Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 1348720" data-attributes="member: 7737">Hey, thanks for starting this thread, mmadsen. I wasn't aware that Rateliff had reviewed so many fantasy classics. I find his reviewing style a bit convoluted, but he gets the point across: these are great books, worth reading. As to what I've read: The Hobbit - of course. Like CCamfield, my father read it to me when I was little. He then continued by reading the entire Lord of the Rings to me as well! It took about a year all told. Watership Down - my childhood friend Jamie had to beg me over and over to read this. "I don't know," I said; "It's about rabbits." But as Rateliff points out, it's really about so much more than that. I was immediately spellbound and drawn into the story, and melancholy when it came to an end. The Face in the Frost - this book scared the daylights out of my when I was younger. In my mind I always think of it in conjunction with Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series (which I hope Rateliff reviews at some point), probably because I read them around the same time. Too bad Face in the Frost is out of print now; I would like to re-read it. A Wizard of Earthsea - I agree with Rateliff that this is one of the very best fantasy sagas of our time. Like everyone else, I wanted to be Ged, desperately and forcefully as only a child can wish for something impossible. (I was not aware that Le Guin had retro-engineered her world to make it politically correct; how awful.) The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - Weirdly, I read this book surreptitiously while attending Sunday school. I'm sure that's some sort of sin. Anyway, I disagree with Rateliff that it is Lovecraft's best work; although it may be HPL's most well-realized work, it is, as others have pointed out, a Dunsany pastiche. I also am astounded that Rateliff doesn't find any of HPL's horror tales truly horrific. Surely I am not the only one to get shivers down my spine from stories like The Colour out of Space or The Shadow out of Time. = = = Rateliff mentions, in his review of Face in the Frost, the list of recommended reading at the back of the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide. That list set me on the path of reading fantasy classics - although I can see from the shortness of my list above that I left much undone! I commend Gary Gygax for his good taste in including that list. Hooray for D&D. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification