OMG BOOKS! ... for people who read books

[luna]

That sucks I have a huge fear of doing the same thing...

[Goose]

Books 9 (Winter's Heart) and 10 (Crossroads of Twilight) of The Wheel of Time series dragged like nobody's business.  So little actually happens in the majority of both books that I have a hard time justifying their existence at this point.  The climax of Winter's Heart was awesome, and is going to have some big ramifications in the very near future, as will the last few pages of Crossroads of Twilight.  The rest of it just got mired in shuffling characters around and random braid-tugging.

I'm reading these in publication order, so the prequel, New Spring was next on the list after that drudgery.  With writing this prequel, Jordan finally got away from the tediousness he'd written himself into, and was able to really focus on a simple story outside of everything WoT was mired in at the time. It was a breath of fresh air, and you could tell Jordan thought so too while reading it. Hopefully this carries forward into the next book in the actual series.

Also finished off Foundation's Edge, the first of the sequels that Asimov wrote for that series.  It went in a completely different direction than I was expecting in its final chapters, so I'm really going to enjoy finishing this series off.

[r00]

R.I.P.  Ray Bradbury  8(

[kristin]

I just got through the S. T. Joshi-edited Black Wings of Cthulhu anthology of modern Lovecraft-influenced writers.

Someone recommended this to me recently- I just d/l it to my kindle. I love it so far, I'm about 1/2 finished. There are some fantastic stories in here.

[r00]

book related lulz:

[sin]

Just realized Dumarest of the Terra by E.C. Tubb is now available for Kindle, so I'm going to be occupied for awhile working my way through this 44 novel series.  I've read maybe 12 or so in the middle, and I'm looking forward to reading them in order and all the way through for the first time.

edit:  I should note that each novel is only a little over 200 pages, so it's not AS a mammoth undertaking as one might assume, but it is still going to take me probably around a year to complete.

[rynne]

How pissed off am I that I didn't know Subterranean Press has been releasing limited-edition Thomas Ligotti reprints annually for the last three years?  I grabbed Noctuary, but Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe are long gone.

[Goose]

Finished Knife of Dreams: Book XI of The Wheel of Time, and the last book that Robert Jordan wrote before he passed away.  After books 9 and 10 (two absolutely dreadful books which spent 700 pages each doing practically NOTHING), this was a massive payoff.  Multiple major battles finally take place after so much dickering around, and plots actually advance and resolve.  There's still a very complicated story going on, but its so great to actually see it move somewhere.  This reminded me why I enjoyed starting this series in the first place.  From what I've heard, Brandon Sanderson continues into the final three novels with a similar pacing that I'm looking forward to.

Which brings me to something that royally pisses me off.  When I first started reading this series (almost two years ago now), there was only one book left to be published to finish it off.  Given the pacing of the previous novels, I figured the last book would be published sometime this year, meaning I figured the last book would be published before I caught up.  Well, Brandon Sanderson ended up getting bogged down with a bunch of other work, meaning he didn't get started on this last novel as soon as he would've liked.  That's fair, and I can understand that.  He actually finished the principal writing back in December (actually live-tweeted while he was writing the last couple chapters, which was kinda neat to see).  For all of his previous books, editing after that and publishing only took 4-6 months.  TOR is stretching this one out for over a fucking year.  The hardcover will be released in January 2013, and the eBook won't be out until April 2013.  Fucking bullshit.  At this pace, I'll have at least a 6-month gap between reading the last two books.  And a 4-month eBook delay?  WTF?!  What century do you think this is TOR?  So not impressed.

Next up, back into Timothy Zahn's Star Wars novels, with Specter of the Past.  I keep wanting to spell the first word of that the Canadian way, have to keep checking myself whenever I type that in.

[Aaron]

The Twelve I just bought it for my Kindle, reading it now.

I have read that all three books are going to be made into movies. Like the rights to make them movies have been bought? Something like that. I think it would be cool to see what the monsters look like in the flicks...


70% in to it now. I'm really liking it. I also am gona hate waiting for the 3rd book to come out...

[luna]

ah The Twelve is definitely on my list.

I'm currently re-reading The Dark Tower series (yes again!), I realized it had been a few years. I just love going back to mid world

[Aaron]

Uh. FB post.

But ya, you should take a bit of a break. Trust me. book 2 is awesome. I have less then 100 pages left. It's gona suck having to wait to read book 3. I think I will pick up on the TD books after I finish it. I think I'm some where in book 3?

[Aaron]

Just finished it. Really gona be interesting to see how book three plays out...

[luna]

if I can time everything well I should be done the DT series and onto The Twelve just in time for vacation in mid november

[Goose]

Finished Timothy Zahn's Star Wars: The Hand of Thrawn duology.  Really, it was just one big book that got split into two for no apparent reason.  The ending to the first book was pretty jarring and out of nowhere, so I'm guessing that the publisher just didn't want to release an 800-page Star Wars book.  Either way, the storytelling and visual narratives were a step up from Zahn's Thrawn trilogy, which was nice.  I had no problem picturing characters or their species this time around, especially new species like the Qom Jha.

I wasn't expecting these to be as good as they were, as the plot summary seemed a little hokey.  It could be taken as that at the beginning, but things play out in a really nice fashion that keeps the galactic-peace-tightrope-walk going and not seem stale, and still keeps characters interesting.  I've really got to stop reading Wookiepedia while reading these books though, because I accidentally had Mara Jade's long-term fate spoiled for me.  Its just so bloody habit forming to want to know everything immediately.  Stupid internet has ruined me.

Also read The Gathering Storm: Book XII of The Wheel of Time, the first book in the series written after Robert Jordan's death.  Completely awesome.  It felt like I was reading the first book in the series again, as I was completely blown away on a pretty regular basis.  So much was revealed and dealt with on so many fronts, it was just such a joy to read.  I'm pretty sure I actually exclaimed "FUCK YES" out loud when Elaida met her end, which came in a way I totally did not expect but was still beautiful justice. 

Brandon Sanderson has done an amazing job of keeping things going, and I'll definitely be looking in to some of his original work now.  He's handled the characters absolutely perfectly, and even though the voice and writing style was a little different, the motivations and actions and feelings of the characters I've spent the last twelve massive novels learning about didn't change at all.  That's a serious challenge for an author taking on another's work, and Sanderson nailed it.

Up next, Towers of Midnight: Book XIII of The Wheel of Time, Zahn's other two Star Wars novels (Survivor's Quest and the Thrawn prequel Outbound Flight), and Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash.

[Aaron]

I bought Neil Gaiman American Gods. I wanted a new book to read and I was looking at some on amazon. It was the cheapest and longest. So I got it. (Also I have been looking at it for a long time.) I'm at 120 pages in (I fucking love that the Kindle shows real page numbers now) I really like it. Reading the little blurp on amazon, I wasn't to sure, but I'm really liking it...


I also plan on reading Dune at some point. And depending on if I like it or not reading all the other books... (one review said if you can get past page 20 you have it made.)