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[Africa]

Reading "Nonzero" by Robert Wright, about how non-zero-sum logic has given human history a general direction.

I want to read....I dunno, whatever I come across next.

[Ephemeriis]

That isn't always the case with Lovecraft. The Call of Cthulhu and The Shunned House end in fairly action-y ways.

If I recall correctly (it's been a little while since I read either of those)...

Call of Cthulhu ends with the guy running away screaming in terror, aboard a boat, and accidentally crashing into Cthulhu on his way out.

The Shunned House climaxes with some guy pouring some acid into a hole in the ground.  Fainting when he realizes the massive shape is just an elbow.  And pouring some more acid in the hole when he wakes up.

Granted, for Lovecraft, that's downright action-packed.  But in comparison to just about any other author on the planet, it's pretty sedate.

Don't get me wrong - I love Lovecraft.  He's quite possibly my favorite author of all time.  But his writing style is a bit on the unique side, and not simply for his choice of words.

[Darkmere]

Lovecraft was all about psychological case studies. What happens when someone is confronted with unfortunate truth about humanity's tiny place in a huge, unknowable universe. It's a journey of sublime discovery.

I'd actually argue that modern action-schlock is the genre with nothing happening. X is a hero, Y is a villain, they fight. X wins. Also there's a romantic interest and some plucky comic relief. The end.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Lovecraft was also fairly sadistic with his willingness to give details about the things going on in a particular story. He tells enough to catch a person's interest, but not enough to satisfy them or allow them to know the whole truth. That ends up being rather unnerving.

[Vector]

Reading City of God by Doctorow.  I am not exactly fond of it.

I'm not so fond of the modern "NO, you cannot have any heroes!" approach.  Maybe I want a hero sometimes.  Maybe I need one.

[Darkmere]

I'm not so fond of the modern "NO, you cannot have any heroes!" approach.  Maybe I want a hero sometimes.  Maybe I need one.

There's a big difference in real heroes and schlock though. Pop cultural analogy:
Aragorn, Lord of the Rings: Shouldered with metric tons of responsibility he really didn't want, triumphed in spite of it, made the world a better place.

Qui-gon Jin, Star Wars... whatever it was. Liam Neeson. Walk, talk, talk, fight some guy. die. Yeah you remember the fight scene, but apart from describing Liam Neeson, what was the character like?

[Vector]

Of course.  I'm saying that I want works about real heroes, rather than the "hurr hurr hurr there are no heroes at all" approach a lot of modern literature seems to be turning out when they're not spewing out, as you put it, schlock.

Because screw it.  Sometimes I want something else.

[Zrk2]

If Dune was a turn-off, go ahead and ignore everything else in the series.

Finished Lukyanenko's Watch series. Kinda stalled now.

I liked it, I just lost the book a couple times so it was disjointed. And half of the organizations and people (mentats, Bene Gesserit, Fremen etc etc) are never properly explained so I'm running on half comprehension and half of what they do is poorly explained or simply thrown out there with no support.

In short, I need more detail.

And the ending was pretty WTF? Time to go buy the next one.

[SalmonGod]

Aragorn, Lord of the Rings: Shouldered with metric tons of responsibility he really didn't want, triumphed in spite of it, made the world a better place.

Common misconception thanks to goddamn Peter Jackson.  He was not a reluctant hero in the books.  He was fully accepting of his responsibilities, and further motivated by his love for Arwen when Elrond declared that he would not allow his daughter to marry him and give up her immortality unless he fulfilled his role in claiming the throne of Gondor.  His long years as a ranger were a form of training and of hiding for if his existence and full importance became widespread knowledge, he would have been hunted ruthlessly.

The movie's remake of his character was, in my opinion, cliche hollywood fake character depth.  This was employed with every character in the entire story which robbed the entire protagonist cast of their sense of nobility, which was a pretty horrendous thing to do considering Tolkien's original cultural context and intentions.

[Darkmere]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Common misconception thanks to goddamn Peter Jackson.  He was not a reluctant hero in the books.  He was fully accepting of his responsibilities, and further motivated by his love for Arwen when Elrond declared that he would not allow his daughter to marry him and give up her immortality unless he fulfilled his role in claiming the throne of Gondor.  His long years as a ranger were a form of training and of hiding for if his existence and full importance became widespread knowledge, he would have been hunted ruthlessly.

