Last book I read was Prince Caspian (1951) C. S. Lewis. A true work of Art. The actual copy I have was printed in 1980, it's 5 years older than I am and looking a bit weathered.
Flyte by Angie Sage -- Volume 2 of the Septimus Heap series. A quick read, as it's geared towards younger readers, but it was still interesting, with some clever gimmicks peppered throughout.
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Originally Posted by Dextro
Finished I,Robot by Isaac Asimov. Great book and the plot has absolutely nothing to do with the movie with the same name btw.
Candide (Voltaire) for a literature class. I actually ended up really enjoying the book.
The last books I read for fun were a bunch of Alastair Reynolds books. Before he was a full time author, the dude was a scientist for the European Space Agency. So the science fiction actually makes some sense from a scientific point of view. And since I'm a huge nerd I think that's pretty cool
I'm reading Harry Poter, lol. It is funnier and less inteligent than I expected. Here are my thoughts on the first book.
Spoiler for wall of text:
1) The story begins with the wizards making a hero out of the protagonist. Why? Because he didn’t do shit. That’s right, he was a baby who didn’t do a thing and thus became a hero. Why? Because for reasons not known he survived the Big Bad’s attack. Hm, yeah, a great way to make a hero out of thin air. Why weren’t his parents who fought to the death defending him and the entire magic world become heroes? How can a baby who doesn’t understand anything or even actively fought back become a hero in the first place? What kind of crap is this?
2) So the wizards decide to reward the baby protagonist for his unexisting heroic deeds by giving him to be raised by a bunch of retarded common people, who hate him and mistreat him all the time. Because that is what you do to a baby hero, right? You don’t take him to be raised by magicians who can train him and allow him to tap into his potential. You give him to idiots to torture him for being special. Furthermore, you don’t give a damn about him and you only pay a visit to call him to go to school … after 10 years of absence. Yeah, talk about caring wizards who want to show their respects to the baby hero who defeated the lord of evil without doing a damn thing.
3) So the protagonist is taken to the magic school where we are immediately told that all children going to Slitherin are evil and shitheads. Why? Because. It would really help to be simply told they are snobs but no, that would be too hard. We are just told they are evil without a cause.
4) So his studies begin and he is told that there are some things he is not allowed to do in the school or there will be punishment. Well guess what, there wasn’t a single rule he didn’t brake while being there. And instead of being punished, in the contrary he was being rewarded! I’m not kidding, the teachers were brainlessly giving him points and extra magic equipment for breaking the very rules they set. Plus, the rest of the students keep cheering him more and more for not doing what he is told. Not only that, but even when the teachers actually DO punish him, he is sent to a place where he is given insight into further dangerous information about the return of Big Bad. Now if you were even punished in school, you would know that a punishment is not meant to make you cooler or smarter or stronger. It’s meant to make you obedient. Any punishment that school was doing was like telling you to break as many rules as possible in order to be rewarded. Duh!
5) Then there are also the bad guys in the story who for some irrational reason the more they try to hinder the protagonist, the more he becomes cooler and gets access to further forbidden knowledge. Seriously, the best thing they could have done was NOT doing anything and letting him rot away in bliss. Nice adversaries my butt.
6) Then it’s the whole security issue of the school. They keep saying it is top level and yet it keeps being breached easier that rice paper by a bunch of 10 year old rookie first timers. No reason dark magicians stroll through the corridors as easy as scratching your nose. Yes, it was THAT easy. Security was about a huge three headed dog that you could defeat by playing a flute or a room you could cross by simply winning at chess or drinking a potion, all accompanied with proper hints left there by the wizards themselves to allow any possible intruders to pass security even easier. What kind of a madman gives hints to the secret passcode in broad daylight for everyone to guess it with simple arithmetics? Retarded!
7) Then comes the final confrontation with an evil wizard. He was a really powerful one and could kill the protagonist in less than a second. So what does he do instead? He patiently explains all his evil plans as if he was trying to make a point when in reality he was just supposed to kill him. Duh! This is one of the major bullshit crappy authors use when they are incapable of simply using internal monologue or just good old fashion narration.
8) So then the protagonist manages to kill the evil wizard, who wasted half an hour explaining instead of just killing him. How? By touching him. I’m not kidding you, he touched him and he died. Wow, what a powerful wizard! What kind of spell did he use? Nothing! I’m not kidding again, he didn’t do anything. The power who defeated the wizard was dear old mommy who loved her sonny so much, her love came from the afterlife to protect him. That is right people, the power of love gave resolution to the problem. Another bullshit method authors who can’t just use strategy or allow a bad ending resort to.
9) Finally, in the last chapter we get nothing but the protagonist asking questions and the wizards kindly replying to all the otherwise forbidden things he is not allowed to know. Furthermore, they reward him so much for doing such a dangerous thing without telling them about it, his school wins in points for that year. Duh!
My IQ dropped some points after finishing this book. And I have 6 more to go. Thank goodness I wrote down all this crap in order to gain back my lost intelligence. Seriously, this book is making children stupid. It’s giving a very false image of what punishment or reward really is. It creates punks and anarchists.
2010-08-08, 02:38
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Vampire Knight*anime :P* Fan girl xp.. 
