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

I didn't like the first two Harry Potter books, but actually fought with my son for posession of the next three! (He has a thing about now wanting anyone to read a book before he does, even if they are (a) a quicker reader and (b)he's busy with something else...
Terry Pratchett! I've read everything he has written so far.
I've read LOTR only twice, but I am reading the Silmarillion at present. Awesome!

More of an old Coro' fan myself, Jane (Albert Tatlock, Minnie Caldwell, Elsie Tanner , Ena Sharples .....)

Unless it all turns out to be an allegory for the five pillars of Islam, of course

Then you're a better man than me! I tried and failed miserably. To me, the Silmarillion read like a dry and tedious history book. Henry VII 1485-1503... I love LOTR, and have read it over twenty times over the years, but JRRTs other output failed to capture my imagination (except The Hobbit, which I think of as an intro to LOTR).

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

TWENTY TIMES???

Wow!

I agree with you about the Silmarillion. I don't remember how far I managed to read but it wasn't much. Maybe Della can tell us about it when she finishes.

az

Well I'm only just short of fifty now, and I first read it when I was sixteen. Over thirty years of reading, how could I have read such a great story any *less* than twenty times?



Great idea!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

*lurks in*

Hummm I just can't get into LOTR

<--- Z

Ah, Robert Rankin. Love the in-jokes.

I think it's an individual thing... there are parts of the Silmarillion which I find boring - discussions about places - but that's just me... No, I really am enjoying it - but my son can't even get through LotR! He says Tolkien should have hired Catherine Fisher (Welsh fantasy novelist) to write it for him, after giving her the basic story...

<<>>
Will do if you want!

az

Isn't it in a RR book that Odin trades the universe for a place in a nursing home for all eternity, with fresh white starched sheets on His bed every day? And Thor storms around like a mad football hooligan? [If it isn't RR, then it must be DNA; I can't remember. ]

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Nope, that's The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by DNA. Easy mistake to make, though...?

Have you read any of the Tom Holt comic fantasies like "Whos Afraid of Beowulf"? Very funny especially when the Vikings get the London Underground map confused with a genological table.

He also writes some very black comedies set in ancient Greece which like Vonnegut can have me in tears and laughing out loud at the same time.

Hello Seth

Oh yes... I loved Coronation street too!!! just the very mention of those names brings back fond memories!!! Ena Sharples and Minnie sitting in the Snug of the Rovers Return, Ena with her hairnet on, did she ever take it off?? I was a great Stan and Hilda Ogden fan, I just loved it when Hilda started to sing..............Ahhh those were the days...

Actually, dare I confess, I am reading Paul Burrells book about Princess Diana at the moment, sneakily picking it up and buying it at Stansted Airport in January, not at all what I expected, it really repeats how much Paul Burrell (I wasn,t just a servant) thought the princess adored him, and what an efficient and brilliant fellow he is and how on earth does any one on earth do without him????

I was never much of a "Diana fan" but I do find her fascinating and I am beginning to think that she was much misunderstood, I always dismissed her as being shallow and selfish, which I am sure, to a certain extent she was, but there was an awful lot more to her and it is incredible that almost 7 years after her death she can still make front page stories in the newspapers.

Just thought I would add that.

Jane

marking.

I don't know. Turn your back for a minute and the FFFF turns in to a book club!


I read Lewis before I was 10 and the christian message passed me by until it was pointed out later. They were still enjoyable and despite my own rejection of christianity, I'm now thinking of reading them to my own kids.

LotR - read it more than twenty times; the fastest was over a single weekend, the most recent just before the RotK film came out. Also read The Simarillion, The Hobbit and some of the other bits. I concluded that JRRT was obsessed, but that The Silmarillion does provide a real depth LotR that makes the whole structure of the world stand out and explains most of the more obscure references in LotR.

TP is probably one of my long term favourite authors. He is not only funny by writes in a really critical way about topical subjects. For example, Small Gods is a brilliant comment on religion and Men at Arms is simply a fantastic treatise on gun control.

I find Rankin a much harder read. The Witches of Chiswick is a case in point, it bounces along in a ridiculous fashion. The only redeeming feature for me were the jokes and cross-references to other works.


Now on another topic entirely, JtP appears to have elvised overnight. Without so much as a bye. Now I'll have to do some work and can start reading this thread again.

Madent

Madent,

I am reading Men at Arms at the moment and it is wonderful. Though I mentioned to a friend yesterday about the inherent dangers of reading TP on a crowded bus.

Another wonderful series I am making my way through is the Falco books by Lindsey Davis. She is an historian of ancient Rome and started a series of 'detective' novels taking place in Imperial Rome, roughly 70AD, with occasional forays to that provincial backwater Londinium. I can't recommend the books enough. Very funny, clever, well-written *and* educational. I've learned quite a lot about Roman times along with being splendidly entertained.



az

ps
It seems that Justin got tired of being asked 'difficult' questions he couldn't answer. I wonder where he's gone.

Hmmmm....I have read LOTR every year since I was 11 years old, and sometimes 2 or 3 times. I also posses and have read all his other fiction from The Father Christmas Letters to the collections of notes his son flogged after his death (Unfinished Tales etc). I wear my elven anorak with pride .

Mr Pratchett is a brilliant writer, unfortunately he knows this too and sometimes gets to clever for himself (and his audience). Thus his later books have been patchy at times.

I must admit to being a Robert E.Howard fan as well, so, slipping a lithely as a panther, I shall exeunt stage left...

Blessings,
Matholwch the Barbarian /|\.

Oh wow, the Falco books! Aren't they wonderful? I have learned so much from them, and they are funny, in a nice understated way. Superb!

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Ah, Robert E Howard, he's on my "to read" list.