Successful Cambridge Applicants Chat - 2006

panda11

Ok ok I admit I was generalising a little - but I'd define Frankenstein as Gothic and 1984 as Satire/Sci-Fi (haven't read G.T.). 'Fantasy' for me includes LOTR, The Hobbit, most things by Garth Nix, those novels by Marianne Curley, Harry Potter, and generally books with lots of made-up places/names/worlds, armies of elves/goblins/trolls/fairies and heroic "quests". I used to like Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy when I was younger though.

I thought 1984 was dystopian? Or is that just a category of books made up by my teacher? (My mum swears it's not a real word)

Reply 701

Toscar

11

i would agree that 1984 is dystopian, as is gulliver , btw. but surely a utopia is a kind of fantasy?

Reply 702

Helenia

20

Toscar

i would agree that 1984 is dystopian, as is gulliver , btw. but surely a utopia is a kind of fantasy?

Yes, in a way it is, but different from the hobbity-elfy-dragony world of typical fantasy work. The point of Sir Thomas More's Utopia was that the place he described could NEVER exist. The title comes from Greek, which depending on how you translate it, either means "Good/perfect place" or "No place." I think it's generally believed that he meant the latter because he was implying that the religious and political freedom in the book (which I haven't read :wink:

) could never be reality. Therefore to call books which are the opposite of utopia "dystopian," which when translated means "bad place" ignores the actual meaning of utopia itself.

Or something like that.

Reply 703

wanderer

2

Dystopian is a description rather than a genre - quite a lot of SF is dystopian. 1984 isn't fantasy in the normal sense.

Reply 704

wanderer

2

Toscar

what is "literary fiction"? - a term used to group together all fiction? - these terms are completely arbitary!

Literary fiction is a standard term used to describe fiction that isn't genre fiction - highbrow fiction, basically.

Reply 705

Toscar

11

wanderer

Literary fiction is a standard term used to describe fiction that isn't genre fiction - highbrow fiction, basically.

sorry to keep asking seemingly inane questions, but what is highbrow fiction? as in the stuff kept on classics shelves at book shops?

Reply 706

Lucyvet2006

Loocy

Yay someone else named Lucy :yy:

You should come to Cambridge so we can have fun sharing the same name!

I have had too much to drink :frown:

Hiya drunken Lucy :p:

What you up to at Cambridge? I'm gonna be a vet but swaying towards Liverpool atm. I wouldn't be surprised if you're also a wannabe vet, they are all called Lucy! (3 on here, 2 others i know... obviously a 'sign' not that we have a common name!)

Reply 707

Lucyvet2006

lisa_2k

so if you get edinburgh youll be rejecting cambridge?

Ideally, but boooooo I was rejected from Edinburgh :frown:

.
They said that if I don't have other offers in the summer I might be able to get in on the waiting list- not sure whether to jack in my Liverpool and Cambridge offers + take that gamble, have my heart set on Edinburgh!
Will probably end up at Liverpool though- no.1 rated vet school esp for teaching quality. And i'm afraid to say- in my opinion- a much cooler city (this might be because when I go to Cambridge it's to visit my old old auntie n we obviously don't go down the student union!), and think Liverpool will be a bit more like 'real life' rather than going to a larger version of the Grammar school I'm at, in a city that seems like a larger version of Stratford on Avon (where I live!)

Reply 708

sassygirl

wanderer

Well, if you ever want literary fiction with a gripping first chapter, try the afore-mentioned 'Shalimar the Clown' - its the latest one by Salman Rushdie. Or 'The Wasp Factory' by Iain Banks, which is more literary fiction because it isn't anything else, rather than being highbrow.

Character based fantasy - like I said, Michael Moorcock's Elric books, starting with 'Elric of Melnibone'. Oh, and the 'Chronicles of Thomas Covnenant' by Stephen Donaldson if you want something really deep - Thomas Covenant has to be one of the best fantasy characters ever. Romance just doesn't appeal I'm afraid. Not my kind of escapism.

It's all a matter of taste really. I'll be sure to check out 'Shalimar the Crown' and have a look at the fantasy books you recced. I have such a huge book-buying list at the moment. My parents disapprove of me reading so much, so they make me ration my book-buying. Hence, I spend ages deciding what books to buy. My birthday's in 2 weeks and I hope I'll be able to SPLURGE then!

Reply 709

sassygirl

Toscar

sorry to keep asking seemingly inane questions, but what is highbrow fiction? as in the stuff kept on classics shelves at book shops?

