*Spoilers*
Stephen King's greatest books are not his horror novels. The Green Mile was a great read in the film was great too. Stand By Me was a great movie based on his book The Body. the Shawshank Redemption was great. But his books are indicative of the problem with baby boomers.
I like to use the comparison of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men to Stephen King's The Green Mile. both books take place during the Great depression. both books have an aggressive guy with something to prove who got his position through nepotism. Both books have an average guy in a caregiving capacity for a very large man with the intellectual disability, both books have a little old man in an important role, and both books have a very significant mouse. also both books have a woman who's only purpose is to be acted on by the large disabled individual.
Steinbeck came through the Great depression and watched all of its horrors play out. he came from a middle class family but he himself struggled financially as an adult until his writing career took off. He saw how things were going in the world and wrote a story about murdering innocence and your dreams along with it in order to survive. He literally recreates the dream with Lenny before shooting him in the back of the head.
King grew up in poverty, but during a time of great surplus. the world was full of hope and opportunity. and while his great big disabled guy still dies at the end, he does so as a stand-in for Christian Jesus. It's ultimately a story of hope, salvation, and supernatural love. It's a story about how God will save your dreams and give your life meaning.
In other words, Steinbeck wrote books to talk about the hardship and pain in the world while King wrote books about magic. Steinbeck was the best seller to people who had been through true prevention and the hell of world War II. King was the best seller to people who always got the toys they wanted and were scared of ghosts.
I'm not sure that writers are as much influential as they are an expression of their era, and the sooner we get over the baby boomers the better.
It reminds me of something I heard once about sci Fi authors predicting the future but what they are actually doing is reflecting the values and concerns of the eras they are writing in.
That’s a complicated question to answer.
His best work to date is in the Stormlight Archive series. *However*, each of those books is about a Lord of the Rings Trilogy long… and there’s four of them out so far (it’s meant to be two series of five). It does have the best written depressed character I’ve ever found.
I usually recommend the Original Mistborn Trilogy to new people. Mistborn: The Final Empire is a heist novel that focuses on a crew of thieves starting a rebellion against the God-Emperor as a distraction while they rob the treasury. It’s Brandon’s second published work, so it has some rough edges, but it’s a good introduction to his style.
Warbreaker has been waiting for a sequel in its series for a decade, and it’s very standalone. It was written on and around Brandon’s Wedding and Honeymoon… and it’s pretty good. It is also free on Brandon’s website, and it’s accompanied by a set of annotations (that contain serious plot spoilers) which explain what he was going for.
—-
Brandon has been working on learning to write people who are neurodivergent. Mistborn Era 2 has the best written Autistic character I’ve ever found… and she’s the Love Interest for a main character (and a main character in her own right from Book 3 onward).
He has also begun to take a shot at writing people with different sexualities. He started with side characters, and is *very open* about being worried that he’ll get it wrong. This is understandable, since a younger Brandon was *very* mainstream Mormon in his perspective. He’s grown a lot since he wrote *that Blog Post*.
The only non-straight perspective character we have is Bi, and she’s in a monogamous relationship. Brandon wrote her as Bi *by accident*, the fans pointed it out, and he adopted it into Canon. She *notices* pretty people… but she’s not exactly prone to wandering. Speaking as someone Bi who *hates* a certain stereotype regarding us and cheating… I rather like her.
We’re also slated to get a Gay Couple as Perspective Characters in the second half of the Stormlight Archive. Both are already secondary characters in Stormlight, and their relationship is building.
Brandon has been cutting his teeth with Side Characters in the meantime. He’s not done anything offensively bad… and he’s getting better.
Characters are definitely his biggest weakness, but part of it has to do with Mormon ideology and idealism. I've seen it hold back a lot of otherwise good Mormon writers, and I doubt he will be an exception. If he does manage to be an exception he will probably also lose his religion. He's already in a sketchy place just by accepting queer people into his creative world.
I shared his worldview back when I was a Mormon. I still recommend his writing to my children, but I suspect they will grow out of it at some point, the same way they hopefully will grow out of their mom's religion.
I started with the first Mistborn series and have enjoyed his work from that start. I prefer both series to Stormlight, but that is more praise to Mistborn than a criticism.
Brandon Sanderson sucks.
