Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
"Oh. Yeah, Fantasy. *snort*"
Fantasy did get a very bad name. At first you basically had only Tolkien, in the Epic / High Fantasy genre (of course there was "other" Fantasy, but IMHO, Tolkien started Fantasy as most people know it today). Then, starting in the 70's with Brooks and later Eddings, more people began to write Fantasy. Now there is so much of it that it seems *everybody* writes Fantasy and I doubt I'll ever read 5% of it. And I suspect that there's really bad Fantasy too...
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To be honest, I read the Lord of the Rings last summer for the very first time, and I didn't want to see the films when they came out. I was like "Fantasy? *snort*" until some kids persuaded me to read Harry Potter and I found out I liked it. So I came to LOTR and found many interesting parallels ...
I agree that there are lots of bad fantasy books, but I guess there a lots of bad books in any genre. This seems to be getting much worse with the rise of ebooks, when anyone can publish without all those qualiy controls. Sometimes I am just overwhelmed when I look at those "free book" lists and can't figure if I'd want any of those for free.
So, to get back near the original topic: Don't you feel that these "canon lists" are getting more important with the numbers of books exploding, as it is getting harder and harder to find the good stuff in this jungle?
Looking at the BBC list I just thought I would rather go back to Jane Austen than reading some random new stuff (now that's showing my age, probably ...)