- starexplorer
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Roci wrote:
I have never read a Stephen Donaldson book before. I got 8/10 too. Questions 9 and 3 were my stumbling points. That was a really fun quiz
Maybe this is your chance?
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- Roci
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Once I finish the Sun Eater series, I'll be needing something new to focus on. Is his Covenant a good starting point?
- starexplorer
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Once I finish the Sun Eater series, I'll be needing something new to focus on. Is his Covenant a good starting point?
That’s what I am reading. But this is my first by Donaldson.
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- Aja Jin
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Once I finish the Sun Eater series, I'll be needing something new to focus on. Is his Covenant a good starting point?
Another choice is Mirror of her Dreams & A Man Rides Through duology. It’s my favorite Donaldson.
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
I found an old interview with Donaldson and thought this would be of interest here. Read to the end:
I find I *do* want to respond to [Orson Scott] Card's silly assertion that "SF and fantasy place setting above character." Sure, junk SF and fantasy make that mistake. But art of all kinds is always about character (about what it means to be human) in one form or another. I prefer to think that SF and fantasy use setting as a means to probe character. And sure, virtually every form of serious fiction does the same to some extent. (Look at Sir Walter Scott's best novels, or Joseph Conrad's, or Henry James', or William Faulkner's, or--well you get the idea.) The distinction, as I see it, is one of degree. (Of course, "Differences in degree become differences in kind.") SF and fantasy exaggerate this technique (using setting to probe character) in an attempt to shed light upon aspects of the human definition which might otherwise remain inaccessible. ("Dune" is an obvious example, as are C. J. Cherryh's best novels.)
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- starexplorer
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Two other interesting things (to me) turned up about Donaldson. First he grew up in India as the son of a medical missionary taking care of lepers.
Second, he was a grad student at Kent State at the time of the killings of the four students by the Ohio National Guard. He was asked about the experience:
”I usually try to avoid answering such questions because the memories disturb me. The facts are simple enough. I was attending Kent State during the shootings as a graduate student taking evening classes while I worked in Akron City Hospital as a conscientious objector. I was not on campus during the actual shootings (which took place around noon) because I was at work ten miles away. However, my apartment was a block and a half from the campus, so I lived under martial law for three days after the shootings (virtually the entire study body and faculty--well over 20,000 people--were evacuated within four hours of the shootings, so they were spared that aspect of the experience, while I was spared the experience of being evacuated under threat of lethal force). I have many recollections, all painful, some horrific. I'll only mention four. 1) Living under martial law meant that a helicopter shone its searchlight into the windows of my up-stairs apartment every 90 seconds for three nights in a row. 2) Within half an hour of the shootings, virtually everyone I worked with in the hospital believed that the National Guard had fired on the students because the students were urinating on the Guardsmen (quite a trick from a distance of nearly 50 yards). 3) Within four hours of the shootings, every gun shop in a 75 mile radius was completely sold out; and for the next week I never left my apartment without at least one of my neighbors aiming a firearm at me as long as I was in sight. 4) Three days after the shootings, a Kent citizen was quoted by the local newspaper as saying, "If my son had long hair, I'd want him shot too." I'll spare you the other 20 or 30 things I'll never forget”
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- Surtac
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Once I finish the Sun Eater series, I'll be needing something new to focus on. Is his Covenant a good starting point?
Another choice is Mirror of her Dreams & A Man Rides Through duology. It’s my favorite Donaldson.
Or, if you have a penchant for SF over fantasy, I am very fond of Donaldson's Gap series of space opera novels. Also, crime fans might also enjoy the series of crime stories he published under a pseudonym. They were pretty good too, iirc.
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Thread Starter- Surtac
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Star, do you have a link to that interview? I knew about his India background. I did not know about the Kent State link.
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Thread Starter- Felicitous Sk8er
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Donaldson's background is fascinating. Starexplorer posted about Donaldson's Kent State memories
”I usually try to avoid answering such questions because the memories disturb me. The facts are simple enough. I was attending Kent State during the shootings as a graduate student...I'll spare you the other 20 or 30 things I'll never forget”
Insightful. Donaldson's Kent State anecdotes are new to me although I did a fair amount of reading about it at the time. I was a shielded small -town high school sophomore in 1970. Over 5 decades later, Kent State still impacts and highly disturbs me in a number of ways. I can't imagine what Donaldson went through. I appreciate this post, and gaining additional context for that era and those events.
- starexplorer
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Re: What have you been reading lately?
Star, do you have a link to that interview? I knew about his India background. I did not know about the Kent State link.
Yes, you will find it somewhere in this large collection of questions and answers. I am quite taken with his voice as an interviewee. He is clearly very bright, and while courteous, he doesn’t suffer fools. Which pleases me.
I also enjoyed this little comment:
"As it happens, I've met Terry Brooks, Katherine Kurtz, Alan Dean Foster, and Anne McCaffrey; I think they're all good people; and if I don't happen to read their books regularly, well, so what? They probably don't read mine regularly either. Who has time?"
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