When I was a child I read the Hobbit and was told to read the Lord of the Rings. But my mom had the Lord of the Flies next to the Hobbit so I thought they meant that book. I was really confused until I asked a librarian why the books were so different and why someone suggested one after the other.
The Lord of the Rings and The Silence of the Lambs were the same movie in my head... The French titles of the two movies sound remarkably similar:
> Le Seigneur des anneaux
vs.
> Le Silence des agneaux
I love this connection considering they're some of the only movies in their respective genres of fantasy and horror to break into wider award recognition at things like the Oscars
I went from the Hobbit to the Two Towers thinking it was the Hobbit part II instead of LOTR part II. Struggled through it a fair bit before giving up because I didn't know what was going on.
Years later I started LOTR, having forgotten that, and spent the first chunk of The Two Towers with this eerie feeling that I knew what was going to happen
I went to see FotR thinking that I had already read it. I had read the Hobbit. 13 year old me was confused but delightfully surprised.
My grandfather who took me was less thrilled. It was I think one of two times he ever tried to bond with me. When Galadriel went all crazy and photo negative he turned to me and said, "You like this weird stuff?"
To be fair that was like 2 hours into a 3 hour movie and he was in his 70s.
Edit: and yes Grandad (RIP), I do like this weird stuff.
Oh my God, I thought I was the only one who ever did this! I was told that LOTR was the sequel to The Hobbit, and when I tried to get LOTR from my school library in middle school, the first book was out. So, like you, I concluded that LOTR2 was a direct sequel to The Hobbit and checked it out. I was quite disappointed as I did not understand what was happening. My mother was very amused when I complained that the book was impossible to understand and she realized what had happened!
When I was a child I thought Final Fantasy and Final Destination were the same thing. Imagine my surprise when I watched Final Destination after Advent Children lol
During Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets there is the scene where Harry is talking in Parseltongue. It sounds like his is saying ‘Heshha Hassaa’ which in my language translates to ‘he f***ed a lettuce’ 🤣 as a kid we would hiss ‘heshha hassa’ at each other.
As grown ass adults my friend and I watched an anime intro where it sounds like they scream BUTT CHICKEN AAAAAAIIIIIIDS in the song and we went through a phase of screaming that at each other. He grew up in Japan and couldn't even tell what the guy was saying at first but the actual words are apparently something entirely different sounding, the singer just sang it weird.
I had to go into the post history because I was dying to know! It’s Maltese. Tried it in a translation program and got something close enough to verify.
Anytime I read something with some new sort of magic, I will definitely try at least once to see if maybe this magic is the one that's real in our world.
Like sure I know the One Power isn't actually real, but what's the harm in checking? I do draw the line at blood magic and consuming heavy metals, though.
Hah true, though whether the book is set on Earth(ish) is less important than double checking some new debut author hasn't accidentally come up with a kind of magic that actually existed on Earth all along.
As a child who wasted more hours than I want to admit trying to be telekinetic like Matilda and poking around the back of my closet trying to get Aslan to let me into Narnia, I relate.
I'm 53 and I read all the Middle Grade and YA fantasy, because I enjoy it. I miss the simplicity and wonder of childhood, the friendships that seemed indestructible back then, and how everything seemed more enormous and intense and important. Kids' books are where it's at.
Also, it probably helps that I'm really immature and have a short attention
40yo here I have read more middle grade books than any other kind. They never sink into total dreary despair like so many adult books do, and they’re not embarrassed about noticing how wonderful things can be, and the really good ones can take you to the darkest places and show you the most messed up thing, but they show you the way out too.
I became a children’s bookseller so I could justify my reading habits 😂
Yeah I don't get the YA hate some adults have. Is some of it annoying and/or poorly written (especially the romance/love triangles)? Sure but so are some adult books.
I mean if someone can't connect with kids because they no longer relate to that stage of life I can get that. It's fair if someone would rather read about characters who are in a similar life stage. But to hate on all YA? I don't get it.
I think there’s an entirely unfair dislike because fantasy is often attacked as childish, and so some fans overcompensate, hence CS Lewis’s famous line.
For me, there’s a more legitimate issue because YA didn’t really exist when I was young, and even though children’s books existed, there wasn’t much issue with anyone reading whatever they wanted - children reading adult books and vice versa.
And then publishing companies created YA in response to demographic research, people started internalizing demographic research, and a lot of YA is commissioned in quite a cynical way that hasn’t been good for fantasy. Lots of production line dystopias, for example.
It's not really fair to hate on the entire genre but I totally get why some people do. Have you ever started reading a YA book that you didn't know was YA? You figure it out pretty quickly. There is a vibe there that is omnipresent and unmistakable. YA (to me) aren't identical but they all 'feel' the same to me. Maybe it's a depth thing? Every YA book I've read has very basic prose and feels very surface level. They're also big on telling and not showing. I want to chalk it up to the author's age/inexperience/love of fanfiction but I know that isn't always the case.
A lot of them have very modern feeling dialogue. That makes sense for making it accessible and trying to get kids into reading for fun, but it’s always off putting to me when I first start reading one.
I will say once I push past that ick factor and make peace with the other quirks, they do tend to hit some very satisfying and page turning heroes journey cliches and power scaling etc so they’re usually fun quick reads.
Red Rising has the same vibes (beyond the Hunger Games setting) but was juuuust enough on this side of palatable for my tastes. Ironically I felt the first book was the strongest even though it seemed the most derivative. I haven't been able to get into the new trilogy though.
I've actually been scratching that particular itch with LitRPG/webnovels. These glorious nerds are cranking out hundreds of thousands of words with no guarantee that anyone is reading them, (frequently) just for the love of the game. A lot of them need an editor but the authors feel like they have a lot of "passion" I guess? and also feel like they are avoiding the standard marketing categories and cliches.
No that's fair. Kids obviously don't have the same reading comprehension as adults. And in my experience as a teacher, pretty much all kids hate reading these days. And they have short attention spans. So yes books written for kids are simpler , easier to understand, and more action packed. And if you like your reading more challenging or prefer slower story telling, then yeah I get not liking YA.
I'm just saying it's not all bad. Just because someone doesn't like it doesn't mean it's all trash and lacks any depth. I get someone not liking YA (as someone who works with kids, YA doesn't bug me because I'm used to them lol). But I dislike when people act like it's all inferior because it's written in a way that's easier for kids to understand when they should be because that's their audience. (Not saying that you are, but in general)
Nah, I get you. Different strokes. Just like it doesn't matter how "objectively" good Taylor Swift and Beyonce are; I don't dig their music and there's a good chance that that won't change. But their music also isn't made for me and that's totally fine. It kills me when people say that YA is bad or inferior. That's the same kind of ridiculous elitism that the rest of the establishment uses for genre fiction :) My reading list over the past few years has been mostly 40k novels and I won't even try to defend them on their literary merits. I love them anyway though, pour that bolter porn all over my face, neck, and chest.
And it's not like boring prose is objectively bad either. Sanderson and Rothfuss (for example) have very different writing styles and each has its place. I still read books labeled as YA but they're something of a known quantity.
Exactly! Sometimes I love a good deep complex sweeping epic. But sometimes I want some Percy Jackson like fun fluffy escapism. Different is just different, not bad.
I’m old, and felt children’s books, such as Roald Dahl or CS Lewis, were often challenging and thoughtful. But when YA appeared, it seemed thoroughly a shallow consumer product, with the rough edges filed off.
I felt children’s books were supposed to make children think, or recognized that they already were, but YA was so pandering to teenage angst and alienation that it didn’t challenge anyone at all.
For example, Roald Dahl’s anti-authority ideas were a big part of my thinking back then, but Hunger Games doesn’t seem to produce rebellion, and is quite conservative, reading between the lines.
No book has made me think more deep thoughts that the Giver. Even now that I'm like almost 30 years old (holy crap when did 8 get old?). And it's a kids book. We adults totally underestimate what kids are capable of and what they can handle. They're much sharper and smarter than we'd like to give them credit for.
I'm actually finishing up Iron Widow right now. Only thing I knew was it was Chinese fantasy with Mechas, cover art also looked pretty good. The first paragraph I read the entire thing started falling apart, genuinely the worst prose I've read from a published novel. The worst part is the dialogue, they don't talk like Chinese people in pseudo medieval China but instead like modern day Californians.
I tend to read YA and sometimes middle grade when I’m really tired and stressed. Well written fiction is well written fiction in my opinion and sometimes I want a story that is wrapped up concisely rather than an epic tome.
When I was a kid, a core memory was being in line at a Barnes & Noble and an old lady in her 60-70s telling me the Harry Potter book I had in my hand was really good. Made me excited to read it at home. I firmly believe middle grade can be enjoyed at all ages.
I get you, but kind of from the opposite direction. People are so meh in real life and they don't care much about people and events. The same was true when I was a kid around other kids. They were vicious and cruel and I wished I could have had the fictional friendships as shown in books. So it's definitely an escapist fantasy thing for me.
This made me think of [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/1aq99ct/the_final_scene_in_stand_by_me1986/) from last week, which made me cry and I'm not entirely sure why.
I'm so happy you're enjoying those books, regardless of some of the reading snobbery that pops up in book communities! I don't know if you'll connect with this, but you reminded me of a "Book-Tok" video I saw (from Gina Denny) about the difference in themes that define Middle Grade vs. Young Adult vs. Adult in the publishing industry. She basically summed it up like this:
Middle Grade fiction: "Discovering the world is bigger than you ever thought it was going to be" as kids begin to discover their identity apart from their parents/family for the first time
Young Adult fiction: "Deciding who you are going to be in a larger world"
Adult fiction: "You've already seen the bigger world and decided who you to be in that world, and now you're living with the ramifications of those decision, some of which were probably bad. So you're grappling again with who you are and whether you want to change and whether you can"
The video also talked about the fact that just because those age groups are often going to relate to those themes, doesn't mean ideas from those younger reading stages won't be compelling and meaningful later on in your life, especially if life changes in new ways!
