The Princess Bride really is very, very good!

[Welverin]

I will second that nomination, since you beat me to the first (It is John Barnes by the by... ).

Both are fairy tales on par with the Grimm tales (if not a little better in places). Where not everything ends up nice for everyone. Yet, you come away with a little something that leaves one satisfied.

And why exactly did you never tell me about it?

 

[RC Hagy]

And why exactly did you never tell me about it?

I mentioned it once... It was during one of your larger load of 'books to read' days.


Hagy

 

[CCamfield]

I will second that nomination, since you beat me to the first (It is John Barnes by the by... ).

Whoops! Well, one out of two (names) isn't... that... bad....

 

[Umbran]

[*]It's clearly a fantasy novel. But, it's not genre fantasy. I mean this in the sense that I've never seen it in a bookshop's fantasy section (it's always been kept with the "proper" books).
[...snip...]
http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/promo/princessbride/

Uh, nikolai, fully setting aside the fact that I see the book in the fantasy section all the time, Delrey is most definitely a genre imprint. From a different section of the website you link:

"About Del Rey Books

Del Rey Books began as an imprint of Ballantine Books in 1977 with the bestselling The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks (which was the first novel to hit the New York Times trade bestseller list). Begun by editor Judy-Lynn del Rey with the editorial assistance of her husband, author and editor Lester del Rey, Del Rey Books quickly grew into the most robust science fiction/fantasy imprint in the field. Over the years, our list has grown beyond Terry Brooks to include Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Stephen Donaldson, Anne McCaffrey, David Eddings, Larry Niven, Alan Dean Foster, Katherine Kurtz, Jack L. Chalker, Barbara Hambly, and many other familiar names."

 

[Macbeth]

You don't truly appreciate parentheses until you've programmed in LISP

There's nothing quite like finishing a piece of code with

))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

-Hyp.

{
I geuss I'm lucky;
to have never had to mess with LISP;
my writing is only influenced by C++;
}

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I read Princess Bride when I was 12...laughed my ass off, got depressed about Goldman-in-Goldman-voice talking about his home life. Then I reread it last year, realized that there was no "unabridged edition," and got all pissy 'cause I'd been feeling sorry for Goldman and all along it was ALL fiction, not just the story.

 

[CCamfield]

Ok, here's a sort of literary question...

WTF is the point of those "home life" bits in the book, anyhow? To show that people don't live happily ever after?

 

[diaglo]

Ok, here's a sort of literary question...

WTF is the point of those "home life" bits in the book, anyhow? To show that people don't live happily ever after?

pretty much. life is not fiction i think is the lesson.

or "As you wish."

 

[Welverin]

I mentioned it once... It was during one of your larger load of 'books to read' days.

Excuses, excuses, just send it over already.

 

[Squire James]

You don't truly appreciate parentheses until you've programmed in LISP

There's nothing quite like finishing a piece of code with

))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

-Hyp.

The sad thing is that he's not kidding or even exaggerating! I think LISP stands for "Lots of (stuff In) Silly Parentheses".

Prolog, while it lacks the plethora of parentheses, had a similarly-twisted structure to it. Both had this thing about requiring everything to be recursive, which basically meant everything was in an infinite loop, which required something really kludgy to terminate them.

In one particularly distressing assignment, I was required to write a program in LISP and in Prolog that actually involved I/O! All in all, anything harder than assembly language should probably just be written in assembly language!