MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Apr 23, 2024 6:48:27 GMT
He's right though.
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otto
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Post by otto on Apr 23, 2024 7:06:00 GMT
/rubs bridge of nose furiously
/minimises browser window
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Post by damagedinc on Apr 23, 2024 7:06:15 GMT
First Law trilogy (Book 1 and 2)
Really struggled with this if I'm honest, has some great momements but found the second an especially tough read. Going to take a break before I finish the trilogy as may as well see it to the end.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Apr 23, 2024 7:25:00 GMT
/rubs bridge of nose furiously /minimises browser window Lol Yeah, look, I fully understand and appreciate how important and influential LotR is to the genre. And the world it built is intricate and nuanced and detailed in a way that few others can match. But the actual experience of reading that book is... boring as shit. All the characters spend half their time singing shit songs, Tom Bombadil also exists, and the entire plot grinds to a halt so people can sit around a table for dozens of pages to talk about irrelevant bullshit. At times the book is like a lecture delivered by the world's dullest European History professor. So yeah, movies better than the books. Though the opposite is true for the Hobbit.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Apr 23, 2024 7:25:51 GMT
I'm happy for that to be my last post if I get banned.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Apr 23, 2024 7:26:14 GMT
Well, third last post.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Apr 23, 2024 8:32:08 GMT
/rubs bridge of nose furiously /minimises browser window Lol Yeah, look, I fully understand and appreciate how important and influential LotR is to the genre. And the world it built is intricate and nuanced and detailed in a way that few others can match. But the actual experience of reading that book is... boring as shit. All the characters spend half their time singing shit songs, Tom Bombadil also exists, and the entire plot grinds to a halt so people can sit around a table for dozens of pages to talk about irrelevant bullshit. At times the book is like a lecture delivered by the world's dullest European History professor. So yeah, movies better than the books. Though the opposite is true for the Hobbit. This is true. I've tried to read the LotR trilogy about ten fucking times. I get halfway through TTT and give up. More recently I tried the Simarillion. Ha. No.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Apr 23, 2024 8:56:39 GMT
It's possible that that level of detail just isn't for me. I appreciate lore to an extent, but if I think it gets in the way of a good story, I bounce right off. See also: hard sci-fi.
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otto
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Post by otto on Apr 23, 2024 9:15:44 GMT
Are we actually going to have this conversation? Because *I have views* I fully appreciate that many will not enjoy Tolkien's style or approach. LOTR is a marmite thing, for sure. But the films are absolute dogshit. They shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as the supreme achievement of world-building that is Tolkien's written work, whether you like it or not. Not only are they poorly acted, dreadfully directed, woefully paced, etc etc, they also poison the experience of reading the books for anyone that has made the mistake of seeing them, because it's hard to unsee them. I absolutely fucking hate Peter Jackson for making those films and pissing on something truly special, and I will die on this hill.
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Apr 23, 2024 9:36:38 GMT
Still better than the books though
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otto
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Post by otto on Apr 23, 2024 9:43:32 GMT
Haha you bastard
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Post by Dougs on Apr 23, 2024 11:42:28 GMT
The films are shit, I agree. But I found the books boring as fuck too. Probably says more about my attention span than anything else though. I also tried to re-read GoT and gave up equally quickly. Meandering bollocks, but a very rich world in there somewhere.
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cubby
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Post by cubby on Apr 23, 2024 12:24:23 GMT
Both with the films and the books I've always fallen off part way into The Two Towers, and I've tried quite a few times with both now. Just can't do it. It's all shit.
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Post by harrypalmer on Apr 23, 2024 12:27:21 GMT
Coldheart Canyon
This is peak Clive Barker. It's gone right up 'there' as one of my favourite books OF ALL TIME. Seriously fucked up tale of a modern day Hollywood megastar who get's well and truly embroiled in a sadistic haunted love affair in creepy tumbledown mansion surrounded by freaks.
I recommended it to everyone in my office on world book day when I was only about a quarter of the way through. That night I got to a bit where a insane mutant peacock jizzes all over a woman's tits. And that's non even close to the weirdest thing that happens. I had to then add a disclaimer to my recommendation that it may not be for everyone, and to not judge me. It really doesn't hold back, but remains grounded, funny and very touching.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Apr 23, 2024 12:48:32 GMT
Coldheart Canyon is my fav Barker after Damnation Game. Read it two or three times and you’ve just convinced me to read it again.
