Sunday Morning Book Thread - 08-11-2024 ["Perfessor" Squirrel]

Welcome to the prestigious, internationally acclaimed, stately, and illustrious Sunday Morning Book Thread! The place where all readers are welcome, regardless of whatever guilty pleasure we feel like reading (he's always in the last place you look...). Here is where we can discuss, argue, bicker, quibble, consider, debate, confabulate, converse, and jaw about our latest fancy in reading material. As always, pants are required, unless you are wearing these pants...

So relax, find yourself a warm kitty (or warm puppy--I won't judge) to curl up in your lap, dust off those textbook covers, and dive into a new book. What are YOU reading this fine morning?

PIC NOTE

I had another picture lined up for this week, but then ace gave us an important update on Phas3 Thr33 of his sh3lving proj3ct. I found this artist's rendition of what that might look like.

WHY YOU SHOULDN'T TRUST BOOKTUBE

Although I do watch "BookTube" videos, I tend to take their opinions and recommendations with a fairly large grain of salt. I'm always a bit skeptical of their "top ten" lists or whatever, because they never line up with my own. That's only to be expected because everyone's tastes are different and what one person raves about, another will loathe. Some of these BookTubers do have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, though, so people do pay attention to them as long as they put out halfway decent content. I have quit a few BookTubers because they have annoyed me with their opinions on certain works of literature, because of how they respond to criticism, or they have revealed themselves a shill for certain intellectual properties that have been destroyed by wokeness (**cough**Amazon's Wheel of Time/Rings of Power**cough**). I certainly would not expect anyone in the Moron Horde to rely too much on the opinions of BookTubers unless they've been vetted somewhat and have provided good recommendations that you enjoy. We here at AoSHQ Sunday Morning Book Thread have an awesome, amazing community of readers who know their stuff when it comes to literature. I'd put us up against the subscribers of any BookTuber out there...

(HT: I am the Shadout Mapes)

(Any resemblance to my cat Penny is purely coincidental.)

J.R.R. TOLKIEN ON CREATING FICTIONAL WORLDS

I found this to be an odd interview. While Tolkien does ramble around a bit in his responses, it also sounds like the interviewer doesn't even try to understand the points Tolkien is making when it comes to creating fictional worlds. To me, it sounded like they were talking past each other, with each one having their own agenda in speaking, but not quite meeting each other in the middle. Granted, this is only a short snippet of a longer interview, so perhaps there is more to this story.

RESPONSE TO A COMMENT

I didn't have a chance to respond to JTB's comment last week, so I thought I'd do it now.

Perfessor,

You mentioned Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series in the post. My attempts at modern (compared to the LOTR and older) epics usually leave me cold. Too derivative or lacking depth. Do you think the Williams series is good enough to change that view?

Posted by: JTB at August 04, 2024 10:57 AM (zudum)

At the time The Dragonbone Chair--the first book in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn--was released, the epic fantasy landscape looked very different than it does today. Lots of fantasy was inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, Michael Moorcock's darker Elric saga, and, of course, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It was not at all surprising to find derivative works because that is what publishers wanted based on demand from the public. Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara was written expressly as a Tolkienesque story to meet that demand. His sequel, The Elfstones of Shannara, was a very, very different story, and set the foundation for all of the Shannara books that came afterwards.

On the surface, the basic plot of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn has a lot in common with Lord of the Rings. The Big Bad Ineluki the Storm King, a spiritual being of immense malice and hatred towards humankind, launches a plan to destroy humanity and restore his own people, the mysterious Norns, an offshoot of the faerie-like Sithi, to their rightful place as the undisputed rulers of Osten Ard. Bands of unlikely heroes must go on their own epic quests to find the means to stop him.

