Forward The Foundation

 Isaac Asimov wrote two prequels to the Foundation series in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  I just read the first, Prelude to Foundation, a few weeks ago, and now I made my way through the second one, Forward the Foundation.

I have to admit that I enjoyed the last one better than this one. This one was fun, but it felt like it was too long. Lots of writers have that problem. Rish pretty much complains about this with every book he ever reads. With some writers, it's less of an issue than others. Asimov has a very old fashioned and stilted style of writing. Even though this was written in the 1990s, it still felt as though it came from the 1950s to me. It was still a good book, but it didn't keep me turning the pages nonstop until I finished it. I was able to take it slow and read only when I had the time for it.

I think there are more Foundation books that I haven't read. Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth were two sequels that Asimov wrote in the early 1980s. I think I'll have to eventually get to those ones as well...although, I think I might reread the original series first, because it's been about 25 years since I read them last, and I don't really remember how they went, so going on to read the sequels might be silly and worthless if I don't.

The Empty Throne

I finished up my last book, and had nothing to jump into right away. I looked at Bernard Cornwell and found that the next audiobook in the Saxon Stories series didn't even have a wait. I could check it out immediately. So, I jumped in.

This one was funny. They started out with a bit of trickery. In the end of the last book, the hero of the book series seemed close to death, but I was pretty sure that he hadn't died. The book did end abruptly, though, so I thought maybe I had been mistaken. Cornwell started out the book with Uhtred's son as the point of view character. It seemed like maybe the torch was being passed for the rest of the series. Of course, it was a trick. I liked the trick a lot, though. Someday, I'll have to steal that. Fun stuff.

The book, as usual, was interesting and fun. It was easy to get through. The kind of book that made me become a reader in the first place, and I was happy to come back to it each time I got back in my car and the audiobook started up again. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I still recommend these books. Bernard Cornwell has yet to let me down.

The Mercy Of Gods

I love James SA Corey (that's the pen name of the writing duo, Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham). The Expanse is probably my favorite book series of the last ten years. I loved the finale of the story, but mourned when the world came to an end. So, the minute I heard that there was a new series by Corey, I jumped at the chance to get started on it.

I couldn't believe, therefore, that I didn't like it. I listened to the audiobook, read by Jefferson Mays, the same guy who did the Expanse books. I was hours in, and had yet to find anything that I liked. There were no characters I liked, no situations I liked, no storylines I liked...I was completely confused at how such a thing could happen.

I got despondent, and let my hold on the book lapse without finishing it. I went book free for quite a while, but then a month or two later, I finally got back to reading, and after doing that, I decided to give the book a second chance.  I mean, I'd quit the book right as the aliens invaded. The book was about to completely change, I assumed, so I ought to try again. Besides, it was James SA Corey!

Sadly,  despite the humans becoming slaves to an unfeeling alien race, the book didn't completely change. None of the characters became interesting. Nothing ever gave me that feeling that I couldn't wait to get back to listening to the book, that I hated having to stop and do things like go to work or feed myself or sleep. Books often do that to me, and those are the ones I remember fondly. Sadly, despite my love for The Expanse, I don't feel that way about this book. I slogged my way to the end of it anyway, because I'm masochistic or something. I should have given it up once and for all and let it go much earlier. I suspect I won't bother reading the second book in the series, but you never know...I mean, it's James SA Corey!

The Pagan Lord

I went back to this well for my next book. I love to have them there as a go to any time I need a palate cleanser. I keep running into books that don't excite me like I want them to, and Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories series always pleases. It's a really long series, but I'm getting closer and closer to its finale. I'll be sad when I've finally made it to the end of Uhtred's story.

I got the new Brandon Sanderson book on my Audible as well, but my son wanted to listen to it right away, so I let him go at it. I didn't want to be losing his place every time I listened. Listening at the same time just doesn't work.

So, The Pagan Lord it was. This one was very interesting, and took Uhtred farther than any of the other books up until now did. In fact, the ending was even a little bit ambiguous. I wasn't quite certain what had happened to our hero at the end. All the same, it was fun and satisfying. So far, not a single one of these books has let me down. They've been great all around.

