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Hyrax Attack! posted:For LeGuin I’ve only read the Dispossessed and did enjoy it. He's okay. But top tier? No. Especially since Tuf is pretty much just who you'd get if you shaved GRRM and gave him a god-spaceship. It really is way better than his fantasy stuff, though. There's a point and it gets to it.
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Feb 4, 2019 16:28
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Labes for days posted:Same with Marion Zimmer Bradley. :/ Came to post this specifically.
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Feb 4, 2019 16:33
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You have some great authors on that list. Several come close. Depends on your criteria. Harlan Ellison- Prolific, quality Frank Herbert- Couple of classics but by the 4rth Dune book wtf? Isaac Asimov -I would give this guy the nod Arthur C. Clarke - Close second Robert E. Howard -Best pulp fiction writer. But hardly as cerebral as LeGuin. But drat entertaining
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Feb 4, 2019 18:10
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tetsuo posted:people say they read them so that they sound smart but no one actually makes it through their impenetrable garbage hth No way. Gravity's Rainbow is my favorite book and I've probably reread it a dozen times. It's long but not really even that "difficult" especially when you remember the secret: the weird sections are usually stream-of-consciousness of a character who is powerfully hosed up on drugs. That said if anyone wants to start reading Pynchon, I always recommend Inherent Vice since it's shorter, has a pretty traditional structure, and wraps everything up nicely in the end. Pynchon is the world's greatest living author imo
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Feb 4, 2019 18:30
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Tiny Bug Child posted:No way. Gravity's Rainbow is my favorite book and I've probably reread it a dozen times. It's long but not really even that "difficult" quote:stream-of-consciousness of a character who is powerfully hosed up on drugs
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Feb 4, 2019 19:13
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She is ok. I mostly read her as a child so idk if I missed anything particularly profound. Picked up the Lathe of Heaven a while ago for a buck in a uses book store, haven't read it yet. Wonder if it's about Jesus getting his mullet caught in the lathe?
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Feb 4, 2019 19:19
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Captain Jesus posted:Name of the Rose is an easy read, nothing impenetrable about it. When I read it, there was a thread going on in Book Barn that said "tough it out through the chapter about the door and it picks up from there" but I liked the chapter about the door
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Feb 4, 2019 19:28
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If you want good sci-fi try Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.
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Feb 4, 2019 19:32
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have u read vernor vinge op?
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Feb 4, 2019 19:41
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Wizard of Earthsea is terrible and I couldn't finish it. Oryx and Crake is better but all the science and apocalypse junk comes off as window dressing to write about cp. PS lol if you think Umberto Eco is hard.
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Feb 4, 2019 19:43
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free hubcaps posted:have u read vernor vinge op? Dunno if I would say Vinge is better than LeGuin but surprised not to see him on OP’s list. Fire Upon the Deep might be better than any individual LeGuin book though I think LeGuin’s work as a whole is better than Vinge’s.
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Feb 4, 2019 19:45
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I've read the first 100-200 pages of infinite jest, I think, not including the footnotes. Better than the 2 or 3 Le Guin books I've read by a mile
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Feb 4, 2019 19:46
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Has anyone recommended Roger Zelazny yet
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Feb 4, 2019 19:46
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Some one at work gave me other books of this series.
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Feb 4, 2019 19:48
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Ka0 posted:Has anyone recommended Roger Zelazny yet I’ve never read any of his longer stuff though I hear amber is a real good series, his short stuff is so good though. doors of his face, lamps of his mouth is one of the best short stories I’ve read. i love the way it plays with the reader re:the protagonist and that enigmatic last line... Roger Zelazny posted:No one is born a baitman, I don't think, but the rings of Saturn sing epithalamium the sea-beast's dower. dude can definitely write
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Feb 4, 2019 19:56
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I’m angry that you would put Brian Jaques on the same list as Ayn Rand, OP
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Feb 4, 2019 20:04
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Marian Engel wrote a book about a librarian loving a bear on the reg and it is the book of the month in TBB, cum read it with us friends
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Feb 4, 2019 20:22
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free hubcaps posted:I’ve never read any of his longer stuff though I hear amber is a real good series, his short stuff is so good though. doors of his face, lamps of his mouth is one of the best short stories I’ve read. i love the way it plays with the reader re:the protagonist and that enigmatic last line... Amber is really loving weird. I honestly like his short stories better, but they're really drat good. Definitely would put him at least on par with LeGuin. I'm not super comfortable ranking writers above other writers unless we're talking about some real terrible poo poo honestly. A lot of that is just down to what you like reading personally. Stephen R. Donaldson is also up there. The Gap series is the most mindbendingly weird sci-fi I've ever read, and his Mordant and Covenant books are great too. Someone already mentioned Italo Calvino, but thumbs up to his works too. Invisible Cities is amazing.
