From this point on, I'm thinking that I might start posting daily. Doing so will make for some writing exercise and an opportunity to stretch my brain a bit. It will also keep my blog from filling up completely with oppressive thoughts.
I was gonna use the word garish where I used oppressive... then I realized that I would be completely misusing the word.
Garish is a funny word.
I've started rereading two different series. In both cases, I've read the first two books, but never got around to the third.
The first series is the Inheritance Cycle. I remember reading both Eragon and Eldest and enjoying both books, but they didn't exactly impress upon me like some other books did when I was in middle school. I'm now close to 100 pages into Eragon and I can definitely see why the books were a little less impressive to me. The book is rather obviously written by a novice writer. It lacks a certain amount of depth, or rather, doesn't portray character feelings well enough. It fails to flow and grow correctly. One example of what I found lacking was how Eragon adapted to the idea of talking to Saphira in his head. It was like he just suddenly knew what to do... too much like a kid's cartoon. Hah. (Note: I'm not saying this as a writer, but as a critical reader. I don't assume to be a better writer.) Christopher Paolini was only fifteen when he started on Eragon and was nineteen when he initially got it published, so this isn't much of a surprise. I'm interested to see how much the writing style and ability changes between Eragon and Eldest... and then if it changes even more in Brisingr. I'll be sure to post about it once I'm finished with all three.
The other series I'm rereading is The Bartimaeus Trilogy. These books, unlike The Inheritance Cycle, had a strong impression on me when I was younger. I remember finding Bartimaeus's personality and comments, both within the text and in the form of footnotes, to be highly entertaining. I remember also finding the main protagonist, Nathaniel, to be very likable. I'm currently only 30 pages into The Amulet of Samarkand, but I can already see what made these stories so enchanting. The writing is clearly on a different level than that of Eragon. It feels much less forced and I was swept into the events and the mystery of the story much more quickly. Even at page 90 of Eragon, it still feels somewhat blaa, even though a considerable amount of exciting events have already occurred. I can say that I'm much more inclined to read The Amulet of Samarkand than I am to read Eragon.
On the subject of good books, there's a whole bunch of different stories, both in the form of single novels and series, that I could recommend, but I think I'll save that for a future post. If you're looking for something to read now, though, I do recommend The Bartimaeus Trilogy. If you've read it already... then read it again. Or wait for my future post. Try The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer.
Anyway, thanks for reading my post, now go read a book.
...signing out.
No comments:
Post a Comment