Subject: Ooh!
Author:
Posted on: 2013-08-06 07:05:00 UTC

Let's see...

Terry Pratchett
The ingredients all look conventional at first glance - at second glance, you see he's got physically improbable items listed right after comically shaped vegetables, and you're laughing so hard you don't realize until you're nearly done that the ingredients also spell out heavy social commentary.

(Meh. Somebody else should take a crack at it, I don't think that quite hits it.)

James Joyce
Even if you could read the list through all the words you're pretty sure he made up and the strange not-quite-rhythm he's got going, you're pretty sure you don't want to know where you have to go to get all this stuff. And then you realize what the list is actually for, and you wind up too depressed to go to the store anyway.

Kim Stanley Robinson
Most of the ingredients on the list don't exist yet, but they're so realistic, you're sure someone will invent them by the time you get to the store, if we could just figure out how.

(And then you realize that someone has to start the industrial revolution so that we can actually get to the store, and it might as well be you, and I'm losing track of this metaphor aren't I.)

Tamora Pierce
The list looks pretty traditional at first, but then you realize that most of the ingredients are clever alternatives to the usual commodities; when you're done, you find normal grocery lists disappointingly conventional.

Guy Kay
His lists look suspiciously like history lessons, but there's a flavor of Tolkien, somewhere, there, deep in the wording, and the language isn't quite of this world. And then, when you reach for the jars, you realize that the list is in your head. Again.

The Brothers Grimm
Everyone keeps talking about how clever and delicious their meals are, but you've been staring at the list for ten minutes wondering why there appears to be blood spattered all over it, and where the goblins came from...

(Dann reminded me of some of the ones we had earlier.)

Shakespeare
It's all in iambic pentameter. And you could swear that he's making half these words up as he goes along to fit the meter.

C. S. Lewis
It looks like all the ingredients for a delicious meal, and it's only as you're finishing and clearing up that you realize the whole thing was actually an allegory...

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Also, I think Doc's take on Lahaye & Jenkins may be one of my favorites on the thread, but that can be blamed on Slacktivist's awesome takedown of the series. If you haven't read it, it's a most excellent (and utterly hilarious, and occasionally heartbreaking) blog series, some of the best matter-of-fact critiquing of bad (awful) (no, seriously, utterly terrible) literature (and theology - don't even get me started on the bad theology) I've ever seen. Because it's gone on so long, the index is the best place to start: First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth. The series is ongoing, but after 300 you're on your own - they're pretty easy to find in the tags, and he's slowed down with them a bit lately.

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