I used to work in a bookshop. Classics meant the authors were dead. Everything else went in general fiction. Incidentally, I worked in the bookshop opposite Trinity College, Heffers. I expect everyone will make a trip there once they get to Cambridge.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/front/0,6000,87980,00.html

That's modern literary fiction.

Classics also count as literary.

Reply 710

sassygirl

Helenia

I thought 1984 was dystopian? Or is that just a category of books made up by my teacher? (My mum swears it's not a real word)

It is, I just read the word being used to describe a book in 'The Guardian'.

Reply 711

popop12345

I just read "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" I thought it was very good, but a bit of a disappointing ending :rolleyes:

Reply 712

sarahliz12345

popop12345

I just read "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" I thought it was very good, but a bit of a disappointing ending :rolleyes:

True, but some of the best bits are highly quotable during awkward pauses in conversation... "it is a mistake to think that most of the world's problems can be solved just with potatoes" :p:

Reply 713

Loocy

Lucyvet2006

Hiya drunken Lucy :p:

What you up to at Cambridge? I'm gonna be a vet but swaying towards Liverpool atm. I wouldn't be surprised if you're also a wannabe vet, they are all called Lucy! (3 on here, 2 others i know... obviously a 'sign' not that we have a common name!)

Sober now, no worries :yy:

I'm just plain old medicine, so close! I'm definitely going with Cambridge as my firm though, haven't got a back-up yet. :frown:

I did notice the abundance of Lucy vets on TSR, bit strange.. in fact one of the only other Lucys I have known went off to do medicine somewhere last year - I sense a CONSPIRACY.

sassygirl

I used to work in a bookshop.

Oo, so jealous.. hoping that I might be able to get a job in a bookshop for the first half of my gap year but it might be hard to find one. Also I would probably spend all my wages on books and as I have to save the money this might be a very bad idea.

Reply 714

panda11

Helenia

I thought 1984 was dystopian? Or is that just a category of books made up by my teacher? (My mum swears it's not a real word)

Ahh I knew there was a better word for it! :biggrin:

wanderer

Well, there's a lot more to fantasy than that. Everything you've named, with the possible exception of Marianne Curley who I've never heard of, is actually a children's book! Dark Materials is more than a children's book though, its very good and pretty deep.

I've read a Discworld book too, if that counts? It was hard to think of lots of fantasy on the spot - but I thought LOTR was meant to transcend age boundaries? I would agree that the D.M. trilogy has some interesting ideas, but I'd rather get them out of a book that didn't have so many different worlds and fantastical creatures. I suppose... well, simplifying it, I like books that are (almost) believable. Which includes 1984 and Frankenstein :smile:

Reply 715

NiandraLades

College applied to: Christ's
Course: Social and Political Sciences
Conditions: AAA
Deferred entry? No. I may change my mind and see if they let me go in 2007.
Nationality: English
Where are you living right now: Warwick, go to school in Stratford.
A few details about yourself: My name's Ed and I'm 17. I'm taking Maths, Music and Biology so who knows why I applied for this subject and why they gave a buffoon like me a place. I got pooled from Queens' and was accepted at Christ's, which i didn't apply to because I thought it looked harder to get in. Presently, i'm worrying about getting the three A's which i now feel i must get to avoid going to LSE, which just looks scary.

Reply 716

wanderer

2

panda11

Ahh I knew there was a better word for it! :biggrin:

I've read a Discworld book too, if that counts? It was hard to think of lots of fantasy on the spot - but I thought LOTR was meant to transcend age boundaries? I would agree that the D.M. trilogy has some interesting ideas, but I'd rather get them out of a book that didn't have so many different worlds and fantastical creatures. I suppose... well, simplifying it, I like books that are (almost) believable. Which includes 1984 and Frankenstein :smile:

LOTR may transcend age boundaries in the sense that lots of adults like it, but its a kids book. The characters are cardboard cut outs and the themes are simplistic - the world is threatened by evil, which good people have to stop against incredible odds. Not a lot of depth. Fair enough on the believability - I find suspension of disbelief easy for some reason.

Discworld is something different again. It starts off as a straight spoof of fantasy (I highly doubt someone who doesn't read fantasy would find the early ones interesting) but later on he's built up something with a lot more depth on that foundation.

Toscar, literary fiction is the kind of stuff that usually gets nominated for the Booker prize or Whitbread award (although one of the two Booker winners I've read was historical fiction, although it was essentially just literary fiction in a historical setting). Authors like Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro.

Reply 717

bazlette

Speaking of 1984 - has anyone read London Fields, by Martin Amis? Ignore what the critics say, they obviously don't understand the point of the book. Also, Chuck Palahniuk - author of Fight Club (although haven't read that yet) - I've read Choke and Lullaby and both have slightly Orwellian-type themes..

