Which Author Wrote The Best Boring Book? [100 Book Challenge #30-35] 

You've become one of my favorite channels recently. I'm always learning something about the genre when I'm watching your stuff.

The Lord of the Rings is my favourite book of all time. I agree about the Fellowship seeming very dry, and it takes some dedication to get through it, but it definitely is worth it for me. You can tell the whole story took some years to finish by the change which occurs from The Two Towers onward. The prose, while lyrical in the first book, steps up to a whole new level. This continues through to the end of Return of the King. Taken as a whole, it is a masterpiece of world building and the battle between good and evil. I saw a video once where it was suggested that the reader approach the story as a historical document, put on the head of a researcher discovering ancient texts. With the whole history of Middle Earth to dive into, it’s rich, religious beginnings really do create a living world. I hope you enjoy Return of the King when you read it.

Would you and the rest of the Science Fiction Alliance consider a book club like podcast? Where once every 2 weeks or so you could all have a round table about some book. I would be interested to see the different opinions you all might have and I think yous could bring out interesting discussions with each other.

Haven’t read all the comments so someone may have already brought this to your attention…..The character of Sam was played by Sean Astin, spawn of Patty Duke and John Astin, best known as Gomez in the original Addams Family tv series!

Glad to hear you warm up to Lord of the Rings. It's not something that's really said much amongst the fans, but it seems to me that it's one of those books that benefits greatly from a reread, much like with Book of the New Sun and Malazan. Middle-earth definitely has a "keep you coming back" quality to it, and more and more you'll appreciate Tolkien's scenic descriptions and slow pace in Fellowship of the Ring.

So glad you've noticed how good Tolkien's prose is. I've had multiple friends read LOTR and be so surprised by the level of the prose, particularly in the final two books.

I’m one of the myriad admirers of Tolkien so am really glad you were able to get through Fellowship to Two Towers. It’s often so awkward when a work intended to be a single book is broken up. I remember enjoying the Helliconia series, but was a teenager at the time so had the time to spend days reading slower works. I think slow burns can be more of a challenge when you’re adult-life busy, and have to fit most of your reading into 15 to 30 minute breaks.

Return of the King is twice as long as it needs to be.

I haven’t read Aldiss (I own Non-Stop but haven’t read it yet) but I enjoyed your NASCAR analogy haha. Recently I read Roadside Picnic and enjoyed it, especially parts 1 and 4 in the zone. In the next couple of months I’ll be reading Dying Inside, Blindsight and Solaris, which I know are some of your favourites!

Very interesting comment on the translation of Lem. Conrad was also Polish, and I read a critic who said his absolutely masterful use of the English language was informed by Polish grammar and sentence structure.

I’ll always remember where I was when Bookpilled ate some crow over his prior trashing of The Lord of the Rings.

Discovered Robert Silverberg last year and love him. Listened to a ton of his stuff on Hoopla while working landscaping and it was a remarkable experience. Star of Gypsies, Nightwings, Master of Life and Death. Marvelous. People should be talking more about him.

Tolkien is typical brit lit: it's best to read when you just have a lazy Sunday and don't mind the story taking it's time. The author is conversationally telling you a story, the same as he would in real life. Hobbit is even slower, but the narration is quite fun. But you have to be that kind of reader to enjoy it. Fast-paced and action-oriented he is not, and that's what modern audiences are supposed to want.

"Star Diaries" by Lem, collecting the Ijon Tichy stories, I remember as very good.

you got that right about Tolkien's LOTR: "there are pieces of real beauty in the language", same as I remember it

The interrupts in Helliconia Spring will pay off in the third book.

As someone who loves Tolkien, I think what keeps a lot of people coming back is the way it rewards re-reading. I've read the LotR maybe six times and I get something new out of it every time.

A very interesting set of reviews. Well said and well done.

"Memoirs Found in a Bathtub" is my favorite Lem work. "The Cyberiad" is a very close second. I've always thought that his sense of humor set him apart from other SF writers.

I always enjoy hearing you talk about books!

Great review! You've inspired me, and I'm already on the book 23 in this year's challenge 😌

Speaking of videogames, I feel like the Invincible was a big influence, at least thematically, on Deadspace: you have the missing ship, the hivemind, people going insane

Every single cover you showed for the Lem book was absolutely fantastic

Great video! Interesting to hear your changing opinion on the lord of the rings. I haven’t read it myself yet, but you’ve gotten me onto sci-fi. I started with Solaris, loved it. Can’t wait for the next upload!

