Confessions

[dwndrgn]

My girlfriend never liked 2001 because it was so impersonal and there was no real character viewpoint to really get involved with.

Would you think that might the similar objection you are having??

I think that is very close. I mean the writing is good - it's just dull. Which means that I can't relate at all to the people in the story, I don't even know them. They are all just interchangeable. However, I'm going to stick it out just to be able to say I've read it. I've got four other books waiting behind it so I've got incentive to get through it fast

 

[littlemissattitude]

I have to say, I really liked 2001 and 2010. But then I read the next one and didn't really connect with it at all.

But I really liked The Iliad and The Odyssey, Master. The Odyssey, especially. I probably wouldn't have read them, but I had to for a lit class once, years ago. Partly, I was scared off by the fact that we read verse translations. But, I ended up really liking them. I think we read the translation by Fitzgerald, which is very accessible despite being in verse.

 

[dwndrgn]

More trouble with 2001. I'm just now reaching two-thirds of the way through and I'm a little perturbed. After feeding the reader with all of this incredibly well-thought out scientific fact and fabrication, Clarke leaves a glaring hole in his logic with regards to HAL. I won't say what it is because if you are reading it and don't see it, then your enjoyment of the story might be ruined if I point it out. However, it made me drop the book immediately. I still intend to go back and finish but I must have a break.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Whatever that point is, it sounds like a thread starter for discussion.

 

[dwndrgn]

Poly couldn't contain his curiosity about it and pm'd me. In telling him about it I realized that it may not have been such a glaring hole on the author's part but possibly an incorrect assumption on my part. When I get home I'm going to reread that passage and if it still seems a gaping big hole then I'll post what it is for discussion. If my brain was malfunctioning, I'll post an apology to Clarke

Well, I still feel that the logic was somewhat off but my partial apologies to Clarke because if you blur your eyes a bit you can just catch the image...in other words, there isn't complete logic to the entire sentient computer story he stuck in the middle of this novel, but it isn't wholly illogical either. After my re-read of that passage my personal feeling was that A) you can't just pull out specific portions of hardware without reprogramming if you want it to continue funtioning, B) a computer could be sentient but could it 'feel' as in the sense of feel, as in knowing it had been touched...? and C) would a computer who has lost certain circuits know which circuits were gone? So there was my problem with HAL. He was reprogrammed by Dave ripping out certain circuit boards and he knew that boards were being taken out, and he knew which ones were gone.

 

[mzarynn]

My first confession is ... I read the spoilers in the above post without reading the book! *sigh* That's better.

Secondly, I cannot get through any of the Redwall books by Brian Jacques. I've tried Mossflower twice and couldn't get interested. I'm not really sure why I haven't taken to the books. I think it might be that I don't relate well to the animal characters. *sigh again* My husband loved reading these books years ago, so I've tried.

Thirdly, Please don't throw stones at me... I was bored with Catcher in the Rye. It held my attention long enough to get me through the book, but that was all. I did not have a "Wow" experience after reading it. I hardly remember anything other than I had to force myself to finish it. *third and final sigh*

 

[littlemissattitude]

Thirdly, Please don't throw stones at me... I was bored with Catcher in the Rye. It held my attention long enough to get me through the book, but that was all. I did not have a "Wow" experience after reading it. I hardly remember anything other than I had to force myself to finish it. *third and final sigh*

Don't apologize for that, mzarynn. "Catcher in the Rye" didn't just bore me...I actively despise the book. Or, more accurately, I actively despise Holden Caulfield. I've had to read the book three...count them, three...times for different classes, the first one being when I was in the eighth grade, the other two for college classes. Even when I was a young, angst-filled teenager, I couldn't buy Holden as an angst-filled anti-hero. Sorry, to anyone who likes the book, but I just did...not...like...it.

 

[dwndrgn]

So, I finally did it. I read 2001:A Spacy Odyssey. Didn't like it. There wasn't enough story to make me want to continue reading (but I did just so I could say that I'd accomplished my goal). There wasn't enough characterization to make me care about the characters. And it just felt as if the book was completely rushed and lots of stuff was left out. The big deal with the HAL 9000 - where was the rest of that story? It was like a blip on the screen...The ending was so abrupt and ethereal that there wasn't anything to grab on to...There just wasn't enough stuff there, I felt that it could have been fleshed out a great deal and made into a pretty good book. A little background, a little more detail on what was going on. Less endless detail about the arrangement of the planets and their orbits and their satellites and their curvature and arcs and ellipses and flares and blah, blah, blah. It read like a NASA manual on traversing the galaxy. Well, it's done and I won't ever have to do it again .

 

[Esioul]

Ooops- you're going to hate me now, but 'Catcher' in the Rye' and 'Anna Karennina' are two of my faveorite books. Never read any Clarke- think I trie 2001 or whatever it is years ago but only got through a few pages. 'Anna Karennina' is great- one of the reasons I like it so much is the great writing, another is that it portrays people so realistically, and the characterisation is so excellant.