The Books/Reading Thread

My review of the new Joanna Schaffhausen thriller DEAD AND GONE is now up on the Mystery Scene magazine website. You can check it out HERE!
 
My review of the new Martin Edwards mystery THE PUZZLE OF BLACKSTONE LODGE is now up on the Mystery Scene magazine website. You can check it out HERE!
 
Had a great book related weekend!

On Saturday I went to a talk/signing event for author Edith Maxwell and then she and I and my friend Ann went out for dinner afterwards.

The next day I went to an author's brunch that had three authors including Sara Paretsky, who is one of three authors who got me back into reading for enjoyment decades ago. I got to meet her, get some books signed and I got to thank her for how important her work was to me.

Then this past Tuesday at our monthly Mystery Book Club meeting, we had author Craig Johnson Zoom into the meeting to talk about his first Walt Longmire mystery THE COLD DISH.
 
no country for old wainds said:
you know what isn't designed to be read in one day?

a 1300 page fantasy novel

so i ask you this: what in the god forsaken living fuck are you talking about?
Click to expand...
@TageRyche

the books that were being referred to as "summer beach reads" were all between 50-thousand-words and 80-thousand-words
that's words, old-man, not pages
when you have the kind of open-ended-single-protagonist-series where you eventually have 30 books with the same protagonist
(as opposed to the Harry Potter books only having 7 books)
then each book in the 30 book series (Anita Blake, Mercy Thompson, Drizzt Do'Urden, Harry Bosch, Lincoln Rhyme, Alex Cross)
will be edited to be between 50-thousand-words and 80-thousand-words, that's words, not pages
i started reading the early Alex Cross, the early Anita Blake and the early Drizzt Do'urden thinking that the length of 50-to-80-thousand-words
was the amount of text you'd read, in a day, when you have the day off from work
(as opposed to reading a smaller amount of text on a work-day after you get off of work)
because i knew people in the DFW Metroplex who would drive all the way down to the beach early enough in the morning and then drive back to their own bed that same night, before 9-11 made gas prices jump which made the working 6-days-a-week people in the Metroplex stop driving that far on their day off of work

so
i taught myself to read 50-thousand-words in a day back before i realized that "summer beach read" was referencing teachers and students in Minnesota going to Miami for their summer-vacation where apparently it takes these specific people the entire summer-vacation to read a fucking Alex Cross novel

so, those specific people will never in a million years even try to read a 1300 PAGE novel, when it takes them a whole 2 months to read 80-thousand-words

BTW
when Tolkien wrote the Lord Of The Rings
he intended it to be just one single book
the original publisher was the one who cut it up into 3 separate books to sell it to the specific people that would never have even tried to read something that freaking long if it was all bound as one-single book

then, the lord of the rings becoming popular, is the explanation of why Fantasy publishers will now publish Fantasy trilogies and quartets where a single Fantasy story-arc will now have as many PAGES as the number of WORDS in a non-Fantasy story
 
Last edited:
Just finished
Relentless, A Drizzt Novel

it was AWESOME

i'll do a detailed book review at some point later
 
Blurry_Dreams said:
Just finished
Relentless, A Drizzt Novel

it was AWESOME

i'll do a detailed book review at some point later
Click to expand...
@TageRyche

i loved the way the story goes back and forth through time
part 1 and part 3 are "in the past"
part 2 and part 4 are happening "now" as in 5 freaking minutes after the end of Boundless
the in the past parts are all about Drizzt's father Zaknafien with Zak writing all the first-person intros instead of Drizzt
the in the past parts were really just expanding on what happened in the book Homeland, (and what an amazing expansion it was)
but this is the 3rd in a trilogy, and this trilogy is labeled as being "inclusive of people outside the lore" and it really was
part 1 and part 3 were amazing extensions to what was happening in the book Homeland but i was dazzled by how it was done in a way where reading homeland really isn't actually necessary to reading this trilogy
the epilogue had my crying but then the very last paragraph does something that i'd thought impossible to do in a long-novel
the last paragraph just kinda undoes everything that you just read
the way the last sentence just undoes everything you just read in the short stories "a boy and his dog" "the forever kitten" and "complex god"
but it does it in this way that is so amazingly emotional, the characters are dazzled, crying tears of joy and i felt it with them
 
finished the Mercy Thompson book
1710280839740.jpeg


it was awesome

got halfway through the Harry Dresden book
1710280907501.jpeg

also awesome

and i just finished reading
1710281014012.jpeg
and this was actually good as well
 
I DNF the first book since it sucked, but it has a pretty enthusiastic fan base that say it gets a lot better after the first several books. As a huge Pratchett fan I often say the same thing about Discworld, but I haven't given The Dresden Files a second chance yet. Ive been considering trying again with the audiobooks on my commute since I enjoy easy reads like this in the car, but im not sure if it is worth the slog.
 
Currently reading this.

91absz8rOiL._SL1500_.jpg
 
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