There's one part in Fellowship OTR I never enjoyed reading, altho it fascinated me. When he's describing their early journey thru and out of the Shire, he names every kind of tree and flower and terrain feature in sight. And it's kind of mind-boggling, because who but a specialist knows what all those are. I did a re-read once where I had a dictionary next to me, and I wrote down and looked up all the unfamiliar words. It was a lot. Otherwise, I enjoyed most of the first volume, especially the birthday party. But I agree it gets better in Two Towers.

Keep doing what you do! This has quickly become my new favorite channel. Excited to see what you think of those next 5. There are some you mentioned that I really enjoy. I’m a bit behind on many must reads, but I’m reading lord of light now off of your recommendation. Really cool book.

Great to see you back, Matt. Hope your feeling better? Enjoying the channel as ever.

The version you read of The Invincible is also highly edited. For whatever reason chunks of the story were removed. The newer version is much better but I think your rating of 7/10 would still stand. I’ve read a ton of Lem and I think you may enjoy His Masters Voice and Fiasco. I loved both of them, especially Fiasco. Of course YMMV.

Thanks for all the reviews! I totally agree with the Bloch writings. When he’s good he’s great and when he’s ok he’s really mediocre. I’m looking forward to trying the Brian Aldiss series, I just picked up starship from him as well. Glad to see you’re doing well!

Holy Cow! Homecoming!!! Agree 100% That story is amazing. I had forgotten that it was Silverberg, but I will never forget that story. I read it in some collection that had 4 stories - each by a different author.

I would like to recommend a book that I read recently,, that my father recommended to me a few years ago. My father even met the author in 1973, when he worked as a young man at the biggest bookstore in Warsaw and the author came to buy his own book. At first I could not find it, but I randomly stumbled upon an english translation last autumn. Its called Robot, by Wisniewski Snerg. The protagonist wakes up in a factory and finds that apparently he is a robot newly manufactured, but the story just gets stranger when he finds himself to be perfectly human, caught with thousands of people in an underground bunker with no way to escape. Ive never read anything like it. On the cover it said that it was the best Scifi book written in Poland, and I really liked it.

I value your opinions and the way you dissect a book. I’m glad you turned the corner on JRR Tolkien…out of many of the writers, I think he is the closest to a Grandmaster with words the way Rembrandt was a Grandmaster with paint, light and shadow.

Wow great channel. Although your tastes in sci-if are different from mine, I’m inspired to get more into the genre and explore some of the new wave authors in particular. As for LoTR, the first half of FoTR has always been my favorite, maybe because it reminds me of childhood and fairy tales.

So funny man your vids are hilarious! I loved 2 towers the most out of all 3. Reading blindsight now it’s ridiculously good

Can’t wait for the next five! I’m reading Childhood’s End at the moment so I might be picking up Rama or 2001 after I’m done.

I read Hothouse last week largely based on your recommendation and wow, I absolutely loved it. A few aspects of the story have aged a bit but the concepts and world-building the reader explores are so truly unique. I ended up buying Helliconia right after, but it sounds like I'm in for a bit of a slower burn so I'll temper my expectations.

Hidden City by David Eddings. One city, a god, some rebels and a single army vs 10 armies, scores of gods, a guy with the most powerful artefact that can make him a god, a host of powerful figures plus sundry others. You will never guess who wins (it’s not the single city).

Love that font on the Lem cover; it's the same as on my beloved Ross MacDonald mass market books. Still got them.

Re the Brian Aldiss prologue, I think they call it "world building."

I think the Helliconia series probably inspired Game of Thrones to some extent. Both feature very similar planets with extremely long seasons. Anyway, in Helliconia they'd probably say "Spring is coming"....

I always enjoy time travelers who go into the future. It's like a Neanderthal showing up in his time machine made of mammoth tusks and ground sloth hide, and he judges us for our weird ways. And meanwhile we the future people don't have time machines. Such a burn. Is it any wonder the future people always go after the time traveler?

Phil Dragash's audiobooks on the 3 lord of the rings books is the best. One of those few things everyone should listen to at least once in their life.

Big fan of Solaris, so I remember being surprised by The Invincible (the newer Bill Johnston translation)... it sort of reminded me of No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy... a sort of unexpected, really well-written action-thriller... yes, of course, not in the same league as Blood Meridian and Suttree... but still dang good!

Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO was adapted from Robert Bloch's novel of the same name, but it was adapted to the screen by Joseph Stefano. Bloch, interestingly, was a correspondent in his youth with H.P. Lovecraft, but later was one of the authors responsible for developing a more violent, psychologically informed Horror.

