Favourite stories - The Bear and Badger

davyK

There are a couple of stories that I truly love - be they consumed via book or TV/film.

The first is Dickens' A Christmas Carol - mainly because of the theme of redemption - always have a big soft spot for that. Sure it's an age old theme and is threaded more recently through the likes of Schindler's List and Star Wars, but the small scale of the Dickens' novella and the personalised affects portrayed make it something I adore. And I particularly love the fact that the huge resources Scrooge has to put to good use at the end are the result of the misery of many, including himself. I think it's also a story of how someone can forget how to laugh, or lose the sense of childishness that society and many jobs seem so hell-bent in crushing out of us - but how we can still find ourselves again before it's too late. A cautionary tale for many of us who find a twisted pleasure in becoming curmudgeonly as we mature.

The second for me is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carre - just for the pure sense of paranoia and mistrust, the staggering scale of betrayal, and the stolid, plodding, ruthless sharp logic with which the mole is tracked down - and an ending that is at odds with the redemption theme of A Christmas Carol - there is no way back (for anyone in this story). The hero is almost bereft of feeling too - his "weak spot" and his redeeming feature as a person that is held in check. I find it spell-binding and the Guinness TV series, novel and now the quite brilliant though boiled down ensemble cast film all fit for repeated reading & viewing.

Any of you with similar feelings toward certain stories that just get their hooks into you?

Brooks

Murder mysteries of most descriptions are very much my shit.

hylian_elf

I don't tend to read much, spending most of my time on games, followed my film. Of the books that I have read, my favourite is possibly Wuthering Heights followed by 1984.

I generally prefer classics and love books by Dickens. Have rads all the Brontes books and a fair amount of Hardy. Nothing quite like a 19th century Britbook.

Coopers Green

Of the top I my head without toooooo much consideration - Rendezvous with Rama.

The best sci-fi doesn't explain everything, but enough to make the technology genuinely plausible. Rendezvous is a brilliant story about a fleeting discovery, with not enough time for a thorough exploration. Instead of copping out and leaving you hanging, it makes you want more. Hardly any questions about Rama are answered, but the scenery and sense of place are realised so well they pique the natural sense of curiousity we have. I should read more Clarke, but this is, to me, a far more enjoyable read than 2001.

Be warned - the co-written sequels that I so eagerly read get worse by the book and the 'revelation' of book 4 made me want to drown things. Think the Matrix sequels, but even more awful and with added religion.

I want them to make a movie, but they'd only fuck it up.

Good call on TTSS, Davy. Awesome book. Went through a phase of le Carre for a while.

Brooks

For sci-fi it's all about Stanislaw Lem.

Coopers Green

Roadside Picnic?

Coopers Green

<googles>

Ah, Solaris. Only seen the Clooney movie which I liked a helluva lot.

Love me some quality Sci-fi.

mistercrayon

Quite like what ever I read by Vonnegut which leads me to an interesting comment that he made. He said the best you can do with Sci fi is the blurb and everthinh else is kind of obviously extrapolated. I think this doesn't mean that Sci fi is pointless but the best bits of Sci fi are often not the Sci fi per se and often the intriguing idea is more than enough.

davyK

Coopers Green wrote:

Ah, Solaris. Only seen the Clooney movie which I liked a helluva lot. Love me some quality Sci-fi.

Watch the Russian version by Tarkovsky - slower but better - though I was pleasantly surprised by the version Clooney was in.

Aaroncupboard

Much Ado About Nothing

I just love the machinations and humour throughout.

TheDJR

Typical hard boiled fare.

acemuzzy

The book I've read most often is "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". So many lessons in so few pages, the sheer density of knowledge leaves one demanding "again again" with near childlike glee.

djchump

mistercrayon wrote:

Quite like what ever I read by Vonnegut which leads me to an interesting comment that he made. He said the best you can do with Sci fi is the blurb and everthinh else is kind of obviously extrapolated. I think this doesn't mean that Sci fi is pointless but the best bits of Sci fi are often not the Sci fi per se and often the intriguing idea is more than enough.

Yeah I've tended to get most enjoyment from trad scifi short story collections - you get the condensed cool idea without the cruft, the "what if?" with less of the clunk; most scifi authors short of Banks struggle with decent character. Egan's shorts are fantastic, mixed bag when he tries to spin them into full novels. Melville could do with trimming down to novella as he drags a bit.
Hard scifi (Reynolds, KSR) kinda needs the length of a novel or series to establish and explain the universe though.
The potboiler stuff like Corey and Asher kinda falls in between I suppose - the actual sciencey/futuristic stuff is never the particular focus, it's more about the popcorn story/characters.

adkm1979

Predictable, maybe, but I like a Romeo & Juliet story.

Kow

Vonnegut is the zenith of sci-fi for me. Sirens of Titan 9 is a masterpiece of storytelling.

hylian_elf

Not read much sci-fi myself, more fantasy, but I did go through most of a collection of short stories by Heinlein that a work colleague once leant to me. There were some very good ones in there. I have the intention of reading some Dick and Asimov etc at some point.

Kow

I bet you'll love Dick.

Coopers Green

I like Dick but my wife doesn't.

Outlaw

I quite enjoy a lot of plays - Arcadia, The Importance of Being Earnest and Othello are probably my favourites. I have never seen any performed live either, which I'm quite gutted about.

Also like books I hate, as in, the concepts behind them. Intensely disliked The Handmaid's Tale for the vile misogyny yet I don't think there's a book on this planet I've considered and ruminated on more after reading than that one.

JonB

I suppose like a bit of meta - stories about telling stories, even games that tell stories about the player's agency.

Don Quixote is the classic in that respect - the way it has a main character that it takes the piss out of for taking fiction too seriously while dragging you in to its own fiction, making you take it seriously. Jacques the Fatalist is another I really like. Or in film something like the Usual Suspects, where the character telling the story is also a known liar.

Moot_Geeza

This might sound like I'm purposefully going for something different, but I'm hugely partial to storytelling in songs. I find most poetry heavy-going and (I'm reluctant to admit this) pretentious, and the same can be said - to a lesser extent as a rule - of certain literature, but song lyrics seem to be granted a lot more leeway in my head. For example, it's unlikely I'd pick a novel off the shelf about lost love and regret, but if I'm lost in the panoramic sprawl of Tangled up in Blue I'm on cloud nine. A song like Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat is endlessly relistenable to me, but something far less accomplished, like Cornerstone by Arctic Monkeys, still has the ability to captivate me based on the fact that I get to hear a four minute short story of sorts.

I should probably change my avatar before I say this, to avoid looking slightly obsessed, but I think Watership Down is a perfect novel. I've read it seven or eight times since I was eleven, and consider the exodus from Sandleford Warren and attempts to reach and settle on Watership Down to be the greatest journey in literary fiction.

dynamiteReady

You know what I really enjoyed recently?

Hellboy 2... That was a great introduction to a character and a world that I never gave two shits about before.

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