notgettingenough 's Reviews > Lord Foul's Bane
Lord Foul's Bane (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, #1)
by
by
notgettingenough 's review
bookshelves: will-be-regretted-on-my-deathbed, science-fiction
Sep 27, 2009
bookshelves: will-be-regretted-on-my-deathbed, science-fiction
I am (albeit slowly) removing my reviews from goodreads since it has become Amazon. For more on why that bothers me and should bother you, please go to my profile and also here:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
What I learned from this book.
Don’t agree to read the book Robert tells you is the best book in the whole world ever just because he invited you over to watch the best film in the whole world ever (Close Encounters) and you slept through all but the first ten minutes.
You know you are going to hate this book before you’ve even opened it. You know you can’t read it out of guilt. Robert’s fifty. He can live with you sleeping through his favourite film.
But you take it home. Non-specific Catholic guilt syndrome, as my dentist informed me when I said I thought he was God. And you open it up.
And.
and for the rest:
http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...
------------------------
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
What I learned from this book.
Don’t agree to read the book Robert tells you is the best book in the whole world ever just because he invited you over to watch the best film in the whole world ever (Close Encounters) and you slept through all but the first ten minutes.
You know you are going to hate this book before you’ve even opened it. You know you can’t read it out of guilt. Robert’s fifty. He can live with you sleeping through his favourite film.
But you take it home. Non-specific Catholic guilt syndrome, as my dentist informed me when I said I thought he was God. And you open it up.
And.
and for the rest:
http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...
------------------------
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
January 1, 1998
–
Finished Reading
September 27, 2009
– Shelved
October 2, 2009
– Shelved as:
will-be-regretted-on-my-deathbed
February 10, 2010
– Shelved as:
science-fiction
Comments Showing 1-45 of 45 (45 new)
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I loved the books when I was a teenager. And you have to be a teenager to love it. One of the most famous un-words from this oeuvre is "unambergrised" as in t..."
Oh. I do love compulsive researchers. I've used this Randall Munroe cartoon before, in my The Dispossessed review, but it is so to the point,
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Well, yes, I can see that would be handy.
Have you read Persepolis? If I recall correctly, Marjane was just the same. Or did she start by wanting to be God, and then compromised on just being a saint? I'll have to look it up...
Most of my colleagues when I was little wanted to be nuns, of course. Little girls in a convent school. I seem to have been appallingly ambitious. Truth be told, my research brought me to the conclusion that the way to fasttrack the whole saint idea was to become a nun.
This caused me a great theological dilemma as I hated cabbage. Honestly. As a little girl I laid awake sleepless at night wondering if I had to give up the whole plan because of cabbage.
I should say, by the way, I'd never eaten cabbage, but my mother had told me how awful it was and the vegetables she cooked us were so indescribably dreadful that cabbage loomed as positively evil. So evil, that I was perfectly content to die the death of a saint - eaten alive, or something - but not eat cabbage in a communal dining room where I imagined it would be a sin to say 'no'.
Eventually I found myself with a group of nuns on a Walk Against Want and summoned up the courage to ask them. 'Excuse me, but if I become a nun, will I have to eat cabbage?' I was shocked when they all started laughing. This had quite genuninely upset me for a long time and what on earth was funny about it?
Not long after that my devout Roman Catholic family decided to give up Catholism and I could no longer become a saint. In fact, I've never really had a career path since. What do I want to be? Well. If I can't be a saint....ummm. Hmmm.
Santa Marta - patron of cooks, she
was the sister of Mary Magdalena.
She happily cooked for Christ. She
is also patron of entertaining,
San Lorenzo- is patron of boiled
foods ( because of his martyrdom, yecch),
pasta cooks, candy makers, diets, and
graciousness.
San Pascual - is a patron of
cooks, the kitchen and
domestic animals ( and finding
lost animals). He was a lay
Franciscan who happily worked
in the kitchen.
Santa Elizabeth- is patron of
bakers because she gave food,
especially bread to the poor.
Santa Margarita - patron of a good Margarita (a tequila drink made with line and salt) because of her goodness and repulsing the devil in the "old stories" this drink was named in her honor.
@NGE: Whenever you decide to write your memoirs, I will read the shit out of them. Your anecdotes are so good, and so well told!!
