There are several aspects to books and movies that I enjoy well out of proportion to the overall quality of the story:
* Taking place on a boat or ship (e.g. Master and Commander, the Horatio Hornblower series)
* Following the difficult coming-of-age of a young character (e.g. Dickens)
* Taking place in a boarding school or, especially, a college campus (obviously Harry Potter has this element; I loved a mystery that was set in a young women's gymnastics/physical education college)
* Dragons (in movies because they look so cool - not such a fan of them in books)
* Involving the theater (e.g. several Ngaio Marsh mysteries)
I have recently decided that I am also very interested in stories that feature bureaucratic afterlives, in which dead people take their place in The Organization and work in some capacity. The TV show Dead Like Me had this quality.
I am also interested in the hierarchy of angels. I guess I am still waiting for the perfect book or movie incorporating this element.
Clearly, the perfect series for me would be one in which our young protagonist (male or female) is forced to leave home under difficult cirumstances, gets put into a boarding school that stages a quite novel production of Macbeth, is befriended by a dragon, runs away to join the Navy, dies during a pirate attack, and after a bizarre organizational mix-up gets assigned to a job in the afterlife as personal assistant to the Chief of the Powers rather than to one of the Authorities.
There are probably others that I am forgetting right now, but these are major interest-triggers for me. Do you have any?
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11 comments:
I love archeology mysteries, the paranormal (including time travel), survival stories, settings in the mountains or by the ocean and Agent Pendergast who is in a catergory all by himself. I also tend to like the Victorian age. Can't stand medical settings, the mob or the financial world.
I have a few, including
* boarding school / prison - any kind of institutional setting like that
* training/education/learning, especially with specifics
* first contact (whether anthropology-related or aliens, etc.)
Mom, I enjoy getting your hand-me-down archeology, paranormal, and nature-set books. And who can argue with putting Pendergast into his own category of deliciousness? (Though I haven't totally forgiven the writers for using a rebellious teenage girl character as Pendergast's taxi driver in that one book; she is almost exactly like a character I had planned for the driver in my alien story.) I prefer financial world to Victorian age, run hot and cold on mob stories and generally can't stomach medical settings because they insist on having people who are bl**ding all over the place.
Robert hates time travel elements to any story, and in the episode of Lost we were watching a couple days ago, there was that bit with Daniel Faraday and Desmond's "constant" that gave me a sinking feeling of the writers hitting one of his anti-triggers.
Tam, #2 reminds me of that Heinlein youth story you had, the kid who goes with a group of settlers to another planet and takes up farming. It was great with the specifics.
My science fiction interests tend toward space opera, but I also like surviving armaggedon (which I can't spell) type stories. For fantasy, I tend to dislike high fantasy set in an agrarian, feudalistic society with good kings vs bad kings in which all is right with the world once the good king is in power. (I completely loved The Lord of the Rings, which is this kind of story, so it's not an iron-clad rule.) I prefer stories that involve alternative types of societal structures (see, e.g. Ursula Le Guin, Sherri Tepper).
When I was a kid, it was anything to do with witches, ghosts, or mystery. Now:
* smart people (_Emergence_, _Ender's Game_)
* witty or over-the-top dialog (or monolog)
* role bending ("Tootsie," "Trading Places" sort of)
* teachers ("Dead Poets Society")
* supremely competence, especially when it involves both the good guys and the bad guys ("The Fugitive," "Burn Notice")
* Different cultures or subcultures (but realistic, and they have to explain it--sci fi is usually better than fantasy; historical fiction can be good, too; post-apocolyptic stuff works; religious medieval stuff was somewhat interesting for a while but overdone)
* Dealing with psychological or other physical problems, but preferably nothing too dark ("Fifty First Dates," other amnesia stories; too dark: The Batman with Jack Nicholson as the Joker)
* Realistic situations different from what I've ever been in, but again, preferably not too dark (disaster movies, documentaries; too dark: first part of "Saving Private Ryan")
Perfect plot: smart and witty protagonist with psychological problems explores new world/subculture; side plot involves supremely competent witty teacher guiding smart, witty students to related knowledge by trying out different roles; plots merge such that the whole exceeds the sum of its parts. Also, there may be just a little bit of martial arts in it, ideally disguised as ballroom dancing. Oh, and a happy ending that's not obviously fake.
Oh, I also like cheap special effects.
Debbie's list reminded me that I also really, really like neuro-atypicality. (I'm using this broadly to refer to characters who are autistic, aliens, or otherwise don't have normal human psychology, but who are able to communicate - either directly to the reader or thorugh dialog).
Oh, and for my "do not tend to like" list: mystery, intrigue, heists, wars, battles.
The mystery in a young women's gymnastics/physical education college reminds me of Miss Pym Disposes, a favorite book. And by jove, there was a movie made! Not at Netflix though.
Debbie, when I was a kid, I went through a vampire book phase (esp. vaguely "non-fictional" accounts - e.g. Vlad the Impaler - rather than outright fiction). It almost impossible to imagine this now. "Smart and witty protagonist with psychological problems explores new world/subculture": while this doesn't push my biggest triggers, I would totally want to read this book.
Tam, I like neuro-atypicality, too, though I wouldn't have thought of it independently of you and Debbie. Among many, many stories with this angle, I loved Matt Ruff's "Set This House in Order" about a person with multiple personality disorder and was surprisingly charmed by Steve Martin's (yes, that one) "Pleasure of My Company" about a guy with autism/OCD. Did you like "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" despite its mystery story trappings?
Cartaufalous - Yes! That's the book. Thanks for reminding me of the name; I will want to read it again at some point.
Sal - I'm surprised when you mentioned 'neuro-atypicality' you didn't note Haviland Tuff from "Tuff Voyaging".
Oh man, I love Tuf! And his cats!
Sally, I haven't read any of those books you mentioned! Oops.
I don't have this particular trigger very strongly anymore - possibly because there aren't as many adult books in this category - but as a kid, I absolutely loved books about a person (usually a child) surviving in the wild. For instance, Island of the Blue Dolphins or any of the Jean Craighead George books. As a kid a lot of my own fantasies involved living in the wild (building a shelter, etc.)
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