What are we reading?

[Nefaro]

Ughh..  the Wheel Of Time series.

It had the typical fantasy series problem.  Too much damn hero pining for "home".  Took it to a whole new and repeated obsession, actually. 

I had to stop reading that series after about the 3rd book because it seemed to pop up constantly.  "Boooohoo.  I miss home", and "I hope to see home again soon", and "I'm daydreaming of home".  The constant barrage made me want to break stuff after awhile.

Not an unusual thing in the genre but that horse was beaten regularly in WoT.

[Martok]

Hmm, I never got that vibe, although I kind of see where you're coming from. 

In any case, all three of them stopped pining for home after the fourth book, albeit for very different reasons. 

[Dammit Carl!]

Only way I could stomach Wheel of Time after a bit was to read the chapters of the people I was interested in.

Even then, I only got through, I think 3 or 4 of those bastards before I started actively rooting for evil to win and doing other things like picking my nose and such.

Currently on my reading list is finishing up John Tolland's The Rising Sun, starting The German Army: 1933 to 1945 and taking a side trip and re-reading The Great War by Hart. 

...and this effort will take me months to complete as I'm horrible at leisure reading in a continuous fashion.

[airboy]

I'm reading all of the 2015 Hugo Nominees.  I've finished short stories.  I'm now on "novellas" and "novelettes" and hopefully will be finished with those by Tuesday.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

The Dead and Those About to Die: D-Day: The Big Red One at Omaha Beach | [John C. McManus]
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The Dead and Those About to Die: D-Day: The Big Red One at Omaha Beach

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[Emeraldlis]

I'm about 100pages into the first book of the wheel of time series , and what Martok forgot to mention is that the book is 751 pages long !! Good job I'm a fast reader ....but still Martok a heads up there would have been nice , lol .  :P

Also I'm reading two other books at the same time , so this is going to take a while , haha ,   :)

[Martok]

I finished up World War Z Saturday night, which means I was finally, *finally* able to start digging into The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay.  O0 

I'm about 100pages into the first book of the wheel of time series , and what Martok forgot to mention is that the book is 751 pages long !! Good job I'm a fast reader ....but still Martok a heads up there would have been nice , lol .  :P

Also I'm reading two other books at the same time , so this is going to take a while , haha ,   :)

I do apologize, Emeraldlis.  It's not an excuse, but the truth is I've read so many "doorstopper"-length books over the years that I simply don't think to warn other people who maybe aren't used to that...  ::)  :-[ 

[Emeraldlis]

I finished up World War Z Saturday night, which means I was finally, *finally* able to start digging into The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay.  O0 

I'm about 100pages into the first book of the wheel of time series , and what Martok forgot to mention is that the book is 751 pages long !! Good job I'm a fast reader ....but still Martok a heads up there would have been nice , lol .  :P

Also I'm reading two other books at the same time , so this is going to take a while , haha ,   :)

I do apologize, Emeraldlis.  It's not an excuse, but the truth is I've read so many "doorstopper"-length books over the years that I simply don't think to warn other people who maybe aren't used to that...  ::)  :-[

Lol , it's fine Martok . I don't mind reading a book that length ...it's just with reading two others I thought I could squeeze that in no problem as well !! And then I saw the length and thought ....oh hell , I'm going to have to give this my full attention , and leave my other two books hanging in mid air for a while !!
I'm just hoping when I finish reading it I don't want to use it as an ACTUALL "door stopper " , hahaha,  ;D

[Ubercat]

Well, there are a couple of fellows here who happen to think that Eye of the World is pretty good.  They acknowledge that there are some slow bits, but, overall, it was good and Sanderson did an admirable job filling in.  I don't subscribe to that theory.  So there's that.

I would be one of those.

I discovered the series while killing a little time at the University of PA bookstore in Philly because I was temporarily locked out of my apt. There were only 3 books at that time and I thought "Cool, a new trilogy!" and bought the first one.

By the time I started book 3, I realized that it was no where near over. Thus began the long years of re-reading the series every time a new book was coming out, to get ready for it. I stopped reading somewhere around book 7, but never lost interest. I wanted to wait for it to be complete before I got back into it, and many years later it finally was.

Soon I'll read the entire series from the beginning. I'm working up to this task which will probably take more than a year. I wish to hell I'd known how long it would take for the series to finish as I would have bought something else and waited 20+ years to start it!

[Martok]

I was finally, *finally* able to start digging into The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. 

I just had to say that I'm already a third of the way through this one.  I don't know if it's the setting, the characters, and/or if Kay is just good with pacing, but it reads very easily.  O0 

I stopped reading somewhere around book 7, but never lost interest. I wanted to wait for it to be complete before I got back into it, and many years later it finally was.

Well you were smarter than I was.  I didn't realize I should wait for the series to be completed til Jordan had died and Sanderson was working on the last three books.  (Or maybe I *did* realize, but I was just that much of a "junkie"...)  :-[ 

Soon I'll read the entire series from the beginning. I'm working up to this task which will probably take more than a year.

I wish you luck whenever you get around to undertaking the quest then!  It took me 7-8 months to read the whole series (which I finally did last year), although I generally don't churn through books as quickly as I used to either. 

I wish to hell I'd known how long it would take for the series to finish as I would have bought something else and waited 20+ years to start it!

Ubercat, I suspect you speak for many of us in saying that.  ;) 

[JasonPratt]

I'm about 100pages into the first book of the wheel of time series , and what Martok forgot to mention is that the book is 751 pages long !! Good job I'm a fast reader ....but still Martok a heads up there would have been nice , lol .  :P

Also I'm reading two other books at the same time , so this is going to take a while , haha ,   :)

[...]