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Feb 4, 2019 20:30
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tetsuo posted:people say they read them so that they sound smart but no one actually makes it through their impenetrable garbage hth Eco's readable, but it helps to google some of the historical stuff. I just can't get through Pynchon, though. I've started Gravity's Rainbow probably a dozen times. Jorge Luis Borges is also better than LeGuin.
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Feb 4, 2019 20:35
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BgRdMchne posted:Jorge Luis Borges is also better than LeGuin. I can actually get behind this. Borges is ridiculously good. Probably one of the best writers of all time.
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Feb 4, 2019 20:38
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If we're commending heavyweights then add Julio Cortazar and Gabriel Garcia Marquez to that pile.
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Feb 4, 2019 20:46
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A_Bug_That_Thinks posted:I've read the first 100-200 pages of infinite jest, I think, not including the footnotes.
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Feb 4, 2019 20:50
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yeah shes pretty good op but have you ever read anything by dean koontz now theres a real wordsmith
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Feb 4, 2019 20:51
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Android Blues posted:Oh! Virginia Woolf. Her best novels are Orlando (a comedy about an immortal who undergoes an unexpected change of gender and must adapt to the changing centuries) or To the Lighthouse (a sublimely naturalistic novel about a painter visiting the estate of an estranged family). Not much happens in To the Lighthouse, but it doesn't happen in a very beautifully written way. Oh, there was a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic that had Orlando as a character and I never got the reference.
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Feb 4, 2019 20:59
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Zeluth posted:Some one at work gave me other books of this series. Ugh
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Feb 4, 2019 21:26
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Applewhite posted:Oh is he a confirmed pedo now? I had my suspicions because of all the naked children throughout his books but I was hoping he was just oblivious or that I was being overly suspicious. As far as I can tell, everything - EVERYTHING - that Orson Scott Card has written is about child abuse and/or Mormonism. There may be aliens or magical powers, but there's also abused children and transparent Joseph Smith fanfic.
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Feb 4, 2019 21:31
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Here comes an  answer to Applewhite’s questions. First of all, I like LeGuin, but I think that her works outside of the big three (Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, Lathe of Heaven) suffer from many problems that plague other genre works to an even greater degree. I am not a literary critic neither I studied literature, so bear in mind some of my terminology might not be that precise. Genre authors often focus on plot and disregard believable dialogue, good prose, characters and interesting ideas that make some of the works of the authors I mentioned earlier great. LeGuin does some of this very well, but doesn't have the full package. However, I still appreciate her thoughts on femininity, gender, social issues and so on.Here's my list expanded with a few words about every author and a personal recommendation: Laszlo Krasznahorkai - Hungarian author obsessed with themes of decay and melancholy. Start with Satantango, his literary debut, a dark, depressing novel about the inhabitants of a failed socialist farm in the Hungarian countryside. A character who might be Satan or just a common criminal appears and promises to deliver them to a better world. Elfriede Jelinek - does reading about a voyeuristic piano teacher who lives with an overbearing mother she detests and enters into a BDSM relationship with her student appeal to you? Then you should pick up The Piano Player. LF Celine - you generally shouldn't be allowed to describe a novel as a "romp", but that is how I would describe his Journey to the End of the Night. It follows a French provincial doctor on his misadventures around the world in the early 20th century. Hailed and despised at the time for its vulgar language, this novel really piles on weird imagery and improbable events seen from the viewpoint of a crude and impulsive narrator. One of my all time favorites. Thomas Pynchon - try The Crying of Loy 49 - it’s short and will give you a good taste what to expect. Pynchon is all about word games, weird names and literary homages/pastiches. He’s also probably the most nerd-friendly author on my list. Italo Calvino - read If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler... for a good example of postmodernist metatextual(?) narrative. Mario Vargas Llosa - one of the rare liberals that are good writers - it is known that the left has the best prose writers and the fascists have the best poets. His War for the End of the World is an amazing door stopper of a book I would recommend to anyone that reads thick fantasy volumes. The slave revolt in the Brazilian wastelands might as well be happening in a different world if you examine the motivations and beliefs of the characters. If you like “worldbuilding”, you will enjoy this. Julio Cortazar - master of the weird, unsettling short story. Roberto Bolano - 2666 is really good - I’m sorry that the poster who disparaged it earlier didn’t have the guts to go through 300 pages of women murdered in Juarez (or did the critics break you buddy?). However, I’d recommend you start with something short and fun, for instance Nazi Literature in the Americas, a book told through a fictional encyclopedia of fascist writers. Umberto Eco - Foucault’s Pendulum is a book about conspiracies. There are multiple layers and a ton of references to the Kabbalah, hermeticism, secret societies, and it helps if you’re familiar with the Italian mid-century history and politics. However, there is a plot and a ton of funny and tense imagery to be enjoyed if all of the previous stuff goes over your head. The same is true for medieval and ancient literature and Name of the Rose, which is a murder mystery on the surface.