Project Hail Mary

After a couple of dour Richard Bachman books in a row, it was nice to take a break and try something else. This time around, I grabbed Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

I wasn't prepared for this book. It turned out to be one of those books that I loved so much that I just wanted to be reading it all the time. Of course, I do almost all of my reading via audiobooks, so binge reading an audiobook is a different prospect. You can only listen to an audiobook for as long as your mind is unoccupied. If you do something too mentally taxing, you will stop paying attention to the book and find that you are lost and don't know what's going on, but because you don't have to sit on the couch looking at a book, you will find something to do. I think it's just generally more difficult to pull off.

I found that I was able to listen to my audiobook while formatting Sunny & Gray for publishing. That wasn't too much for my mind to concentrate on both. So, that was nice. I was able to get two things done at once.

The book was completely delightful, and not at all what I suspected it was going to be at the beginning. I won't talk too much about the plot to avoid spoiling it, but it's high-concept stuff (as my screenwriting teacher, John Lee, used to call it) and there are some very touching moments that will bring tears to your eyes even though the events are only playing out on the stage of your mind.

I loved The Martian by Andy Weir. Now, I've loved Project Hail Mary. I'm going to have to get Artemis, the one book he's done that I haven't read, and go after that one soon. This guy does good stuff.

Blaze

This one has been on my shelf for a while, but I've never gotten around to reading it until now.

But, as I said in my last book post, all my Stephen King holds were coming in at once on Libby. So, this was what came up next. I should have found something else, especially considering that I disliked the Richard Bachman book I read last.

This one wasn't as bad. It wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad. Blaze is a bit of an homage to the Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men. The main character, Blaze, is the Lennie of the book. He was abused as a child, suffered a head injury, and came out of it mentally disabled. His partner in crime...yes, the guy was named George...died a few months before the start of the book. The two had been planning their biggest hit of all, kidnapping a rich guy's kid and getting the ransom from it. But now, Blaze is left rudderless. He tries to pull the scam on his own, but he doesn't have the intellect to manage it.

The book is sentimental and cute, but not particularly good. It's not terrible or depressing like the other Bachman Books that I mentioned in my last post. This one was written by King in the early days of his career, but turned down by the publisher. He decided to put it out back in 2007 as a Bachman novel, but it doesn't really feel very Bachman-esque. Which made it a little more pleasant, but it did still have the sad ending.

I can't really say much about it. It's probably good that King didn't put it out as his follow-up to Carrie, because the best I can say about it is meh.

Roadwork

I mentioned in my last book post that I had gone through and placed holds on pretty much all of the Stephen King books that I had never read before.  They all started coming up available in the last few days for me...all at once. I had to push most of the holds off, and pick one to go with. The first one that came up was Roadwork, written by Stephen King under the name Richard Bachman.

I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of the Bachman books. I used to have the omnibus edition of those that they published a years ago called The Bachman Books. I thought I'd read the whole thing, but I never did get to Roadwork. I only read The Long Walk, Rage and The Runnning Man. I remember being blown away by the ending of The Running Man, considering that it was originally published in 1982 and made into a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987. ***Spoiler Alert for anyone who hasn't read it*** It ends with a man purposefully crashing a plane into a building to kill the TV execs. That was almost twenty years before 9/11, but I never read it until after. They could never make an accurate movie rendition with an ending like that. Not anymore.

Anyway, it turns out there were four books in The Bachman Books, and Roadwork was the one I had missed. It may be that I did that on purpose. I might have grown tired of the cynicism and dour tone of those books. It seems like writing under a pseudonym gave King the freedom to be as dark and dreary as he wanted without any repercussions to his income.

Every one of those Bachman books were dark, depressing, jaded, and grim. Life sucks. It's not worth living. There is no meaning and there's nothing worth saving. It's no surprise that they all end with dour BD Anklevich-style unhappy endings.

Roadwork was another book in that same tradition. Because of that, it took longer for me to get through it than I had been doing. There was definitely less to get excited about and keep me coming back for more. Luckily, it wasn't that long, so I did make it to the end, but there wasn't a whole lot in it that I found to recommend.

