red_bus wrote:
I think Hemingway can run close to self parody sometimes   .  Especially read today.  But the romantic in me does like the Sun Also Rises.  I would also recommend, A Moveable Feast.  

On fantasy (or perhaps, mythology), I recently re-read some of the Ulster Cycle.  A good collection is in Marie Heaney's, Over Nine Waves.  Really great inspiring D&D stuff  

Also nostalgic for me.  We had it in school for the first year!  Happy times.  

Hemmingway unfortunately has been parodied so much, his original stuff is hard to read without smiling at inappropriate parts.  I find myself doing much the same when reading pulp detective fiction of the 30s-50s.  You have to remember though at the time the writing styles were new and exciting...it's only through hacks that tried to borrow these styles that we come to disrespect the source material. If you can somehow "forget all you have learned" and adjust your mindset, it can be pretty powerful stuff.  Particularly a lot of the hard boiled writers of the time period (Hemmingway included).  

Mike B.

FormCritic wrote:WARNING!  NO SPOILERS, BUT SOME DISCUSSION OF THE LAST HARRY POTTER BOOK!


Finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Overall, I rate it at a 4 out of 5.

Rowling ended the series well.  Good thing, too, because she was repeating plot devices, re-hashing storylines and recycling old situations throughout the book.  She was clearly out of ideas.

First, it will in interesting to see if Rowling is a one hit wonder (Harry Potter Series) or can do something else.  Writers like Katherine Kurtz, for example, get little respect in the community because all their written literature takes place in one selected milieu.  If Rowling someday is able to do something outside of the Potterverse respect for her could rise.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say it won't happen.  I bet if/when she does return to writing, it will be in the Potterverse. Then again, in ten years time, freed from the strictures of having to follow a formula or deal with the same characters, she might surprise everyone.

Second, what the hell ever happened to editors?  Do they spell check and nothing else nowadays?  There seems to be an unwritten rule, once you make the best seller lists editors keep their hands off and let you put out the most awful, over padded dreck ever.  Stephen King has needed a decent editior for almost 30 years now. Read a nifty tome like The Shining or Salem's Lot and compare it to overblown and bloated stuff like It or the interminable Dark Tower series.  Better yet, check out the best thing he ever wrote, the short story collection Night Shift.  Less is more, and you would think such a student of literature as King would realize this.  And if he had an editor, one who could gently nudge him back on track ("Stephen, do we really need this 60 page digression right in the middle of the novel?"), he might be able to bring in the page count to something readable.

I blame a lot of it on the general bloat in entertainment society...."More is better".  Which is why we have "supersized" meals, 2-hour season finales of shows, 3.5 hour feature length movies, DVD "extras" of 4-5 extra discs, and apparantly 800-1000 page stories that could have been told in half that just as well.

I keep thinking back to Cap Shaw and Black Mask magazine.  He would mercilessly chop the word count in the detective tales, both saving money (writers got paid per word in those days) and creating a terse style known as "hardboiled" that gave the literature of the time a gut punch effect that the more bloated literature nowadays fails to deliver. In the process, absolute classics such as Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammet), The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye (Raymond Chandler), The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters (Jim Thompson), Fast One (Paul Cain), and many others were produced.  Not a word is wasted, and the story is told expertly and efficiently.  I fail to see how a 700 page version of  The Big Sleep would have improved the story one iota...who needs to have 100 page digressions of Phillip Marlowe's journey into the dark side of California in the 30s. Hell, if it was written today, they would make him add a cute kid sidekick and a pet Shar Pei.

BTW, just found the Time Magazine's list of 100 greatest books ever online...was pleasantly surprised to find both Red Harvest and The Big Sleep there....

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:First, it will in interesting to see if Rowling is a one hit wonder (Harry Potter Series) or can do something else.  Writers like Katherine Kurtz, for example, get little respect in the community because all their written literature takes place in one selected milieu.  

Stephen King has needed a decent editior for almost 30 years now. Read a nifty tome like The Shining or Salem's Lot and compare it to overblown and bloated stuff like It or the interminable Dark Tower series.  

    I respect Rowling.  Her Potter series is a seven-book juggernaught...even if she never writes anything else.  I think the respect of critics is overrated.  She has the respect that matters...book sales.

    It and the Dark Tower series are great examples of the need for an editor.  King meanders around It like he can't decide what story to write.  The book is actually irritating to read.  I have never been able to get through it all and I keep losing my place...which doesn't matter since the storyline is a wadded up mess.

    King's main characters are so transparently autobiographical that they get a bit hard to sort out....although King never hesitates to kill his literary self.  (In The Stand, I suspect that King is Larry, the one hit wonder pop star. The Stand is one of the 50% of King books in which the main character is not a writer.  However, even Johnny, the psychic in The Dead Zone is autobiographical in a different way.)

   For King at his best, read The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.

    My favorite part of King's writing is his writer's notes that often open and close his stories.  King's On Writing is one of my favorite books.

Just started the last Potter book. I admit to having enjoyed all of them, though they are a bit patchy. My only criticism is, as others have stated, they are so damned long. Now I don't mind a long book but....  Basically the Potter books are not cut out to be long books. The last two in particular could have 20% (at least) removed and still tell the same tale.
Rowling has become a victim of her own success in many ways (shame - I wish I was a victim with her bank roll!). Basically I imagine that as the best selling author in the history of the universe or whatever her publisher will simply print whatever she writes knowing that its runaway success is a given. This attitude does not, unfortunately, improve the books. But clearly noone at the publisher is going to want to be the one to hand the m/s back and say something along the lines of 'yeah great, lose the giant, a couple of redheads and 150 pages and you've got a deal'. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.

megnelwil wrote:http://www.travellermap.com - very slick indeed.

WOW - now that is a wonderful thing indeed!!

First Bergman, now Antonioni is dead  

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6923785.stm

A shame.  A great director is no more.  My Acaeum sig. (before Orwell) was from Zabriskie Point - my favourite of his films.

There has been some talk of an Acaeum gathering at GenCon, and possibly an open gaming event with Rob Kuntz as the DM....

So, here's an off topic AD&D question to consider:

Let's say that a group of AD&D adherents were to get together, gathered from all over the world.

What version of AD&D would they play?

I'm not being facetious....what AD&D rules would they tend to use and not use?

For instance, would Unearthed Arcana be a good thing or a bad thing?  Or, would the DM use parts of Unearthed Arcana while disallowing other parts?

Would classes from Dragon magazine be OK to use?  

What about the non-weapon proficiencies from the Wilderness Survival Guide and the Dungeoneers Survival Guide?

How about pisonics?  

Weapon speed factor?  

Initiative?

Racial class limitations?

Oriental Adventures?

How much time do you spend explaining house rules?

Also, at conventions is it considered non-Kosher to use modules from Mayfair or some other D&D copycat company?

With limited time, in a convention setting, how does the DM maximize playing time and minimize down time with questions about the rules?  

Mark   

i think if Rob was DMing it would be along the lines of OD&D rules imo....

Al

killjoy32 wrote:i think if Rob was DMing it would be along the lines of OD&D rules imo....

Al

IF Rob were to use OD&D rules, how would he explain his particular version of the rules to his convention open play players?

What supplements would he use or not use?

Since OD&D has been in a deep freeze for 30 years, how would anyone know what to do or where to look?