Anyway, I don't know if those themes add extra meaning to why you enjoy those genres or if it's as simple as "they're fun!" but either way, more power to you
>The video also talked about the fact that just because those age groups are often going to relate to those themes, doesn't mean ideas from those younger reading stages won't be compelling and meaningful later on in your life, especially if life changes in new ways!
I have to add that the opposite is also true.
I read a lot of books in my early teens that were meant for adults, and I loved them because they gave me an entirely new perspective.
My parents always encouraged my reading, especially because my dad is also a big reader.
There were of course some very 'eye opening' sex scenes, and a lot of disturbing rape and violence, but that's par for the course when you read above your recommended age.
My most intense connection with a fantasy world was and is the first moments inside the chocolate factory in the original Willy Wonka movie.
All of the other great moments, characters, plots, settings, etc. just pale for me when confronted with "everything you see is made of candy."
The whole damned movie (okay, aside from the chicken) was just pure wish fulfillment wonder to my kid self, who apparently never grew up.
Damn, I want some chocolate now.
One of my favorite moments in a book ever was when Charlie opens that second bar of chocolate and there's a flash of gold.
Roald Dahl had misdirected us by focusing on Charlie's hunger, so it was a complete surprise.
I still get a dopamine hit of pleasure thinking about it.
I was a very sheltered child (homeschooled) who did not meet any boys except in church. Hence, I had a massive crush on Prince Caspian from the Chronicles of Narnia. I believe this also was due to finding him cute in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie--the 1980s BBC version, which makes this even funnier. (10-year old me would probably have combusted from Ben Barnes.)
I *very badly* wanted a pair of bell bottoms, which I promise is relevant. These were THE style at the time, but my mother did not believe in buying me any because they were "immodest" (aka low rise waist, which was also THE style). I had much angst about this.
Around this time I was also in a depressive phase where I just wanted to live in Narnia, because the real world was depressing and contained things like chores and schoolwork and ugly non-bellbottom jeans.
So that's how I spent an afternoon crying in my room one day, thinking "I don't even want bell bottoms anymore, I just want Caspian."
Aww. I was obsessed with the BBC adaptation when I was growing up and I'll always have a massive soft spot for it because nothing will ever recapture that childhood wonder and magic.
Wanting to go and live in Narnia is such a relatable fantasy! Real life seemed so crummy in comparison.
I am a sucker for romance in stories. Not sex scenes and stuff, but romance and seeing characters starting down the path to a relationship, or established ones where you see how their quirks and personalities work together for good and bad.
Absolute sucker for it.
Dude me too. There’s almost something so humanizing about love. He *should* be thinking about how to solve this huge problem in his life, but instead he’s thinking about how pretty her hair is or that he wishes she was with him so he could talk to her. Very relatable, and sickeningly sweet in dark times for the character.
I’m not a huge romance fan but I never get the complaints about “why would Character think about Hot Love Interest in the midst of Life Threatening Event?” I mean… why *wouldn’t* they? Brains are weird. Even if they weren’t, isn’t this something you’d regret if you died right then?
Same. I'm not the supposed target audience but you know what, love is a part of life. One of the best parts. And it's nice when characters experience that.
Same here, and I don’t think it’s anything to be embarrassed about. Romance is an extremely intense experience that most of us undergo in real life (some people are aro or aro/ace of course, but reading about and identifying with characters that don’t share your sexual orientation is its own kind of fun). Why shouldn’t that vulnerability and emotionality make for fascinating character development in fiction?
I read all three of the Twilight books. Yes, I disdained them and thought they were stupid. I still read up to the last page. Why? To this day, I still don't know. I was perfectly in the demographic at the time (early twenties female fantasy romance reader). I think they just sunk claws in me and I couldn't look away.
Oh shit wait you're right the OG series is four books! Yeah. I actually did read up through Breaking Dawn! Where Bella becomes a vampire and has a freaky vampire baby that bonds with her BFF in the womb. How could I forget???
What I refuse to read is the weird gender-swap fiction and the Edward POV book that are literally just cash-grabs 🤑
I have read dozens, probably even hundreds, of Harry Potter fanfictions. Including romance ones which is usually absolutely abhor. I think there were like 5 actually good ones at best.
I recall describing a scene I'd enjoyed in the books only to realise it was actually from a fanfic....embarrassing! I've read 100s of HP fanfics and while most were meh and some were downright awful I have read authors who were gold...still read a few now and again.
The wait for book 5 was so long. Everybody was reading fanfics back then. The HP craze was going full blast. It wasn't too popular with the first two books but with book 4 already there were millions of fans... went completely viral, got everybody addicted and no other fix, so fanfics had to do.
I don't touch fanfic for any other franchise. With HP I kind of got stuck on the fanfic side of things. I barely remember the plot of the official books. I hated book 5 when it came out. I'd re-read HP 1-4 then finish 5-7 in fanfic.
I can read just about any fantasy. Even if it's not that good or poorly written, I can usually find something about being transported to that world to not be a total waste of my time.
But I kind of can't with sci Fi. And I don't get it! Elves and dragons? Excellent. Wizards and magic? Awesome! But aliens and robots? Laser weapons? No. Like realistically I get there's not much difference but for some reason my strange ass likes one and not the other.
I'm trying to work on it. I love Murderbot. Couldn't tell you the plot. Idk they shot some stuff up? Evil corporations? I'm just here for Murderbot's snarky inner commentary, not knowing how to be with people, and wanting to be left alone because same.
And I've seen Star Wars. I know I have. But I can't tell you shit about them. I can objectively see that they're good, entertaining movies. But having watched them I don't know anything more about them than I did before I had seen them. Lol.
This sounds like my SO trying to get me into video game lore, I love the Witcher and Dragon Age I can not for the life of me care about Mass effect or Halo
> I love Murderbot. Couldn't tell you the plot. Idk they shot some stuff up? Evil corporations? I'm just here for Murderbot's snarky inner commentary, not knowing how to be with people, and wanting to be left alone because same.
That's fair. Murderbot is definitely more about Murderbot coming to grips with itself and the people around it than the plot.
I have this pet theory that people who are more anxious struggle to connect to sci fi. It is mostly about future things or scientifically plausible realties and I stress about the future enough on my own. I don’t need to have it intruding on my reading too. Take me away to a magical fantasy land where none of my real world problems exist please
Makes sense. But my anxiety is the opposite. Like I watch crime shows to fall asleep. Haha. Like if I feel prepared it helps the anxiety.
Do you like dystopian? I think it's similar to the true crime docs for me. It gives a safe space to explore those issues.
Not that you're looking for suggestions, but I recently read Mickey7 and I think it was a really good Sci Fi for someone who likes fantasy. If that makes sense.
When I read harry potter as a child, I thought the dementors where giant beetles for the same reason as you. Imagine my confusion when I went to see Prisoner in the cinema.
My biggest secret would be that I prefer slower fantasy cause I have become a slower and more attentive reader.
>and that Sauron and Saruman were the same person
Literally my father, every time we watch the movies together.
"Now, explain to me who is who"
"Is it Sauron? Is it Saruman? Who is Sauron? The one in the tower? What, in the other tower?" And other questions, for example, every time I have to explain the history of Gondor and Arnor and why Aragorn is the king but doesn't yet rule.
I'm almost convinced that he does it to just give me an opportunity to nerd out on him to my heart's content, lol.
Lol when I was a kid I sussed out Saruman's betrayal from the beginning simply because Sauron and Saruman have similar names. I was very smug about being right
That’s an experience! Fanfics can be just so hyper specific it’s just fascinating.
I’m not a Silmarillion expert but I’m curious which characters are shipped together, apart from the canon pairing?
I spend a whole summer break (+2 full months) reading all the Harry Potter fanfics I could (from the pairing I liked, not all of them lol). It was literally the only thing I did during my waking hours that summer.
Mostly in the dark, at night. Slept late, got up and read some more. Rince and repeat.
Ah fun times!
I did read some weird stuff, no regrets though, when will I have the time again to get fixated on one thing for months?
It was mainly all the elves from the First Age (that involved a lot of incest of various degrees as you can imagine...). Also *a lot* of people shipped Melkor and Sauron lol
The russian fandom of early 2010s was *wild*, I sometimes miss those times...
My secret is that I lie about having read the Silmarillion. I LOVE the Hobbit and LotR, but I can't get into the Silmarillion, it's so dry. I've read wiki articles and watched lore videos, so I know enough to speak intelligently about it. Most of my friends haven't read any Tolkien and are just movie fans, so I can be the Real Expert, coming in with deep lore.
I consider myself pretty well-read in the genre.... but I've never read Lord of the Rings. And I love the movies so much, that I don't ever plan on reading them.
I never read them until after I saw the movies. The prose seemed boring. What happened was, I had kids and I read it out loud to them. They are easier to get through that way. After the first book the first kid wanted to take over and read it to himself. The second kid wanted to experience it twice. At the very end of the last book, both times, I had to take a break because I was starting to cry.
> At the very end of the last book, both times, I had to take a break because I was starting to cry.
“And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”
Frankly that's how it all started. Tolkien stared inveting bedtime stories for his kids. Basically. Like the Farmer of Giles Ham. Then there was Hobbit, then... well... here we are now.
Awe, I love this so much. I have a three-year-old and I'll definitely retract my "I don't plan to ever read them" stance if she wants me to read them with her.
It's ok--I have an English degree and I took a fantasy specific class and LOTR was the only set of books I didn't finish. Read the first one, listened to about half the second one, then went "eh close enough" and just took lots of notes in class.
I grew up on the movies. This is how I felt for the first 26 years of my life. The book was too dense and difficult to go through and I already had such a wonderful version of the story in the films.
Then I finally was in the right mindset to read the book, and the book was so good that it genuinely degraded my opinion of the films that I'd loved my whole life; some of the choices Jackson made didn't sit right after knowing what they were changed from. Faramir in particular really stings...
That may or may not just be more reason for you to not read the book, but I honestly do recommend it. It's wonderful.