It's kind of funny to hear a review like this from somebody such as myself. I've written too many dark and dreary stories of my own to be complaining about reading one, right?

The Wind Through the Keyhole

After finishing up The Death of Kings and getting back on track with my reading, I was eager to get another book to read. I was talking with Rish a few days ago, and he was mentioning how surprised he was to realize that, even though he knew all about the book, he'd never actually read Stephen King's Duma Key. He's a huge fan of Stephen King, as am I, and he's pretty much read it all, but this one had escaped him somehow.

I confessed to him that I'd never read Duma Key either, and I thought maybe I ought to rectify that too. I got on the Libby app to check it out, but there was a line and I had to put it on hold. While I was at it, I figured I should go through the list of King's books that I hadn't read, and put those on hold as well. I almost always love Stephen King's books (aside from Cujo, which I've tried to read twice, but never managed to finish), so they probably wouldn't derail my progress (unless I tried Cujo for a third time).

I went through and placed holds on more than a dozen books, and the first one that came up as available was The Wind Through the Keyhole, a Dark Tower novel. I read the Dark Tower series through to the end, but Stephen King went back and added this novel into the middle of it in 2012, so I was able to revisit my favorite characters again in an all-new adventure.

Although it didn't turn out to be quite that. There's actually precious little time devoted to Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy. The story takes place in between books four and five, and our heroes are force to take shelter from a crazy storm that blows through Mid-World and kills pretty much everything in its path that isn't sheltered away very securely and warmly.

While they shelter, Roland decides to tell them a story from his past. He weaves the tale of the time he was sent to Debaria to catch a skin-man, which is a shape shifter akin to a werewolf but that isn't limited to just one creature. It can turn into various things. Weirdly, in the middle of this tale, Roland tells another story (we're going deep here. This is the Inception of The Dark Tower. It's a story within a story within a story), this one a tall tale or a myth about Tim, who has to deal with the loss of his father and save his mother from troubles that arise by going on a long quest.

It was an odd bit of framing to make our way through all these nested stories, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Rish, I gather, is not a fan. Probably because there's no real consequence to the tale, since Roland and the others aren't really a part of it. I didn't mind it. I found it fun. 

Not only that, but I managed to make my way through it in only a few days. I stayed home sick from work last Wednesday, and while home, I decided to put up as much of my Christmas toy decorations as I could. I had the audiobook playing the whole time that I worked, and I burned through a huge portion of the book in that one day, only doing a tiny amount before on Tuesday and after on Thursday to finish it. That's always cool to jam through a full-length novel so quickly. It feels like an accomplishment for some reason.

My only gripe was that the finale of the story was kind of weak. Gunslingers are just to capable with their shots, so there wasn't a lot of drama about it, and, of course, since it's a prequel, there's no actual danger to the characters. That's the ultimate problem with prequels. We know damn good and well that the character is going to survive just fine.

It's already time for another book. This time, Stephen King's book that he wrote as Richard Bachman came up as the next thing available. So, in a few, I'll be back to talk with you about Roadwork. I thought I'd read all the original Bachman books, but this one doesn't sound familiar at all, so we'll see how it goes.

Death of Kings

I had a run of several books in a row that just turned me off. They didn't appeal to me in any way, even though I had reason to expect that they would. I was upset by this, and wondered just what the deal was. As usual, I figured it was probably me. There was probably something wrong with me. If everybody else liked these books, but I couldn't even keep my interest for a day, then I must be defective in some way.

I gave up on reading for a few months...to be fair, I gave up on writing and many other things during that time too. I was in a general funk. I have managed to pull myself out of that funk, though. I finally tried picking up some books to read again, and started with Isaac Asimov's Prelude to Foundation. 

While it wasn't a barburner that I couldn't put down for a moment, I still enjoyed it, and managed to make my way through it without having the time on my library book run out on me before I finished it. That was a big accomplishment for me after the last few books I'd tried.

Once I finished Asimov, I played it safe. I remembered one of my favorite series of books, and decided to get the next one of those. Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories book six is called The Death of Kings. I knew that one would appeal to me, so I grabbed that.