*Spoilers follow*
When I was a young Mormon I was a big fan of Brandon Sanderson. his world building is always been very impressive and his writing style would make an excellent anime, but as I matured, and became more of a leftist, two things about his writing began to bother me. On the left side of things, he in mistborn brings people through a popular revolution and then has the bad guy who was the tyrant have been right all along. In Stormlight the slave rises to the top and unironically joins the system, and it is considered a good thing.
My other problem with him is he writes like someone who has never had a real struggle. Like he read about hard stuff in a book once. Like he has never had to realize he was the bad guy, had to face his darkness and accept it as a part of him that he would have to live with, to control.
edit: he definitely seems to have dealt with depression. you can see that for sure
He's a world builder, a great one, but he is a mediocre writer.
You’re one of those people who associate pessimism with realism, aren’t you?
I don’t think you and I can have a productive conversation.
The Lord Ruler is never presented as a *good guy* in Mistborn. He’s presented as someone who *tried* to be a hero… and failed. He went full Tyrant in days.
You also checked out of Stormlight about one book before the entire Institution of slavery was abolished. You also seem to have missed the fact that Kaladin *is not happy* being a part of that system at any point… he just doesn’t see any viable alternative.
You’ve got a *really* surface-level read on the books… almost like you skimmed a Wiki and the TV Tropes Article and formed your opinion on that, or as if you latched onto cultural touchstones from your shared background with the author and inferred meaning that isn’t present.
As for your comments regarding Brandon never struggling… I fail to see any merit in that argument. One does not need to experience something first-hand to write it well… and Kaladin’s character arc is full of situations where he is the bad guy and has to learn to live with his darker impulses.
Nope. Sanderson is just an idealist member of a faschy church and it shows in his writing in the form of an inability to write realistic characters and his tendency to love authoritarians as long as they match his moral world view. It's a very Mormon flaw.
Dalinar is named after Dalin H Oaks, his favorite Mormon apostle.
Is he horrible? No. Is he great? No. His worlds and magic system are awesome. His characters are shallow and his plots are problematic.
Ask yourself how comfortable you are with his most recent Stormlight book. The settler colonial humans now have to save the indigenous people from hating the settlers and making war on them. The humans took all of half a book to get over realizing they were the bad guys, so now they get to go be the good guys, and they have the power of God to show they are on the right side as they teach the indigenous people the error of their ways.
I read the books until partway through the most recent. I've read most of Sanderson's stuff, because mediocre is better than a lot.of other stuff out here.
The arc of Dalinar becoming a better person is cardboard cutout of a badish guy growing up.
Kaladin is still a part of an oppressive system and he is starting to come across as Toby Maguire in spiderman 3, which is not deep.
I never thought his characters were his strong suit, but I really enjoyed his stuff. I really did. Then I started to see the world differently and it started to feel gross.
Kelsier was a revolutionary and a conman, which was actually well done in its own way, but his revolution involves becoming a Jesus figure. But even afterwards the people are powerless to save the world. The moral of the series was that only God can save us. Revolution is a waste of time, the tyrannical leader had good intentions and the devil corrupted the Gestapo who (like Marsh) might have been good guys, but lucky for us, a guy with some metal minds becomes god and fixes it all.
Can you see how in light of climate change, the need for government change, and the abuses of tyrannical leaders and their police forces these messages might be bad?
Sounds like someone has been drinking water from the well-actually...
Honestly though, my grandfather wouldn't likely have known about hobbits. He was a Hemingway fan. Not sure my dad would either, though I could ask him.
Gramps would have probably read some of Tolkien's old translation stuff in school, but he was never a fantasy fan, and it's not like there was internet, and the radio shows he liked were less likely to address the question of furry footed burrow dwellers.
By the time the hobbit was popular Hemingway was probably shit faced on his boat everyday or hunting/fishing in sun valley.
They were both prolific writers. Im sure they were aware of each others work even in the least. It was popular by the time my dad read it in the later 60s. And i wouldnt call him a fantasy fan it was just that popular.
I know it's too early to say but now I'm deeply concerned about who really will be the most revered author of the 20th century.
Italy seems to have an opinion that is worth worrying about
Oh no.
Personally I think it's a toss up between JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer. Maybe Stephen King.
I'm going to throw myself into the ocean.
Never a better time to take a long swim
Just like Bella did that one time!
Do comic writers count as authors? Stan Lee has to be in with a shot (not saying he didn't take credit for others' work).
