I despise the Twilight books, but I agree with Frank. The issue with them is that they're selling a horrible view of romance and how women should live their lives that has nothing to do with the vampiric nature of the male romantic lead. I would worry more about teenage girls meeting an abusive stalker and thinking he's romantic and caring than I would that they'll be haunting dark alleys trying to find a vampire hottie to bring home to mommy and daddy.

As for the people who try to be vampires and werewolves, most of those people have severe mental issues. Some people theorize that the myths of vampires and werewolves arose to explain people with these kind of mental illnesses. It's not something that came about because someone somewhere decided to write the first nice vampire story.

Honestly, I think you're all giving the devil too much credit. If he's so smart and cunning and shiny sparkly wonderful at his job of being evil, why's he losing the war? He's had thousands of years of flawed, crappy, stupid, insane, homicidal humanity to work with and he's still losing. Fixating on him and wondering what he's planning and spending your life poking sticks into shadows expecting him to jump out is exactly what the devil wants. If horror isn't to your taste, just don't read it. But please don't make generalizations about the genre and those who read and write it and try to make them out to be tools of the devil or whatnot.

Moderator Note

Thanks!

Hmmmm. Princess Diaries is a good choice to buy in bookstores, isn't it? :-/.

Returning to an earlier inquiry:

...has anyone on here ever read any books by Anne McCaffrey? I saw some of her books at the library today and they looked kinda interesting, so I was wondering what they were about.

McCaffrey's written a large number of works, mostly in science fiction/fantasy. Some are collections of short stories, like Get Off The Unicorn or The Ship Who Sang, but I think she's most well-known for her novels. She's written stories set in a number of different fictional universes (list here), but she's probably most well-known for her Dragonriders of Pern stories.

The first trilogy (Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon) sets up the medieval-type culture of the world of Pern, explains the main threats against that culture, and eventually explores its origins. A centerpiece of these stories is dragons, who form a life-long telepathic sort of bond with their riders (decades before Eragon used a similar idea).

Another trilogy (Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, and Dragondrums) covers many of the same events but from the perspective of a little girl named Menolly, who wants to get into Pern's Harper Hall.

There are many other Pern books that have been published since these were - so many that I've only read a few.

I think the world of Pern is quite interesting, but I haven't read the books for a long time. The first two books (Dragonflight and Dragonquest) are, as I recall, long and rather dull in places. The Harper Hall trilogy was much lighter and easier to read, perhaps because it's told from a child's perspective (and the books themselves are much shorter).

A cautionary note is that later McCaffrey works may contain some content that is less than family-friendly.

I thought that The Time Paradox was excellent

Time travel makes my head hurt*. It was lots of fun to read, I'm not denying that, but I'm not sure it would hold up to a reread for me. The desire to reread is how I like to decide how well I liked a book, and since the only two Artemis Fowl I think I'd want to read again are Eternity Code and Arctic Incident, I'm guessing that the series lost some of its appeal for me as it grew.

*I also really like reading books about time travel, so that's not a point against it. In fact, I suspect that it is just a very random observation.

has anyone on here ever read any books by Anne McCaffrey?

I've read her Black Horses for the King, a story about King Arthur. I like it quite a lot, but then, it's about two of my favourite subjects. I'm pretty sure her Pern series is the one most likely to be found on a shelf, though, and I don't know anything about that... but Stargazer has provided an admirable summary.

Wait... The Scarlet Pimpernel has a sequel? Or did you not mean that?

Not just one, not just two, but...eighteen. (Unless you kind of ignore the two prequels about distant ancestors of the hero.) Some are more enjoyable than others. I think I'd recommend The Elusive Pimpernel, Eldorado, and Sir Percy Hits Back as the best. I can't remember if I've read The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel but the blurb is amusing.

I'm so glad you enjoyed My Side of the Mountain! I've wanted to live in a tree ever since I read it.

And yes, the other two books about Henry and the 100 Cupboards are as good as the first. I was very impressed with how the series was wrapped up. I was very certain it was marching towards a very depressing end, but it didn't. End horribly, I mean.

D'awww. You've just happened to ask about genres and authors that I love. (And lots of what I know, I learned from hanging around this thread!)

Has anyone read any Oliver Optic? I happened to read one of his books yesterday that was set locally, which was fun. The plot, however, was chock full of cliches. Even that might not have been so bad, but our hero was fourteen. And he was already such a fabulous steamer navigator (using the mad skillz he learned when he was twelve) that men three times his age looked up to him. If he'd been, oh, eighteen, I wouldn't have quibbled, but... fourteen.

