h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I can't decide! They're all great reads, depending on what mood I'm in at the time.

Have to agree with Bob though, Tad Williams is one of the best, both for Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and Otherland.

I easily enjoyed Lord of the Rings most. Brilliant rich descriptive passages, and the story is set against a vast inbuilt "believable" mythology/history.
I also enjoyed immensely reading the HP books to my boys but you just cannot compare the two easily-they are not even aimed at the same audiences.
Narnia was sort of OK and more useful for teaching Christianity.

Roddy Doyle? pah!

Um... Still don't know who this HP guy is. Sorry.



an ingnoramus called Ben

I would have to say Narnia is the best. I read the series as a child and it was very engaging. I read them again as an adult and discovered all the symbolism and deeper meanings contain therein. Lotr and Hp are interesting and well written, but they cannot compare to the Narnia series.
-The Sciolist

Why pick one as 'best'?Also why pit two childrens novels against an adult one?Having got that off my chest I recently reread LOTR after a fairly long period since I had read it.I was disappointed by the stiltedness of it.It didn't flow as I rememberd it.Indeed I have read better fantasy in the intervening years such as Raymond Fiest's Daughter of the Empire trilogy or Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series.

Just got that HP is Harry Potter. How dumb can I be! I was thinking HP Lovecraft for some reason.

Harry Potter is good, loved the books and loved the film. But they are adventures not allegories.

a dumbo called Ben

heehee. finally caught up wiv d rest of us then benny?
jus outa intrest, what does every1 think of the respective films? & i hope ur all gonna c felloiwship of the ring when it comes out later this month!!!

LOTH=4
Narnia=5
HP=0

I believe I counted right... though it is tough to be sure with all of the "other" fantasy chatter going on here. Correct me if I'm wrong...

peace.

I'm just a little confused. In the last post: LOTH - Lord of the Hat, perhaps? Not quite as mythical...

I've never been able to get into Tollkien (sp?), so I'd just have to go by HP and Narnia. HP is great, but the Narnia books really move me. The Last Battle (which I just started rereading today, spooky) especially. It helped me deal with a lot of left ofer Christian beliefs I had which had been worrying me at the time I first read it.

I've never been able to get into Tollkien (sp?), so I'd just have to go by HP and Narnia. HP is great, but the Narnia books really move me. The Last Battle (which I just started rereading today, spooky) especially. It helped me deal with a lot of left over Christian beliefs I had which had been worrying me at the time I first read it.

Even Garth Brooks himself was not always evil, before he created the ultimate album and became "Lord of the Hat".

Lord of the Rings.

Why? It's the best book ever written, simple as that.

How can HP or Narnia possibly compete with the pure grandeur and sweeping scale of the Lord of the rings? Also, it's just a darn good story. It's not stilted it's just not written in the cosy fashion that some modern fantasy authors like, it has archaic, Shakespeare like dialogue because that's its style, it's supposed to be a mythological story and I think that adds to it.

Narnia was good, I did enjoy them thoroughly and have reread them several times. Never compares to LOTR though. I particularly like the Silver Chair in that series but I agree with Cloviscat, it's fairly well documented (as I recall) that Tolkein wrote the Hobbit and LOTR and then seeing their success C.S. Lewis suddenly came out with the Narnia novels and Tolkein was not best pleased. I believe their friendship suffered for that.

Harry Potter - never read any of them but I have seen the film which seemed quite charming but lacking in any real substance. It never had anywher near the atmosphere of LOTR - the creeping evil of The Nazgul for example and Gollum gave me nightmares when I read LOTR as a child, I can't see HP doing that.

Tolkein, Stephen Donaldson and Tad Williams are the only fantasy authors I've read who can do dark, evil side well. Actually making them seem scary for example. In Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time for example, good as it is, the Forsaken who are the main nasties in it are really pretty crap and pathetic and some of them you actually start to like. I've never found myself rooting for the Lord of the Nagul in LOTR.



Can my strong feelings count as 10 votes for Tolkein?

Orcus, you should read Harry Potter, bearing in mind that they are children's books. They are well worth the read. While the first one will not give you nightmares, they get darker as the series continues, and the Dementors in the third one are truly terrifying. Mind you, they are suspiciously similar to the Nazgûl!

Oh, I do intend to read them, it's just I'm currently on the last Otherland novel, the second Sword of Truth novel, Ivanhoe and Neal Stephenson's Diamond age, after that come the new books in the Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire (by George R.R. Martin - a really good series!).

Never seems to be enough time to read everything.

I read somewhere recently that the Lord of the Rings is currently in its 111th edition (or thereabaouts) - will C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling ever get this continuing following? I doubt it.

And in reverse order

HP

Narnia

And the winner is

Lord of the Rings.

well in my house anyway

Gedge

I like Narnia because of it's many layers, but you could say the same for the other two as well. Really, I like them all but if I had to chose, I'd say Narnia followed by LOTR, then HP. Tolkien beats Rowling by a short head because I think he writes beautifully - poetry and prose.

like i sed LOTR is the best. but they arent really possible to compare. they all have different and unique properties that make them good. though i doubt HP or Narnia will ever get the same status as LOTR. they are written at different times about different events for different audiences (HP & Narnia are both 'childrens books' but aimed at children in different times. theres a big difference there i feel.)
what tolkien does that none of the others do is create a whole new world for his charactures. not just alternative parts of this world, but a whole new language system, mythology and history that is completely fascinating on its own (though heavey reading a lot of the time, like the silmarillion). its simply a masterpiece.

omy

LOTR=6
Narnia=7
HP=0

I believe I counted right... though it is tough to be sure with all of the "other" fantasy chatter going on here. Correct me if I'm wrong... If you didn't vote, just lectured on one or the other, I probably didn't count it either way, and if you gave 2 opinions, I probably didn't count it either...

peace.

Maybe that's because children's books tend to deal with the stark polarities of good and evil, white and black, and there's nothing in between? Dealing with subtle greys isn't easy until you've passed adolescence.

Personally, although I enjoyed Harry Potter (apart from being an imaginative blast, it was a way for me to relate to my eight-year-old) I found it somewhat derivative. Of course, most fiction is. I think it is derivative of Tolkien and of Lewis, who were,of course, contemporaries and good friends.

I prefer, on the whole, the work of Tolkien, even though I am relatively new to it. Like Gnomon, I find the latter sections of Lewis's Narnia series a little God-awful preachy. Of course, there are echoes of Biblical epic in the Silmarillion, too, (Light-giving trees of life, the favourite spiritual-son turned bad, etc) but these are themes that are found in many spirtual myths around the world. Tolkien's greatness lies in the fact that he created an entire mythology, language and people - for his imaginary Middle Earth.