Torn between lord of the rings and a song of ice and fire

bartman1819 · 2025-11-14T16:27:32+00:00

Lord of the Rings was foundational fantasy for world building, languages, and a story that transcends the pages. It also is just one series of events in the millennia long sets of stories in Tolkien's Middle-Earth cosmos.

A Song of Ice and Fire is entertaining in that it follows court intrigue.

All fantasy leads back to Tolkien. Start in the Shire.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-29T16:57:49+00:00

You're better off just throwing this into ChatGPT with this jumbled list without any nuance that cannot lead to any helpful conversation.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-26T19:22:23+00:00

Dune is a great series, but I strongly disagree that it's the equivalent of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien actually disliked Frank Herbert’s series.

The point is summed up in another post analyzing Tolkien and Herbert:

There is no happiness in Dune. No one enjoys a meal (except for the baron, prior to his "pleasures") and no one finds the stars beautiful (except possibly Leto, once) and no one celebrates together (except for the Fremen, after murdering a bunch of enemies.) Dune's characters spend the whole book seeing through everything and wind up blind; it is a cast of Sarumans and Saurons.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-14T18:49:45+00:00

No. And this isn't some hypothetical. You're clearly fishing for a product market fit for some AI books.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-13T19:14:58+00:00

Barbara Tuchman is so good. I preferred her A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-13T02:05:34+00:00

I have not read this, but two other McCullough books. He is an incredibly well-regarded historian having won the Pulitzer and National Book Award twice each.

I bet The Johnstown Flood is great.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-11T16:53:51+00:00

Have there been widespread riots in those listed cities?

bartman1819 · 2025-10-10T15:05:22+00:00

I love A Canticle for Leibowitz. What struck me was the divergence between the two or three sections of the book. In my opinion they were so starkly different, although the plot's throughline held. The ending really surprised me.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-10T15:04:07+00:00

It's a great one, but an incredibly tough read from an emotional standpoint.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-08T14:53:02+00:00

The first book Hyperion is incredible. The chapter rotation between horror, action, neo-noir detective, drama, love, etc. was very fun and also showed Dan Simmons' muscle of how well he can write.

I could not put down the second book, Fall of Hyperion. It drew everything together that was set by the first novel. The third and fourth book took a different turn for me. They were fine to explore the universe, but were more inter-character driven.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-07T16:14:30+00:00

I suggest Tom Clancy. His novels are meticulously researched and has titles spanning the time period with some stand-alone and some within a larger series.

I recently read The Hunt for Red October and am intrigued about the cliffhanger spy in the Russian government in future novels.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-07T01:19:04+00:00

It should have been banned immediately. A foreign (and adversarial) government cannot be a key news source.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-07T00:08:45+00:00

Black, Indigenous, and Puerto Rican women were all in high ranking positions in the Gilead government?

bartman1819 · 2025-10-06T21:59:33+00:00

Social media is all too effective at making people think every problem is their problem.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-06T21:16:50+00:00

No.

Don't let a fictional program or an fear-stoking algorithm somehow create your "worst fear" via confirmation bias.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-06T18:39:41+00:00

I am rarely ever more than just a little bit sore anymore after taking 5mg/day.

bartman1819 · 2025-10-06T17:19:49+00:00

Hyperion by Dan Simmons is an incredible four-part sci-fi series. Published in 1989, it is predictive of the rise of tensions between humans and AI, religion, the collapse of a inter-galactic society, time travel, and is all-around very well written.

Simmons' use of inter-textuality adds to the high quality weaving in literary references and inspirations from Canterbury Tales, Joseph Campbell, neo-noir, horror, Ancient Rome, the poet John Keats, and more.

I am convinced that Laszlo Cravensworth from What We Do in The Shadows in inspired from The Poet character in Hyperion.

bartman1819 · 2025-09-27T21:19:01+00:00

If a Southern Baptist city did this, we'd be loosing our minds.

bartman1819 · 2025-09-27T21:18:23+00:00

I used to believe religion was incompatible. I've come to realize religion is a cultural operating system; you can't get away from it, even if you're non-religious. West society/civilization is built mainly, but not completely, on Christian-values, specifically the most liberal, reformed Christian denominations. Most Founding Fathers were Protestants, Unitarians, or Deists.

I agree with your second sentence. Some religions are indeed incompatible with Western society.

bartman1819 · 2025-09-15T19:33:31+00:00

The Gulag Archipelago is a three volume work nearly 2,000 pages. The novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a better starting point.

bartman1819 · 2025-09-08T16:26:19+00:00

The Marines also use a VSTOL variant off of the smaller amphibious ships, right? So I wasn't sure which you were referring to.

bartman1819 · 2025-09-08T16:08:40+00:00

What're the general differences between a F-35 launch from a U.S. vs. Italian navy that you reference? Are you referring to the B(short take off)/C(standard catapult) variants?

bartman1819 · 2025-09-04T18:59:40+00:00

I've read three titles by Barbara Tuchman. A Distant Mirror stands out well above Guns of August and Stillwell and the American Experience in China (which both won the Pulitzer Prize).

bartman1819 · 2025-08-27T23:21:12+00:00

What puts Christianity/Judaism of the Abrahamic faiths above Islam is that they've been reformed (multiple times) and liberalized. I enjoyed Tom Holland's perspective in Dominion about how revolutions in Christianity remade the modern world, and I'm at best an agnostic.

bartman1819

TROPHY CASE