Do you enjoy reading fiction or nonfiction ?

[theworldwithout]

I read fiction, scifi mostly, myself, but on rare occasions I will read history, ancient Europe/Asia.
I prefer fiction much more as it lets your imagination run wild.

 

[Kulindahr]

Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie.

Many books in the murder mystery genre could fit that criterium.

Don't you love books that when you get to the end, the characters seem just as blown away by how it turned out as you are?

Roger Zelazney did some like that, and he even did a classic foray in the other direction: he wrote a novel where right at the beginning, none of the characters have a clue of what's going on -- and the fun part is that as they start to figure things out, none of them trust the others so no one puts it all together into their noses are sort of rubbed in it. Reading that a second time was like reading a whole new novel, because I realized that almost everything in the book is something one character is relating to another, and there's no way at all to tell how much is truth, how much fiction, and how it's being slanted so the one character can gain an advantage over -- or smoke something out of -- another.
Which turned it into an entirely different novel the third time through; all efforts to struggle with who and what and why abandoned, it just reads like a rollicking good adventure.

 

[Kulindahr]

Funnything, that DUNE.

I was one of the 15 or 20 people who actually went to the cinema to see that movie. It was so awful that I only have one memory of the film--the protagonists riding a giant worm.

I'm sorry.

I was one of those who was skeptical of ever getting it right without at least four hours on the screen, and several more millions in budget than anyone was considering.

There was a worthy film version done, but I think it was for TV only or some such. Its weakness was that the viewer just about had to have read the book, because background was skimped on in a way that made it obvious they were sketching a framework that existing fans would fill in basically without realizing they were doing so.

 

[Kulindahr]

Interestingly, I've read sci-fi that makes a better read the second time, for opposite reasons: sometimes the science involved is so important you have to go slow, and it sort of loses the sense of adventure, so when you read it again and don't have to slow down for the science, you can get the swiftly tilting tale; other times the adventure tugs so hard you sort of skip the science, but then the second time, since you know the flow of the adventure, you slow down to take in the science, only to discover how much the story is about the science nearly as much as about the adventure.

BTW, the fun Zelazney novel in question is called, IIRC, Nine Princes in Amber -- which when I first say the title sounded like some kind of archaeological mystery; bugs in amber is one thing, but nine fully preserved princes?

 

[Kulindahr]

I have decided to bookmark this thread, Kulindahr, because I think I'd like to read that book.

I want to introduce a new idea to the thread. Ponder this:

What books have you read that, at the time you read it, seemed like a turkey? But later on, when you looked back on it...you thought it profound?

(I hope that makes sense).

One book I read that fits that criteria is The Robots of Dawn. At the time I read it, it seemed like boring humdrum. I struggled to get through it.

But something about the book has stuck with me for over three decades, and even now I can remember seemingly unimportant details. (Three planets? One planet in which the inhabitants had 15 or 25 robots apiece; one other one which had only one or two apiece. And then, of course, the quiet, outdated, old insequential robot who was running things behind the scenes...and so on.)

Robots of Dawn really has to stand with/on the ones that preceded it, clear back to the original "I, Robot" stories. Caves of Steel is important, but The Naked Sun is critical.

Having read all Asimov's robot books i order, Robots of Dawn didn't seem like a turkey, but wasn't quite as satisfying as the one right before it. OTOH, the novel engages in multiple levels of discussion all the way through, including in the title, making it social commentary as much as detective novel.

And of course the finale is the setup for the entire Foundation series....

 

[The_Reaper]

It really depends on my mood; I've been burning through fiction mostly, just finished Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth, then moved on to Kafka's The Metamorphosis (which I didn't overly care for, to be honest). Sort of dragging my feet on whether I want to read Plato's The Republic next, or perhaps re-read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series first.

 

[Kulindahr]

It really depends on my mood; I've been burning through fiction mostly, just finished Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth, then moved on to Kafka's The Metamorphosis (which I didn't overly care for, to be honest). Sort of dragging my feet on whether I want to read Plato's The Republic next, or perhaps re-read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series first.

Forget the Republic -- Plato is totally dishonest with it, going thoroughly against his own values and convictions as a philosopher.