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Feb 4, 2019 22:12
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I prefer my scifi and fantasy to include nude women with big hooters
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Feb 4, 2019 22:52
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Luna: New Moon by Ian MacDonald is very interesting. Its not as good as Ursula but it does some better world building than I've seen in a while.
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Feb 4, 2019 22:57
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Not a fan of the Mobius Continuum? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXFknz4J88
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Feb 4, 2019 23:01
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Thomas Pynchon - try The Crying of Loy 49 - it’s short and will give you a good taste what to expect. Pynchon is all about word games, weird names and literary homages/pastiches. He’s also probably the most nerd-friendly author on my list. Lot 49 is great but I feel like the ending is going to put some people off which is why I usually go with Inherent Vice for Pynchon introductions Also someone definitely should have mentioned Nabokov by now. Pale Fire is amazing; it's kind of like a less obnoxiously gimmicky House of Leaves.
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Feb 4, 2019 23:01
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I really do not wanna read or engage with all the posts before this about what or which author may or may not be better than LeGuin. I wanna say, she is really good. Great author for sure, greatest, maybe. The Earthsea books are brilliant. I read them as a small childe, and I remember being confused and ennobled by them.
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Feb 4, 2019 23:31
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free hubcaps posted:have u read vernor vinge op? I have. Leaving him off the list was a huge oversight on my part as I loved Fire Upon the Deep. Definitely one of my favs
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Feb 4, 2019 23:33
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tetsuo posted:people say they read them so that they sound smart but no one actually makes it through their impenetrable garbage hth It's one thing to be too stupid to understand Pynchon. That just makes you a dumbass. Nothing wrong with that. But being too stupid AND being so arrogant that you smugly assume everyone else is as dumb as you are? That makes you a loving rear end in a top hat.
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Feb 4, 2019 23:33
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I could say lots about the list, but right now I'm just gonna upvote LeGuin. 
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Feb 4, 2019 23:37
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Within the sf/fantasy genre LeGuin has a credible shot at being best. I personally would put Gene Wolfe at the top if the qualification is just "best writing", but could be persuaded to LeGuin if you added other categories. Also check out Peter S Beagle who is loving amazing and doesn't get enough credit, probably because he only writes a book every other decade.
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Feb 4, 2019 23:38
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:The books Nice. I’ll check these out. Thanks!
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Feb 4, 2019 23:40
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hey has anyone mentioned shakespeare or faulkner yet
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Feb 5, 2019 00:19
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seriously though gene wolfe is a really drat good writer, book of the new sun is a masterpiece
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Feb 5, 2019 00:22
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Nurge posted:Stephen R. Donaldson is also up there. The Gap series is the most mindbendingly weird sci-fi I've ever read, and his Mordant and Covenant books are great too. Someone already mentioned Italo Calvino, but thumbs up to his works too. Invisible Cities is amazing. Seconding SRD. I go back every few years to reread the Covenant Trilogy(ies). Not scifi or fantasy but man I have loved pretty much everything by Cormac McCarthy, and usually end up thinking about the books randomly years later (mostly Blood Meridian and Suttree). I can't think of many other authors who do that for me. Of course, I should mention, any book of his will make you intensely depressed for a while, or at least they did for me.
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Feb 5, 2019 00:58
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