Are you familiar with the John C Lilly "Dreamhouse"? Seems that Silverberg story may be inspired by it, just from your brief description. Atrocity Guide has an excellent video about it. Also, The Two Towers is my favorite book, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. I agree mostly with all of your critiques, although I find LoTR to be much greater than the sum of it's parts. Book 4 in Two Towers is particularly powerful to me, and I agree that Frodo in Sam in the books are far more compelling and sophisticated compared to the movies. I find the books really hit their stride with the Council of Elrond, love all 3 volumes, but Fellowship is definitely a bit up and down up until that point for me personally.

Read my first Silverberg a few days ago. Hawksbill Station. Gotta say it was very good for 180 page book/novella. No filler and to the point!

Good shit as per, look forward to the next one.

Another great video. I agree with you on The Two Towers. I think it is better than Fellowship. I would add that Saruman is one of the most magnificent villains I have ever read in the genre.

For Heinlein, I recommend Citizen of the Galaxy. I've read everything he wrote. I really enjoyed it as a kid. I've even typed out entire books of his figuring out construction and sentence structure. But, even so? His work doesn't age so well, I think. CotG, holds up better. A) It is a long polemic against slavery. Most people haven't changed opinions on that subject, at least. B) It shows how corporatism is also a problem. BTW, greatly enjoying the channel! Fine job of elucidating strengths/weaknesses of these books and authors.

Helliconia is one of those books I think would be elevated for you even more if you read the whole trilogy as there is some incredible moments of evolution of the societies and ecology. Like you I had trouble getting through it but once I finished the whole thing I could look back on it and be very impressed.

One thing about The Lord of the Rings is that it’s primarily a story about the Hobbits. The Hobbits dominate the first book, and I think there’s only one chapter over the course of the entire LOTR that doesn’t feature a Hobbit. So if the Hobbit-centric nature of Fellowship annoys you, that’s the reason. The story and the world fleshes out in the second and third books.

I read Ishmael in Love over 40 years ago and loved it. Never forgot it.

Actually, Joseph Stefano (who went on to create the Outer Limits tv series in the 60s) was the screenwriter of Psycho. Bloch was the author of the novel on which it was based. Love his short stories!

The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings were books I read as a teen where I had become so immersed into the stories that they felt like real events. In more recent years the only book that immersed me to a less of an extent than Tolkien was Rendezvous with Rama.

I like the _Helliconia_ books a very great deal. I think they do a brilliant job of imagining a different sort of humanity in respect of the connection between history and environment, and in the matter of sharing their world with a non-human intelligence. The comparison with _Dune_ is obvious, but to be honest I think the ecology of Helliconia is a lot richer and more interesting than that of Arrakis. The prologue to _Spring_ maybe does make the book feel somewhat imbalanced. But I think it lends some prehistoric weight to the history that follows, and the action does speed up quite a lot after the prologue is over. The second volume is my favourite. In that one the plot is much more immediate, more interestingly twisty and faster moving. And all the major elements that come together in the first volume (including the "conceit" you mention) are further developed in interesting ways in the later volumes.

For a Lord of the Rings noob you have an impressively sophisticated take on the two-thirds of the tale read thus far. I’m impressed, and since LotR (and The Silmarillion) acts as my personal benchmark for all things bookish, your review of this serves as a sort of Rosetta Stone to give me confidence using you as a reliable translation gateway to all of the books you review which to this point are foreign to my experience. I’m definitely going to track down Blindsight on your recommendation, for example. Keep up the standard of excellence, fella!

Great video

I love Lord of the Rings but admittedly there are some slow parts (most of the songs/poems can be skipped.) I remember reading The Two Towers as a teenager and doing it in two days, perhaps the fastest I've ever read a book. It's such a standard of fantasy literature that it's now hard to judge on it's own merits, particularly with the movies being so good, maybe the best trilogy ever made. I'm not even going to try although I will add that LOTRs is one of the few books I've read more than once. The Helliconia series is on my TBR, but further down. Who knows whenever I'll get to it.

I just picked up a vintage copy of "The Gods Themselves". Starting it now

You basically nailed my opinion on my Fellowship of the Ring. I utterly despised the book so much I've sworn off reading any more Tolkien, especially knowing that the Simerillion and the Hobbit were even worse from what my family members who actually read them said and from my own attempts to read them.