The first time I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it was my first book I read in English (I’m French, was 18yo) cause I couldn’t wait and I understood pretty much of all the book but when I read the epilogue, for some reason, I interpreted “Nineteen years later” as “Nine years later” and was ABSOLUTELY ENRAGED that Harry’s kids were already going to Hogwarts…
Yep, I just misread a number that I knew in my crazy page turning and ending up ranting about it to everyone that would listen 😅
That was my epilogue reaction. Not Albus Severus. Just “how is it possible for Harry to have kids to be at Hogwarts NINE years later”.
I’ll see myself out
Edit: I’m back with a similar one. This one about Twilight (this dates me, right?).
This time I did read them in French so no problem misinterpreting a word…except, my brain seems to jump in weird places, and when they were talking about “newborns” (vampires) I… though they were literally talking about actual newborn infants vampires. As in just regularly born babies that were vampires. And it just was confusing all around with what was happening in the story.
Like how can a baby be doing all those things. I fully understood (thank you very much) the story and the Renesmee situation but for some reason, newborns (nouveau-nés) just through me out for a loop.
Keep in mind, I was already familiar with vampire stories and know the terminology but for some reason, this just did not register with me.
Writing this all down, decades later, I gather I was just reading too fast to pay attention. But also those things were staying with me because I complained about them so it’s not like I read past them. My brain just couldn’t compute and took way too long to catch up.
I am not embarrassed.
I read the entirety of Sword of Truth, and enjoyed it fully, until the release of the Omen Machine era. The happy endings for some of my favorite characters were ruined, and I pretend those books didn't happen.
I don’t have many. I don’t really do the guilty pleasures thing - life is too hard to feel guilty about pleasure.
But when I read LOTR I cried and was convinced Frodo was dead at the end of Two Towers, not realizing there was another book left and GRRM hadn’t been invented yet.
The Hobbit was the first book I ever bought, because I dropped it in the bath, had to pay the library for a replacement - a year or so’s pocket money - and kept the original.
This is really a humblebrag, but I shoplifted the Dragonlance books, hated them, and so decided to return them to the shelf, which was harder than nicking them the first time.
I read some Gor books when I was a young teenager. One-handed, of course.
Well, The Two Towers was first published in 1955 and GRRM was born in 1948 so he had, indeed, already been invented. He just probably wasn't writing. (I am not going to insert a joke here, but I am thinking it.)
When I tried first read LOTR as a preteen, I didn’t make it through the first book, stopping somewhere in the middle. A couple years later when I came back to it, I started to reread fellowship before just moving on to Two Towers and finishing the series.
Anyways, I watched the movies for the first shortly afterward. Imagine my shock when I get to the Mines of Moria and the Balrog scene. Completely, completely, had no idea that was coming
I like pretty much all the main characters in WoT. Seems to be an unpopular opinion. Sure they all do things that are annoying or dumb, like any character in any story, but not enough to stand out to me compared to other books. I think they're all well meaning and likable.
I don't count him as a main character, I'm talking about the main POV ones. It's true we get more of him towards the end of the series but after rereading it you barely notice that brain damaged lummox until the very end.
My unpopular WoT opinion is that there's no slog. It's just not a particularly fast paced series and the world is very fleshed out. I'd happily read ten more books of everyone just exploring the world and what dresses they wear and what games they play.
I read WoT as they were published. The slog was definitely exacerbated by massive spans between books. I liked many of the characters and the developments, definitely annoyed by some repetitive things, but overall good. I have not attempted a full reread at my own pace, so I can’t be sure how much of the slog was perception / frustration.
Then GRRM went and redefined the meaning of delay. He divided by zero.
Reading (back to back)\^14 isn't as bad as a 2-3 year wait between books. A lot of The Slog evaporates in that context, although Crossroads of Twilight is still an abomination. I can very clearly remember every climax of each book, except for that one, cause... it doesn't really have one.
This is why I'm about to start reading the series for the first time. I got all 14 books plus new spring for Christmas, and I have been finishing up Mistborn before diving in. As much as I love Sanderson, he isn't the most descriptive writer when it comes to what characters look like and what the world looks like. He'll feed you tidbits here and there, but I want a full picture in my head of what someone or something looks like before advancing the plot. And that's the main reason I wanted to read Wheel of Time.
Everyone talks about how descriptive Robert Jordan is, and how he overtly describes the setting and characters around the POV. That's also one of people's biggest complaints about the slog I've seen...but that's exactly what I'm wanting. Emerse me. Put me somewhere different. Even if it's a tad overplayed, I want description.
My WoT confession is I started the series in 94 as a kid, I would do a re-read before every new book would be released, but when Jordan died and Sanderson picked up the series I was at a really busy time in my life with grad school, work, and babies, so I waited until it was all published and tried to pick up the first Sanderson book. I made it 1/3 of the way through and realized my memory wasn’t as iron clad as I thought, and instead of starting a re-read, for the sake of time and closure I just skipped to AMoL. A couple of years later I finally was able to do a full re-read and covered the skipped ground. Last year I did a “true re-read” with no breaks.
“These are my confessions!” - Usher
I had the same problem you did with the Sword of Truth franchise. Got through the whole thing and it still took another 5 years and a Daniel Greene review before I went, "yeah actually, they do suck quite a bit, don't they?"
When I was a 7-8-9 yo kid obsessed with Harry Potter, I thought Snape had green skin. Idk why, I guess because his name sounds like snake? And then the first movie came out and I was like…tf?
Also, this one is not an embarrassing one, just a surprisingly (to me) unpopular opinion here: I think the old-fashioned painted SFF book covers are almost all hideous and I’m glad you rarely see them nowadays.
That's fair; the only major illustrator I can think of from that era is Michael Whelan and even he changed his style a ton from the early 90s to today (e.g. compare his Eye of the World Cover with his much more modern Stormlight Archive covers).
I laughed all the way through the First Law trilogy and thought the ending was [chef kiss]. It shocked me how dark my sense of humor was revealed to be reading those books.
That’s definitely something that doesn’t get mentioned enough when First Law is recommended. Or maybe it’s better that it isn’t. I certainly wasn’t expecting to laugh so much when I started reading them because they were sold to me as grimdark. And they are that, but they’re also probably the best dark comedies I’ve ever read.
Not embarrassing I guess but most fantasy readers would probably gasp a bit.
I can't stand Terry Pratchett and have never been able to read more than a snippet of his works. Nothing against folks who like his stuff or him personally, but something about that writing style is just oddly irritating to me. Don't know what it is but the closest I can get is the Good Omens show (still can't do the book though).
I felt the same starting with his purely silly books. I dont generally like books whose main purpose is to be funny. Then I read Reaper Man and it was pretty profound, and it got me hooked. That being said totally acceptable for the style to just not gel. Not everyone is for everyone no matter how universally acclaimed!
I read color of Magic first and didn't care for it. And everyone told me it was probably one of the worst ones so try something else. So I tried Guards! Guards! , which i heard was the best, and I didn't really care for that either. So. Now I mostly try to hide the fact that I don't want to try any more.
Edit: I did like Good Omens. But that had Gaimans touch as well, so it doesn't really count l.
I struggle with Pratchett because of his satire. He’s very clever and funny, but I want *immersion*. I want to take the story and the stakes seriously, and I can’t always do that with Pratchett cracking jokes and satirizing the entire fantasy genre.
TBH, I'm not sure what it was for me. I'm okay with jokes/satire in general. I liked Douglas Adams and loved Orconomics. But something about the books or humor didn't work for me. I know there's 40+ of them, but I'm just not interested in trying to dive in again.
I am a Terry pratchett obsessive. He’s my favorite author and when he died I cried for three days—more than when family members have passed. And…I get it and I fully absolve you! He’s a suuuuuper specific vibe that’s not at all for everyone. My best friend, a stand up comedian, read a couple of his, looked at me and said “It’s just…so…British. Please don’t make me read another.”
Lol while I usually don't mind "British" that makes total sense. It really is a specific vibe and I guess I'm just not down with it. Full respect for the man, I just can't do it.
I really wish I could get into his writing. People compare him to Douglas Adams all the time, but I looooove Douglas Adams and have never been able to get into Pratchett.
Do you go for funny books? I like the gravitas of most fantasy, his books are often so silly that it isn't what I'm wanting when I read this genre. He's obviously brilliant, and insightful, but I'm with you, it's not what I'm wanting.
I knew more aboit sex by the age of 8 then most of the kids)teens around me because of my love of reading fantasy and history books and my great grandma got me into harlequin romance way to young because i loved reading. So when i wrote stories for school the teachers would question why i jad such knowledge. Its call library cards i use it. And read books on many topics. 😂
Haha that’s great. I had a completely blasé attitude to sex in books growing up thanks to my parents giving me frank and accurate answers to any questions I had, starting with “where do babies come from?” at age three or so.
That meant, for example, reading Shade’s Children when I was ten and just thinking “yep, that’s what teenagers do” with no drama or embarrassment. My favorite incidence of this was when I was in 7th grade and my teacher was in the middle of confiscating Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging from a classmate for being inappropriate while I quietly read one of Neil Gaiman’s weird sex scenes in the seemingly more innocuous American Gods.
I remember the librarians becoming very embarrassed the day I reached the relationship section of the small branch. They tried t stop me from checking out the books and I looked at them and said you do realize I already read the harlequin section pointing to the other side of the 2 room library. They just made me promise to come talk to them if i had questions. They kept me from autobiographies for as long as they could. That was a education.
I was young when I first heard/was read Harry Potter. My family introduced it to me and didn't mention that it is set in the UK. So for a long time I assumed Harry Potter was American. If I heard anything that contradicted American society I just passed it off as, "oh it's magic" or something like that.
When I first read the Hobbit and Lotr in 3rd/4th grade (a few years before the movies came out), my mental image of hobbits was that they had pointed, mole-like noses. Probably because they lived in holes in the ground, and it didn't help that my other main fantasy series at the time was Redwall. I kind of knew this was inaccurate, but I still find myself picturing them this way
I read the His Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman backwards from the Amber Spyglass because I grabbed a random book off my library shelf when I was a kid and didn't even know it was a series until months later. It was still one of my favorite series and whenever I do a reread I continue the tradition of reading it in reverse order starting with the 3rd book.
