Favorite Book

[aphoticruby]

JK Rowling may as well be Danielle Steel. What is it that people find worthwhile in her writing? I honestly don't get it.

The same goes for Rand. Not only do I have a total disagreement with her ideology, I also find her writing to be pedantic, her arguments flimsy, and her characters at best 1-dimensional. I certainly don't agree with Dostoevsky's world view, but I can still see the literary and intellectual merit of books like Notes From the Underground.

C'mon people, popularity != value.

[rocketman1555]

the Harry Potter series are good books, they've developed to stay with the same group of people that read the first book, so people like them because no matter how old you are you can still read and enjoy them if you read the first book when you were young, they don't stay for the same age throughout the series

[gneissisnice]

JK Rowling may as well be Danielle Steel. What is it that people find worthwhile in her writing? I honestly don't get it.

The same goes for Rand. Not only do I have a total disagreement with her ideology, I also find her writing to be pedantic, her arguments flimsy, and her characters at best 1-dimensional. I certainly don't agree with Dostoevsky's world view, but I can still see the literary and intellectual merit of books like Notes From the Underground.

C'mon people, popularity != value.

I did not pick Rand because she was popular. I read the book and enjoyed it a lot. I agreed with her philosophy, and i thought it was extremely well written. As for JK Rowling, her writing may not be exceptional, but she weaves a good story. Reading does not always have to be enlightening, the whole point of reading is to be entertained with a good story.

[andrewwski]

Anything written by an astronaut, or someone else involved in the space program. I love getting different viewpoints from those involved.

Also anything about aviation or space. I'm mostly into nonfiction nowadays.

Although there's some fiction that I still like - Jules Verne, HG Wells, etc.

[aphoticruby]

I agreed with her philosophy, and i thought it was extremely well written.

So, how is pulling yourself up by your bootstraps coming? I just kind of figured that after the failure of Reaganomics everyone with half a brain realized that not all people fail because of their own actions. Oh well, guess I was wrong.

[theoneandonly]

As for JK Rowling, her writing may not be exceptional, but she weaves a good story.

Amen. Some of the allusions to and foreshadowings of the plot of Book 7 can be found in as early as Books 3 and 4. Plus, who DOESN'T like The Snape Chapter in 7?

[Mr. Cool]

JK Rowling may as well be Danielle Steel. What is it that people find worthwhile in her writing? I honestly don't get it.

The same goes for Rand. Not only do I have a total disagreement with her ideology, I also find her writing to be pedantic, her arguments flimsy, and her characters at best 1-dimensional. I certainly don't agree with Dostoevsky's world view, but I can still see the literary and intellectual merit of books like Notes From the Underground.

C'mon people, popularity != value.

Here's what I find good about J.K. Rowling's writing.
Character Develop
Story
Creating suspense
Climax
And she just puts everything in a way that anyone can understand

[aphoticruby]

Here's what I find good about J.K. Rowling's writing.
Character Develop
Story
Creating suspense
Climax
And she just puts everything in a way that anyone can understand

It is rather pedestrian prose with almost no original content. The story is simply a patchwork of tired cliche from the sum of prior children's literature, devoid of the trappings of inventive story telling. She doles out tired metaphors which fail at even being cute and trite, instead coming off as forced. It is as if she went through the English children's lit canon and crudely clipped sentences and paragraphs then rearranged them in an essentially arbitrary manner. Her characters only have depth because of the ideas of the authors they were stolen from; characters that have entered the public psyche such that even passing mention to them elicits a response. She generates a sort of white bread homogeneity that, while comforting at times, is without cultural merit. To proclaim her greatness is to deny those authors that essentially wrote her work for her.

[gneissisnice]

Listen, aphoticruby, you sound like a real literature snob. A person is entitled to like whatever books appeal to them. Slamming authors because you don't like their writing is juvenile and immature. The whole point of the forum was so people could say what books they like and maybe other people would be interested and read them too, not to evaluate the credentials of each writer and start an argument. And if you had actually read Atlas Shrugged, you would have seen that it had the theme of individualism, and how a person's wealth is his own and he other people are not entitled to mooch off of his wealth for "the good of the people"

[aphoticruby]

And if you had actually read Atlas Shrugged, you would have seen that it had the theme of individualism, and how a person's wealth is his own and he other people are not entitled to mooch off of his wealth for "the good of the people"

Apparently you totally missed what I said about it, then. I know what it is about, and how it is totally wrong. Rand is a terrible author, a terrible philosopher, and a hypocrite to boot. She was born into a life of privileged yet tried to write about the inability of others to achieve success. So far the only thing "immature" was your little quip "if you had actually read Atlas Shrugged", which is not only juvenile but observably wrong. Sorry for launching into a literary criticism of the books posted, but as you said "[t]he whole point of the forum was so people could say what books they like and maybe other people would be interested and read them too". I would hate for someone to come along and see a bunch of people extolling the literary merit of Rowling and decided that it would be worth their time to read it. Think of it as a little bit of public service. There are so many books worth reading that someone simply does not have time to waste on even one (or heaven forbid TWO, let alone 7) Harry Potter books. Worst of all, they might then propagate the mind virus even further and waste the time of even more people.