Thank you so much for your profound, genuine, intelligent response to and analysis of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I have recently become utterly addicted to your calmly charismatic and astute evaluations of a literary genre I rarely venture into. As a decade-long adherent to Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus, I cannot wait to read James Blish's Black Easter! I am very fond of Tolkien's 'legendarium' but understood and to some extent share your experience of Fellowship of the Ring, but there are very, very few readers who think so deeply and respond so honestly to Tolkien's nuanced world and characters, so it was a joy to hear how pleasantly surprised you were by TTT. Have you come across Stuart Turton's '7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle'? I'd be very interested in hearing what you thought about that fun curiosity, or for that matter George Eliot's literary novella 'The Lifted Veil', although both may be a tad far from your channel's brief. Best wishes from a Dane in the UK.

I finished the Helliconia Trilogy and I agree it has a leisurely pace. Somehow though it added up (mostly) to a realistic world history. I enjoyed it but I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone though as it's a slog. I bought the hardbacks in a used book store because the titles intrigued me - but it still took me more than 10 years to get around to reading them. A decent and memorable read but probably not a popular one.

That process you describe of adujustment (where you're being poked by the novum first, going into the paradigm shift and adjusting to the cognitive estrangement of the world of the story) I call 'Airlocking', as you're going from a safe, known environment of the known (mimesis/realism) and into the real core of what SF is, where your mind may not be able to breathe. Delany says this is all about the language the SF writer uses and how some readers cannot read SF as they can't process it as the cognitive estrangement is too much for them and they keep trying to get the story to 'make sense' in line with our current paradigm. The Aldiss trilogy is atypical of his work in scale, but typical of his inventiveness. My suspicion is that there was a commercial imperative behind it, as the day of the dumpbin had dawned by then. Re LOTR, as you know I re-read (some) of it recently. My attitude has softened, but I still find it- as you said- dry and dull at times. I'm more impressed than I was by Tolkien's scale of imagination and I think this is what built his iconography and legend, but much of it is just sheer size, I feel- it dares you to be unimpressed. This is why I'm looking forward to seeing you react to the Viriconium series, the Anti-Tolkien. That Lem is one of my least faves, too. Nice vid as always, my friend!

Thank you!

I love your videos dude

I’ve started “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” twice now. I can only make it about 100 pages before I drop it. I just can’t connect with this one. I wish you the best reading it.

...The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.. The only Heinlein book where I have never been able to complete even the first chapter.

I tried Helliconia Spring several times and just kept hitting a wall because it was so slow. I still have the trilogy sitting on my shelf. Maybe I'm old enough to appreciate it now. I think you picked a decent one to try for Heinlein. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Double Star are the only two books of his that I really liked, though I've read maybe 15. I'm not a huge fan and think that if you don't like those, it's not worth continuing.

Tried to read Helliconia Spring a few years back after my Dad suggested it. Jeez... its tough to get into. Ended up on my DNF list. Hoping to pick it up again one day.

The NASCAR example made me explode with laughter! Still I love the book... and the series

I saw the cover of The Invincible there and thought 'there's a game that totally rips that off coming soon'. Couldn't remember the name. As you say, it's based on the book. I had no idea.

Try "The Cyberiad" by Lem, lovely fables. I never reached the end of the prologue of "Helliconia", didn't feel to be worth the time. And I LOVE "The Lord of the Rings" and reread the whole alot of times. And I regularly skip the pages with the journey into Mordor...😊

I really like the concept of the Helliconia series, but I could not make a good start on it because it was so slow paced. The first book remains unfinished.

Sean Astin -- I'm sure a zillion dozen posts below have already provided this info.. Elijah Wood totally knocks it out of the park in Wilfred and also in I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore which is a must-see on Netflix.

I still have my Ballantine paperback of this that you displayed. I'm torn between The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers as my favorite. As you said, they are quite different. The first is filled with a magical sense of place, and a journey. The second is drama and action. I love what you said about the character development- the orcs talk like a couple of Cockney coal-shovelers in Victorian England. I'm not dissuading you, but the Return of the King is a bit of a slog. The good parts make up for it, though: Sam and Frodo's trek across the plain to Mt. Doom. More good orc stuff.

Starship (Non-Stop) by Aldiss was a childhood favorite.

With regard to the beauty of Tolkien's descriptions, it may interest you and many to know that, for much of his career, he considered himself primarily a poet, rather than a prose writer. His prose is therefore highly inflected by the lyrical quality of his poetry.

Appreciate your videos, but I need to make a correction. You referred to Robert Bloch as the screenwriter of “Psycho.” Bloch wrote the book the movie was based on; the screenplay was written by Joseph Stefano.

I agree with you on frodo and Sam's characters being saccharine in the movies, and I don't understand why the screenwriters made them that way. Maybe an unpopular opinion here...but the lotr movies feel like a cluttered mess with too much happening and a little hard to watch and too pardon me, "precious".