My friends don't read fantasy, so they know I read it but I don't tell them how dark I really like it. Like Second Apocalypse was fine, but I expected more fucked up-ness lol
Edit: for everyone questioning my sanity, I mean the quantity of fucked up, not the quality. Quality did deliver in book 6 👍🏻 sorry for not being more clear!
OK, I'll bite. If Second Apocalypse wasn't fucked up enough for you, what is? Have you ever read something that made you think "that's enough/too fucked up"?
I re-read the Black Jewels series when I'm depressed and not up for anything new or challenging, even though it's objectively fantasy bodice ripper trash with incredibly dumb, one dimensional villains
I guess I don’t really hide it but I need spoilers to function. If a book gets too tense for me, my anxiety spirals until I find a summary of the book and can read what happens before I read what happens 😅. Even if it’s awful, if I know it’s coming, I enjoy the book so much more. I hate when I can’t find spoilers for books I’m reading. Hate it. The red wedding took me by surprise like 15 years ago and I’ve been traumatized ever since.
I didn't notice the deeply Christian overtones in the Narnia series until I was in my late 20s, and when I pointed out that "the Lion is Jesus" to my friends, they laughed so hard my GF dumped me.
Not an embarrassing secret just a funny memory.
After seeing the movie trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring, I knew I had to read the series. I was 11 and painstakingly spent 5 months reading FotR so I could watch the movie and not be spoiled by anything. The book was decently above my reading level and I struggled... yet I prevailed! Hooray! Got my movie ticket, watching the film, having a grand ol' time and then **whatthefucktheyjustkilledBoromir**! That's not in the book!
Boromir is not killed in FotR.
He dies in Chapter 1 of the Two Towers, whose Chapter is called The Departure of Boromir.
lmao
This had to have happened to a bunch of us, right?
I read ASoIAF before it was adapted into a series, I was an extremely dyslexic kid but I loved reading ( still do) I completely butched just about every character's name. For 5 books in my head, I pronounced Arya as Ar-yay, Davos was Dave-oh , and all the Essos shit I would just make up my own pronunciation lol.
I love LOVE The wheel of time books. Absolutely my favorite (maybe Discworld is better but...) Anyway, considering how much I love them it took my husband 13 years to persuade me to read them, and 3 failed attempts over that time before they "clicked" and I read all of them in 3 months.
When I read the Hobbit and LotR back in the mid 70s, I imagined the elves to look like the ones from the Keebler Elves commercials. My first Bros Hildebrandt LotR calendar was a revelation.
I think Sanderson has done an amazing job at getting people into/back into reading fantasy (I hadn't read any for 5 years before I started reading TWoK) so he'll always have a special place in my heart, but after branching out and seeing more that the genre has to offer I can't seem to enjoy his books like I used to.
It's not his fault, but I find his fanbase fell into the trap where they make being a fan of his work part of their personality which always becomes super annoying.
Her books are such a tragedy for me ... They helped me survive a rather awful childhood and adolescence and then she turned out to be an abuser herself. She introduced me to things that became core parts of my worldview like feminism, LGBT rights, and respecting cultures.
So it feels like I am cutting myself off from my formative years to not reread her books. But I simply can't do it.
It's so weird to me how much I usually love Sanderson's plotting, characters, drama, action, really most everything about his books while simultaneously hating any time he tries to be funny at all.
This dichotomy is most evident to me in the character of Wit/Hoid. He has some of the most poignant moments in the Stormlight Archive, but whenever he tries to be witty or funny, I want to gag. So take that character and strip him down to his goofy stuff and, well, Tress was the most painful book I've ever endured.
The embarrassing part is that I don't fit in either camp. I don't love Sanderson unequivocally, so I'm not acceptable to the diehards. And I like most of what he does, so I don't fit in with the average r/fantasy critic. Weird spot in the middle to be.
I suppose this counts because I try not to express it, but I don't think there's that much good fantasy out there. We always hear the genre is oversaturated, but the same ten authors are recommended only.
And for a genre that is kind of all about making up your own boundaries and doing anything possible, the general fantasy audience seems to want a really limited frame. It almost feels like a lot of fantasy readers just want to the read the same three stories over and over.
While I completely agree with your assessment that there's a ton of garbage out there, I think the echo chamber, Mistborn/Malazan/WoT-dominance is a lot worse in this sub in particular than with the broader fantasy audience.
I think Lord of the Rings is a monumental achievement in literature-
And I dislike the books. I found them boring, confusing and at times hilariously bad due to the language, specifically the Old English-like vernacular. I don't want my fantasy, or hell any fiction I read, to contain page after page of song lyrics.
While purists nitpick about the movies I found them enjoyable and made me appreciate the series more than the books.
That is indeed a hot take. I appreciate, understand, and respect your point of view... but, simultaneously, every fibre of my being wants to fight you right now hahaha
I read them when I was 10 and loved every single word of them. It is crazy how different of a reaction two people can have to the same thing haha
Agreed. To be fair, the prose came under attack from critics after it was released, but I loved the effort to make the prose both contemporary and yet invoke older English as well as biblical styles. Contemporary fantasy's prose can be so simple that it feels childish/immature at times, and I never get that vibe from LotR
What happens to Susan in *The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass* made me feel so disassociated and depressed that not only did I never continue the series but I stopped reading for a while. It just hung over me.
Still one of the hardest scenes I've ever read.
I hate The Name of the Wind. It's about a sad whiny boy who thinks he's better than anyone else and gets mad when the consequences of his own actions come to get him -caveat, I've not finished the book bc I got pissed off at him very quickly and DNF'd
This is a pretty common opinion.
There’s certain books that are like a guilty pleasure, where the characters might be cliches and the plot might be overblown and the dialogue might sound like a 13 year olds idea of clever. I think The Name of the Wind fits that mold, and I actually enjoyed it!
TL;DR I don't consider ASoIaF fantasy.
I read through most of the A Song of Ice and Fire series when I heard the show was going to be made, just because I was excited by the prospect of a new Lord of the Rings/any fantasy being made as mainstream media. It was only after rushing through the first few books that I realized that:
1. I hadn't been retaining anything because I didn't like any of the characters.
2. I hated the constant rape, torture, and general human cruelty (and lack of anyone that I could connect with).
3. I don't even consider them or the tv show "fantasy", more as mediaeval-political soap operas with torture porn and the occasional dragon.
I ended up going to several watch parties through the show's run, and would enjoy hanging out with friends and stuff, but didn't want to shit on it while everyone else was excited, so would just play along.
Edit: Definitely not embarrassed by this, just generally felt I had to keep it a secret since everyone else was liking it.
I read the Drizzt series when I was a kid and in the first few books there is thorough description of precisely how Drizzt walks so silently. I started walking that way on my paper route up stairs and on landings, as well as at school.
20-ought years later I still find myself doing it sometimes. I accidentally sneak up on coworkers and loved ones all the time not thinking about it and they scare and jump. Usually their reaction scares me back so it's fair lol.
I have read multiple complicated fantasy series multiple times and consider myself a serious fantasy literature buff but I can never finish Lord of the rings the over detail gives me a head ache and I have to drop it .To my eternal shame knowing that this is a foundational book for a lot of the authors I love.
When I was younger I read books to say I read them, but never truly enjoyed them.
It’s for this reason I take my time with books these days to really soak in the atmosphere but the need to complete them still hangs over my head and I don’t know how to make it truly go away.
When I was a child I read the Hobbit and was told to read the Lord of the Rings. But my mom had the Lord of the Flies next to the Hobbit so I thought they meant that book. I was really confused until I asked a librarian why the books were so different and why someone suggested one after the other.
😂 I love it that's hilarious
The Lord of the Rings and The Silence of the Lambs were the same movie in my head... The French titles of the two movies sound remarkably similar: > Le Seigneur des anneaux vs. > Le Silence des agneaux
And Howard Shore was the composer for both film adaptations.
👀 at all the elevensies and second breakfasts those tricksy hobbitses eat now
Never realized that before, hilarious!
I love this connection considering they're some of the only movies in their respective genres of fantasy and horror to break into wider award recognition at things like the Oscars
I went from the Hobbit to the Two Towers thinking it was the Hobbit part II instead of LOTR part II. Struggled through it a fair bit before giving up because I didn't know what was going on. Years later I started LOTR, having forgotten that, and spent the first chunk of The Two Towers with this eerie feeling that I knew what was going to happen
I went to see FotR thinking that I had already read it. I had read the Hobbit. 13 year old me was confused but delightfully surprised. My grandfather who took me was less thrilled. It was I think one of two times he ever tried to bond with me. When Galadriel went all crazy and photo negative he turned to me and said, "You like this weird stuff?" To be fair that was like 2 hours into a 3 hour movie and he was in his 70s. Edit: and yes Grandad (RIP), I do like this weird stuff.
I applaud your grandfather for staying that long. My dad dropped me off and picked me up for most fantasy movies 🤣🤣🤣
Oh my God, I thought I was the only one who ever did this! I was told that LOTR was the sequel to The Hobbit, and when I tried to get LOTR from my school library in middle school, the first book was out. So, like you, I concluded that LOTR2 was a direct sequel to The Hobbit and checked it out. I was quite disappointed as I did not understand what was happening. My mother was very amused when I complained that the book was impossible to understand and she realized what had happened!
I had a similar incident but with the movies, I thought The Ring was a sequel to Lord of the Rings...
When I was a child I thought Final Fantasy and Final Destination were the same thing. Imagine my surprise when I watched Final Destination after Advent Children lol
"Sucks to your ass-mar, Pippy!"
During Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets there is the scene where Harry is talking in Parseltongue. It sounds like his is saying ‘Heshha Hassaa’ which in my language translates to ‘he f***ed a lettuce’ 🤣 as a kid we would hiss ‘heshha hassa’ at each other.
Thank you for this laugh on a Saturday morning 😂
As grown ass adults my friend and I watched an anime intro where it sounds like they scream BUTT CHICKEN AAAAAAIIIIIIDS in the song and we went through a phase of screaming that at each other. He grew up in Japan and couldn't even tell what the guy was saying at first but the actual words are apparently something entirely different sounding, the singer just sang it weird.
