Books

[biggredone]

I loved Cannery Row and it had a sequel (Sweet Thursday). East of Eden is in my top 5 all time.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

I loved Cannery Row and it had a sequel (Sweet Thursday). East of Eden On my top 5 all time.

I haven't read Sweet Tuesday. I'll try to get it sometime.  I just reread Grapes of Wrath. There is no good ending there unless an old emaciated starving guy breastfeeding is a good ending.  8-[

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Yeah..I have a tough time with endings too.. Just saying goodbye to me is awkward.

[GrinningYMIR]

I tend to connect with video games more as well, and they have had a long history in being more progressive than the other forms of art at the time. A good example would be the franchise YMIR and I both enjoy, that being "Mass Effect". It has had a long history of adressing complex problems, which is a (figurative) godsend at a time where the rest of the world is still struggling with dystopian stories.
To try and connect it back to the thread, YMIR and I have both discussed the Mass Effect books before, and how awful they were, as are all video game adaptions. It really should not be that hard to do, yet it seems as if game adaptions will forever be associated with the likes of Uwe Boll. :x

The problem with most game adaptations, particularly for the big screen, is that they try to shove everything into a little book for two hour movie. When there is over forty hours of plot that shouldn't be ignored. So you end up with a shitty movie like hitman or that god awful Eragon, or you end up with meh books like the mass effect books.

Personally I liked Revelations and Ascension, but not really the second two. The original author Drew Karpyshan was a pretty good author, and when he left the series suffered.

What I'm getting at is, video game books can certainly work, the movie versions have already proven to be able to succeed, implying VG's will be able to as well. The problem is either shitty writers, small works, or general lack of respect from the average reader

has there been a truly perfect VG book? I don't know, but I do know that there are more than a few that are good reads, and if someone could find a book that translated well I do believe that a lot of non-gamers would enjoy it.

tl;dr Books made based on games have potential if the right circumstances can be found

[Insult to Rocks]

Dammit, I just learned that after three years of asking to read "Lord of the Flies", I learn through being a TA that the freshmen are reading it, whilst we're stuck reading this crappy surrealist book "Pedro Paramo". I'm just gonna hafta check the book out from the library and re-read it myself, because it seems that our curriculum is designed solely to both disappoint and piss me off.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Aww..c'mom IR, read Steinbeck or Dickens or James Lee Burke or Lars Kepler.   :-D

[Insult to Rocks]

Aww..c'mom IR, read Steinbeck or Dickens or James Lee Burke or Lars Kepler.   :-D

I have read Dickens before, specifically Great Expectations, and was honestly not all that impressed. He wasn't flat out bad like many of the other classic authors I've read, but his work was just startlingly uninteresting.
That reminds me, I should get around to reading "The Jungle" eventually. It's apparently required for all historians to reference that damn thing once in their life, no matter their specialty, so I guess historians in training need to read it to.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Believe it or not many books become much more interesting as you age. They seemed dull to me as a youngster too, but I now have more life experiences to apply things to. I understand the context better because I've lived through a lot of what I read now days.
There's only one way to not get old and it usually involves flies laying eggs on your carcass.  :-k

[the_antithesis]

I found a version of Myra Breckenridge by Gore Vidal. I'm reading this trash because I encountered the movie and it's batshit insane. I want to know how much of what's on screen is in the source material. I'm only a few chapters in thus far and the title character is an insufferable cunt in the very first sentence and hasn't gotten better yet.

I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess. Clad only in garter belt and one dress shield, I held off the entire elite of the Trobriand Islanders, a race who possess no words for "why" or "because." Wielding a stone axe, I broke the arms, the limbs, the balls of their finest warriors, my beauty blinding them, as it does all men, unmanning them in the way that King Kong was reduced to a mere simian whimper by beauteous Fay Wray whom I resemble left three-quarter profile if the key light is no more than five feet high during the close shot.

The movie feature seeming non-sequitur clips from vintage movies intercut with the main action. This is because Myra is an annoying film nerd. Since the book was written in the late 60's, she's obsessed the films of the 30's and 40's. This might mean something, but I fucking doubt it.

One difference is so far the book is coy about the big reveal. In the film, it starts with Myron Breckenridge about to have a sex change operation. The book saves this for later which has me wondering why the film doesn't. It makes the reveal later in the movie lame. I'm curious what other differences I'll spot or if any of it will make any god damned sense.

It seems the problem is that Vidal was a voluminous writer who wrote many, many books and they can't all be winners. Myra Breckenridge was written in a time when sexual repression was fashionable, with homosexuals and transgenders getting the short end of that stick. So at the time it may have been daring and groundbreaking, but today it has not aged well. It doesn't help that Myra is a self-absorbed cunt, as I said before. Much too much time spent on how beautiful she is and shit. In the film, Rex Reed plays Myron and Myra is played by Raquel Fucking Welch. I suppose if one made that kind of upgrade, they wouldn't shut up about it, either.

In any case, the movie is more famous for being just plain bad than anything else. I am curious if the book is just as bad. Kind of tough to judge since the book won't have as many surprises for me if I hadn't seen the movie. I'll be glad when I'm done with this one.

[Shiranu]

Finally actually reading it, and I am loving it. Normally I finish a 300-some page book in less than a day, but this one I have really taken my time with (that, and I haven't actually read a book in years so my reading speed is much slower than it use to be...). But anyways, yes... very much loving this book yeah.