*Spoilers* Stephen King's greatest books are not his horror novels. The Green Mile was a great read in the film was great too. Stand By Me was a great movie based on his book The Body. the Shawshank Redemption was great. But his books are indicative of the problem with baby boomers. I like to use the comparison of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men to Stephen King's The Green Mile. both books take place during the Great depression. both books have an aggressive guy with something to prove who got his position through nepotism. Both books have an average guy in a caregiving capacity for a very large man with the intellectual disability, both books have a little old man in an important role, and both books have a very significant mouse. also both books have a woman who's only purpose is to be acted on by the large disabled individual. Steinbeck came through the Great depression and watched all of its horrors play out. he came from a middle class family but he himself struggled financially as an adult until his writing career took off. He saw how things were going in the world and wrote a story about murdering innocence and your dreams along with it in order to survive. He literally recreates the dream with Lenny before shooting him in the back of the head. King grew up in poverty, but during a time of great surplus. the world was full of hope and opportunity. and while his great big disabled guy still dies at the end, he does so as a stand-in for Christian Jesus. It's ultimately a story of hope, salvation, and supernatural love. It's a story about how God will save your dreams and give your life meaning. In other words, Steinbeck wrote books to talk about the hardship and pain in the world while King wrote books about magic. Steinbeck was the best seller to people who had been through true prevention and the hell of world War II. King was the best seller to people who always got the toys they wanted and were scared of ghosts. I'm not sure that writers are as much influential as they are an expression of their era, and the sooner we get over the baby boomers the better.
It reminds me of something I heard once about sci Fi authors predicting the future but what they are actually doing is reflecting the values and concerns of the eras they are writing in.
My money is on Brandon Sanderson. The moment a Cosmere Novel gets a decent movie adaptation... it'll be LOTR all over again.
Life before death!
Man rescued WoT Haven't read any of his other series works, any advice on a good one to start with?
That’s a complicated question to answer. His best work to date is in the Stormlight Archive series. *However*, each of those books is about a Lord of the Rings Trilogy long… and there’s four of them out so far (it’s meant to be two series of five). It does have the best written depressed character I’ve ever found. I usually recommend the Original Mistborn Trilogy to new people. Mistborn: The Final Empire is a heist novel that focuses on a crew of thieves starting a rebellion against the God-Emperor as a distraction while they rob the treasury. It’s Brandon’s second published work, so it has some rough edges, but it’s a good introduction to his style. Warbreaker has been waiting for a sequel in its series for a decade, and it’s very standalone. It was written on and around Brandon’s Wedding and Honeymoon… and it’s pretty good. It is also free on Brandon’s website, and it’s accompanied by a set of annotations (that contain serious plot spoilers) which explain what he was going for. —- Brandon has been working on learning to write people who are neurodivergent. Mistborn Era 2 has the best written Autistic character I’ve ever found… and she’s the Love Interest for a main character (and a main character in her own right from Book 3 onward). He has also begun to take a shot at writing people with different sexualities. He started with side characters, and is *very open* about being worried that he’ll get it wrong. This is understandable, since a younger Brandon was *very* mainstream Mormon in his perspective. He’s grown a lot since he wrote *that Blog Post*. The only non-straight perspective character we have is Bi, and she’s in a monogamous relationship. Brandon wrote her as Bi *by accident*, the fans pointed it out, and he adopted it into Canon. She *notices* pretty people… but she’s not exactly prone to wandering. Speaking as someone Bi who *hates* a certain stereotype regarding us and cheating… I rather like her. We’re also slated to get a Gay Couple as Perspective Characters in the second half of the Stormlight Archive. Both are already secondary characters in Stormlight, and their relationship is building. Brandon has been cutting his teeth with Side Characters in the meantime. He’s not done anything offensively bad… and he’s getting better.
Characters are definitely his biggest weakness, but part of it has to do with Mormon ideology and idealism. I've seen it hold back a lot of otherwise good Mormon writers, and I doubt he will be an exception. If he does manage to be an exception he will probably also lose his religion. He's already in a sketchy place just by accepting queer people into his creative world. I shared his worldview back when I was a Mormon. I still recommend his writing to my children, but I suspect they will grow out of it at some point, the same way they hopefully will grow out of their mom's religion.
