Fantasy Fiction

How can J.K. Rowling, Christopher Paolini, Robert Jordan and Tolkien create such wonderful, new worlds?! Inventing new characters, new powers, more senses than five or six, new places, new games, new rules, new government, new species and what not?!
But there is a catch here. There is a necessity to read all the series written by these four brilliant writers one at a time. You mix them up, you better start reading again. I found that out at a very time-consuming cost.

I started with the Harry Potter series, and am more than glad that it’s over. That helped me enjoy it to the fullest and live the different world effectively for many years.
Then I made the biggest mistake of my book-worm life. I took the following treacherous path:

1. Eye of the World - Wheel Of Time (WoT) Series


2. Eragon - Inheritence Series (IS)


3. Eldest - IS


4. The Fellowship of the ring - Lord Of the Rings (LOTR)


5. Brisingr (started) - IS




• Googled for IS, read the wiki entry to refresh my meory.


6. Brisingr (completed) - IS


7. The Great Hunt (Started) - WoT




• Googled for LOTR, to find where I am going wrong in understanding


• Googled for WoT to discover that I had completely forgotten the plot, and mixed it up with Inheritence series


• Googled for IS, to find out what is WoT, IS and LOTR.


• Make a Venn Diagram for future reference.. ggrrrrr!

Warning:

Kindly don't repeat the mistake that I did. If you have done it already, here is a little something for reference.

However, this does not guarantee a confusion-free reading, as the three series are deeply inter-connected. You may have to re-read everything again. What with WoT spanning 11 books, and still going strong, you don't want to take THAT risk!

Disclaimer:

I am a consultant and a follower of KrishAshok - hence propagating the usage of charts and graphs.

Noise levels - in a book?

Books are like colofully lit magical boxes with beautiful or interesting thoughts floating inside them. Any book is meant to be lovingly held, cherished and opened, so that the one reading the book can bask in these lights and floating thoughts.

The above corny lines are mine, and I believe in them everytime I open a new book. That is why when a book disappoints me, it feels like I have been slapped hard by each floating thought, and blinded by excessive lighting.
The slapping and blinding happens when there is too much of noise in a book. Noise, in this case, is commonly termed as 'wordy'.

Theoretically, ( my theory that is), there can be two types of 'wordy' books:

• Words-wordy:This is when simplicity simmers and whimpers everytime she is ignored. For example,the previous sentence is wordy. I could have said that ignoring simplicity is undesirable. Even if that sounds unappetizing, its simple. With patience and the right frame of mind, words-wordy books can be read and enjoyed. ( We all like Rushdie don't we?)
• Wiki-Wordy:This results in a book full of irrelevant knowledge and facts, a classic symptom of a megalomaniac writer. I don't know what it takes to tolerate a wikipedia-type-wordy book.

Let me know tell you a story:

Once there lived an Indian Woman in a foreign land. She thought and made herself believe that she could write well. She took all the necessary courses and decided to make her debut with a collection of short stories. But she wanted to show how MUCH she knew, how rich her (cross) cultural knowledge is. So she ended up writing stories that could have been summed up in one line, but dragged on for 30-odd pages.

That is how, I ended up reading the story of a woman's survival after divorce. The author decided to take the seldom-used path, and covered the whole plathora of topics ranging from the protaganist's village, her husband's family, his work(which, for all of 5 pages, still remained a mystery), to the typical east-west divide, our cultural values, abortions, divorce and finally, her making out with another woman.

Most of the poets and writers are full of themselves and want to be in the spotlight in every forum and have maximum hits to their name in google. For example, when they are introduced to a person X with a "You know, X has written many short stories and has got herself published in so-and-so", these people go with, "Oh its a pleasure to meet you. You write stories? I understand, I myself have written more than you can even count, got more of my works published than you any-day, and can beat ou up in any contest, should it ever happen".

Beware of these specimen. They argue for the sake of arguing, do a lot of google to make their write-ups seem intelligent, and write stories, which can be easily renamed as "what's on wikipedia" or "Did you know? I do".

PS: I could have made this post shorter, but this post is a tribute to all the editors, who are scared to let the writers know that half of the book is a truckload of .. undigestable stuff. grrrr.