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JonFE
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Post by JonFE on Apr 23, 2024 12:54:27 GMT
Coldheart CanyonThis is peak Clive Barker. It's gone right up 'there' as one of my favourite books OF ALL TIME. Seriously fucked up tale of a modern day Hollywood megastar who get's well and truly embroiled in a sadistic haunted love affair in creepy tumbledown mansion surrounded by freaks. I recommended it to everyone in my office on world book day when I was only about a quarter of the way through. That night I got to a bit where a insane mutant peacock jizzes all over a woman's tits. And that's non even close to the weirdest thing that happens. I had to then add a disclaimer to my recommendation that it may not be for everyone, and to not judge me. It really doesn't hold back, but remains grounded, funny and very touching. I've got to re-read that as the bit you describe does not ring a bell (and by the sound of it, it fucking should).
I still maintain that Barker's best book (for me at least) is WeaveWorld, but still you can't go wrong with his books.
One day, I may finish Imagica, one of these days...
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Post by harrypalmer on Apr 23, 2024 12:58:19 GMT
I didn't even know it existed, despite being a big Clive Barker fan. Huge blind spot. It's quite rare to find his books in second-hand bookshops in my experience, but I got lucky with this. I slowed right down for the last couple of hundred pages as I didn't want it to end.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Apr 23, 2024 13:02:59 GMT
It’s one that seems to go under the radar. Theres a bit with the main characters dog that was actually quite affecting iirc, which was basically Clive grieving for his own dog. Goes someway in indicating how much personal stuff he was putting in there. The result is a far more introspective story.
Plus, you know, the peacock jizzing on someone's tits.
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wunty
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Post by wunty on Apr 23, 2024 13:07:52 GMT
Talking of Barker, I recently finished The Scarlet Gospels and - whilst far from his greatest work - wasn't actually as bad as I thought it was going to be. There was actually some pretty good stuff in there. Better then Mister B. Gone anyway, although that's not difficult (to be fair I love the concept of that book, just not the execution).
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Post by larrybong on Apr 23, 2024 13:57:05 GMT
The films are shit, I agree. But I found the books boring as fuck too. Probably says more about my attention span than anything else though. I also tried to re-read GoT and gave up equally quickly. Meandering bollocks, but a very rich world in there somewhere. This may make me a centrist melt but I actually think both the books and films are great. Books are clearly better but the films are entertaining enough given the inherent difficulty of trying to make a mainstream movie trilogy based on the source material. Rereading the LOTR at the moment on my Kindle as I lost my paperback copy many years ago and they were free on prime reading as a promotion when the rings of power was released. Was actually surprised how good they still are given I probably haven't read them in thirty years or so. Will freely admit to skipping all the songs though, still find them a bit shit. Also, finally got round to reading silmarillion in full, bounced off it hard in my teens but found it an interesting read, even if not exactly an addictive page-turner.
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Post by 😎 on Apr 23, 2024 14:36:21 GMT
Hey otto what did you think of Rings of Power
We ragged on it so hard here someone emoquit.
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Post by Mark1412 on Apr 23, 2024 16:06:49 GMT
Films being shit is a dagger to the heart of my childhood, you bastards.
I'm listening to the Two Towers now and the ents have pushed me but I still love it despite the waffle, which just shows how great the core story and world building is because I wouldn't stick with any other book that spends an hour talking about the minutiae of ent wives, who don't even exist anymore (I think).
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askew
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Post by askew on Apr 23, 2024 17:57:05 GMT
No wonder they’re a bunch of Entcels
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Post by skalpadda on Apr 25, 2024 23:40:36 GMT
I loved LotR as a teenager, not sure how I'd feel about it now. I read the Swedish translation, which I (much) later came to realise is very different from the original. It was the first translation made (along with the Dutch) and the translator Åke Ohlmarks took a lot of liberties with the prose, along with generally seeming to think his job was to "improve" the text in any way he could. Lots of people consider it vandalism, and it objectively is, but I think Ohlmarks may have been at least a bit right. The Swedish text is quite beautiful and it doesn't feel like a translation at all. It may be a sacrilege, but it's a beautifully put together sacrilege. The songs are still rubbish though. Tolkien himself really didn't like it, especially the changes made to names of people and places, and he wrote Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings to keep future translators from making similar changes. He also seems to have absolutely detested Ohlmarks on a personal level, and there are lots of complaints about him in his published letters. He was certainly right about the latter; Ohlmarks was an enormously pompous and arrogant nutcase of the highest order. He was mostly wrong about the names though. Some of Tolkien's specific complaints stemmed from just not being able to translate Swedish well enough himself, and he also didn't understand what would sound good or bad when directly translated.
