Wiðercora wrote:That's why I've started reading actual history. It's a glorious epic which never ends.

As do I. I think it started with Montaillou, a village in the Pyreneés, then Tuchman's Distant Mirror. I am fairly well read up on French Medieval history - Sweden hardly has any Medieval history, no records, really, we know fairly little except what we learn from archeology. Currently I am diving into the history of Tuscany, from the Early Middle Ages till the end of the de' Medici dynasty 1737. Not in a book though, but surfing the Internet, Wikipedia etc.

Fallible wrote:Those were my feelings as well. It became an anthology rather than a novel.

I was hoping the response was going to be "it all becomes worthwhile because the last third is the best stuff he's ever written."

Mazille wrote:

NilsGLindgren wrote:Tuchman's Distant Mirror

Which is brilliant, by the way, for those who haven't read it yet.

Yes, indeed. Amongst the better historical popular treatises written.

NilsGLindgren wrote:Gavriel Kay could have written a splendid novel based on what is actually known about NE Italy and Byzantium rather than a fictive Sarantium.

Non, monsieur. What Kay achieves by floating his world slightly above the historical one - as well as the freedom to insert a little magic where it helps the flavour - is release from the dead weight of detail. He reforms the setting according to the spirit of the time and is able without strain to mould a plot that embodies that spirit. There was surely not one mosaicist in Byzantium to whom all those events could plausibly be attached, not an empress who in the end - well, my point is, he is unrestricted by what actually happened, and can tell the story that ought to have happened, if the cosmos had a better sense of poetry.

Fantasy in general is not, I suggest, about the furniture, but about confronting the human condition in extreme and clarified circumstances that are not attained in the real world. The trappings build those circumstances and situations, but are incidental to them. What you will remember most from A Game Of Thrones is the people.

logical bob wrote:

Fallible wrote:Those were my feelings as well. It became an anthology rather than a novel.

I was hoping the response was going to be "it all becomes worthwhile because the last third is the best stuff he's ever written."

Well don't despair yet, Bob. I could just be very thick indeed and therefore missed the amazing revelations contained within the third part.

I'm like that me. I have no idea what The Name Of The Rose was about. (Half of it was in foreign!)

I had the same experience with Foucault's Pendulum - I couldn't tell you to this day what it was about. But weirdly, I was left with a feeling of having just spent a thoroughly enjoyable time reading it. I'm speshil.

You may be interested to know that when Dave Langford reviewed Foucault's Pendulum, he said it reminded him of "that rather better book", Aegypt by John Crowley.

Stop it, I'm waiting for a cheque to clear.

Like we haven't heard that one before!

I deposited a cheque made out in dollars t'other day. They tell me there's a £1.50 fee, it might be £20, it could be more, and it will take 6 to 8 weeks. I had to check the calendar to see what year it is. So, I might see the remainder of my $25 by the end of March...

The Name of the Rose is simply the best book ever and I won't here a word against it. Foucault's Pendulum is pretty damn fine too, and a free copy of it should be supplied with every purchase from the New Age section. If you're going to write books about the impossibility of meaning it would be a tactical error to write too clearly.

logical bob wrote:The Name of the Rose is simply the best book ever

People keep making this elementary mistake. Fortunately, it's obvious what you meant to say, which was Little, Big by John Crowley.

...so that you can buy books?

It's sad, but this is what addiction does to people.

j.mills wrote:I'm like that me. I have no idea what The Name Of The Rose was about. (Half of it was in foreign!)

Possibly because there are as many ways of approaching The Name of the Rose as Cyrano de Bergerac had of approaching his nose ... (please not rhyme)