Books!

Eldorion wrote:I didn't get very far in the book but I did watch the movie with my girlfriend.  I suspect that they took a lot of the corniest stuff out (much like the first Twilight movie), but it was still pretty bad.  Worst part was that there was no ending, not even a cliffhanger.  It just stopped.  It probably would've been better as a porno, though as we watched the unrated DVD version there was a half-second shot of part of a dick in one scene.

Forest Shepherd wrote:Did you read the book out of curiosity? Or was it recommended or something.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I am still trying to work out how (I suspect I can see the why!), seemingly rather early on in a relationship, you causally managed to slip into the conversation Eldo the suggestion- 'Fancy watching a really badly written film that's full of S&M?'
Youngsters today

Bluebottle wrote:You are assuming he did.

Bluebottle wrote:

Aries: “Welcome,” he said, shoving my hair hard, “to the butt room.”

Taurus: “No way,” I cried out orgasmically. “No way, no way, no way.”

Gemini: “When I woke up Christian Grey had somehow gotten an entire orange into my mouth.”

Cancer: “Say it,” he commanded. “Yankity Spankity.” “Louder.”

Leo: “He gently handcuffed me to the parking meter. “Bye.”

Virgo: “The helicopter was built for sex, I observed sexily. You could lie across the seats or recline them.”

Libra: “Christian Grey picked up the long black thing and started working my zone. It was bananas.”

Scorpio: “The sex feelings flooded my body like a charging herd of itty, bitty elephants. We’re talking small.”

Sagittarius: “Do I afraid you?” Christian Grey asked, licking his eyebrow.”

Capricorn: “It’s a Murphy Bed,” he explained. “Maybe one day we could leave it up and have sex in the walls.”

Aquarius: “Christian Grey mashed on my area with the meat of his hand. “Do you like that, you woman?”

Pisces: “Hey,” I asked “Didn’t you used to be a vampire?”

Forest Shepherd wrote:I agree about the footnotes, I thought they were excellent additions to the style of writing. There is a strange sort of thing that happens when one hears or reads about something that sounds unfamiliar but is presented within a context that gives it just enough meaning to be understood without being thoroughly known. The as-yet unexplored but merely-hinted-at in literature provides us with the opportunity to join the author in creating the story and is an important factor in whether writing (and fantasy writing in particular) works well.

I like to compare this feeling of not-knowing the details of something but being intrigued or delighted by the idea of it to the various sensations that the Pevensies have when they first hear the name of "Aslan" in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. 

P.S.
The extent to which the book subscribed to realism in war did not bother me. I like to think that the oddities of Jonathon Strange and the peculiarities of Wellington worked together only so far as they could have worked together. It's not like we have the scientist character sitting there in the board room of generals and politicians describing exactly what must be done in order to avert said crisis or accomplish said goal like we see in various sci-fi movies. The politics and traditions of England and the gentleman-officers of its military could not allow for the magic to be used in too calculating a manner, for reasons of honour and chain-of-command and so forth. 

The entire charm of the novel depends upon the concept of "gentleman magicians" for whom the idea of killing with magic was disdainful. The beliefs and standards of the various country's must be true or else we do not have a story of magic being practiced by stuffy gentry but instead a revisionist war-novel like you get with those historical revisionist versions of WWII and so-on. Of course there is some middle-ground here, in which Wellington could have asked for help in details just a little more pertinent to ending the war swiftly and Strange could have offered more powerful spells without turning into a calculating killing machine. But I liked the balance that we are given better. 

Magic is an unknown at this time, and as there are only two magicians in all of England and only one of them is even willing to share any of its details it seems quite logical that the British military with its stiff traditions would not simply accept the superiority of one man rummaging about through his satchel of books to a thousand English rifles toted about by a thousand sturdy Englishman. I feel this point is about mindsets. As readers, we can consider plots and events in meta-terms, while the characters themselves are constrained by the limitations of their own experience. Similarly to how we are living our own lives all around the globe right now, instead of banding together to defend ourselves against the coming zombie apocalypse. Oh if only we knew what future readers of history books will know. They will read about Petty's rants and Figgs pussies and shout out: "You fools! Argue about all of that from inside bunkers in Northern Canada! Get out before it's too late!!"

She smiled at him.
And then it arose and struck Vimes that, in her own special category, she was quite beautiful; this was the category of all the women, in his entire life, who had ever thought he was worth smiling at.  She couldn’t do worse, but then, he couldn’t do better.  So maybe it balanced out.  She wasn’t getting any younger but then, who was? And she had style and money and common-sense and self-assurance and all the things that he didn’t, and she had opened her heart, and if you let her she could engulf you; the woman was a city.
And eventually, under siege, you did what Ankh-Morpork had always done – unbar the gates, let the conquerors in, and make them your own.

"The morality of fantasy and horror is, by and large, the strict morality of the fairy tale. The vampire is slain, the alien is blown out of the airlock, the Dark Lord is vanquished, and, perhaps at some loss, the good triumph - not because they are better armed but because Providence is on their side.
Why does the third of the three brothers, who shares his food with the old woman in the wood, go on to become king of the country? Why does Bond manage to disarm the nuclear bomb a few seconds before it goes off rather than, as it were, a few seconds afterwards? Because a universe where that did not happen would be a dark and hostile place. Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain."
— “Let There Be Dragons” (1993), Terry Pratchett.

"Reason not withstanding, the universe continues unabated. Its history is terribly long and awfully difficult to understand, even in its simpler moments which are, roughly speaking, the beginning and the end. The wave harmonic theory of historical perception, in its simplest form, states that history is an illusion caused by the passage of time, and that time is an illusion caused by the passage of history. It also states that one’s perception of these illusions is conditioned by three important factors: who you are; where you are; and when you last had lunch with Zaphod Beeblebrox."
— Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Series Fit the Eighth