I'm looking forward to the new Artemis Fowl book, but this is one I won't be buying until after I've read it. I found the last two to be very poor in quality compared to the rest of the series.

*slinks in* Er, hello... It's been such a long time, hasn't it? I've been so busy and embarrassed about having been away for so long. You have no idea how many book links I've saved up. It's good to be back!

I've been a horrible reader so far this summer. I'm currently about halfway through the Looking Glass portion of The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition. The book has got the loveliest cover and ridiculously exhaustive footnotes not only about historical stuff and references of possible inspirations of Lewis Carroll's works, but of the scientific and philosophical implications of a looking-glass world, etc. I love it. I bought it two weeks ago (yay graduation giftcards to Barnes & Noble! ) and I'm still not done. Gaah.

I have so many unread books here at home, but I can't stop buying more! In my defense I just *had* to spend the grad giftcards people gave me. It's only polite. Anyway, I bought at B&N a lovely book quote tote (which I'm currently using as my bag for summer school), The Neverending Story in paperback, I Capture the Castle in paperback (lovely cover; this picture doesn't do it justice but Amazon is down) per Val's recommendation, The C.S. Lewis Encyclopedia by Colin Duriez (on clearance for $7!), this notebook, and this journal especially for keeping track of books.

So I have all these plus all the books I've bought before that I haven't read, and I've set for myself the summer reading goal of all 7 Harry Potter books, and I'm taking a class this summer and my room is a total mess and there is so much to do... Yeah.

*is enjoying the vampire and Artemis Fowl discussion* The Time Paradox was a bit of a letdown, to be honest. [spoiler=TTP]ArtemisxHolly=NO. [/spoiler] I liked The Lost Colony and The Eternity Code best.

Book links (I don't know if you guys have seen these already or not):
-Tiny libraries!
USA
UK phonebox
-YouTube--Toddler and Shakespearean actor quote Hamlet Too cute.
Ten Rules for Writing Fiction, parts one and two.

Not a link but a quote:

Anybody who writes a book is an optimist. First of all, they think they're going to finish it. Second, they think somebody's going to publish it. Third, they think somebody's going to read it. Fourth, they think somebody's going to like it. How optimistic is that?

OH MY GOSH IT'S MAR_GIRL!!!! I thought you dropped off the face of the earth!!! Welcome back!

stardf29 and (Booky ): ok you guys did convince me on some things, but not completely. I still don't think vampires should be the "good guys" in a book. The whole idea behind them is messed up and they don't even have souls, depending on the story, and if they do, they're eternally damned to hell and I don't think that's, um, great. But I know I'm not going to convince you two and you're not going to convince me therefore I think more conversation would be pointless, so we can just agree to dissagree and end it here .

Wuthering Heights is very suspensing but I still am bored a bit with it. I still want to finish it though, . It's a thick book! *frets* I want to read other books already but I need to concentrate on this.

Thanks for the help, stargazer! I'll definitely have to check out the Dragonriders of Pern series, then. It sounds pretty exciting!

Thanks, Meltintalle! I remember seeing Black Horses for the King at the library, so I'll have to read it soon! I like King Arthur, so I'll probably enjoy it a lot.

~Lucy

And about My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George's best work, and I've read some others by her), there are two sequels:

Hello there! This thread looks rather interesting, as well, I do like to read.

I s'pose I'll start of by saying what I'm reading now : The Count of Monte Cristo (unabridged version), Homer's Iliad, The Lord of the Rings (re-read), and a few others that aren't coming to mind right now.

Well, I'll be around.

~CSLN

Just finished reading my latest Early Reviewer novel, Rooms by James L. Rubart. My short opinion? Don't waste your time. The long version is here.

I recently read 'What I saw and how I lied'. It was good, believable charaters and well described scenary which gave a good feel of the 40's . But that's until I discovered dirty scenes in it . SO I won't be reading that again. Also I found that though it was a nice smooth read, the plot only unfolded towards the end and wasn't such a shocker as I thought it would be, and it ended oddly. Like it built up to a lot but crashed down to dissapointment.

I really do hate it when books have stuff described in it.Everyone has different tastes and mine could do without the heated stuff in it.

Anyway, yeah I'm searching for the next interesting book....

I really do hate it when books have stuff described in it.

I prefer my reading material to have some description.

Do you mind turning down your avatar camera flash? It could be bad news for members with epilepsy. Thanks

I'm currently reading Stephen King's The Stand and will be for awhile. It's an excellent book but very long (over 1,300 pages).