This thread has officially become awesome reading. 8 )
(Sort of OT Warning, I got really carried away, read only if your head hasn't already exploded from the rest of the thread.)
Unfortunately, I haven't a lot to add (edit just before actually posting, this is a LIE, I have a lot to add). For the last 10 years or so, I've upheld a strict policy of only reading non-fiction, or if I do read fiction, that it is something that has real literary merit. For instance, the last fiction that I read was "The World Inside", by Robert Silverberg. Great depth and storytelling, and really makes you think - I highly recommend it.
It's rare that fantasy is written anymore that really opens up your mind, and makes you THINK. Well, my mind, and making ME think anyways - after the sum total of all words which I have consumed. Isn't that sad? It's a genre that is supposed to be about imagination and vision more than any other, and yet what do people do with all of that potential? Well, they do one of two things - they either regurgitate more of the same to make a buck, or they create something vividly their own... but their creation ends up expressing little or nothing, it paints a pretty picture, but when you look closer, it doesn't show you anything more.
I do have my guilty pleasures from the past, including Anne McCaffrey (who seems to have few fans around here!
come on, I found her when I was 11...), and the Dragonlance series which likewise started when I was in my prime of reading. Which btw, from what I recall, the original Dragonlance trilogy is not just fun, but rather innovative, AND thought provoking (at least, if you haven't read fantasy for 20 years already, and thought the duality of good and evil into the ground).
I would be very grateful if someone could turn me on to some modern fantasy that would really reward me for my time reading it. Unfortunately, I can smell empty literary calories a mile away - and I am on a strict diet now.
I'm intrigued by a couple of the authors referenced here, but also feel vindicated by the general pattern of "post 1: hey I think this author is so good and worth reading" segueing into "post 2: that author has good qualities, but let me list everything that's wrong with his work".
Definitely saves me the time of finding out the hard way that some novel or series or other would just be me adding another name to my list of "hack authors I would like to lecture about the point of writing".
Final note on that subject - I am not 100% against fluff, if it is not advertised as more. For example, the Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison. It's just FUN, and easy reading cause you know it's just fun.
And of course any books that push themselves off as fluff, but really are more, like Hitchhiker's Guide, et al. That's not an easy trick to pull off, and I greatly admire it.