FOTR is mostly ordinary language because it focuses on the hobbits, Tolkien's stand in for the ordinary country Englishman. He intentionally elevates his language in TTT and ROTK as men high lineage and heroic deeds enter the picture. The Similarillion, which is about the elves, is almost all elevated language whereas The Hobbit, which is about hobbits and dwarves, has virtually none.

1:11. Dolphin falling in love with his human trainer? True story.

Helliconia will reward you. It is something to be lived.

I think Two Towers was my favorite of the three

I remember enjoying _The Fellowship of the Ring,_ the band of comrades on a quest together, but getting bogged down in the larger scale movements of _The Two Towers,_ to the extent of giving up on it. I was 11 or 12, so maybe I was too young. But I was a dedicated reader; my older, cooler friends were all really into it; and I was snobbish enough to be impressed by its reputation as a classic. So I feel like it must have been pretty bad to put me off so much. When I got back into fantasy it was as a fan of Michael Moorcock, who was vocal enough about his dislike of _The Lord of the Rings_ to give me an excuse not to go back to it. But I do feel I should read it again nonetheless, so I can see what I think of it as an adult.

"Invincible" is the part of Lem's "trilogy of first contact" (with "Solaris" and "Eden" being the others two). Language in this books is pretty much consistent, so it must be translation. What was it? Read "Eden" if you can decent find polish to english translation. Astonishing book.

"The Swarm" by the German author Frank Schatzing is my nominee for the most boring SciFi for now. "Singularity Sky" by Charles Stross is another (Will I ever get through Norman Mailer's "Harlot's Ghost", I wonder?)

Gosh, wouldn't the SF fan community enjoy it immensely if BP was the senior editor at all of the relevant contemporary SF publishing houses! Would that it were. Another splendid offering here. Great content, insight and presentation by BP as always. I never miss a post. Now that I think of it, there IS a sage in the UK who would also fit the bill as that aforementioned editor but, there it is ;). Cheers.

Given your past views of Heinlein and your general tastes I have observed in your videos, _Job: A Comedy of Justice_ might be a good bet for something you would like. It is not really science fiction, though -- more of a contemporary fantasy.

Completely agree with you about the depiction of Frodo and Sam in the movie of LOTR... E.Wood's Frodo is almost unwatchable for me 😂 Only Sean Astin's fantastic Sam saves it. Really enjoy your channel, by the way. Nice work 😁👍

11:03 Maybe the term you were looking for is infodump?

Bejeweled Bedecked “Behorned”.... why not?

You sure are showing Fantasy Booktube who's boss

FYI the invincible is being converted into a computer game to be released sometime this year...can't wait!

I'm glad that you liked _The Two Towers_. My first love was fantasy, but fantasy brought me to science fiction, which I now prefer to fantasy. Thus, classic fantasy is coated with too much nostalgia for me to see it accurately. The contemporary fantasy genre, however, is a strange beast. It's more popular than ever, but I find many of the big names to be unreadable. I wonder what you would make of Sanderson, Rothfuss, or Abercrombie. Martin's antics just about ruined the genre for me. His push for realism and novel narrative devices was commendable, but some of the plot twists and turns were utterly absurd. By book 4, the series was unreadable, yet people still lapped it up!

The whole time I was reading LOtR I was waiting for it to be as good as the Hobbit.

Regarding Lem I would suggest you read His Master's Voice.

16:28 - No,no, this was written after _Solaris._ Early Lem wrote novels like _The Magellanic Cloud,_ naive and childishly optimistic, in a "soc-realism" vein, he disowned later. Don't you see the same innability to communicate theme here as in _Solaris_ (and later in _His Master's Voice_ )? Then again, the characters here are intentionally flat, almost mere shadows (IIRC, they are not even named - just "captain" or "engineer" or something.) We are not supposed to identify with them - they are one big generalization of humanity. Interesting how we saw this novel differently. I usually agree with your reviews almost to the letter. Now, try _His Master's Voice_ - I think you will like it almost, but not quite, as much as _Solaris._

Can anyone recommend slogging through to the end of 'His Masters Voice'? 50 pages in; hating it; need to return it to the library in 2 weeks ago

I absolutely LOVE "The Lord of the Rings" ... and it is the only fantasy novel I have ever liked. I have HATED every other fantasy book I've ever tried.

The LOTR books and movies are definitely different experiences. The movies are darker and the Hobbits are half their book ages. As much as I enjoy the movies, I have to ask: did we get angsty, teen Hobbits?