However, the story itself goes much, much deeper as we are exposed to Tad Williams' own unique touches of worldbuilding that make his epic fantasy stand head-and-shoulders above most of his contemporary authors of that era. His tale is full of interesting, tragic backstory as we see that the Sithi have fallen very, very far from when they were in charge of the world. The remnant only seek to live in peace, but cannot because of the Storm King, their former lord and master, who stirs up the hatred of humans towards their own kind. The main villain we encounter, the excommunicated priest Pryrates, is one of my favorite bad guys in all of fantasy literature. He's a complete monster that will stop at nothing from achieving his goals, which are as dark and mysterious as he is. When we first meet him through the eyes of Simon, a young kitchen boy in the Hayholt, Pryrates crushes the skull of an innocent puppy in front of Simon just because he can. From that point on, Pryrates is an utter bastard that we love to hate.

While the bad guys are thoroughly evil, they are matched by good guys that embody virtue and heroism. Duke Isgrimnur, the gruff but loveable ruler of the Rimmersmen, shows his merit time and time again as he seeks the Princess Miriamele after she runs away from her father, who is caught up in wickedness beyond his understanding. He's another of my favorite characters because of his courage, his honor, and his dedication to protect those weaker than himself (which is pretty much everyone--he's quite large and beefy). Sir Deornoth, Price Josua's knight and his "right hand" (because Josua lost his own right hand in a fight many years ago), exemplifies the knightly virtues, despite his own doubts, basing his life around the legendary hero Sir Camaris. He has a minor, but ultimately significant role in the resolution of the plot at the end of the story, as it is through him that the heroes are able to find the tools needed to win the conflict. Saying any more would give away important spoilers...

I read these books during my prime formative years as a teenager--between the ages of 15-19 or so--which is also the age of the main character in the story, more or less (Simon is 14-16 over the course of the books). So I related to his hero's journey in many ways. It's a great story for adolescent boys. But it also holds up quite well for us older gents. I re-read it last year and enjoyed it just as much, if not more so, than I did when I was younger.

Williams has continued to enrich his world through a sequel series (The Last King of Osten Ard) and a couple of "interlude" novellas that take place within the same world, adding depth and complexity to a world that was already drowning in it.

MORON RECOMMENDATIONS

A fun (in a macabre way) look at the cycles of history is A Canticle for Liebowitz. After a thousand years of a nuclear winter, which sends most of humanity into primitive, dark-ages sort of existence, man becomes technological again, only to blow up the world again. Posted by: no one of any consequence at August 04, 2024 09:27 AM (+H2BX)

Comment: It's been said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. We have not yet been through a truly cataclysmic world-shattering apocalypse as a species, though doomsday predictions have been fast and furious over the past few decades. We are also living in extremely perilous times. According to the extremists on the Left, the world will be doomed by climate change because of our recklessness. According to the right, the Leftists intend to destroy the world (or at least a significant majority of the population) on purpose. It remains to be seen which scenario plays out. And if it does, can humanity rise from the ashes to become a technological powerhouse once again? Are we doomed by our own hubris to continually destroy ourselves?

I went back to my pile of recently-purchased used-kids-novels by Jim Kjelgaard. This time I went straight to his most iconic novel, Big Red. It stars a teenager, the sone of a backwoods hillbilly who lives on the edge of a mountain-ranch owned by some rich guy. The teenager does odd jobs for the ranch, and eventually the rich guy notices that the kid is good with dogs, so he entrusts the teen with his prize-winning Irish Setting show-dog, the titular Red. The teen then proceeds to teach Red how to be a working/hunting dog, in addition to just a show-dog.

The book is oddly paced. The first third is a typical narrative, that introduces the character and sets up the status quo. But then it turns into a series of single-chapter vignettes as we follow the kid and his dog as they go through the daily life of a backwoods hillbilly. They get into a series of scrapes (the backwoods are dangerous) but get out of them because of the sheer awesomeness of Red, or (occasionally) the cleverness of our teenage hero.

The ending of the book felt a little weak, because it was just another vignette. Sure, it was a more epic vignette, that tied back to an event at the start of the book, and altered the status quo of our main characters....but it was still just a vignette. There narrative wasn't driving towards an inevitable conclusion, we just hit the end after a series of unrelated episodes.

The vignette format may be okay in a kids book (just keep the kid's attention for a single nearly-stand-alone chapter at a time) but it was a little unsatisfying for me.