I can make a direct comparison, because there was a new Swedish translation made around the time the movies came out, and the new translator very carefully followed Tolkien's Guide to the Names... (he blogged about his torment at the time). The names just aren't as good, often sounding unidiomatic or a tortured.
Frodo and Bilbo's last name is now Secker (used to be Bagger) because Tolkien insisted that it must contain a translated reference to the word bag. It sounds bad, even moreso than calling them "Sacker" would in English. And that in turn created a problem with the Sackville-Baggins, because that would be Säcksta-Seckerna (The Sackville-Sackers). That kind of rigid fidelity simply doesn't work, and there are other examples like that and things that sound okay but still worse than the old translations.
I'm obviously a bit biased but I've read the first book in English and a bit of the new translation, and they both seem a lot more dry and less vivid.
Hell, that turned out long. Thanks for coming to my lecture about a translation you're never going to read.
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Post by rhaegyr on Apr 26, 2024 9:11:17 GMT
Joe Abercrombie - A Little Hatred
Started off pretty slowly but I was fully invested in this new chapter and set of characters by the end of the book, Orso and Rikke in particular. Great stuff.
8/10
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Post by rhaegyr on Apr 26, 2024 9:14:43 GMT
Both the LOTR books and the Peter Jackson films are great by the way.
Films made a lot of necessary changes (and a few unnecessary ones) but the basic themes, characters and arcs were all similar to the books and hit all the right notes.
Is it cool to hate LOTR now or something?
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mikeck
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Post by mikeck on Apr 26, 2024 9:35:25 GMT
I understand translating names when set in the real world, but for fantasy books can the names not remain in their original written form? We're not talking about regular names here - do the likes of Gandalf and surnames like Baggins really need changing?
I've never thought about it before but for fantasy settings does it matter (appreciate that as I only speak one language I am on dodgy ground here)?
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MolarAm🔵
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Post by MolarAm🔵 on Apr 26, 2024 9:42:25 GMT
Both the LOTR books and the Peter Jackson films are great by the way. Films made a lot of necessary changes (and a few unnecessary ones) but the basic themes, characters and arcs were all similar to the books and hit all the right notes. Is it cool to hate LOTR now or something? I've no idea whether it's cool or not, I just enjoyed watching the films more than reading the books. You can disagree if you want! But it's got nothing to do with being trendy.
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Post by rhaegyr on Apr 26, 2024 9:54:14 GMT
Sorry, wasn't directed at you personally, more me just thinking out loud after reading some of the comments in this thread.
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Post by skalpadda on Apr 26, 2024 22:26:39 GMT
I understand translating names when set in the real world, but for fantasy books can the names not remain in their original written form? We're not talking about regular names here - do the likes of Gandalf and surnames like Baggins really need changing? I've never thought about it before but for fantasy settings does it matter (appreciate that as I only speak one language I am on dodgy ground here)? Well, Tolkien was adamant that things related to hobbits and some human people and places should be translated since they're mostly English and carry some specific meanings or flavour. That makes sense, you want the names to give a similar feeling, but it doesn't work to translate them too literally. Same with place names like Rivendell, Mirkwood, etc. Elven names and the like are not translated.
Mirkwood is a good example of one that Tolkien simply misunderstood. From Guide to the Names of The Lord of the Rings:
He presumably looked up "mården" in a dictionary and thought Mörkmården meant The Dark Marten. Mård does mean pine marten, but here it's an older word for a rugged and stony forest landscape and nothing to do with the animal. It's a great name and has precisely the "elements of poetic or antique tone" Tolkien says he wants. The new translation was too scared to stick to its guns and changed it to Mörkveden, which is okay and more literal but loses the evocative feel as well as the elegant alliteration.
I guess the lesson is that authors shouldn't presume to know what works better in languages they aren't intimately familiar with, even if they're language professors, and translators should trust that they do.
But Ohlmarks' way of translating definitely was disrespectfully liberal and self-indulgent even for the time. From a book he wrote about his translation of LotR (my English translation):
He became increasingly unhinged as the translation was criticised and was mortally insulted when Christopher Tolkien would only allow a Swedish translation of the Silmarillion on the condition that Ohlmarks had nothing to do with it. Two years before he died he wrote a book called Tolkien and the Black Magic where he, quoted from Wikipedia, "attempts to give evidence that the literary societies formed around Tolkien's work The Lord of the Rings are an evil maffia, controlled by Tolkien's descendants in Oxford. The Tolkien societies are claimed to engage in sex orgies, narcotics, devil worship, ritual murder and organised crime." So not the most stable genius. Good with words though.
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