Topic: Super Waffle's book chat / Gundam discussion

[Super Waffle]

Well Wicked turned out to be kind of overrated.

I'll let you guys know when my copy of Carmilla comes in.

[Beaumont_Belmont]

You just got Carmilla? Not the whole "In A Glass Darkly" collection?

[Super Waffle]

In a what what?

Isn't that a Keanu Reeves movie?

[Beaumont_Belmont]

In A Glass Darkly is the collection that LeFanu originally published Carmilla in. Carmilla itself is fairly short.

[Ratty]

It's also in the public domain and free if you don't mind reading on your computer or a pad/e-reader http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10007

[Super Waffle]

In A Glass Darkly is the collection that LeFanu originally published Carmilla in. Carmilla itself is fairly short.

Oh, no.  I just got the stand-alone version with the cover that looks kind of like the art style used on the cover of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

[Beaumont_Belmont]

8 bucks and you're missing four other stories...tsk tsk. The rest of the stories are less well known, but The Room in the Dragon Volant at least is really good.

[Super Waffle]

Excuse me princess for only being interested in trashy lesbian vampire books.

I've marathoned through Crysis: Legion, The Handmaid's Tale, the first three Earthsea books, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, Fahrenheit 451, and Wicked (a completely logical and thematically similar series of stories, obviously) in the past three weeks or so, and I still have Tehanu, 1984, and Jurassic Park lined up for Bookamania.  I'd like to take a break from reading in the near future.

[Beaumont_Belmont]

Unfortunately Carmilla is a rather classy lesbian vampire book. Though there are plenty of trashy ones out there...or so I'm told.

[Super Waffle]

Unfortunately Carmilla is a rather classy lesbian vampire book.

how does that even work?

[Beaumont_Belmont]

It works because there's suggestion rather than wall-to-wall spank fuel. t's all about subtext, because in the 19th century you couldn't really put it in the open. Or I suppose you could, considering what some gothic literature includes (and Carmilla is very much an extension of gothic lit). It's not really easy to explain without spoiling the events of the story.

Also, that particular edition's branding of Carmilla as a love story raises some pretty unfortunate implications.

(click to show/hide)

While it can be debated whether or not Carmilla's affection for Laura is genuine, she is unambiguously also a predator that is feeding on Laura and causing her to waste away.

[Super Waffle]

Clearly a metaphor for our post-Twilight society.

[Mooning Freddy]

I was reading this book, and I tell you, it was horrible. It was all full of phonies. I swear to God, I never seen so many phonies in my stinkin life. It really made me depressed, but it was the kind of book that even though it makes you depressed, you need to go on reading. You would understand what I'm saying if you read. Anyway, that book was about some goddamn bastard kid who always disappoints his parents, and hates everybody but his sister and his dead brother. Of course he would say it's not true because he's a big phony. It kills me. All he does most of the time is horse around like a ten year old. He seriously needs to grow up. If you read it you'd want to puke. And the worst part is that the book just ends with the most stupid ending and you don't even know what in the hell happened to that kid. And it's not even like you care anyway because it's a stupid story but I still kinda like the boy. I don't know why. I'm crazy. I kill myself sometimes.

[Ratty]

I was reading this book, and I tell you, it was horrible. It was all full of phonies. I swear to God, I never seen so many phonies in my stinkin life. It really made me depressed, but it was the kind of book that even though it makes you depressed, you need to go on reading. You would understand what I'm saying if you read. Anyway, that book was about some goddamn bastard kid who always disappoints his parents, and hates everybody but his sister and his dead brother. Of course he would say it's not true because he's a big phony. It kills me. All he does most of the time is horse around like a ten year old. He seriously needs to grow up. If you read it you'd want to puke. And the worst part is that the book just ends with the most stupid ending and you don't even know what in the hell happened to that kid. And it's not even like you care anyway because it's a stupid story but I still kinda like the boy. I don't know why. I'm crazy. I kill myself sometimes.

The Catcher in the Rye? I dunno I really liked that book, but I haven't read it in about 10 years.

How did you like Carmilla by the way Super Waffle? I thought about reading it myself but decided to wait until October, so started on the (chronologically) first Drizzt novel "Homeland". I like the Drow, though as I've seen it pointed out it's kinda messed up D&D's most prominent Matriarchal society is pure manipulative evil, but kinda underwhelmed so far. Largely because the writing style comes across as a stale imitation of Frank Herbert. Maybe that's due to the worldbuilding and Icewind Dale is better?

[Flame]

Basically, if you want to read Dracula, don't expect Castlevania. it's a very drawn out sort of novel. Lot of journal stuff, and it's not all OOOH ACTION so much as "oh look they are tracking the count down"

If you've ever seen the Jesus Franco Dracula with Christopher Lee, that's a pretty close adaptation of the book, right up until the ending, where it just abruptly cuts to transylvania and kills the count in the most anticlimactic way possible. I guess they'd blown their budget on the castle shit in the beginning and Christopher Lee. To the point; the movie is boring past the Dracula stuff at the start. The book is similar. It's not fast paced at all. it's rather slow paced. But I liked it anyway. I don't personally mind slower paced books. hell, i read mystery novels. Like, Agatha Christie ones. those tend to have a slower pace.

Actually, if you want a more quicker paced Dracula adventure, read Sherlock Homes Vs Dracula. it's got the pacing of a Sherlock Holmes story, but Dracula in it as the antagonist. It even manages to fit itself into the original book's continuity.