Bookish Thoughts

For all that I've said I'm happy to wait as long as it takes for the third Kingkiller book, reading the second one got me really excited for it. I have so many unanswered questions, and there are so many tantalizing hints about what's to come, that a part of me just wants to get my hands on it now. But then I tell myself to be patient. I love the first two books because they are basically perfect. The amount of work and care that Rothfuss put into them is clearly evident. He worked hard on them and he's working hard on the next one. And if I have to wait another decade, at least I know that I'll be getting a perfect book at the end of it. This book is perhaps even more episodic than the first one. Or maybe it's just more evident because Kvothe is moving around a lot more. Either way, people tend to complain about the pacing of this one more. But I maintain that it's better than the first. It has Felurian (true story: there's one page in the Felurian ...

I love this book. It's one of my favorites. I've read it several times, and it's just as good each time. There are so many layers here, so many hints and mysteries, that each re-read rewards me with a little more understanding, a few more answers to my questions. When Pat Rothfuss announced the 10th Anniversary Edition, I had to get it. And while it sat on my shelf for a while before I got around to reading it, the anticipation just makes it that much sweeter. I've talked about this book, at length, on this blog. So I'm just going to talk about the fancy new edition now. There's a new (equally opaque) map. There are discussions of the calendar and the money. Most of this information can be gleaned from the text, but it's nice to have it all laid out in an easy-to-reference place. There's even a pronunciation guide. But best of all, there are illustrations. A bunch of them, showing key scenes in the book. The illustrations were the whole reason I wa...

I was long overdue for a re-read of The Name of the Wind , which remains one of my favorite books. Even if the third book is never released, the first two will probably stay in my favorites list. They're so rich and dense, packed with magic and music and the mundanity of life. But the thing that really makes these books sing is Rothfuss' masterful use of language. The tenth anniversary of this book just came out, and if it takes another ten years to get every word perfect in the third book, I think it will be worth it. I have plenty of other books to read in the meantime. And I can always re-read this one, looking for new clues and soaking in the incredible world Rothfuss built. On this re-read, I took particular note of the dialogue. Throughout the book, characters often fall into rhyming or metered language. It's subtle, and hidden well in the paragraphs, but once you know to look for it, this book brims over with poetry. It was a lot of fun to pick up on it this time t...

I have a lot of dedicated reading spots in my house. There's the papasan downstairs, where I can make a nest of pillows and blankets and curl up in the long winter months. There's the brown couch upstairs, where I have easy access to a glass of wine or cup of tea on the side table. The green couch is on the wrong side of the table for easy drink access, but it has the recliner. Upstairs there's a leather chair in my office, where I can be surrounded by books, and a second leather chair in the bedroom where I can put my feet up on the footstool. In shady summer afternoons I read out in the backyard, avoiding the sun as much as possible. Finally there's the bed, where I can drift off to sleep, sandwiched between the animals. This is, perhaps, overkill. Especially since I do the vast majority of reading on the train. But it's nice to have a different spot for each mood I'm in. And it ended up providing a nice parallel to this book, which I read while bouncing aro...

My friends warned me that while The Wise Man's Fear was a good follow-up, it wasn't as good as The Name of the Wind . I'd heard that there were pacing issues, that it was too drawn out and took too long to end. I must disagree. I liked the sequel even more than the first book. There was more adventure, more heroics, more epic mistakes. I had no issues with pacing, thinking it was perfect pretty much throughout. I liked spending time in Faerie and Ademre. I liked the way the book slowly wound down for the last hundred pages. I liked the way Rothfuss gathered up all the loose threads while still leaving plenty to wonder about for the final installment. I cannot wait to see how this story wraps up. I'm going to split this up geographically in an effort to organize my thoughts. There was just so much in this book that I want to talk about and gush over. That means that this got a bit long, but that's to be expected given how long the book was. The Univ...

A whole bunch of people recommended The Name of the Wind to me. Everyone was convinced it was exactly the kind of book I would love. And so it moved up my to-read list pretty quickly. I started looking at reviews on a few sites - GoodReads , Amazon , and The AV Club - and everyone had great things to say about it. I didn't read most of the reviews because I wanted to stay as unspoiled as possible, but the sheer number of five star reviews grabbed my interest. The thing that really pushed me over the edge was Patrick Rothfuss' list of Books You Should Read , mostly the fact that he included Buffy on his list of books. Of course every one was right. This book was a lot of fun to read. It's been a while since I completely forgot where I was. Since it took flashing lights to alert me to the fact that the train I was on had reached the end of the line. Since I was sitting at my desk at work, desperately trying to read just one more chapter while my computer rest...