These books are just fun. They won't be for everyone. I think they're very male specific-type stories. They tell the tale of a medieval Saxon warlord living in the time of Alfred the Great, and detail his wars and conquests. They're mostly fictional, but there are snippets of true history woven into them as well. Most of all, though, they're fun. 

I always like them, and this time was no different. This time, I worked my way through the book quickly, in just a matter of days. Now I feel like I'm fully back in the swing of things. I can read again without getting totally bored and looking for something else to do. Maybe I just have to be more careful with what I choose to consume. It's okay to try things out now and then, but don't go overboard right away, because you just might cause problems if you do.

Prelude to Foundation

Way back in the last century, a young Big Anklevich got a three book omnibus edition of the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov from the Science Fiction Book Club. I read the whole thing, which wasn't even all that long...particularly since those SFBC omnibus editions always had the tiniest margins in order to pack as many words per page as possible. Less pages meant less printing costs.

I really enjoyed the Foundation Trilogy, and had it on my list of favorites over the years, but I never bothered to read any of the later books that came in the series. The first ones were written in 1951, 1952, and 1953. Asimov didn't come back to them until the eighties. That smacked of a sequel that nobody wanted, which we are plagued with these days in every big series from Star Wars to Indiana Jones to The Matrix to Scream to anything else that Hollywood thinks that they might be able to squeeze a few more shekels out of. So, I never did read any others.

Then Rish's friend Jeff moved to Germany. Jeff was a huge speculative fiction book reader, and he had a big collection of books. Rather than pack them all up and move them to Europe or keep them in a storage facility, he chose to just give them all away to anyone who wanted them. Rish only had so much room to accept books from his friend, and he took all of his favorites, but he also knew that I would love to have more books to add to my own anemic-in-comparison collection, so he grabbed boxes worth of books that he thought I might enjoy.

I thanked him, and used many of those books to fill my shelves. I have this aversion, though, to having a book on my shelf that I've never read. It makes me feel like a fraud. Here and there, I set out on a new effort to read the stuff I have up there so that I can say that I have read them all. That's how I found myself reading Isaac Asimov's Prelude to Foundation.

It wasn't a magical return to a galaxy far, far away for me or anything, but it was pretty good. I find it to be an interesting thing that Asimov was doing in the end of his life. He was famous for a few different science fiction concepts, and he was weaving the universe together and uniting them all into one. 

My copy of Prelude to Foundation started with an author's note from Asimov that informed me what the proper chronology of his books were. The robots and Foudation went together, and he gave a nice delineated list of what was first, then second, then third, and so on. The funny thing is that hearing that list made me really want to read them all in that order now. I feel like I need to get to each and every one of them. I don't suspect that I will, but you never know.

Prelude to Foundation felt almost like a series of short stories stitched together, which shouldn't be surprising, considering that Asimov has written tons of short stories. He may well think in terms of short stories always, like Rish Outfield seems to. I like how he pulled it all together in the end, though. I won't spoil it in case you haven't read it yet, but the twist at the end was fun, and I liked it. 

Maybe I ought to try watching the TV series. I think I watched one episode of it, and didn't feel all that entertained, but maybe if I gave it another chance while I was in more of a Foundation mood...

The Postman

Last week, I talked about finishing up the David Brin book, Sundiver. I liked it, but it was a little bit too far on the hard sci-fi end of the scale for my tastes, so it didn't really do it for me like I'd wanted. A twist of fate in the scheduling of my holds, however, had me trying Brin out again right afterward with his book The Postman. 

I remember that being a movie with Kevin Costner in it back in the 90s, but I didn't ever see it. I did know the general storyline of the book, however, because of the commercials and whatnot for that film. It's a post-apocalyptic world, and a dude brings hope and community to the people by pretending to be a postman and delivering letters around the area.

Now, that may sound a little silly. It did to me. I'm guessing that David Brin once worked as a mailman before his career as a writer took off or something. If I had to imagine what things might ignite hope in people after a nuclear holocaust, having a mailman would likely be down on the list toward the bottom if it made the list at all. Brin made it work, though. The story was good and even believable. Maybe it wasn't the best thing to use as an avatar of hope, but it worked.