And yes, to slitting the wrists as an adult.
Like, like, like review.
I do like that, Alan. You make me think I'd love to knit a book.
I would love to see this poem!
I would love to see this poem! "
Google's so good for finding poetry:
Knitted Things
by Karla Kuskin
There was a witch who knitted things:
Elephants and playground swings.
She knitted rain,
She knitted night,
But nothing really came out right.
The elephants had just one tusk
And night looked more
Like dawn or dusk.
The rain was snow
And when she tried
To knit an egg
It came out fried.
She knitted birds
With buttonholes
And twenty rubber butter rolls.
She knitted blue angora trees.
She purl stitched countless purple fleas.
She knitted a palace in need of a darn.
She knitted a battle and ran out of yarn.
She drew out a strand
Of her gleaming, green hair
And knitted a lawn
Till she just wasn’t there.
Lovely, thank you.
Oh, I just think my parents wanted to have sex and couldn't afford any more children after four back to back. That doesn't quite make sense to me, since they managed to avoid children for about six years before we stopped being Catholic. But it was part of the principle of it. They would never have been non-practising Catholics, the idea of taking on the bits of religion that suit you and are easy but not the rest is not their idea of believing. I think they thought Catholicism was doing some things in a very wrong way and therefore withdrew completely. So to speak.
But I tell you what, I will check with my mother and ask her. At the time it was a round table decision by all of us, but I was the eldest at ten of the children, so I would say although we felt completely included in the decision, we wouldn't have actually had anything meaningful to contribute to it. Pity I can't remember the details at all of what happened at that family meeting!
That said, Donaldson's info about leprosy Does seem quite dated. We've had a rudimentary cure for leprosy since 1950.
I think he chose leprosy because it was (and in some ways is) mysterious. No one knows why it died out in Europe. No one knows exactly how it is contracted.
Over 50% of cases are from people who had no contact with a leper-- so you don't have to go to a leper colony to die a saint's death. HOWEVER, most of the people who get it spend YEARS in a country where leprosy is still prevalent.
Maybe Thomas Covenant licked an armadillo?
*note* This is not an attempt to make you like the novel.
Good point!
..."
Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) wrote: "I think he chose leprosy because of the whole social outcast thing it has carried since biblical times."
Yes, yes, yes, I'm sure you are right! But it doesn't help me with the book :)
Well, your review seemed to focus mostly on how spontaneous leprosy isn't really a thing, but it can be (kind of). So . . . that's all I can really do to help you with this book. I didn't like it. It's been a few years now, and I still remember how hard my eyes rolled at the dumb. Oh, man, the waxing eloquent into attempted metaphors were so excruciatingly unintentionally hilarious. The premise-- "guy spends whole book trying to convince himself that he's dreaming" -- and sulking and whining about how awful it's going to be once he wakes up from this awesome dream of awesomeness. (And also raping some random elf chick to prove to himself that everything is awful, including himself?) Did not win me over. The setting also felt really thin and weak to me-- traditional meh fantasy world.
All I can say is -- he apparently gets better as a writer, and looks back at this book as cringeworthy. So.
How interesting. I didn't know that! Maybe I should try another one.
And well he should.
The book of short stories of his that I read was really top notch, and I think I'll try another series by him. But this book was enough to bump him off my "favorite authors" list. because no, I don't need to read everything by him, after all. Shrug.
So, if he improved, does that mean this series actually got better? I assumed the worst of it, of course.
Everything I have read indicates that this series gets a Lot better. I am, however, disinclined to continue after reading this one. I would try a different series by this author, though... someday.
Right now I need to read about what Putin intends to do with my country.
Well, Putin and China....
I loved the books when I was a teenager. And you have to be a teenager to love it. One of the most famous un-words from this oeuvre is "unambergrised" as in this delicious gem:
WTF?
Well, ambergris comes from whales and is used as a perfume for embalming, to cover the stink of the corpse during the funeral. Google "unambergrised" and Donaldson himself apparently explains that this word then evokes the opposite. Huh? He meant the mountain was stinky for all time?
It also turns out that ambergris is an extract from the whale that the whale spews out from its mouth. So, whale vomit (kind of). How that fits in there I have no idea. But then I suspect that Donaldson didn't either.