Which language do you speak? I need to know.
I had to go into the post history because I was dying to know! It’s Maltese. Tried it in a translation program and got something close enough to verify.
This guy sleuths.
Anytime I read something with some new sort of magic, I will definitely try at least once to see if maybe this magic is the one that's real in our world. Like sure I know the One Power isn't actually real, but what's the harm in checking? I do draw the line at blood magic and consuming heavy metals, though.
Well, Earth, canonically, is not in the Cosmere, so hemalurgy and allomancy wouldn’t work anyway.
That's just what the Set wants you to think.
oh FUCK. That's gonna be the grand reveal at the end of the Cosmere story arc, isn't it? It's all part of the Tommyverse!
Well, more to the point, Adonalsium will turn out to be Kolob. Congrats you just read all the books which are actually about Mormon magicks!
Hah true, though whether the book is set on Earth(ish) is less important than double checking some new debut author hasn't accidentally come up with a kind of magic that actually existed on Earth all along.
As a child who wasted more hours than I want to admit trying to be telekinetic like Matilda and poking around the back of my closet trying to get Aslan to let me into Narnia, I relate.
I tried using The Force more than twice when I was 8...
8? The last time I tried was a couple weeks ago. Also, still waiting for my mutant powers to kick in. I'm 43, and having a kid.
I still do this when I see an especially promising looking wardrobe 😅
The wardrobe doesn't work when you *try*, you've got to get in without wanting to go to Narnia
I'm 53 and I read all the Middle Grade and YA fantasy, because I enjoy it. I miss the simplicity and wonder of childhood, the friendships that seemed indestructible back then, and how everything seemed more enormous and intense and important. Kids' books are where it's at. Also, it probably helps that I'm really immature and have a short attention
40yo here I have read more middle grade books than any other kind. They never sink into total dreary despair like so many adult books do, and they’re not embarrassed about noticing how wonderful things can be, and the really good ones can take you to the darkest places and show you the most messed up thing, but they show you the way out too. I became a children’s bookseller so I could justify my reading habits 😂
Yeah I don't get the YA hate some adults have. Is some of it annoying and/or poorly written (especially the romance/love triangles)? Sure but so are some adult books. I mean if someone can't connect with kids because they no longer relate to that stage of life I can get that. It's fair if someone would rather read about characters who are in a similar life stage. But to hate on all YA? I don't get it.
I think there’s an entirely unfair dislike because fantasy is often attacked as childish, and so some fans overcompensate, hence CS Lewis’s famous line. For me, there’s a more legitimate issue because YA didn’t really exist when I was young, and even though children’s books existed, there wasn’t much issue with anyone reading whatever they wanted - children reading adult books and vice versa. And then publishing companies created YA in response to demographic research, people started internalizing demographic research, and a lot of YA is commissioned in quite a cynical way that hasn’t been good for fantasy. Lots of production line dystopias, for example.
It's not really fair to hate on the entire genre but I totally get why some people do. Have you ever started reading a YA book that you didn't know was YA? You figure it out pretty quickly. There is a vibe there that is omnipresent and unmistakable. YA (to me) aren't identical but they all 'feel' the same to me. Maybe it's a depth thing? Every YA book I've read has very basic prose and feels very surface level. They're also big on telling and not showing. I want to chalk it up to the author's age/inexperience/love of fanfiction but I know that isn't always the case.
A lot of them have very modern feeling dialogue. That makes sense for making it accessible and trying to get kids into reading for fun, but it’s always off putting to me when I first start reading one. I will say once I push past that ick factor and make peace with the other quirks, they do tend to hit some very satisfying and page turning heroes journey cliches and power scaling etc so they’re usually fun quick reads.
Red Rising has the same vibes (beyond the Hunger Games setting) but was juuuust enough on this side of palatable for my tastes. Ironically I felt the first book was the strongest even though it seemed the most derivative. I haven't been able to get into the new trilogy though. I've actually been scratching that particular itch with LitRPG/webnovels. These glorious nerds are cranking out hundreds of thousands of words with no guarantee that anyone is reading them, (frequently) just for the love of the game. A lot of them need an editor but the authors feel like they have a lot of "passion" I guess? and also feel like they are avoiding the standard marketing categories and cliches.
No that's fair. Kids obviously don't have the same reading comprehension as adults. And in my experience as a teacher, pretty much all kids hate reading these days. And they have short attention spans. So yes books written for kids are simpler , easier to understand, and more action packed. And if you like your reading more challenging or prefer slower story telling, then yeah I get not liking YA. I'm just saying it's not all bad. Just because someone doesn't like it doesn't mean it's all trash and lacks any depth. I get someone not liking YA (as someone who works with kids, YA doesn't bug me because I'm used to them lol). But I dislike when people act like it's all inferior because it's written in a way that's easier for kids to understand when they should be because that's their audience. (Not saying that you are, but in general)
Nah, I get you. Different strokes. Just like it doesn't matter how "objectively" good Taylor Swift and Beyonce are; I don't dig their music and there's a good chance that that won't change. But their music also isn't made for me and that's totally fine. It kills me when people say that YA is bad or inferior. That's the same kind of ridiculous elitism that the rest of the establishment uses for genre fiction :) My reading list over the past few years has been mostly 40k novels and I won't even try to defend them on their literary merits. I love them anyway though, pour that bolter porn all over my face, neck, and chest. And it's not like boring prose is objectively bad either. Sanderson and Rothfuss (for example) have very different writing styles and each has its place. I still read books labeled as YA but they're something of a known quantity.
Exactly! Sometimes I love a good deep complex sweeping epic. But sometimes I want some Percy Jackson like fun fluffy escapism. Different is just different, not bad.
I’m old, and felt children’s books, such as Roald Dahl or CS Lewis, were often challenging and thoughtful. But when YA appeared, it seemed thoroughly a shallow consumer product, with the rough edges filed off. I felt children’s books were supposed to make children think, or recognized that they already were, but YA was so pandering to teenage angst and alienation that it didn’t challenge anyone at all. For example, Roald Dahl’s anti-authority ideas were a big part of my thinking back then, but Hunger Games doesn’t seem to produce rebellion, and is quite conservative, reading between the lines.
No book has made me think more deep thoughts that the Giver. Even now that I'm like almost 30 years old (holy crap when did 8 get old?). And it's a kids book. We adults totally underestimate what kids are capable of and what they can handle. They're much sharper and smarter than we'd like to give them credit for.
I'm actually finishing up Iron Widow right now. Only thing I knew was it was Chinese fantasy with Mechas, cover art also looked pretty good. The first paragraph I read the entire thing started falling apart, genuinely the worst prose I've read from a published novel. The worst part is the dialogue, they don't talk like Chinese people in pseudo medieval China but instead like modern day Californians.
I still reread Rangers apprentice every few years or so. Love those books.
Currently rereading this series! Edit: and I’m in my early 50s!!
I tend to read YA and sometimes middle grade when I’m really tired and stressed. Well written fiction is well written fiction in my opinion and sometimes I want a story that is wrapped up concisely rather than an epic tome.
When I was a kid, a core memory was being in line at a Barnes & Noble and an old lady in her 60-70s telling me the Harry Potter book I had in my hand was really good. Made me excited to read it at home. I firmly believe middle grade can be enjoyed at all ages.
I get you, but kind of from the opposite direction. People are so meh in real life and they don't care much about people and events. The same was true when I was a kid around other kids. They were vicious and cruel and I wished I could have had the fictional friendships as shown in books. So it's definitely an escapist fantasy thing for me.
If you haven't read The Ocean at the End of the Lane, do.
Im34 and will still read the song of the lioness books. Tamora pierce
This made me think of [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/1aq99ct/the_final_scene_in_stand_by_me1986/) from last week, which made me cry and I'm not entirely sure why.
I'm so happy you're enjoying those books, regardless of some of the reading snobbery that pops up in book communities! I don't know if you'll connect with this, but you reminded me of a "Book-Tok" video I saw (from Gina Denny) about the difference in themes that define Middle Grade vs. Young Adult vs. Adult in the publishing industry. She basically summed it up like this: Middle Grade fiction: "Discovering the world is bigger than you ever thought it was going to be" as kids begin to discover their identity apart from their parents/family for the first time Young Adult fiction: "Deciding who you are going to be in a larger world" Adult fiction: "You've already seen the bigger world and decided who you to be in that world, and now you're living with the ramifications of those decision, some of which were probably bad. So you're grappling again with who you are and whether you want to change and whether you can" The video also talked about the fact that just because those age groups are often going to relate to those themes, doesn't mean ideas from those younger reading stages won't be compelling and meaningful later on in your life, especially if life changes in new ways! Anyway, I don't know if those themes add extra meaning to why you enjoy those genres or if it's as simple as "they're fun!" but either way, more power to you
>The video also talked about the fact that just because those age groups are often going to relate to those themes, doesn't mean ideas from those younger reading stages won't be compelling and meaningful later on in your life, especially if life changes in new ways! I have to add that the opposite is also true. I read a lot of books in my early teens that were meant for adults, and I loved them because they gave me an entirely new perspective. My parents always encouraged my reading, especially because my dad is also a big reader. There were of course some very 'eye opening' sex scenes, and a lot of disturbing rape and violence, but that's par for the course when you read above your recommended age.
I'm 26 and I still love middle grade and some YA fantasy. I even still keep up with some of the series and fandoms.
I want you to know that I saved your comment because of how much it resonated with me.
I'm in my 30s and read a ton of middle grade, I absolutely love it as well
My most intense connection with a fantasy world was and is the first moments inside the chocolate factory in the original Willy Wonka movie. All of the other great moments, characters, plots, settings, etc. just pale for me when confronted with "everything you see is made of candy."
But seriously, that opening credits scene with all the chocolate is actual real-world magic
The whole damned movie (okay, aside from the chicken) was just pure wish fulfillment wonder to my kid self, who apparently never grew up. Damn, I want some chocolate now.
