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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 1676154" data-attributes="member: 4720">I like a bit of everything.  I'm a pop-culture junkie, as well, with more DVDs than is at all reasonable given my income.  Though current trends in programming have me generally fleeing the TV, but for the Simpsons, Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, Discovery, and a few others.I'm also a fan of the theater, which doesn't seem terribly common here.  I'm kind of lucky that Ithaca has a wide variety of theater.  We have a couple of good independent theaters, Ithaca College has a tremendous theater department, and Cornell's student productions make up in enthusiasm what they lack in talent.As for books... I own way, way too many books.  But my girlfriend and I are both voracious readers, so they get out of hand easily.  I think if I sold off half of my books I could earn the better part of a year's salary.But while I like a little bit of everything, I can be picky as all get out.  I am an irritable and fickle geek, and while I will praise an author in one breath, I will turn on him in the second.For example, I think Dickens was absolutely brilliant... on the rare occasion he forgot he was being paid by the word and just told the bloody story.  Tale of Two Cities may still be my favorite book of all time, but I can't read more than a few paragraphs of Great Expectations without foaming at the mouth from its sheer craptasticy.I like pulp fantasy, as long as it's written by Howard.  Moorcock and the rest leave me either cold or in fits of apoplectic rage that their nonsense passes for good fiction.  Howard, btw, is among the best ever at writing action.I like High Fantasy in the Dunsany vein, though I get very irritated with imitators who can't come within miles of Dunsany's prose.  Actually, Dunsany is one of a very few authors with whom I've never found myself irritated.  He has such beautiful prose and can evoke moods and wonder like no one else, IMO.I like a very few of Stephen King's books, and am sorely disappointed in the rest.  However, I do think that he, Charles de Lint, and Neil Gaiman are the ONLY people who should be allowed to write any form of modern and/or urban fantasy.  Most urban fantasy makes me want to retch.I love HG Wells, Jules Verne, and Ray Bradbury... but I think they are wildly inconsistent, particularly Bradbury and less so Verne.I feel no need to get into my discussion of Tolkien again.  You can jump up and down screaming "Orwell's a hack!" here and no one will get on you about it, but if you so much as question the pacing of Tolkien, you tend to get the thumbscrews.</blockquote>

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