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Greetings, fellow members of the Kingdom!
I have a few questions for you all. Be prepared to be attacked by the sword of curiosity!
First, what are your top 3 favorite books and what do you like about them? (Be brief but detailed, and no spoilers 🙂 ) How have they taught, inspired, or grown\challenged you as a writer?
(Taught doesn’t necessarily mean they have been about writing, but perhaps you have learned something about plot or characters from reading a specific book.)
Also, what is one (or two) of your favorite characters? What about them do you love? (Personality, quirks, etc) Please give their name and the book\series they came from.
I’m going to tag a few people to get the conversation going, but feel free to jump in even if you haven’t been tagged. 🙂
@dragon-snapper @kate-flornoy @graciegirl @ethryndal @winter-rose @daeus @his-instrument@DelightinLife Whoa! You want a bunch of bookworms to give you their top 3 favorite books? You ask the impossible. 😉
While I don’t exactly have time to go into all three right now, I can give you the first one and maybe talk about the other two later. 😁
1. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. Chesterton
This is an amazing book overall. Packed with action and food for thought, I highly recommend it, but be warned it does get a little difficult to follow at times. I’m not sure if you wanted a spoiler free synopsis or not, but the basic plot follows an undercover London police investigator who’s on a mission against anarchy in general. Even though that literally is the premise of the book, your mind will be blown by how much more there is to it.
What I learned from it: First off, I have to warn you that I am by far one of the most inexperienced writers on here, so most of what I say will be from a reader’s point of view and anything I say about how well-written a book was must be taken with a spoonful of salt. Also, I am a very touchy-feely person so my advice might seem a bit vague.
Anyway, with TMWWT I thought Chesterton’s descriptions were amazing. He used them to add to the general mood of a scene by connecting things like the weather with how the protagonist, Syme, was feeling at the moment or to what was happening in the scene. @Daeus explains this a lot better.
One other thing I noticed was that Syme is a great example of how a protagonist can be reactive but not passive. The poor fellow spends practically the entire time with little to no control over the story’s conflict, yet he never comes across as passive.*is probably geeking out about something*
@DelightinLife wow… that is an impossible question. :”D
Oh boy… ugh. Hm. Okayyyy… disclaimer: all following opinions or statements are subject to alteration and contradiction at any given time and without any prior notice. 😛
Top three favorite books… Well, I’m going to go with stories because one’s a trilogy. *winkwink* Les Miserables, Lord of the Rings, and… um… *groans* UGH! *randomly selects the first that pops into her head* Fahrenheit 451! Because why not? 😛
Les Miserables went a very long way to showing me the importance of foil characters, and especially making me appreciate the depth of thematic complexity that has the potential to exist between hero and villain/antagonist.
Lord of the Rings really shaped my perception of stories as I’ve loved it forever, but one thing I particularly learned from it was that epicness alone cannot carry a story. It has to be balanced with large doses of the beautiful ordinary.
Fahrenheit 451 is really an extraordinary book on a number of levels. Anybody who hasn’t read it should. It’s not a perfect book, but at least for me, it was very powerful. It taught me to experiment with absolutely crazy ideas because you never know what might come of them. Also that as long as the characters and prose and descriptions can ground the reader well, your premise can be the most unheard of concept imaginable and still pack a powerful punch.Honorable mention goes to Lord of the Flies. Because… theme. And allegory. It’s not light reading by any definition of the term, but it is probably the most powerful work of fiction I’ve ever read, judging from how it impacted me emotionally.
TWO FAVORITE CHARACTERS!!!!!!!!!!???????????? WHAT ARE YOU, A MONSTER??? *sobs into her apron*
I’m sorry. That is just impossible. But I will pick two that I found exceptionally well done and try to explain why.
Inspector Javert, from Les Mis. One of the best ‘villains’ ever. (I’m just not even going to bring up Kylo Ren, because no. Let’s be nice to each other, children). I loved the way he fulfilled his role in the story and the story’s theme, and yet in the end he was so much more than just a plot device. I can’t say everything I’d like to because spoilers, but he is an excellent example of the ‘admirable antagonist.’
Second place probably goes to… Gollum, from LotR. Another villain. Figures. XD I have always considered him Tolkien’s crowning achievement in characterization. Being literally two people in one body, and at once representing helpless innocence and ultimate corruption, he is amazingly detailed, complex, and duplicitous. (Literally 😛 ).And… yes. I’ll stop there. Great topic. 😀
@kate-flournoy I love how the three characters you picked (or wanted to pick) are all villains. XD
INTJ ➸Your friendly neighborhood mastermind. ➸https://thesarcasticelf.wordpress.com/
@DelightinLife
Okay, I’m back with another book. 😀
Lotsa people hereabouts have probably heard me mention The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. Well, here’s why I love it so much: the settings it uses.
Reading this story, I fell in love with fantasy, and I realized that, as fantasy authors, most of us have the freedom to create enchanting new places for readers to explore. You can just tell that Goudge had a lot of fun coming up with all the different places in Moonacre Valley, and the book has inspired me to let loose and get creative with the different locations I place my characters in.*is probably geeking out about something*
@delightinlife Well, I had to mull over this one for a few days *cough* weeks, due to impossible questions such as…you know…favorites in writing… BUT. Here I am. So. Books. (Please keep in mind that these are only some of my favorite books. To narrow my favorites down to three would quite possibly be lethal. 🙂 )
The Chronicles of Narnia: *cough cough* What, seven books don’t count as one? I think they do. *ahem* What I like about Narnia is that it’s so simple. Lewis doesn’t rely on incredibly detailed worlds (like Middle-Earth) or crazily intricate plots (also like Middle-Earth) to capture you. His style is very basic, and from its simplicity comes its charm. Sometimes, in a world full of complications, it’s nice to read something that is incredibly straightforward and easy. As a writer who tends to stress about things being too basic, it’s helped me immensely to remember that everyone has a different way of writing, from Middle-Earth to Narnia, and none are really better than the other. Just different styles.
Gregor the Overlander: This book (or books, since it’s a series) taught me the importance of good characterization and the power of backstory. There’s a certain character who begins the book as extremely unlikable, but as the story progresses and I learned more about her, I found myself pitying her and almost liking her. Not because she changed (the first book ended with her exactly the same as when it started), but because Suzanne Collins peeled back layers of her character and backstory so adeptly that the more I knew about her, the more I understood why she acted the way she did, and I sympathized.
Sense and Sensibility: CHARACTERS AND FOIL CHARACTERS. Enough said.
Phew. There. Now excuse me while I take another two weeks to figure out favorite characters. 😉
INTJ ➸Your friendly neighborhood mastermind. ➸https://thesarcasticelf.wordpress.com/
@kate-flournoy @ethryndal @gracie-girl
I’m sorry I didn’t reply sooner!
Thank you so much for all the responses! I know it is an impossible question, as I’m a bookworm myself. (I started reading when I was four and haven’t stopped since. 🙂 )
Gracie, my sister actually has read The Little White Horse, and we have it on our bookshelf though I’ve never read it myself. 🙂
I really liked what you said about Lord of the Rings, Kate, and how epicness alone cannot carry a story. I’ve actually haven’t read The Lord of the Rings *ducks behind a huge ice cream cone* though I have read the Hobbit. I started LOR once, but didn’t get more than a few pages. It’s actually my dad’s favorite book and he really wants me to read it. 🙂
Ethryndal, My mom got me Sense & Sensibility for Christmas, but I haven’t read it yet. I have read Pride & Prejudice though, and liked that one.
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