I don't know never read Hamish MacBeth but I loved the TV Series - Robert Carlyle was perfect in it lol
I don't like stories as seen in what's sometimes called "The New Weird" because they seem to have no plot at all. They're written in a disjointed nonlinear manner and after awhile, I start to wonder if they're a type of prank to get my money. On another note, I recently read a supposedly great book by Cormac McCarthy called Blood Meridian and I thought the plot was very cheap. It was a weatern based on a true story about a band of scalp hunters in the 1800s. They were paid to kill aggressive Indians and paid based on how many scalps they collected. In real life, these guys decided to kill any Indian or Mexican they found just to make extra money. One of the band was supposed to be a large well built man who was very educated. I wanted to read the book because I thought it would be an interesting character study about how a guy like that could get into such a gruesome business. Instead, the author makes him into some vague supernatural force, with no character development, or rational explanation. That trivializes how and why people who should know better get into the business of murder. Basically, the whole book was a deus ex machina that avoided reality.
not really it has about six plots they all have a link - all of a sudden you turn a page and he starts on the next one. For a literary prize shortlisted book it is amazingly good lol
I'm going to write a post that is going to make everyone mad: Harry Potter. I enjoy the series, I love it to death, and I'm in the middle of trying to read all the books, but the plot is soooooo confusing.
Just wait until you get to the end of the series. Harry defeats the bad guy and magically everything in the world is instantly better! I mean, really, it doesn't feel like there are any lasting effects of what happened on the world. The series just ends there and then because J. K. Rowling wanted it to.
I can't speak highly enough about Cloud Atlas - 6 different plots spun across different genres - comedy, thriller, romance, sci-fi, fantasy and historical fiction. A brilliant little read as you realise the plots are all linked.
Wait how are any of the plots confusing? I think this is the first time I have heard this complaint about the series. You do realize there is almost a 20 year gap between the death of Voldemort and the epilogue right? I mean do you really want a infodump on how Muggle/Wizard relations has improved/been strained/whatever as a result of the rather brief reign Voldemort had? The aftermath would pretty be much what happened last time. This war has brought in a whole new generation of people fearing the name Voldemort. The Ministry would be swamped, those muggleborn catcher people would probably be rounded up and punished. Chances are a cleansing of the Ministry happened ensuring that nothing like that could happen again. All speculation I know. But all you really have to do is look at Voldemort's first rise to power to get an idea of what lasting impacts there might be. You also have to take into consideration that Voldemort was only in power for not a year. The story never focused on the outside the trio of friends. We got glimpses and we got some basic understanding of things, but the story was always focused on Harry and his friends and their place in the world. Why should she change focus at the end?
Don't worry, I thought the same - I got all the Ministers mixed up and sometimes when there was a big discussion between characters, I forgot where they actually were. Her names, however, were my saving grace because they're all so different and reflect each character's personality - also I'd recommend watching the movies alongside the books. If you're a highly visual person, like me, who was slightly disappointed the books weren't illustrated, the movies might cut out plot bits but they do a wonderful job of getting the main part down - and all the characters distinguishable in their blooming amazing costumes.
I do agree about the films whatever JK Rowlling did with her descriptions everything looked the way I expected in the films. I think her insistence of keeping a degree of artistic control really paid off.
I think the 20 year gap is the main problem I have with the ending. It really doesn't show how things effect the main characters or the world around them over the rest of their lives. To me, the ending felt like, "Yay! Voldemort is dead!" *tap dance on his grave* THE END.
You've just reminded me about the epilogue bit at the end... I can't wait to see how they do that in the next film. I reckon it will be less disjointed than the book, which, as far as I remember, was a bit abrupt, I think it's because the climax didn't have enough closure... the climax didn't feel like the end of Voldemort, so Harry's later life didn't ring true.
Well, rumor has it that she wrote the ending to her series at the beginning, which isn't usually that big of a deal, but that claims that she knew everything that was going to happen between the beginning and the end of seven books. Either tells me it's a false rumor, or that she really honestly couldn't edit her work. I'm more inclined to believe that latter, considering the length of each work, combined with the general consensus that the ending was horrible.
Speaking from experience I suspect what happened was simple you see it in other series. I know when writing my second book - it changed, as a result I needed to rewrite my first book to help it to work and make sense. When I came to the third book the second book needed tweaking. I know I am struggling with parts of the fourth book set one hundred years in the future because I don't want to have to rewrite the other three. I have an epilogue to my series it is under fantasy short stories entitled Final Flight - some of it will happen that way. However I now know a heck of a lot more about that Great Skua and some of it does not happen that way. I knew exactly how things were going to pan out when I started now I don't - have actually now got four series on my hands. Once the Philosophers Stone was publishing JK Rowlling didn't have the luxury of going back and changing previous books they had to fit the one before.
Anything that pretends to be other than what it really is. Harry Potter & Twilight = PORN (color coded for your convenience) I don't take umbrage at the fact they are porn, just that they swear not to be.
Now I am very curious as to why Harry Potter is considered porn in your example. Twilight I understand... well sorta. Maybe if I understood your definition of porn in this case I could better understand where you are coming from.
My definition of porn is broader than just graphic sex on screen. It is anything that plays on an unfulfilled need in the reader and attempts to fill that need in an artificial way. In this way, traditional porn is simply a subcategory of porn in general. It supplies the missing dynamic of sex in an artificial manner. Harry Potter and Twilight have the exact same function as traditional porn, but they simply supply needs other than sex. In the case of each of these franchises, the need being supplied is to give the reader a pretend place where they are cooler than cool or where magic beings more glamorous than the quarterback of the football team+James Bond+Brad Pitt fall in love with them even though they are as dull as dishwater. Porn. Again, I don't have an issue with porn. Could you imagine how frustrating the human condition would be if there were no way to get around unfulfilled needs? I just hate the pretense. I hate that I go into the story looking for certain elements to materialize and really they never do because they're not meant to. I hate that they are sold as other than what they are.
Yes, porn is literally a "lurid display" and can have nothing to do with sex. For instance, in the US the Weather Channel shows nothing be videos of terrible destructive weather events, there's nothing educational, and so it's just about showing destruction for fun, and that's porn. Many of the so called crime and prison docs on TV are porn because it's about watching human suffering for entertainment. There's many examples of porn on TV.
The worse idea I ever had is where my main character was in High School being bullied around, and then he comes home to see his mother and stuff. Then the rest of the chatpers is an unintended dream, when the readers think that it is. So I don't often write stories anymore. I only do so when I have homework.
My friend, I've been trying to explain this to people since I realized it in the 90s. Lately, I've been shocked by the extreme murder/mutilation porn shown on average TV. Many times it happens to females, but now it's generalized. It seems to have started with Heroes where "claire" who couldn't be killed, was frequently shown being cut apart and here torso spread open, on Supernatural heads get cut off, and on The Walking head people/zombies get their brains blown out point blank. When I was in my 20s and 30s the big thing was showing love scenes and guys buns. As compared to watch decapitations, I'd take full sexual porn on TV. I don't get how TV moved away from sex, because that's "bad", but moved to full graffic murder scenes. It's so odd, I tempted to call a conspiracy.
