where Donald Trump was able to be elected president Rothfuss being popular is surprising, it's a perfect fit. Trump makes a bunch of stupid claims that you can see are obviously bullshit with even the slightest bit of thought, and Rothfuss's books are fine if you shut off your brain completely but their wonderful writing quickly reveals itself as horrible garbage if you actually think about it or the story.

HIJK posted:

All sci fi is questionable since everything goes back to the 60s and 70s when it was still niche and the geeks writing this stuff didn't feel the need to keep their sexual proclivities under wraps Now we're stuck with this industry where the frathouse behavior is still common but now it's getting greater scrutiny. Which makes it all the more baffling that Rothfuss hasn't been targeted by Twitter outrage to be honest.

latinotwink1997 posted:

This thread is like the written form of that pretentious douche from Good Will Hunting that gets slammed on by Matt Damon. Biggest circle jerk ever with no redeeming discussion on a bad book. Thread should be closed and stop taking up TBB space.

Captain Hotbutt posted:

I actually really want to read this book. It's got a massive fanbase and it seems...influential is the wrong word but it's got it's hooks in the publishing world. I like dead threads and playing catchup with other goons.

Tim Burns Effect posted:

didnt she even write a 4th twilight book and then not release it because she got mad about it getting leaked?

M_Gargantua posted:

Read The Emperors Soul, if you don't like it you're forever lost to the world and going to claim "Genre fiction is trash" to your deathbed. You'll exclusively read high brow literature and still be constantly disappointed, but at least smugly disappointed, at it.

M_Gargantua posted:

I am the one who enjoys Bad™ literature.

PJOmega posted:

What's astonishing is Lin-Manuel Miranda praising Rothfuss's writing of music. It's loving bizarro world.

Habibi posted:

That loving Rothfuss is going to ruin Hamilton for me.

Ccs posted:

Rothfuss' book topped another list of best fantasy novels (of the 21st century.) https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/04/the-50-best-fantasy-novels-of-the-21st-century.html?p=2

There are a lot of actually good entries on the list, like Perdido Street Station, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and Pratchett's Nightwatch, but somehow BOTH of Rothfuss' books in an incomplete trilogy get higher rankings.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Reminds me of a clickbait 14 Electronic Albums You Need To Hear list I once saw that listed the Kraftwerk debut as an essential recommendation. You know, the one that doesn't feature any synthesizers and was disowned by the band.

M_Gargantua posted:

If normal people enjoy it it doesn’t get to be important literature.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

BTW why do fantasy novels always fail to have fantasy settings. Its always poorly masqueraded mimicries of the real world. There is always a bunch of brown people with turbans in the east who live in a desert and always people from "the mysterious far east" whoo have curved swords and poo poo

Atlas Hugged posted:

If you want to discuss it in good faith, there are two main reasons why. The first is that unless you speak an East Asian Language at an incredibly proficient level, you're relying on a translator and how good the translation is, and is to you personally, depends on the skill of the translator and the decisions they make. Do they keep idioms as literal as possible and explain them with footnotes? Do they look for an appropriate English idiom that gets the right idea across while sacrificing the flavor that you're actually reading the book for? Do they tone down the content to match the "sensibilities" of a western audience?

The second reason is an extension of the first. Books written in English for a western audience take for granted that the audience will be familiar with references and allusions to the western canon. Likewise, books written in an East Asian language for a specific culture take that for granted as well. Translators have to consider how to approach these and there's no one best way to do it. It usually means that there are going to be a lot of footnotes and outside research put on the reader to get the most out of the story.

So in short, people tend not to read those books just because it turns reading into quite a lot of work. Doing work isn't a justification not to read them, it's just not something a lot of people are going to be interested in doing as a leisurely pastime or while killing time on an airplane.

For another perspective, I'm an English teacher in Asia. I've taught tons of novels to my students and several of these students speak English at near fluent levels. They have zero problem reading the words on the page and getting the gist of what is happening. But they don't understand any of the references to the Bible, TV shows referenced in the text, historical events, or general pop culture. And often times they don't know that they're missing a reference. If a reference is part of an innuendo or double-meaning, the student isn't confused about the literal meaning of the passage and doesn't realize that there's more depth to the story and that they need to look something up. They really need an ambassador of the culture to take them through the novel.

If you're reading in your free time and you don't have access to that, even with the internet at your disposal, I can't begrudge you not wanting to read books where you're not the intended audience. It's certainly more enriching to dig deep into a novel from another culture, but you're basically doing an undergraduate degree to actually enjoy it.

There's a reason why books like "Shogun" are so popular. They give exposure to a foreign culture while being from the perspective of an outsider that the audience can relate to.

A Major Fucker posted:

It was a fairly edgy scene, yes, and I give Rothfuss credit for that. But while the rest of the book was believable, that was so improbable it took me out of the story. You can make the excuse that it's fantasy, so anything can happen, but the point is no matter how magical the setting, your characters still need to be believably human, including their young anuses.

Solice Kirsk posted:

If we wait 100 years, this will be considered literature too. The only difference between literature and genre fiction is age.

Captain Hotbutt posted:

My buddy tried starting "Name of the Wind" - he got it for a dollar at some used book store.

I told him it had a lot of hype but I've heard it's not that good. (From these forums but I'm not mentioning SA to people, no sir)

He texted me and told me it sucked and that he was going to read Hemingway instead.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

One of the Malazan books is called Memories of Ice, so I assume that it's at least as good as One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Rime posted:

I wonder how much of the precipitous quality decline of genre fiction post-90's is from the rise of obsessive nerds, the kind of ilk who write articles on wookiepedia or developed Klingon as a language, demanding that their fantasy-land physics absolutely must adhere to modern scientific rigor.

Benson Cunningham posted:

Because he's confused knowing the definitions of words like canard or zeitgeist with the ability to produce relevant literary criticism.

Benson Cunningham posted:

Have you ever done that thing where you put your hands together and make fart noises?

Basically that, but about books.