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This book might well not exist


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You may have already read this (and if not you will almost certainly already be aware of it!) but I heartily recommend the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. It's been about 10 years since I read it (really? that long!) so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, but I remember them being the most thought provoking, beautiful books I've ever read. They are truly the only books I have ever read that I felt actually changed how I feel about the world.

 

Failing that, I recommend The Old Kingdom trilogy by Garth Nix (Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen). These are young adult books so nothing disturbing, and they really are very good. Once again it's been a while since I read them so I can't remember details, but I do remember them being wonderful and magical.

 

Hope you find something you enjoy :D

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm afraid I find Eco to be presumptious and tedious:lurker: sorry! He's obviously very knowledgeable but I don't think he has the knack or even the desire to make his books intellegible and accessible.

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re: Umberto Eco: yes some of his books are very difficult to understand.

 

The Island of the Day Before - I didn't understand at all.

The Name of the Rose - I thought that was quite good.

Foucault's Pendulam - I really loved this one. I thought it was a very powerful book in some way. I read it several times.

Baudolino - I think this was a romp but I must read it again to really see what it was all about.

 

these are the only books of his that I've read and on the whole I like his style of writing. of course they are the English translations so I'm assuming the translator got it right.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The lines below my picture actually tell fibs, my copy of American Gods was stranded home after Christmas (wouldn't fit in the suitcase :)) so I had to leave it there unbegun; I've recently started Alphabet of Thorn so I really should finish that first before I start on AG. I have been told - after having already bought it, clearly - that there's explicit bits in AG and am now dreading it as much as I'm looking forward to it. Evil Neil.

 

It's not just a matter of not standing the explicit bits I'm afraid, and scanning them doesn't really help - first of all because I'm a 'read-every-word-including-the-copyright-page' kind of girl, and second of all because just knowing they're there would trigger upset. I don't even need to read them, it's gone beyond that.

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You'll be happy to know that Neverwhere (my favourite Evil Neil book) has absolutely no evil bits in it at all. Stardust has just the one but it's just a couple of parapgraphs at the very beginning - even I survived; Anansi Boys has a few annoying allusions but they're also survivable.

 

Incidentally, I know precisely why I get upset too, and you're right, it doesn't exactly help. And you weren't that off-topic, so I won't be exercising my Modship anytime soon :).

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