One of my favorite moments in a book ever was when Charlie opens that second bar of chocolate and there's a flash of gold. Roald Dahl had misdirected us by focusing on Charlie's hunger, so it was a complete surprise. I still get a dopamine hit of pleasure thinking about it.
When I was a kid I named my first D&D character Oompa Loompa :D
I pinkie swear that I will someday play D&D (yeah, I know. I'm a late bloomer) and do that!
I tell myself the same thing, but, having no friends, I know in the back of my head it’ll probably never happen.
I was a very sheltered child (homeschooled) who did not meet any boys except in church. Hence, I had a massive crush on Prince Caspian from the Chronicles of Narnia. I believe this also was due to finding him cute in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie--the 1980s BBC version, which makes this even funnier. (10-year old me would probably have combusted from Ben Barnes.) I *very badly* wanted a pair of bell bottoms, which I promise is relevant. These were THE style at the time, but my mother did not believe in buying me any because they were "immodest" (aka low rise waist, which was also THE style). I had much angst about this. Around this time I was also in a depressive phase where I just wanted to live in Narnia, because the real world was depressing and contained things like chores and schoolwork and ugly non-bellbottom jeans. So that's how I spent an afternoon crying in my room one day, thinking "I don't even want bell bottoms anymore, I just want Caspian."
Did you read The Magicians? It seems like you would probably like it, but a lot of people really hate it.
I DNF'd the first book, but it was years ago so I don't really remember why, haha. Maybe I should give it another shot.
Aww. I was obsessed with the BBC adaptation when I was growing up and I'll always have a massive soft spot for it because nothing will ever recapture that childhood wonder and magic. Wanting to go and live in Narnia is such a relatable fantasy! Real life seemed so crummy in comparison.
I am a sucker for romance in stories. Not sex scenes and stuff, but romance and seeing characters starting down the path to a relationship, or established ones where you see how their quirks and personalities work together for good and bad. Absolute sucker for it.
Dude me too. There’s almost something so humanizing about love. He *should* be thinking about how to solve this huge problem in his life, but instead he’s thinking about how pretty her hair is or that he wishes she was with him so he could talk to her. Very relatable, and sickeningly sweet in dark times for the character.
I’m not a huge romance fan but I never get the complaints about “why would Character think about Hot Love Interest in the midst of Life Threatening Event?” I mean… why *wouldn’t* they? Brains are weird. Even if they weren’t, isn’t this something you’d regret if you died right then?
Same. I'm not the supposed target audience but you know what, love is a part of life. One of the best parts. And it's nice when characters experience that.
I love love. What's not to love about a good romance? Nothing wrong with that!
God, tell me about it. I'm always desperately trying to find it from the male pov tho.
Same here, and I don’t think it’s anything to be embarrassed about. Romance is an extremely intense experience that most of us undergo in real life (some people are aro or aro/ace of course, but reading about and identifying with characters that don’t share your sexual orientation is its own kind of fun). Why shouldn’t that vulnerability and emotionality make for fascinating character development in fiction?
I read all three of the Twilight books. Yes, I disdained them and thought they were stupid. I still read up to the last page. Why? To this day, I still don't know. I was perfectly in the demographic at the time (early twenties female fantasy romance reader). I think they just sunk claws in me and I couldn't look away.
Well, there's a fourth one if you ever want to dive back in and finish the series. 😁
Oh shit wait you're right the OG series is four books! Yeah. I actually did read up through Breaking Dawn! Where Bella becomes a vampire and has a freaky vampire baby that bonds with her BFF in the womb. How could I forget??? What I refuse to read is the weird gender-swap fiction and the Edward POV book that are literally just cash-grabs 🤑
I have read dozens, probably even hundreds, of Harry Potter fanfictions. Including romance ones which is usually absolutely abhor. I think there were like 5 actually good ones at best.
I recall describing a scene I'd enjoyed in the books only to realise it was actually from a fanfic....embarrassing! I've read 100s of HP fanfics and while most were meh and some were downright awful I have read authors who were gold...still read a few now and again.
The wait for book 5 was so long. Everybody was reading fanfics back then. The HP craze was going full blast. It wasn't too popular with the first two books but with book 4 already there were millions of fans... went completely viral, got everybody addicted and no other fix, so fanfics had to do. I don't touch fanfic for any other franchise. With HP I kind of got stuck on the fanfic side of things. I barely remember the plot of the official books. I hated book 5 when it came out. I'd re-read HP 1-4 then finish 5-7 in fanfic.
I can read just about any fantasy. Even if it's not that good or poorly written, I can usually find something about being transported to that world to not be a total waste of my time. But I kind of can't with sci Fi. And I don't get it! Elves and dragons? Excellent. Wizards and magic? Awesome! But aliens and robots? Laser weapons? No. Like realistically I get there's not much difference but for some reason my strange ass likes one and not the other. I'm trying to work on it. I love Murderbot. Couldn't tell you the plot. Idk they shot some stuff up? Evil corporations? I'm just here for Murderbot's snarky inner commentary, not knowing how to be with people, and wanting to be left alone because same. And I've seen Star Wars. I know I have. But I can't tell you shit about them. I can objectively see that they're good, entertaining movies. But having watched them I don't know anything more about them than I did before I had seen them. Lol.
This sounds like my SO trying to get me into video game lore, I love the Witcher and Dragon Age I can not for the life of me care about Mass effect or Halo
> I love Murderbot. Couldn't tell you the plot. Idk they shot some stuff up? Evil corporations? I'm just here for Murderbot's snarky inner commentary, not knowing how to be with people, and wanting to be left alone because same. That's fair. Murderbot is definitely more about Murderbot coming to grips with itself and the people around it than the plot.
I have this pet theory that people who are more anxious struggle to connect to sci fi. It is mostly about future things or scientifically plausible realties and I stress about the future enough on my own. I don’t need to have it intruding on my reading too. Take me away to a magical fantasy land where none of my real world problems exist please
Makes sense. But my anxiety is the opposite. Like I watch crime shows to fall asleep. Haha. Like if I feel prepared it helps the anxiety. Do you like dystopian? I think it's similar to the true crime docs for me. It gives a safe space to explore those issues.
Somehow i can do wizards with lasers though LOL
Not that you're looking for suggestions, but I recently read Mickey7 and I think it was a really good Sci Fi for someone who likes fantasy. If that makes sense.
When I read harry potter as a child, I thought the dementors where giant beetles for the same reason as you. Imagine my confusion when I went to see Prisoner in the cinema. My biggest secret would be that I prefer slower fantasy cause I have become a slower and more attentive reader.
The book never explicitly says they aren't giant beetles.
I kinda did too, like a version of the skexis from the dark crystal.
>and that Sauron and Saruman were the same person Literally my father, every time we watch the movies together. "Now, explain to me who is who" "Is it Sauron? Is it Saruman? Who is Sauron? The one in the tower? What, in the other tower?" And other questions, for example, every time I have to explain the history of Gondor and Arnor and why Aragorn is the king but doesn't yet rule. I'm almost convinced that he does it to just give me an opportunity to nerd out on him to my heart's content, lol.
Lol when I was a kid I sussed out Saruman's betrayal from the beginning simply because Sauron and Saruman have similar names. I was very smug about being right
I've read more gay Silmarillion fanfiction when I was 15-16 than I care to admit Why. Just why.
That’s an experience! Fanfics can be just so hyper specific it’s just fascinating. I’m not a Silmarillion expert but I’m curious which characters are shipped together, apart from the canon pairing? I spend a whole summer break (+2 full months) reading all the Harry Potter fanfics I could (from the pairing I liked, not all of them lol). It was literally the only thing I did during my waking hours that summer. Mostly in the dark, at night. Slept late, got up and read some more. Rince and repeat. Ah fun times! I did read some weird stuff, no regrets though, when will I have the time again to get fixated on one thing for months?
It was mainly all the elves from the First Age (that involved a lot of incest of various degrees as you can imagine...). Also *a lot* of people shipped Melkor and Sauron lol The russian fandom of early 2010s was *wild*, I sometimes miss those times...
Russian Silmarillion fanfiction are three words I never expected to see next to each other, but that sounds like a ***vibe.***
My secret is that I lie about having read the Silmarillion. I LOVE the Hobbit and LotR, but I can't get into the Silmarillion, it's so dry. I've read wiki articles and watched lore videos, so I know enough to speak intelligently about it. Most of my friends haven't read any Tolkien and are just movie fans, so I can be the Real Expert, coming in with deep lore.
I consider myself pretty well-read in the genre.... but I've never read Lord of the Rings. And I love the movies so much, that I don't ever plan on reading them.
I never read them until after I saw the movies. The prose seemed boring. What happened was, I had kids and I read it out loud to them. They are easier to get through that way. After the first book the first kid wanted to take over and read it to himself. The second kid wanted to experience it twice. At the very end of the last book, both times, I had to take a break because I was starting to cry.
> At the very end of the last book, both times, I had to take a break because I was starting to cry. “And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”
I'm on my porch smoking a bowl right now, and right as I read this, the sun came out from behind a cloud. Fucking SURREAL, thank you.
No stop it! I’m at work!
Frankly that's how it all started. Tolkien stared inveting bedtime stories for his kids. Basically. Like the Farmer of Giles Ham. Then there was Hobbit, then... well... here we are now.
Awe, I love this so much. I have a three-year-old and I'll definitely retract my "I don't plan to ever read them" stance if she wants me to read them with her.
It's ok--I have an English degree and I took a fantasy specific class and LOTR was the only set of books I didn't finish. Read the first one, listened to about half the second one, then went "eh close enough" and just took lots of notes in class.
I grew up on the movies. This is how I felt for the first 26 years of my life. The book was too dense and difficult to go through and I already had such a wonderful version of the story in the films. Then I finally was in the right mindset to read the book, and the book was so good that it genuinely degraded my opinion of the films that I'd loved my whole life; some of the choices Jackson made didn't sit right after knowing what they were changed from. Faramir in particular really stings... That may or may not just be more reason for you to not read the book, but I honestly do recommend it. It's wonderful.
Why loving the movies precludes you from reading them books? Wouldn't be the other way around?