The movie's remake of his character was, in my opinion, cliche hollywood fake character depth.  This was employed with every character in the entire story which robbed the entire protagonist cast of their sense of nobility, which was a pretty horrendous thing to do considering Tolkien's original cultural context and intentions.

I wouldn't argue with any of that. But I was comparing two movie characters instead of a book character and a movie character.

The thing about movies from books (pre-warning, my own rant incoming soon!) is that the two media are so fundamentally different that you cannot impart either to the other. Tom Bombadil wouldn't have worked with an American audience, so he was removed. Without that context, the entire universe changes slightly. Same goes for everything else that was changed. If you take the LotR movies as adaptations and compare them to other movies, they stand up pretty well. If you compare it to the books that had time to nuance and define an entire universe... not as much. (Some changes were still kinda dumb, Saruman, Gimli as comic relief, etc.)

My own rant: Watchmen. The entire production cast was adamant about changing it as little as possible, then of the three major changes, two were flagrantly unnecessary. Dan and Laurie fighting the muggers... movie added gore for its' own sake. They weren't brutal vigilantes, just people in decent shape that were defnding themselves. Rorschach tearing up the pedophile just made him seem like a psychopath. Character derail.

The difference in my viewing of the two is: LotR wasn't a visual media, and I don't recall Jackson saying anything other than "I'll do my best." Watchmen WAS a visual media and the movie makers chose to stray from that and lie about it blatantly. It still got the message across, I thought, which LotR utterly failed to do.

Aw, who am I kidding, Watchmen was just a couple hours of blue CGI penis, right?

[Korbac]

Personally, I loved watchmen, although I had the advantage of having a friend explain what was happening as the movie progressed. 

Reading Flyte (cheesy childrens' book full of stereotypical wizardry) and also the White - Luck Warrior (awesome mid - fantasy book about some superclever guy)

[bitterhorn]

Just finished The Scar by China Miéville.  Currently reading the Orkneyinga Saga with my lady-friend, and occasionally flipping idly through the "Three-Fisted Tales of 'Bob'" anthology, the latter of which is doing very little for me except making me thirsty to read some Actual Pulp again... might dive back into Robert E. Howard/Fritz Leiber territory soon.

[SalmonGod]

Spoiler: Epic rant about adaptations (click to show/hide)

Meh... I disagree with most people about the adaptation debate.  A lot. 

My rule is:  You can remove or ad as deemed necessary, but you cannot change what you choose to include, unless purely for the sake of combining content to save time. 

I can absolutely understand why they left out Tom Bombadil.

It took me a while to come to terms with it (because at first I associated it with the general requirement that a main protagonist's love interest be a major component of the story which I saw as major selling out), but I came to agree with the decision to give Arwen a larger role in the story, inserting her in scenes she didn't belong.  It allowed the audience to be aware of something that was important to the story, but was only understood through footnotes in the books.  I learned to appreciate the presence of the elves at Helm's Deep for similar reasons.

Arbitrarily changing the basic nature of every single character and the underlying themes and purposes of the story in the process, on the other hand, is completely inexcusable.  The final straw was when he changed the way gollum died for absolutely no reason, which completely undermined what I've always seen as the primary theme of Tolkien's entire legendarium.  (Good does not triumph over evil.  Evil destroys itself.) 

I have yet to see an explanation via adaptation which excuses every single character being a reluctant hero rather than daunted but fully understanding their duty, or why the nazgul were reduced to bumbling idiotic creatures that can be defeated by waving a flaming stick at them, or why Eowyn's defeat of the witch king was made to look almost like an accident, or why Gollum has to be thrown into the crack of doom in a scuffle instead of dancing over the edge with joy, or why Frodo has to look like he's on the verge of tears in every single scene (even the happy ones!), or why Faramir's character was completely reversed in almost every possible way, etc.  These things have absolutely nothing to do with film vs literature and everything to do with hollywood and appealing to masses.  Many of the explanations from Jackson and his supporters have to do with increasing dramatic tensions because Tolkien was too boring.  Well if that's how they really felt, then why the fucking hell did they bother doing an adaptation?!