I really enjoyed the story, and for the most part, unlike what I had in the previous book from him, Sundiver, I really wanted to keep reading to see what happened next. That's really all I'm looking for in my entertainment...some real entertainment. So, getting this book from Brin right after Sundiver was good. It makes me more likely to go back and finish up the books in the Uplift Saga as well, After all, unlike Sundiver, those ones are the books that are on my shelf. 

The Postman was too, so I'm making some progress. Someday soon I'll be able to say I've read all the books on my shelf, but for now it remains a dream.

Sundiver

I just finished David Brin's Sundiver the other day.

I said in my other post that I was doing this so that I could say that I've read all the books on my shelf. I don't like having books on my shelf that I've never read. Funny thing, however, is that I don't even have a copy of this book. This is the first book in the Uplift Saga. On my shelf is one of those old Sci-Fi Book Club omnibus editions of the second and third Uplift Saga books.

So reading Sundiver is basically just homework to get to the point where I can start reading the books on my shelf. I've heard that these Uplift Saga books are good, though, so I was happy to do it. I was excited.

I may not be the right audience for this book, though. While I wouldn't say it was bad, because it definitely wasn't that, it was too far on the hard sci-fi side of the spectrum to really peak my interest. 

It's about human beings who have suddenly found themselves in a strange atmosphere of alien politics after making first contact recently. In that environment, they are making a scientific exploration of the sun, and have discovered that there is some sort of life there, a completely different life than anything anyone has ever known.

Some hard sci-fi nuts would love that kind of thing, but I'm not that kind of a nut. It was fine, and I made it through the book easily, but I never got to that point where I really wanted to get back to the story and find out what happened next. That's the feeling that hooked me into becoming a reader and probably into trying my hand at being a writer as well. 

I suspect that many others would disagree with me and say that's exactly the feeling they got from this book, and I would believe them. I think reading is very much an embodiment of that old saying, "to each his own." My mom was an avaricious reader, but she only read romance novels, boxes and boxes of romance novels. I read one or two of her books when I was a kid, but they didn't really appeal to me very much...except the steamy sex scenes, that part was interesting to a young man going through puberty.

What does that mean? Will I continue on to read the books that are actually on my shelf? There's Startide Rising and The Uplift War still to go. I definitely will. At the very least, I'll read the next book. As I said, I didn't hate it, I just didn't love it either. I have so much time to burn while driving to and from work that it wouldn't hurt me a bit to listen to a book that isn't absolutely inspiring.

Besides, in this election year of 2024, reading fiction is about the only place I can run to escape the ever-present, pervasive shit quick sand of the political arguments that fill every leisure space that used to be a refuge for people. It's in Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, television, movies, music, comic books, broadway plays, puppet shows, and even on CNN. I get enough of that at work, there's gotta be somewhere I can go to be free of it for a minute or two, and reading old books like these is my solution.

Rhythm Of War

I finally finished Rhythm of War from Brandon Sanderson. I did a post a few weeks ago complaining about how long it was and how I was unable to finish the audiobook in one two-week checkout period. I only made it halfway through the book with my first checkout, and when it was gone, I started a new book. I even said this:

It kind of feels like taking a load off. Now I can listen to a book that I may actually finish in time, so it won't feel like spinning my wheels. 

I started listening to Red Rising and got three hours in, when all of the sudden, I got a message from Libby saying that Rhythm of War was available for me again. I don't know how that was possible, because it was on hold by many people when I returned it, but I didn't look the gift horse in the mouth. 

Instead, I returned Red Rising and checked Rhythm of War back out. I was loathe to have wasted the three hours, but I figured three hours of investment versus twenty-five hours of investment didn't really compare. I'll get back to Red Rising soon and finish it up when I can. I can hold three hours worth of content in my mind a lot better than I can remember twenty-five hours, so the sooner I got back to Rhythm of War the more likely I was to enjoy it.

And I did enjoy it. The book is more my style, I believe, than what I was getting from Red Rising. Red Rising reminds me of Divergent and man of those other clones that came out in the dystopian gold rush of 2011 when everyone was jumping on the band wagon with The Hunger Games.

