Recent comments in /f/books
OneGoodRib t1_jco3ow2 wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
I pretty much only do it intentionally if the person is a new author or if they have an unbelievably massive amount of works. I want to know the backstory of the authors who have written 150+ novels since 1950. I'm not really interested in the life story of every single person whose book I read.
Emperor_Bart t1_jco3izx wrote
Reply to Stephen King’s RV Monologue by sunforthemoon
King hates lots of people. This cranky raging thing is one of the reasons I gave up reading him. He didn't seem to love his characters any more.
Dazzling-Ad4701 t1_jco3dtu wrote
i've heard all kinds of people talk about this urge and thought it was a myth. until i met the writings of sigmund freud.
i picked up a sort of taster-pack volume of some of his essays from some thrift store 50 cent table. on the premise that i'm all grown up now, i've been a rock-solid feminist for 25 years, freud holds no terrors for me. i also thought the kind of lunacy people attribute to him must be another myth.
well, it is not. some of what i read was kind of interesting - i didn't realise, for instance, that there was ever a time when people might not realise dreams are an outgrowth of whatever is bothering us. but when he went sideways and started to haver, oh lord. it wans't even especially misogynist. my outrage was 100% logical.
i've never felt such a (repeated) urge to yell "what?? no it isn't!"
NotAllBooksSmellNice t1_jco2awk wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Sometimes, it's a mixed bag, but I like to remember the fun/interesting ones. Like soft spoken, bushy beard, grandfatherly Robert Jordan being a decorated helicopter gunner in Nam.
msdanarae86 t1_jco1xfl wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Always! I’ve found some that I love even more because of who they are. It makes reading their stories more like reading a friend’s story! Like Kevin hearne or deliah Dawson
Independent_Boss3950 t1_jcnvy7m wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
I found out through a movie that an author I read had murdered someone when she was a teenager. It was made into the movie Heavenly Creatures.
[deleted] t1_jcnvwkq wrote
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sakuranbaby t1_jcntxyq wrote
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney. I don't think I liked a single character, which isn't good when there's no plot to keep me interested otherwise. They were all so pretentious.
QueenRooibos t1_jcnoti9 wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Well I have always followed Margaret Atwood's life with great respect and enjoyment.
QueenRooibos t1_jcnoe5f wrote
Reply to comment by aFairVeronesa in Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
You definitely don't need to worry about Ursula! How I miss her....
https://www.neh.gov/article/ursula-k-le-guin-was-creator-worlds
Fun fact about her -- she never drove. She got a drivers' license in 1947 "but I just never drove, and people who know me are thankful for that".
Edinburgh003 t1_jcno5en wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Nope. My favorite book in middle school was Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. That backfired
UnfallenAdventure OP t1_jcni6dj wrote
Reply to comment by Unnecessaryloongname in What was one book you wanted to throw across the room- and why? by UnfallenAdventure
Woah! Off a boat?! That’s next level. But honestly I’d probably do the same- using women being abused or killed shouldn’t be the motivation of the main character
UnfallenAdventure OP t1_jcni0ch wrote
Reply to comment by AstronautPowerful670 in What was one book you wanted to throw across the room- and why? by UnfallenAdventure
That sounds… anticlimactic
aFairVeronesa t1_jcnh7ph wrote
Reply to comment by FallenJoe in Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
I really hope my homie Le Guin didn't do anything much worse than use all male pronouns for the aliens in The Left Hand of Darkness.
DConstructed t1_jcnh5ma wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Sometimes or sometimes just to see what else they have written.
DConstructed t1_jcnh0ca wrote
Reply to comment by Lord0fHats in Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Her work IMO also started getting weirder. She definitely had a creepy side.
Which was a pity because I felt that some of her explorations into gender roles and non heterosexual relationships were a bit ahead of their time.
Tanagrabelle t1_jcnfkz3 wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Yeeeees and no. You certainly find out awful things sometimes, like the aforementioned Orson Scott Card, or the far more horrifying Marion Zimmer Bradley. And then I re-read her books with that information, and started to see it.
londonmyst t1_jcnd927 wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Yes sometimes.
Im_not_a_robot_9783 t1_jcnbk8k wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Sometimes. The catch is that more often than not I end up spending more time researching the author that reading the book
staffsargent t1_jcnbcv6 wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
I look up other books by them but usually nothing about them personally. It honestly doesn't matter to me or add anything to my enjoyment of their work. If the writing is good, I don't need to spoil it by finding out shitty things about the writer. If the writing sucks, I don't really care what a nice person the author is.
NeenersBrucers t1_jcnb3rp wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Often, but after I finish a book
Unnecessaryloongname t1_jcnaurn wrote
I threw a book off a boat once because I got sick of the bad guys rape girl to give plot point to hero.
KINGGS t1_jcnaswa wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
I don’t even crack open a book until I know some things about the author.
I think it’s important to know the author’s background when you’re reading literary fiction and/or classics.
I also prefer to read a well rounded assortment of writing, meaning that the author’s cultural background is high priority knowledge for me.
The western canon and the big publishers tend to neglect non-Anglo writing, so if you are going into stores just taking books off the shelf without looking then you’re missing out on the world, really.
corrado33 t1_jcnakwi wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Absolutely not.
I do not care one bit about who the author actually is. I do not want to know who they are, what they look like, what political party they are, nothing. That kinda stuff can ruin a book for me. I prefer to know as little as possible about the author. Preferably just their name and nothing else.
"Bad" people can write good books and good stories.
sj4iy t1_jco60n8 wrote
Reply to Do you ever look up the authors you're reading to get to know them better? by justkeepbreathing94
Honestly…no. If i enjoy the book, I don’t want to know the horrible things the author has done. I learned that lesson in Japanese literature class.