Reply 718

popop12345

wanderer

LOTR may transcend age boundaries in the sense that lots of adults like it, but its a kids book. The characters are cardboard cut outs and the themes are simplistic - the world is threatened by evil, which good people have to stop against incredible odds. Not a lot of depth. Fair enough on the believability - I find suspension of disbelief easy for some reason.

I disagree!

LOTR is by no means a "kids book". The book probably has more depth than 98% of books, including fully thought out and developed cultures and characters most with their own meticulously developed and even usable languages.

There are masses of sub plots if one reads between the lines (ie. appendicies expand even further on anything you would want to question (i could point out numerous examples, if you want Pm me)). And the central plot is rather basic but this allows what Tolkien would call "applicability" making the book timeless and readable for all generations.

So please, call harry potter a childrens book but do not call "The Lord of the Rings" (second most read book this century after the bible and winner of recent BBC best book award) which is the life ambition of the professor of languages at Oxford to fill the gap in the mythological past of England; a mere childrens book.

Reply 719

sassygirl

popop12345

I disagree!

LOTR is by no means a "kids book". The book probably has more depth than 98% of books, including fully thought out and developed cultures and characters most with their own meticulously developed and even usable languages.

There are masses of sub plots if one reads between the lines (ie. appendicies expand even further on anything you would want to question (i could point out numerous examples, if you want Pm me)). And the central plot is rather basic but this allows what Tolkien would call "applicability" making the book timeless and readable for all generations.

So please, call harry potter a childrens book but do not call "The Lord of the Rings" (second most read book this century after the bible and winner of recent BBC best book award) which is the life ambition of the professor of languages at Oxford to fill the gap in the mythological past of England; a mere childrens book.

I think LotR has cardboard cut-out characters. I've mentioned before.. I think of them as marionettes, wandering around the fabulous fantasy world. I agree the languages and cultures are good though. But the characters are very bland. They might be well-developed in terms of personal history and so on but this does not make them well characterised.

Tolkien's core plot isn't that interesting, and the sheer quantity of subplots doesn't make LotR a better book. Some of the subplots are interesting, others are not. All of Tolkien's subplots put together, plus his main plots, are not 1/10th as interesting as a secondary character in, say, Kushiel's Dart, or a Goodkind book. Tolkien writes almost entirely plot-based stories. His characters are fairly arbritrary.

Any popular book will have applicability--the very fact that they are popular means that they have a wide reading audience.

LotR didn't win the best book award, really. It doubt that if a proper survey was done, it would come no.1. It has very obsessive fans that are willing to dial a number multiple times, that's all. And popularity doens't mean quality. I've read some very popular books that are so awful I want to vomit.

A lot of chidren's fantasy is fairly sophisticated. In fact, fantasy in general is required to be sophisticated. You can't have world-saving, doom-breaking heroes and heroines be immature--it just wouldn't work. I'd say what separates children's fantasy from adult fantasy is the use of language, the sensuality and violence of the novel, and the themes--if there is a lot of personal, mind-bending conflict, it is adult.

LotR isn't sensual or violent, although its writing style is quite sophisticated (although so, so, tediously boring, imo--it reads like a less interesting Bible). Then again, stuff like Lian Hearn's 'Across the Nightingale Floor' also has very sophisticated style. Fantasy sort of requires this kind of sophisticated style in many cases. Personally, I'd say that the conflicts in LotR are fairly complex, but not particularly. Certainly not as much as His Dark Materials, which is considered children's fantasy.

I think the completeness and sophistication of Tolkien's fantasy world is very impressive though, and it is this that draws its wider audience. Then again, to compare Lord of the Rings to modern fantasy isn't fair. It was written a while ago and attitudes regarding sex and violence in books were different then.

Tolkien's ambitions regarding this book are irrelevant to whether it's considered a children's book. He's successful in delivering an alternative history of England etc. However, I must say that I think it is a rather tame history of England. Think about King Arthur! He's WAY more interesting than Frodo. Think about Greek mythology--nothing can beat Greek mythology in terms of craziness, really. What makes these interesting are the insane characters. Tolkien's characters are simply too bland.

And any epic fantasy told in a mythological style should have proper romance, in my opinion. Arwen was an afterthought. And the ommission of sex is just glaringly and jarringly obvious. Tolkien told an interesting story, but his characters have no soul. I like the drama and what happens in the story, but the characters themselves are too boring to carry it. I ended up skimming a lot of LotR. But I liked reading the appendices--that was interesting!

Successful Cambridge Applicants Chat - 2006

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