As I complained before, however, the book is just too long. The story it tells is enough to be a whole trilogy, and each book in this series probably should be just that. 

The biggest problem is that the series is still being written, so I can't just jump to the next book while all the details are still fresh. The fifth book is set to come out in December, so at least I'm not right on top of the releases. I could manage to read the next book before I completely forget the last one. I didn't manage that with Rhythm of War. I could not remember a single thing that had happened in its predecessor. It was like reading a book from the middle of a series without having ever read any of the others before it.

The other gripe I have is the incorporation of modern stuff in the book. Some people dig that kind of stuff, but to me it seems boring. When I read a book like this, I'm not looking for something that puts all the modern stuff we deal with in a sword and sorcery context. The book centers on a character who is a valiant warrior, but he can't keep it up, because he is having PTSD. He steps away from the battle and has a hard time finding a new place in society. He starts a friggin' support group for warriors who are losing their marbles.  

While I fully support this in modern day real life, I'm not interesting in seeing it in my fantasy epics. I'm sure many of you reading this are pulling your hair out and screaming that it is exactly what we need in our fantasy epics, and that warrior culture as portrayed in Middle Earth or Ansalon is partly to blame for the stigma that those who suffer from PTSD face. You might be right. I'm not saying you aren't. I just didn't find it compelling to read about. Every time we got to a chapter about that I wanted to skip to the end.

Otherwise, though, the book was great. The story is complex and massive. There's so much to be had in the book. I'd recommend it to anyone who asked, particularly if they were planning on buying a book, because you will definitely get your money's worth out of a thousand page tome like this.

Now that I'm done, I'm moving on to...no, not the rest of Red Rising. I have to wait for that one to come up on holds again. I'm moving on to David Brin's Sundiver. That's part of my effort to get everything on my bookshelf read. Rish got me a ton of books from his friend Jeff when he moved to Germany, and many of them, I'd never read before. They've been sitting on my shelf, shaming me, for years. On and off over the years I've tried to work my way through them...and now I'm back onto that effort.

I'll see you again when I finish that one.

Just Here To Complain

I've been feeling a little overwhelmed recently. I have too many goals this month, I think...or to ambitious of goals. I'm supposed to get half of what remains in my audiobook recorded and edited, as well as write 1,333 words a day, and publish the eBook, paperback, and hardcover of Three Vampire Weekend. 

That's a lot, but then there's still the other things that I'm doing as well. Unstated goals you could call them. I have to keep going on my new healthy lifestyle that's helped me lose 85 lbs. this past year, and get the videos shot and edited for that process. I have to keep writing blog posts (I've written a blog post for every day since September 1st of last year). I also have to get my podcast episode for this month put together and published.

Put all that together, and it seems like a lot, but there's more. I've been doing a lot of reading in my spare time as well, and by reading, I mean listening to audiobooks, which is my favorite way to read, and I've been trying to read as many books as possible. I've been posting about what I read here on the blog a bit, and I mentioned that the most recent Stormlight Archives book was in my holds queue. Well, it finally came up.

I got the book, and started listening to it, and noticed that the runtime of the novel was 57 hours. 57 hours! The average book that I listen to is around 12 hours long. This one was about five times as much.

I don't know what it was about that, but it really depressed me. It made me feel uninterested rather than excited. It should have been great news. I mean, if I had bought the book, it sure would be cool, because I'd have paid the price of one book but gotten about five books worth of story. 

Of course, I didn't buy it, but was checking it out from the library on their app called Libby. That might have been part of the problem. The library lets you check out a book for two weeks. For me, that's generally plenty of time to listen through an entire book. I almost always turn in my books early, because I finish long before my time runs out. Not with The Stormlight Archive, though. It's nigh on impossible to finish one of those books in your two weeks of allotted time. You'd have to treat it like a full-time job, basically, and that's how I felt.

I listened to the book, but only half-heartedly. I knew I wasn't going to make it to the end. I was going to have to put it on hold a second time to be able to finish the thing. That's what I had to do with the third book in the series, Oathbringer, too. When I thought about listening to my book, it made me feel tired. It didn't sound like fun, it sounded like work. Not only work, but work that I was bound not to finish in time. Many days, I just listened to music on my drive to work instead, because I didn't feel like listening to the book.