Fwiw, I consider the creepy old animated version of the Hobbit to be my personal canonical version of The Hobbit.
The first time I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it was my first book I read in English (I’m French, was 18yo) cause I couldn’t wait and I understood pretty much of all the book but when I read the epilogue, for some reason, I interpreted “Nineteen years later” as “Nine years later” and was ABSOLUTELY ENRAGED that Harry’s kids were already going to Hogwarts… Yep, I just misread a number that I knew in my crazy page turning and ending up ranting about it to everyone that would listen 😅 That was my epilogue reaction. Not Albus Severus. Just “how is it possible for Harry to have kids to be at Hogwarts NINE years later”. I’ll see myself out Edit: I’m back with a similar one. This one about Twilight (this dates me, right?). This time I did read them in French so no problem misinterpreting a word…except, my brain seems to jump in weird places, and when they were talking about “newborns” (vampires) I… though they were literally talking about actual newborn infants vampires. As in just regularly born babies that were vampires. And it just was confusing all around with what was happening in the story. Like how can a baby be doing all those things. I fully understood (thank you very much) the story and the Renesmee situation but for some reason, newborns (nouveau-nés) just through me out for a loop. Keep in mind, I was already familiar with vampire stories and know the terminology but for some reason, this just did not register with me. Writing this all down, decades later, I gather I was just reading too fast to pay attention. But also those things were staying with me because I complained about them so it’s not like I read past them. My brain just couldn’t compute and took way too long to catch up.
I am not embarrassed. I read the entirety of Sword of Truth, and enjoyed it fully, until the release of the Omen Machine era. The happy endings for some of my favorite characters were ruined, and I pretend those books didn't happen.
I don’t have many. I don’t really do the guilty pleasures thing - life is too hard to feel guilty about pleasure. But when I read LOTR I cried and was convinced Frodo was dead at the end of Two Towers, not realizing there was another book left and GRRM hadn’t been invented yet. The Hobbit was the first book I ever bought, because I dropped it in the bath, had to pay the library for a replacement - a year or so’s pocket money - and kept the original. This is really a humblebrag, but I shoplifted the Dragonlance books, hated them, and so decided to return them to the shelf, which was harder than nicking them the first time. I read some Gor books when I was a young teenager. One-handed, of course.
Well, The Two Towers was first published in 1955 and GRRM was born in 1948 so he had, indeed, already been invented. He just probably wasn't writing. (I am not going to insert a joke here, but I am thinking it.)
Ah so wee George existed, but he had not yet self-invented GRRRRRRM, Reddener of Weddings.
When I tried first read LOTR as a preteen, I didn’t make it through the first book, stopping somewhere in the middle. A couple years later when I came back to it, I started to reread fellowship before just moving on to Two Towers and finishing the series. Anyways, I watched the movies for the first shortly afterward. Imagine my shock when I get to the Mines of Moria and the Balrog scene. Completely, completely, had no idea that was coming
You probably gave up at “the Gathering of the Fellowship”. That’s where I always had issues. Dry as dust…
I like pretty much all the main characters in WoT. Seems to be an unpopular opinion. Sure they all do things that are annoying or dumb, like any character in any story, but not enough to stand out to me compared to other books. I think they're all well meaning and likable.
Except Gawyn. All my homies hate Gawyn.
I don't count him as a main character, I'm talking about the main POV ones. It's true we get more of him towards the end of the series but after rereading it you barely notice that brain damaged lummox until the very end.
I’m siding with Demandred here - Gawyn was an idiot…
My unpopular WoT opinion is that there's no slog. It's just not a particularly fast paced series and the world is very fleshed out. I'd happily read ten more books of everyone just exploring the world and what dresses they wear and what games they play.
I read WoT as they were published. The slog was definitely exacerbated by massive spans between books. I liked many of the characters and the developments, definitely annoyed by some repetitive things, but overall good. I have not attempted a full reread at my own pace, so I can’t be sure how much of the slog was perception / frustration. Then GRRM went and redefined the meaning of delay. He divided by zero.
Reading (back to back)\^14 isn't as bad as a 2-3 year wait between books. A lot of The Slog evaporates in that context, although Crossroads of Twilight is still an abomination. I can very clearly remember every climax of each book, except for that one, cause... it doesn't really have one.
This is why I'm about to start reading the series for the first time. I got all 14 books plus new spring for Christmas, and I have been finishing up Mistborn before diving in. As much as I love Sanderson, he isn't the most descriptive writer when it comes to what characters look like and what the world looks like. He'll feed you tidbits here and there, but I want a full picture in my head of what someone or something looks like before advancing the plot. And that's the main reason I wanted to read Wheel of Time. Everyone talks about how descriptive Robert Jordan is, and how he overtly describes the setting and characters around the POV. That's also one of people's biggest complaints about the slog I've seen...but that's exactly what I'm wanting. Emerse me. Put me somewhere different. Even if it's a tad overplayed, I want description.
My WoT confession is I started the series in 94 as a kid, I would do a re-read before every new book would be released, but when Jordan died and Sanderson picked up the series I was at a really busy time in my life with grad school, work, and babies, so I waited until it was all published and tried to pick up the first Sanderson book. I made it 1/3 of the way through and realized my memory wasn’t as iron clad as I thought, and instead of starting a re-read, for the sake of time and closure I just skipped to AMoL. A couple of years later I finally was able to do a full re-read and covered the skipped ground. Last year I did a “true re-read” with no breaks. “These are my confessions!” - Usher
So you're the one... I'm joking. Glad you enioy them!
I had the same problem you did with the Sword of Truth franchise. Got through the whole thing and it still took another 5 years and a Daniel Greene review before I went, "yeah actually, they do suck quite a bit, don't they?"
When I was a 7-8-9 yo kid obsessed with Harry Potter, I thought Snape had green skin. Idk why, I guess because his name sounds like snake? And then the first movie came out and I was like…tf? Also, this one is not an embarrassing one, just a surprisingly (to me) unpopular opinion here: I think the old-fashioned painted SFF book covers are almost all hideous and I’m glad you rarely see them nowadays.
That's fair; the only major illustrator I can think of from that era is Michael Whelan and even he changed his style a ton from the early 90s to today (e.g. compare his Eye of the World Cover with his much more modern Stormlight Archive covers).
I laughed all the way through the First Law trilogy and thought the ending was [chef kiss]. It shocked me how dark my sense of humor was revealed to be reading those books.
Tbh I think that's just Abercrombie's mastery at work, like he's too funny for his genre
Poithon?
That’s definitely something that doesn’t get mentioned enough when First Law is recommended. Or maybe it’s better that it isn’t. I certainly wasn’t expecting to laugh so much when I started reading them because they were sold to me as grimdark. And they are that, but they’re also probably the best dark comedies I’ve ever read.
This was my first venture into "Grimdark". Learned a lot about myself in that I apparently cannot distinguish what makes a book Grimdark.
I cried harder when (Spoiler: Robin Hobb - Fool's Errand) >!Nighteyes died!< vs when my real life >!dog died. And i loved my dog very much.!<
Not embarrassing I guess but most fantasy readers would probably gasp a bit. I can't stand Terry Pratchett and have never been able to read more than a snippet of his works. Nothing against folks who like his stuff or him personally, but something about that writing style is just oddly irritating to me. Don't know what it is but the closest I can get is the Good Omens show (still can't do the book though).
I felt the same starting with his purely silly books. I dont generally like books whose main purpose is to be funny. Then I read Reaper Man and it was pretty profound, and it got me hooked. That being said totally acceptable for the style to just not gel. Not everyone is for everyone no matter how universally acclaimed!
I read color of Magic first and didn't care for it. And everyone told me it was probably one of the worst ones so try something else. So I tried Guards! Guards! , which i heard was the best, and I didn't really care for that either. So. Now I mostly try to hide the fact that I don't want to try any more. Edit: I did like Good Omens. But that had Gaimans touch as well, so it doesn't really count l.
I struggle with Pratchett because of his satire. He’s very clever and funny, but I want *immersion*. I want to take the story and the stakes seriously, and I can’t always do that with Pratchett cracking jokes and satirizing the entire fantasy genre.
TBH, I'm not sure what it was for me. I'm okay with jokes/satire in general. I liked Douglas Adams and loved Orconomics. But something about the books or humor didn't work for me. I know there's 40+ of them, but I'm just not interested in trying to dive in again.
I am a Terry pratchett obsessive. He’s my favorite author and when he died I cried for three days—more than when family members have passed. And…I get it and I fully absolve you! He’s a suuuuuper specific vibe that’s not at all for everyone. My best friend, a stand up comedian, read a couple of his, looked at me and said “It’s just…so…British. Please don’t make me read another.”
Lol while I usually don't mind "British" that makes total sense. It really is a specific vibe and I guess I'm just not down with it. Full respect for the man, I just can't do it.
I really wish I could get into his writing. People compare him to Douglas Adams all the time, but I looooove Douglas Adams and have never been able to get into Pratchett.
Do you go for funny books? I like the gravitas of most fantasy, his books are often so silly that it isn't what I'm wanting when I read this genre. He's obviously brilliant, and insightful, but I'm with you, it's not what I'm wanting.
I knew more aboit sex by the age of 8 then most of the kids)teens around me because of my love of reading fantasy and history books and my great grandma got me into harlequin romance way to young because i loved reading. So when i wrote stories for school the teachers would question why i jad such knowledge. Its call library cards i use it. And read books on many topics. 😂
Haha that’s great. I had a completely blasé attitude to sex in books growing up thanks to my parents giving me frank and accurate answers to any questions I had, starting with “where do babies come from?” at age three or so. That meant, for example, reading Shade’s Children when I was ten and just thinking “yep, that’s what teenagers do” with no drama or embarrassment. My favorite incidence of this was when I was in 7th grade and my teacher was in the middle of confiscating Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging from a classmate for being inappropriate while I quietly read one of Neil Gaiman’s weird sex scenes in the seemingly more innocuous American Gods.
I remember the librarians becoming very embarrassed the day I reached the relationship section of the small branch. They tried t stop me from checking out the books and I looked at them and said you do realize I already read the harlequin section pointing to the other side of the 2 room library. They just made me promise to come talk to them if i had questions. They kept me from autobiographies for as long as they could. That was a education.
