That’s the first four novels. Then he got Protection From Editors, and the focus shifted from “story about a single deployment” to “historical record about a period of time”.
I actually stopped reading them about five years ago, and decided to revisit them last year. I was not impressed. I’ll admit, towards the end of what I had, I was hate-reading, just out of “beware the sin of pride” self-awareness.
His major sins as an author, in my opinion, are, more or less:
Inability to refrain from infodumping more information than is absolutely needed to move the plot along.
Repetitive infodumping
Advantage-stacking for his favorites (the Star Kingdom, for example, is given so many advantages that it is rather infuriating to read the assertion that it has the highest standard of living in the human-settled galaxy, not to mention the sheer number of advantages he gives Harrington)
That’s not counting other aspects that are objectionable in his writing, but that’s more due to the fact that he’s an extremely privileged libertarian who depends on writing Straw Characters to characterize political viewpoints other than his own. If not for the fact that he does write semi-decent female characters, he’d be the author of choice for the alt-right, and their adoration of laissez faire free markets under a monarch, because that’s definitely his preference.
Same here. (In hindsight, I realize that it also coincides with the period when I was not in any romantic relationship.) I developed a smug (see previous parenthetical) notion how literacy should be measured by how much, not whether, a person reads.
I never felt smarter than when I was 23 - 25. That was it for me, that was as good as I got.
i started reading when i was 4. from the time i was about 10 my parents told the librarians at the library in my home town that i was to be allowed to check out any book i wanted because i could read at a 12th grade+ reading level with the same level of comprehension. from then until the time i became a school teacher 25 years later i read around 400-450 books a year. since becoming a school teacher i generally read around 100 books a year. i’ve read close to 13000 books in my lifetime so far and i hope that i will get in another 7000-9000 more before i die. some books i reread on a more or less regular basis, they’re either old friends like the “lord of the rings” books i reread every couple of years or bitter enemies like “atlas shrugged” which i reread about once a decade to remind me exactly how evil the philosophical basis of so many republicans and “libertarians” is. i despise digital readers of all sorts and am a complete and total fan of dead tree libraries. i own about 5000 books and wish i had the shelf space to keep them out all at once.
Hoo boy. I’ve never tried to read any Hugo, but my two Great Unfinishables are Moby Dick and Gravity’s Rainbow. I’ve read lots of other Pynchon, but that one I always stall on. Moby Dick I’m never attempting again.
You have to address all those assemblies and attend the basketball games and beg the Superintendent for funding and mete out discipline to problem students and hand out the diplomas… It’s harder than you think. More of a broad skillset than a deep one.
I finally read that a few summers ago. It is indeed a great book but I had to read a chapter or three at a time and give it a rest for a day. Still totally worth it.
I need to trawl the used book places for some Pynchon. I started V and was enjoying it but realized I wasn’t going to finish before I had to take it back to the library.
I figure it is less.