Given that, I dove straight into the sequel, "Irish Red," which is a nice continuation, but is still narratively choppy. I'll soon start "Outlaw Red" which will likely be more of the same.

Posted by: Castle Guy at August 04, 2024 09:55 AM (Lhaco)

Comment: As usual, I like to include recommendations for quality children's literature because they need it more than us 29-year-olds. I'm not surprised that the narrative structure is in the form of related vignettes about the life of a boy and his dog. I wonder what the intended age range is for this book. Maybe it was perceived at that time that the children reading the book would not have the patience or understanding of a more complicated plot structure with a solid beginning, middle, and end. The structure of Big Red is not confined to children's books, of course. Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and Clifford Simak's City are simply a series of loosely connected short stories, even though both books are sometimes called "novels."

I started reading Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms, that was published on the day of the '29 stock market crash, in keeping with today's topic. It's based on his experience as an ambulance driver in WWI, as many here are probably aware. He wrote the ending 39 times, and the edition I'm reading has all versions, encouraging me to be more painstaking in my own writing.

Posted by: Norrin Radd, sojourner of the spaceways at August 04, 2024 09:49 AM (hsWtj)

Comment: I can't imagine writing the ending of a story 39 times before settling on the final one that goes to print. Just goes to show how critically important the editing process is. I'm curious as to which ending is the reader's preferred ending versus the author's preferred ending...

More Moron-recommended reading material can be found HERE! (1000+ Moron-recommended books!)

WHAT I'VE ACQUIRED THIS PAST WEEK:

As you all know, I've been reading a fair number of Dean Koontz books lately, due in part to Moron Recommendations. Last week, one of you forced INSPIRED me to add a few more Dean Koontz books to my TBR pile:

• The Face of Fear
• The Funhouse
• The House of Thunder
• The Key to Midnight
• Shattered
• The Vision
• The Voice of the Night

WHAT I'VE BEEN READING THIS PAST WEEK:

After reviewing some of OregonMuse's old Book Threads, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of just listing WHAT I'm reading, I'll include commentary as well. Unless otherwise specified, you can interpret this as an implied recommendation, though as always your mileage may vary.

Salvation Lost by Peter F. Hamilton

I'm delving back into Peter F. Hamilton's Salvation Sequence of books. When we last left our heroes, they had just discovered the horrifying truth behind the supposed benevolence of an alien race, the Olyix, who are on a holy crusade to convert everyone in the galaxy to their way of thinking--by forcibly kidnapping them and mutilating them, if necessary. Now, the heroes of the present and those in a distant future struggle to find a way to stop their inexorable crawl across the universe until they reach the End of Time itself and find God.

As alien invasions go, this one is particularly horrific in scope and implementation. The Olyix "exchanged" biotechnology that enhanced human lifespans and capabilities, but there is a truly disturbing price to be paid when the full nature of that exchange is activated. Imagine if the COVID "vaccines" could be triggered to prepare us for alien conquest.

By this time I've read enough of Hamilton's works to know that there are multiple plot threads across multiple timelines (past, present, and future) and that there will be twists and turns galore before the end of the novel. Always an interesting read. Absolutely ludicrous levels of ultra-tech, though no faster-than-light drive technology....

Word and the Void Book 2 - A Knight of the Word by Terry Brooks

I needed something lighter and fluffier after reading Salvation Lost so I went with this one. It tells the tale of a man who suffers from PTSD after witnessing children being slaughtered from his own perceived incompetence in attempting to save them. Disillusioned with his calling as a Knight of the Word, he has left all that behind in an attempt to build a new life for himself that doesn't involve war with demons.

Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. Now, aided by a young woman he saved several years ago, he must pick up his black staff once more and wield magic on behalf of the Lady who bestowed it upon him. Otherwise, many, many more innocent women and children will suffer. Possibly leading to the end of the world.

The Word and the Void trilogy is an urban fantasy series that Brooks canon welded into his long-running Shannara series. We find out in subsequent series that the demons of the Void were behind the Great Wars that ultimately lead to the creation of the Four Lands in the far distant future when magic has returned to the world.

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