Lol , it's fine Martok . I don't mind reading a book that length ...it's just with reading two others I thought I could squeeze that in no problem as well !! And then I saw the length and thought ....oh hell , I'm going to have to give this my full attention , and leave my other two books hanging in mid air for a while !!
I'm just hoping when I finish reading it I don't want to use it as an ACTUALL "door stopper " , hahaha,  ;D

Well, I did give a fair warning at the end of my post about many warnings. ;) With a redundant warning of redundancy even! "Then I'd remind readers that the series is fourteen very large books (plus a fairly pointless yet still sizeable prequel), and caution them that they could probably spend their time more entertainingly in other ways, since we're talking about no less than three months solid reading at least."

[JasonPratt]

Meanwhile, finished Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality last night (while not altogether successfully getting past a stomach virus or something). I'd say the author did stick the landing, although readers who've gotten used to the action set-pieces in most of the 'books' might feel a bit disappointed that the final book goes back to a more contemplative attitude similar to the first book. But then after all the Ultimate Bad Guy is working hard not to trigger a needless fight, and Harry is working hard not to trigger a curb-stomp battle he couldn't possibly win. All the plot threads seem to me tied up sufficiently at the end, except for the question of where magic ultimately comes from and how it actually operates, which the author may have intentionally abandoned and never actually intended to answer (although Harry being Harry it would be out of character for him not to obsess over discovering this asap for the first third-ish of the story; so something had to be tried along that line.)

Anyone vaguely interested in the topic but who from hearing and reading other things has decided they just couldn't stomach the original books (and/or movies) might like this take. Anyone who at least likes the original books (and/or movies) might love this take -- I've never read the books, and now would feel like the original series just isn't good enough.

I will critically add that I enjoy writing fiction in the same style the author does, so that will surely be affecting my subjective taste. Also, while the author and I apparently (?) have radically different metaphysics, he seems to be somewhat(?)-inadvertently verging on mine the whole time, which affectionately amused me more than it might amuse other readers.

For anyone curious how far off canon he goes: the basic plot is ported in broad strokes from The Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone, with a relevant punch from The Goblet of Fire, and naturally with references to the other books (although the whole plot of all the books isn't covered.) Fans of Sirius Black will be disappointed, though the plot alteration makes sense for keeping the shape of the new plot. Ditto fans of Ron Weasley (if there are any ;) ) and/or Hagrid (though the latter makes a relevant and important brief appearance in the final book once the unicorns start dying in the Forbidden Forest. He's written as to canon but just not as important to the plot.) I don't want to spoil too much.

If I recall correctly it was Peter S. Beagle (author of The Last Unicorn, an Inkling, and friend to both Lewis and Tolkien), who said in reviewing The Book of the Dun Cow by Sheldon Vaneuken (also a friend of Lewis late in life, not sure if he was ever an Inkling): "The best compliment I can give to this book is that I wish I had written it myself. The next best compliment is that I started over immediately after finishing." While I need to go on to some other books, I wish I could start over on it immediately; and I wish I was even capable of writing this myself. 


The book(s) is/are of course 100% free, and can be found here: http://hpmor.com/ , both in separate pdfs and in one collected tome. (Also some other formats including links to the original reddit chapters with author commentary and omakes, both missing in the pdfs.) An enterprising and dedicated fan club has ported the work to an audio podcast drama (links on the main page, including from iTunes); I can't testify as to the quality as I haven't heard it yet. As of this date the drama team has made it a little more than halfway through the final book.

The whole series has a wordcount around 660Kwords, about equal to the first five books of the original series; in print format the 6 books (not 7 as in the original series) average a little more than 320 pages each, but that counts a number of blank/interchapter or legal or contents pages. My original runthrough (to somewhere late in new-book 5) and the new runthrough both read very quickly.

The author will add an epilogue about a year from now on PI Day (when he released the final chapter this year).

[Nefaro]

Just ordered:

John Dies At The End


and the sequel

This Book Is Full Of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It


A highly rated mix of horror & comedy spoof that I should've picked up awhile back.  Likened to a mix of modern Lovecraft, some Hitchhiker's Guide, and Kevin Smith humor.  :D

Loved the movie, despite it reportedly having to axe so much content of the first book that it became a shell of the novel.  Didn't realize there was a 2nd book so I'm finally diving in.

[Emeraldlis]

Well, I did give a fair warning at the end of my post about many warnings. ;) With a redundant warning of redundancy even! "Then I'd remind readers that the series is fourteen very large books (plus a fairly pointless yet still sizeable prequel), and caution them that they could probably spend their time more entertainingly in other ways, since we're talking about no less than three months solid reading at least."
[/quote]

Well I most humbly beg your pardon Jason , indeed I did read your original warning , warning me to be warned !!!  ;D
Out of complete curiosity and maybe just  a little bit of insanity thrown in for good measure , I decided against your better judgement to give this book a go :)
Although I thank you most graciously for taking the time to forewarn me twice   

[JasonPratt]

Now you have been extra-duly warned.  ;D From experience!

(Because TEotW's wordcount is pretty typical for the series.)

How are things going on the readthrough, btw? Speaking from hindsight, it's pretty amazing how many plotlines RJ sets up in Book 1 which will pay off later; sometimes much later; sometimes much, much later. (The next two books as well, although Book 3 does feature some preliminary plot resolutions.)