Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

Yeah the BBC Sherlock is great and I love the Downey Jnr one. Brilliantly artistically shot, great acting (and casting choices) because any Sherlock Holmes has to have the word play between Holmes and Watson as far as I remember... The stories are great you should check them out.

Books I really like
Dune
The tamuli - david eddings
Sword of truth series
Green rider series by kristen britan
and many other but those spring to mind.
as an side seams like a lot of people are talking about the hunger game, I only seen the movie blurb but it sound very similar to the battle royal - am I wrong?

Amethyst wrote: "Books I really like
Dune
The tamuli - david eddings
Sword of truth series
Green rider series by kristen britan
and many other but those spring to mind.
as an side seams like a lot of people are tal..."

I haven't read battle royal but I think they have essentially the same premise.

This list could be very long! Books I like:
The Malazan Book of the Fallen
The Wheel of Time
The Sword of Truth
Anything by Terry Pratchett
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
Anything by Robin Hobb
I could go on, but I'll leave it at at that for now.

I love series:
Wheel of time - Robert Jordan
Shannara - Terry Brooks
Sword of Truth - Terry Goodkind
Outlander - Diana Gabaldon
Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
The Dark Elf - R.A. Salvatore
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Stephen R. Donaldson
And the list goes on, I am finding new writers now on Goodreads.

Xdyj wrote: "Amethyst wrote: "Books I really like
Dune
The tamuli - david eddings
Sword of truth series
Green rider series by kristen britan
and many other but those spring to mind.
as an side seams like a lot ..."

I've heard that Battle Royale is like Hunger Games but with the gore factor amped up to maximum.

Jaq wrote: "I prefer to read books with enough Fantasy element to take me away from the daily news reports."

Agreed.

Jaq wrote: "I prefer to read books with enough Fantasy element to take me away from the daily news reports."

Xdyj wrote: Agreed."

        I find these posts confusing.  From my point of view, fantasy is the main component of the news.

        For example, consider The Supremes, and their decision on the "Affordable Care Act", aka "Obamacare".  The MSM media reported a 5-4 decision, largely on partisan/ideological grounds, but if you read the actual text of the decision, you discover there were two bipartisan rulings: A) By 7-2, Ginsburg and Sotomayor dissenting, los Federales may condition the expansion of Medicaid funding on whether the states implement the new programs the Congresscritters voted for, but can't coerce a state into the program expansion by taking away all funds if they don't agree to the expansion.

        And in a stunningly bi-partisan 8-1 decision, Roberts dissenting, the Court ruled that the Chief Justice is crazy.

        As you can see, the MSM's report is so inaccurate that fantasy is the only label I can find appropriate for it.  So how does reading fantasy stories give you an escape?

The thing with violence (or anything awful) in fantasy books is you can generally skip over it or just read for the plot points - you don't have to visualize and imagine it in detail. When you are reading a biography you it affects you, and if you watch violence on movies you can't skip it. Books have a unique ability to take us away when we need it.

Visual violence is far more visceral than violence on the page. If you have (or work with) children you probably instinctively calibrate this. Even Disney films can be too intense for the very young; I know of a tot who burst into tears at a showing of "Lady and the Tramp". For days after, she would mortify her mother by loudly announcing, at supermarkets or in crowds, "The rat bit the baby!"

I hadn't realized this until The Lord of the Rings movies. I had my eyes closed for most of it, even though I had loved the book.

Hey Connor you wrote: "I love The Lord of the Rings, A Tale of Two Cities, The Three Musketeers, and The Count of Monte Cristo."

Those are my favorite reads too.
Susan

It's interesting reading people's reactions to book violence vs movie violence. Certainly movie violence can really bug me but for the most part its easier for me to dismiss it because I know it's not real. But reading it in a book for me is akin to imagining it happening in real life so sometimes it affects me more.

I love Prepare. The author makes this so much better than any superhero book by his brilliant writing skills. It's a highly intelligent novel. It is beyond the current trends and will take time for other authors to catch up.

I just put Prepare on my to read list. I haven't read many books like this and it looks pretty interesting.

The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings and Dune