On Thu, Jul 18, 2002 at 01:24:53PM -0500, "nikki m. pill" <stvitus at flash.net> wrote: > And Jose wrote: > > Mmm. Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising sequence comes to mind. > OOOOOH, I LOVED THOSE!!!! One of my favorites as well. > My comfort books -- particularly when I'm under stress: > 3. David Eddings' *Mallorean* and *Belgariad.* I got hooked on them when I > was 13 and haven't been able to kick the habit. Reread them one last time, all in a row. Pay close attention to each cliche, stereotype, failure of a character to grow and change over the course of the books, and so on. In fact, just make up a checklist of the qualities of bad writing, and fill it out. At the end of each series, write a one-paragraph plot summary without referring to any proper names or places. When you have read all of the Eddings books you have available, note that your "bad writing" checklist for each one is completely filled out, and compare your plot summaries (noting that they are functionally identical). This will cure you. (Hey, it worked for me. I loved Edding first time through the Belgariad. I began to be annoyed at his lack of creativity through the Mallorean. As soon as the Sparhawk series was revealed to be a quest for Yet Another Blue Stone, I figured out what he was doing and threw the book across the room.) -- Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org)