OFF: Reading Material

[Mark Lee]

Just thought I'd chuck my 'penn'orth in.

I wish I had the patience of some of this groups members, I read
The Hobbit when I was about 10 or 11, followed by all of JRRT's work
over a couple of years, one book I never managed was The Silmarillion
tho', IIRC it was completed by his son after his death ?, from a
fairly vast collection of notes, it just didn't work for me tho'.

I've read most of McCaffery's works but gave up with the PERN works
after about 6 books, they started to become commercial to my mind, in
that there was little new work, just filling in more history for the
sake of a sale.  She's done this with other books, notably Crystal Singer,
although i beleive she stopped at three in that instance.

I've refrained from joining in the various posts about who likes what
etc.  As many of us have said it's a matter of personal taste, and I've
never felt qualified enough to 'critique' any author well enough to post.

I think over the years my taste like most peoples has changed, along with
other members of the group I gave up on Asimov and Clarke years ago, I never
could get on with most of Heinlen's (sp) work, I hated Greg Bear but forced
myself to read it having bought it, then gave it away to a guy on Fidonet.
I wonder how many of us started off reading 'pulp' novellas by the likes of
EE Doc Smith and progressed to lengthier tomes by the likes of Asimov, then
after a few years found ourselves reading material which in many cases was
a rehash of some other authors works, thus we diversified and even moved
away from mainstream Sci-Fi in an attempt to discover 'new horizons' (pun).

I find now that I read more fantasy than fiction, Gemmell mainly, but even
he is falling into the McCaffery trap.

Ah well, enough inane chatter, back to work for me . . .

Mark (Hasbeen)

mark at esparto.org
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