Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

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Even though Lightness is one of my favorite books, it really won't speak to everyone. It has a lot of angst and philosophy and reflections on the human condition from the perspective of poly lovers during wartime, written by a male Czech author. Each of those could be a way to relate, or distance, the writing from the reader.

In truth I don't even remember the plot, but I do poignantly remember the evocative language and beautiful prose, even in its English translation. It was just such a subtly piercing way to look inside people in everyday (yes, boring) situations as they struggle with love and meaning. It's the same "big" questions any literary novelist tries to tackle, but if that's not your jam, the writing won't do anything for ya. Nothing wrong with that. Kundera is a niche/cult favorite, not necessarily a mass market page turner.

There are authors I dislike too, despite their popularity. Tolkien and RR Martin for their verbosity, Barbara Kingsolver for her tendency to go on long rambly tangents about her personal life. Thoreau had his ups and downs. Etc. There are more great books and authors than a person can read in a lifetime anyway. To each their own!

I understand what you mean about Tolkien, he describes seemingly random crap at length and doesn't really care about the plot, but it's not really accurate to call him verbose. The entirety of the Lord of the Rings has less words than two ASOIAF books or WoT books. I recently re-read LotR for the first time since childhood and what struck me is just how compact they are compared to modern fantasy.

Really? I tried to read the first few chapters but couldn't get into it... just seemed like so much unnecessary detail. What might be a minute or two in the movies took forever in the books.

Maybe I'll give it another shot though, based on what you said

If the details seem unnecessary but keep reappearing, maybe it's because the author finds them necessary, important, or even the main subject of the work.

I think there's a book where this idea is pushed to the utter extreme: it's Ulysses by James Joyce. Apparently it's a book about mundane people doing mundane things on a unremarkable day. But Joyce made a point to write a book about all these details, all this tissue of daily life which is commonly omitted in books, or even suppressed and distorted to fit to a stylistic or moralistic mold. I's a book about how a person lives a day on the low level, how maybe an alien would see it.

I mean, I love ethnographic or "day in the life" nonfiction books, learning about different real cultures that way. But when they're about fictional cultures, I dunno, it feels like it'd just be better to experience that in a RPG video game or movie or something... (as a matter of personal preference only).

Of course authors are free to write as they wish. I'd never tell someone "Yo, you have too much detail for my tastes." I just wouldn't read them again. They have their own fanbases, I'm sure, just as I have my own preferences for writing style. Nothing wrong with that, right? In fact I wish there were a good recommendation engine for books based on previous reads, writing style, setting, length, etc.

It's a slow beginning. Tolkien focuses a lot on Hobbit culture as it's important to the morality of the narrative but it picks up very quickly. Oftentimes important events are only briefly summarized by one character to another as they meet up or narrated in brief chapters. That said, his writing style definitely isn't for everyone.

ASOIAF are massively verbose tho. It amounts to argument that more verbose books exists, not that Tolkien is not verbose.

The Twilight series has a higher word count than LotR + The Hobbit if that's a more apt comparison for you

Every speck of glitter must be individually described.

Yes, the thing with Tolkien, is he was telling stories which are meant to be TOLD, as in oral, spoken out loud.

To an audience which might be falling asleep, or minds drifting as they stare at the fire.

That's part of his magic, and few other authors match it.

Contrast to Harry Potter, which is a stream of visual images.

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