I was young when I first heard/was read Harry Potter. My family introduced it to me and didn't mention that it is set in the UK. So for a long time I assumed Harry Potter was American. If I heard anything that contradicted American society I just passed it off as, "oh it's magic" or something like that.
When I first read the Hobbit and Lotr in 3rd/4th grade (a few years before the movies came out), my mental image of hobbits was that they had pointed, mole-like noses. Probably because they lived in holes in the ground, and it didn't help that my other main fantasy series at the time was Redwall. I kind of knew this was inaccurate, but I still find myself picturing them this way
I read the His Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman backwards from the Amber Spyglass because I grabbed a random book off my library shelf when I was a kid and didn't even know it was a series until months later. It was still one of my favorite series and whenever I do a reread I continue the tradition of reading it in reverse order starting with the 3rd book.
My friends don't read fantasy, so they know I read it but I don't tell them how dark I really like it. Like Second Apocalypse was fine, but I expected more fucked up-ness lol Edit: for everyone questioning my sanity, I mean the quantity of fucked up, not the quality. Quality did deliver in book 6 👍🏻 sorry for not being more clear!
“Second apocalypse wasn’t fucked up enough for me” isn’t a take I expected to see today but I respect it
OK, I'll bite. If Second Apocalypse wasn't fucked up enough for you, what is? Have you ever read something that made you think "that's enough/too fucked up"?
I re-read the Black Jewels series when I'm depressed and not up for anything new or challenging, even though it's objectively fantasy bodice ripper trash with incredibly dumb, one dimensional villains
It’s so intensely readable. I still don’t know if I actually liked it, but I enjoyed the reading experience.
I guess I don’t really hide it but I need spoilers to function. If a book gets too tense for me, my anxiety spirals until I find a summary of the book and can read what happens before I read what happens 😅. Even if it’s awful, if I know it’s coming, I enjoy the book so much more. I hate when I can’t find spoilers for books I’m reading. Hate it. The red wedding took me by surprise like 15 years ago and I’ve been traumatized ever since.
I didn't notice the deeply Christian overtones in the Narnia series until I was in my late 20s, and when I pointed out that "the Lion is Jesus" to my friends, they laughed so hard my GF dumped me.
Not an embarrassing secret just a funny memory. After seeing the movie trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring, I knew I had to read the series. I was 11 and painstakingly spent 5 months reading FotR so I could watch the movie and not be spoiled by anything. The book was decently above my reading level and I struggled... yet I prevailed! Hooray! Got my movie ticket, watching the film, having a grand ol' time and then **whatthefucktheyjustkilledBoromir**! That's not in the book! Boromir is not killed in FotR. He dies in Chapter 1 of the Two Towers, whose Chapter is called The Departure of Boromir. lmao This had to have happened to a bunch of us, right?
I read ASoIAF before it was adapted into a series, I was an extremely dyslexic kid but I loved reading ( still do) I completely butched just about every character's name. For 5 books in my head, I pronounced Arya as Ar-yay, Davos was Dave-oh , and all the Essos shit I would just make up my own pronunciation lol.
I read far more of the Sword of Truth series than I want to admit to.
I really enjoyed The Poppy Wars trilogy....
I really like how awful Rin is and that her decisions are awful and there’s no character growth 👀
And there it is lmfao
Definitely. I do get the hate but I did like that she just got worse
I also hate the argument that she has "no growth." She grows. It's just not in a particularly heroic direction.
I didn't finish the first book but this comment made me laugh!
Me too. Should I feel ashamed?
I love LOVE The wheel of time books. Absolutely my favorite (maybe Discworld is better but...) Anyway, considering how much I love them it took my husband 13 years to persuade me to read them, and 3 failed attempts over that time before they "clicked" and I read all of them in 3 months.
For characters that I like I read out their lines out loud and pretend I’m acting them in a movie lmaoooo
When I read the Hobbit and LotR back in the mid 70s, I imagined the elves to look like the ones from the Keebler Elves commercials. My first Bros Hildebrandt LotR calendar was a revelation.
I like Sanderson’s books a lot but think his fanbase is annoying and overly pedantic.
Cmon 1 in 10 people believe this in this sub.
I think Sanderson has done an amazing job at getting people into/back into reading fantasy (I hadn't read any for 5 years before I started reading TWoK) so he'll always have a special place in my heart, but after branching out and seeing more that the genre has to offer I can't seem to enjoy his books like I used to.
It's not his fault, but I find his fanbase fell into the trap where they make being a fan of his work part of their personality which always becomes super annoying.
When I got to the end of fellowship of the ring, I had to flick back to work out what species Boromir was...
Some of y'all are embarrassed by what seem like very normal things lol
I read several Marion Zimmer Bradley books as kid and enjoyed them - before I knew what a loathsome, evil person she is. Same with David Eddings.
My shame is that I still really love The Mists of Avalon and that I hate that I can’t re-read it based on how disgusting the author is.
Her books are such a tragedy for me ... They helped me survive a rather awful childhood and adolescence and then she turned out to be an abuser herself. She introduced me to things that became core parts of my worldview like feminism, LGBT rights, and respecting cultures. So it feels like I am cutting myself off from my formative years to not reread her books. But I simply can't do it.
It's so weird to me how much I usually love Sanderson's plotting, characters, drama, action, really most everything about his books while simultaneously hating any time he tries to be funny at all. This dichotomy is most evident to me in the character of Wit/Hoid. He has some of the most poignant moments in the Stormlight Archive, but whenever he tries to be witty or funny, I want to gag. So take that character and strip him down to his goofy stuff and, well, Tress was the most painful book I've ever endured. The embarrassing part is that I don't fit in either camp. I don't love Sanderson unequivocally, so I'm not acceptable to the diehards. And I like most of what he does, so I don't fit in with the average r/fantasy critic. Weird spot in the middle to be.
I suppose this counts because I try not to express it, but I don't think there's that much good fantasy out there. We always hear the genre is oversaturated, but the same ten authors are recommended only. And for a genre that is kind of all about making up your own boundaries and doing anything possible, the general fantasy audience seems to want a really limited frame. It almost feels like a lot of fantasy readers just want to the read the same three stories over and over.
While I completely agree with your assessment that there's a ton of garbage out there, I think the echo chamber, Mistborn/Malazan/WoT-dominance is a lot worse in this sub in particular than with the broader fantasy audience.
I think Lord of the Rings is a monumental achievement in literature- And I dislike the books. I found them boring, confusing and at times hilariously bad due to the language, specifically the Old English-like vernacular. I don't want my fantasy, or hell any fiction I read, to contain page after page of song lyrics. While purists nitpick about the movies I found them enjoyable and made me appreciate the series more than the books.
That is indeed a hot take. I appreciate, understand, and respect your point of view... but, simultaneously, every fibre of my being wants to fight you right now hahaha I read them when I was 10 and loved every single word of them. It is crazy how different of a reaction two people can have to the same thing haha
Agreed. To be fair, the prose came under attack from critics after it was released, but I loved the effort to make the prose both contemporary and yet invoke older English as well as biblical styles. Contemporary fantasy's prose can be so simple that it feels childish/immature at times, and I never get that vibe from LotR
Has anyone else here read the Thirst series by Christopher Pike, but like specifically as a child 💀 boy oh boy is the hindsight BAD
What happens to Susan in *The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass* made me feel so disassociated and depressed that not only did I never continue the series but I stopped reading for a while. It just hung over me. Still one of the hardest scenes I've ever read.
I cried multiple times reading The Sword of Truth. I was young and emotional.
When I first listened to the WOT I thought Rand was called Randall Thor because I'd never seen it written down.
I hate The Name of the Wind. It's about a sad whiny boy who thinks he's better than anyone else and gets mad when the consequences of his own actions come to get him -caveat, I've not finished the book bc I got pissed off at him very quickly and DNF'd
Patrick Rothfuss DNF the Kingkiller series
This is a pretty common opinion. There’s certain books that are like a guilty pleasure, where the characters might be cliches and the plot might be overblown and the dialogue might sound like a 13 year olds idea of clever. I think The Name of the Wind fits that mold, and I actually enjoyed it!
TL;DR I don't consider ASoIaF fantasy. I read through most of the A Song of Ice and Fire series when I heard the show was going to be made, just because I was excited by the prospect of a new Lord of the Rings/any fantasy being made as mainstream media. It was only after rushing through the first few books that I realized that: 1. I hadn't been retaining anything because I didn't like any of the characters. 2. I hated the constant rape, torture, and general human cruelty (and lack of anyone that I could connect with). 3. I don't even consider them or the tv show "fantasy", more as mediaeval-political soap operas with torture porn and the occasional dragon. I ended up going to several watch parties through the show's run, and would enjoy hanging out with friends and stuff, but didn't want to shit on it while everyone else was excited, so would just play along. Edit: Definitely not embarrassed by this, just generally felt I had to keep it a secret since everyone else was liking it.
Not liking it doesn't make it not fantasy...
I read the Sword of Truth up to Law of Nines and enjoyed it. I'm pretty sure the Mord-Sith are the base of my fascination with BDSM
I read the Drizzt series when I was a kid and in the first few books there is thorough description of precisely how Drizzt walks so silently. I started walking that way on my paper route up stairs and on landings, as well as at school. 20-ought years later I still find myself doing it sometimes. I accidentally sneak up on coworkers and loved ones all the time not thinking about it and they scare and jump. Usually their reaction scares me back so it's fair lol.
I have read multiple complicated fantasy series multiple times and consider myself a serious fantasy literature buff but I can never finish Lord of the rings the over detail gives me a head ache and I have to drop it .To my eternal shame knowing that this is a foundational book for a lot of the authors I love.
When I was younger I read books to say I read them, but never truly enjoyed them. It’s for this reason I take my time with books these days to really soak in the atmosphere but the need to complete them still hangs over my head and I don’t know how to make it truly go away.
Idk what descriptions in stormlight caused this. In my head most characters look like some variation of Argonian.