"david eddings is actually not too unreadable for neophytes. belgariad isn't a bad series; what makes david eddings bad is that he recycles his damn catchphrases, characters, and narrative concepts ad nauseam.
for some reason, terry pratchett does the same thing (ie. recycling his style over and over again) but it works.
david eddings always has :"be nice", "strange kindly old wizards", "immortals who teach young people magical powers", "GLOWING BLUE OBJECT OF GREAT POWER WHICH EVERYONE COVETS" and the most smugly self-satisfied heroes "
His themes (Eddings) too. He always has the "boys and girls aren't the same" theme.
Discworld's covers scared me off. Never read it.
More lambasting of Eddings:
Site 1
"I just couldn't see what all the fuss over Eddings was about. The background story was so convoluted it truly seemed it like it was convoluted for the sake of convolutedness, and ironically, for a saga with such a complex, tortuous background, the language of the rest of the book was mind-dullingly plain, even predictable.
If I consider Eddings predictable/repetitive or whatever before the first book is even over, I think there's a problem. *g* Not to mention the fact that Eddings' foreshadowing was about as subtle as a hammer... reading Eddings was like being spoonfed, like reading a bad step-by-step guide on how to make a novel - no suspense, no interesting language, and no opportunity to be able to figure things out on our own (which is especially vital in a novel which holds no suspense)... Silk, Barak, Hettar, and Durnik were one-dimensional to the point of caricature...
I dunno, maybe I have a problem, but I find Eddings' writing style so boring, and when it's not boring, the drama and tone aren't worked out well enough to keep it from being corny or lame. I literally laughed out loud while reading the book, not because it was funny, but because it was so damn sappy. :) Other sci-fi and fantasy authors handle fight scenes, angst scenes, and drama scenes much better than Eddings.
Again, I'm not a Eddings hater, but a lot of sci-fi fans worship him and I'm just saying that I don't understand why.... Maybe I'm becoming a psychic or something, *g* but I guessed and predicted so many things that happened in later books, and then there was a whole bunch of other things that even a lamebrain could predict... Even on the first reading I was not surprised or stimulated by Eddings, yet whenever I reread Brooks or Anne McCaffrey they still manage to get my heart rate up and my emotions going even though I know the endings and plot twists."
Site 2
"14 Raymond Feist.
David Eddings sucks. Midkemia forever!"
Nuff Said ;)
On souvenirs from life:
There's a rock in my washing area now that, at the end of Primary 5, all of my EM2 classmates went to sign. The signatures and such are all faded by now, but I still keep the rock (Yes I lugged it home)
I also have a PE shirt with signatures from my RV juniors. I hope my mother hasn't thrown it away.
Quote from somewhere on Drama Feste:
"Ohh, but the plays that win every year are the SAAMME! It�s always the dark, depressing poser-ish �oh, life is short and meaningless!� play that ends with a tragic death that wins!"
Thought of the day - thought fragment from scribbled notes of a budding playwright extraordinaire: "reprimands them for thinking that EVERYONE is deep enough to have feelings buried underneath that they do not show, or they everyone is beset with problems"
Words & Music: Martin Luther, 1529; trans�lat�ed from Ger�man to Eng�lish by Frederic H. Hedge, 1853.
This song has been called �the greatest hymn of the great�est man of the great�est per�i�od of Ger�man his�tory� and the �Bat�tle Hymn of the Ref�or�ma�tion.�
This hymn was sung at the funeral of American president Dwight Eisenhower at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, March 1969.