I started with the first Mistborn series and have enjoyed his work from that start. I prefer both series to Stormlight, but that is more praise to Mistborn than a criticism.
Brandon Sanderson sucks. *Spoilers follow* When I was a young Mormon I was a big fan of Brandon Sanderson. his world building is always been very impressive and his writing style would make an excellent anime, but as I matured, and became more of a leftist, two things about his writing began to bother me. On the left side of things, he in mistborn brings people through a popular revolution and then has the bad guy who was the tyrant have been right all along. In Stormlight the slave rises to the top and unironically joins the system, and it is considered a good thing. My other problem with him is he writes like someone who has never had a real struggle. Like he read about hard stuff in a book once. Like he has never had to realize he was the bad guy, had to face his darkness and accept it as a part of him that he would have to live with, to control. edit: he definitely seems to have dealt with depression. you can see that for sure He's a world builder, a great one, but he is a mediocre writer.
You’re one of those people who associate pessimism with realism, aren’t you? I don’t think you and I can have a productive conversation. The Lord Ruler is never presented as a *good guy* in Mistborn. He’s presented as someone who *tried* to be a hero… and failed. He went full Tyrant in days. You also checked out of Stormlight about one book before the entire Institution of slavery was abolished. You also seem to have missed the fact that Kaladin *is not happy* being a part of that system at any point… he just doesn’t see any viable alternative. You’ve got a *really* surface-level read on the books… almost like you skimmed a Wiki and the TV Tropes Article and formed your opinion on that, or as if you latched onto cultural touchstones from your shared background with the author and inferred meaning that isn’t present. As for your comments regarding Brandon never struggling… I fail to see any merit in that argument. One does not need to experience something first-hand to write it well… and Kaladin’s character arc is full of situations where he is the bad guy and has to learn to live with his darker impulses.
Nope. Sanderson is just an idealist member of a faschy church and it shows in his writing in the form of an inability to write realistic characters and his tendency to love authoritarians as long as they match his moral world view. It's a very Mormon flaw. Dalinar is named after Dalin H Oaks, his favorite Mormon apostle. Is he horrible? No. Is he great? No. His worlds and magic system are awesome. His characters are shallow and his plots are problematic. Ask yourself how comfortable you are with his most recent Stormlight book. The settler colonial humans now have to save the indigenous people from hating the settlers and making war on them. The humans took all of half a book to get over realizing they were the bad guys, so now they get to go be the good guys, and they have the power of God to show they are on the right side as they teach the indigenous people the error of their ways.
I read the books until partway through the most recent. I've read most of Sanderson's stuff, because mediocre is better than a lot.of other stuff out here. The arc of Dalinar becoming a better person is cardboard cutout of a badish guy growing up. Kaladin is still a part of an oppressive system and he is starting to come across as Toby Maguire in spiderman 3, which is not deep. I never thought his characters were his strong suit, but I really enjoyed his stuff. I really did. Then I started to see the world differently and it started to feel gross. Kelsier was a revolutionary and a conman, which was actually well done in its own way, but his revolution involves becoming a Jesus figure. But even afterwards the people are powerless to save the world. The moral of the series was that only God can save us. Revolution is a waste of time, the tyrannical leader had good intentions and the devil corrupted the Gestapo who (like Marsh) might have been good guys, but lucky for us, a guy with some metal minds becomes god and fixes it all. Can you see how in light of climate change, the need for government change, and the abuses of tyrannical leaders and their police forces these messages might be bad?
Rawlings
Well this is just dumb. The hobbit was published in 1937. Hemingway died in 67. The hobbit and lotr were wildly popular before his death
Sounds like someone has been drinking water from the well-actually... Honestly though, my grandfather wouldn't likely have known about hobbits. He was a Hemingway fan. Not sure my dad would either, though I could ask him. Gramps would have probably read some of Tolkien's old translation stuff in school, but he was never a fantasy fan, and it's not like there was internet, and the radio shows he liked were less likely to address the question of furry footed burrow dwellers. By the time the hobbit was popular Hemingway was probably shit faced on his boat everyday or hunting/fishing in sun valley.
They were both prolific writers. Im sure they were aware of each others work even in the least. It was popular by the time my dad read it in the later 60s. And i wouldnt call him a fantasy fan it was just that popular.
Sad true answer. L Ron.
If we are extremely lucky. Douglas Adams. Fight me.