what else do you do besides playing chess?

hookers, blow & posting on chess.com forums. no specific order

sometimes all the descriptive stuff can be cumbersome...  tolkien is like that at times.  but for me it kinda depends on how sharp and attractive the language is.  this is why conrad wins; he's so near perfect in his word choice.  the imagery is pretty flawless.  that being said, i have NEVER been able to get though a james fenimore cooper book.

Oh...The Mysteries of Udolpho by Radcliffe. A Gothic novel wherein nothing ever really happens, yet for the time (1800) was very pulse thumping for the fairer sex.

I suppose the fault lies in me.

Re Tolkien: I don't recall being oppressed by any lengthy descriptions in LOTR but it has been quite awhile since I read the trilogy. Reading him, things seemed to find their places quite naturally, in his long and simple sentences, with easy and beautiful flourishes.

Very Anglo-Saxon vocabulary too, in contrast, as I think back here to whether Nabokov could be called an American author. I remember reading Lolita and being quite hammered over the head with the preponderance of Latin cognates in his sentences. An odd style it seemed to me, irritating in a way, and at the same time very well-crafted.

i do think the descriptions are very natural and the style fits the story BUT he does seem to go on and on (and on) sometimes.  i love LOTR

Twain is one of my favorites-- love the cadence of his writing, and his smart-aleck view of the world and people.  Probably was a fun guy to have a few beers with.

Along the same lines, I enjoy Jerome K. Jerome, who was very similar to Twain in writing style and outlook, and wrote at the the same time (lived 1859-1927), but from the other side of the pond-- Jerome was English.  Among other things, Jerome wrote Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) which was the book on which Connie Willis based (or borrowed from) her own novel To Say Nothing of the Dog.

--Cystem 

I was very amused by Three Men in a Boat. Just a lark of a book. I still remember how they were all stymied in the opening of that can, and how its crease as they left defeated looked like a smile. Heh.

Anyone like sci-fi? Non-stop by Aldiss, Hyperion by Simmons, The Invincible by Lem, The Andromeda Strain by Crichton are some of my favorites.

some sci-fi is entertaining...

I love Lem, and I thought The Invincible was interesting enough (Big Phallus was my take). Hard to judge style as it comes as a translation.

Le Guin is a favorite of mine (hometown girl too). People dismiss the genres of SF and Fantasy but there is huge talent there.

How about the Hard-boiled private eye writers?

Hammett (Maltese Falcon) and Chandler (Farewell my Lovely and others).

Oh yeah. Only thing by Lem I've ever read though was a short story, Odd Digit, I think it was called, really good.

I'm a big Asimov fan, anybody who calls me Gentle Reader is ok by me :)

nobody does hard-boiled like James Crumley or John Cheever.  (Though I think Cheever's only novel of that genre was The Falconer.  Does anybody else know one?)

when it come to sci-fi, Wyndham takes a lot of beatin'

I've read all Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories (favorite: "Adventure of the Speckled Band", "The Crooked Man") and watched all of the TV adaptations with Jeremy Brett.  I also have a huge stock of Agatha Christie mysteries, Miss Marple being one of my favorite detectives. Patterson's Alex Cross was all right for a while, but not up to standard lately.

I feel like I should be defending Cooper against the mudslinging.  I loved the leatherstocking tales in my youth.  Unfortunately, when I took it up again about a year ago, I was very put off by how unrealistic everything was. 

As far as "least favorite" works go, "Catcher in the Rye" comes readily to mind.  I threw that book in the trash when I finished it.

i also am not fond of catcher...

 Kerouac is one of my favorite writers, although its been many years  since I read him. On the Road is an American classic in my opinion, although I don't know what critical opinion of him is currently. I also liked Dr. Sax, the Subterraneans and Dharma Bums. His poetry is OK. It tends to be prose poetry like his novels.

 When I used to work for a newspaper, one of our editors told me that people with advanced degrees were the worst spellers.

No one has mentioned William Faulkner as a great American writer. Our heritage of slavery is among the central influences on our American identity, and Faulkner comes to terms with it brilliantly. I'd be interested to hear other opinions on Faulkner as we all have our own perspectives.

No one has mentioned Richard Wright or Ralph Ellison either. Invisible Man is one of my favorite novels. I wish Ellison had written more.

I used to play the field too, but 'ventually found out it weren't very fulfillin'