And no... Peter Jackson promised a lot more than "I'll do my best".  I read The Hobbit in first grade.  It was the first novel I ever read.  I was raised on Tolkien, and was incredibly excited about the movies and followed their development closely.  I saw multiple interviews with Peter Jackson and those working with him proclaiming him the ultimate Tolkien fan and super dedicated to being faithful to the story.  Epic lies.

[Darkmere]

I guess that's the difference, I didn't go in with expectations. I grew up reading Stephen King and his movies are mostly terrible adaptations anyway, so my expectations are generally low.

[Lord Shonus]

Spoiler: Epic rant about adaptations (click to show/hide)

Meh... I disagree with most people about the adaptation debate.  A lot. 

My rule is:  You can remove or ad as deemed necessary, but you cannot change what you choose to include, unless purely for the sake of combining content to save time. 

I can absolutely understand why they left out Tom Bombadil.

It took me a while to come to terms with it (because at first I associated it with the general requirement that a main protagonist's love interest be a major component of the story which I saw as major selling out), but I came to agree with the decision to give Arwen a larger role in the story, inserting her in scenes she didn't belong.  It allowed the audience to be aware of something that was important to the story, but was only understood through footnotes in the books.  I learned to appreciate the presence of the elves at Helm's Deep for similar reasons.

Arbitrarily changing the basic nature of every single character and the underlying themes and purposes of the story in the process, on the other hand, is completely inexcusable.  The final straw was when he changed the way gollum died for absolutely no reason, which completely undermined what I've always seen as the primary theme of Tolkien's entire legendarium.  (Good does not triumph over evil.  Evil destroys itself.) 

I have yet to see an explanation via adaptation which excuses every single character being a reluctant hero rather than daunted but fully understanding their duty, or why the nazgul were reduced to bumbling idiotic creatures that can be defeated by waving a flaming stick at them, or why Eowyn's defeat of the witch king was made to look almost like an accident, or why Gollum has to be thrown into the crack of doom in a scuffle instead of dancing over the edge with joy, or why Frodo has to look like he's on the verge of tears in every single scene (even the happy ones!), or why Faramir's character was completely reversed in almost every possible way, etc.  These things have absolutely nothing to do with film vs literature and everything to do with hollywood and appealing to masses.  Many of the explanations from Jackson and his supporters have to do with increasing dramatic tensions because Tolkien was too boring.  Well if that's how they really felt, then why the fucking hell did they bother doing an adaptation?!

And no... Peter Jackson promised a lot more than "I'll do my best".  I read The Hobbit in first grade.  It was the first novel I ever read.  I was raised on Tolkien, and was incredibly excited about the movies and followed their development closely.  I saw multiple interviews with Peter Jackson and those working with him proclaiming him the ultimate Tolkien fan and super dedicated to being faithful to the story.  Epic lies.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Every" character being made into a reluctant hero? That's absurd. Of the Fellowship, Only Aragorn, Boromir, and Gandalf embraced "destiny" in the book. Frodo never really wanted adventure despite his occasional wanderlust, going only becuase he felt he had to. Meriadoc, Peregrin, and especially Samwise went only because Frodo was going. Legolas and Gimili went along to represent Elves and Dwarves, not becuase they were destined for heroism. In the Movie, Boromir and Gandalf still embrace their Destiny, and are almost unchanged. Elrond was changed a lot, but his destiny and that of the Elves was always to leave Middle Earth, they just tarried long enough to usher in the Fourth Age and defeat the Enemy. The movie version was just more willing to leave.

The one time in the films that Nazgul were defeated by "waving a flaming stick at them" in the films, they were driven off in almost the exact same way in the book. Far more of an annoyance was Frodo's behavior in that scene. In the book, he survived only because of unexpected courage. Because he cried out the name of Elbereth and attacked, the morgul-blade missed it;s mark. In the movies, they stabbed him in the shoulder on purpose.

Faramir is a case where the change was an annoyance. That said, the essential difference between him and his brother is difficult to portray in any medium, and film one of the worst. Much more so in the much more jaded era when the films came out. Faramir's lines from the book would more typically be used by a smug hypocrite today.

Eowyn's scene didn't look like an accident at all. I don't see where you're coming from at all. The main change in that scene was that it was much, much faster than the book, because the book version would have looked ridiculous on screen.