Yesterday, I crossed over the 50% mark on the book, but my due date was today. I decided to call it. I'd done enough. I made it halfway, which was all I was ever going to do anyway. I made a note of what chapter I was in, and the timestamp of where to find that chapter, and turned the audiobook in a day early.

It kind of feels like taking a load off. Now I can listen to a book that I may actually finish in time, so it won't feel like spinning my wheels. I'm listening to a new book already, and I think I liked the Brandon Sanderson one better, but I still feel better about listening to this new one, because I can actually finish it.

I don't even understand why he would write such a tome. Why would someone do that? Nobody would be upset if he gave them a book that was only three hundred pages. That's pretty standard. If he did, he could have four books for every one that he's selling now. Assuming that your fans would buy all four, then you'd have four times the money from all the sales too. It's just mind boggling.

So, it doesn't make sense for the writer, or for me, the listener either. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think I'll be writing any thousand page fantasy novels anytime soon.

Saxon Five

While I waited for my holds to suddenly all come in all at once, I found the next book in the Bernard Cornwell Saxon Stories series. The good thing about these books is that the later entries in the series tend to have no wait. I can just click Borrow instead of clicking Place Hold and waiting for weeks. So, they're my backup reads. I finish something, then while waiting for the holds to appear, I grab a Saxon Story and start listening.

That's what I did with this one, book five, The Burning Land.

Of course, I got a few hours in, and then all my holds starting becoming available on me, so I had to put the pedal to the medal and finish it before it was too late to check them out. I probably listened to the whole book, all eleven hours, in about three days. I've discovered that I can listen in a web browser as well, so I played it while editing on the news at work too, only pausing when I had to listen to sound from a bite or a package.

This book was right there with the rest of them. It's a great series and Cornwell is a great writer. He's really good with telling a tale of war and suffering filled with palace intrigue and great heroes and villains. This one wasn't the best in the series but it wasn't anywhere close to the worst either. There's still eight more books to go, and I'm looking forward to each new edition as I go. They are fun. 

That's my verdict, and I'll be moving on to the next one soon. Well, not that soon. The Rhythm of War is the book that came through on the holds this time, and that one is 57 hours long, so it's like listening to the first five of these Saxon Tales books. I guess it'll be a while before I'm in need of a book that will let me just click the Borrow button instead of the Place Hold button again.

Dancing With The Alien

I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks recently. I got the Libby app on my phone and put a bunch of things on hold. They tell you how long you will likely have to wait to receive your book, and I used that to base my decision of how many holds to place, but then I learned that that guess of when the book will be delivered is totally wrong. What they should say is that all the books will be delivered to you on the same day, because that has now happened to me about three different times, even the books that it said would take months before they got to me.

Anyhow, something about this system has got me trying desperately to listen to the books as fast as I can. If I don't hurry, the next ten holds will come in, and I'll have to delay all of them again. It's a feast or famine thing. They all come at once, but then none come for two weeks, and then I have nothing to listen to in the interim. So, when they come, I want to be ready for them.

Anyhow, it's caused me to voraciously binge listen to these audiobooks, finding any possible spare moment that I can listen, and adding that to my routine. So, I've made it through a lot of books. Recently, the side novel from the Stormlight Archive series came up in my holds. That is Brandon Sanderson's series of massive tomes that I have been listening to as best as I can. The side novel is called Edgedancer.

Rish found a copy of it at a thrift store a few years ago, and sent it to me with the other various toys coming in a package for me. 

It's an interesting beast, because it's hardcover, but it's tiny. It's the size of a mass market paperback, but it's done as a hardcover.

I think it's because it was just supposed to be a little supplemental short story that Brandon Sanderson was doing to keep his fans happy when he found that he had some extra time during covid. Of course, since he's Brandon Sanderson...

It turned out to be waaaaaay longer than a short story. When he was done, he had himself another novel...a really short novel, but a novel nonetheless. So, he put it out that way.

Now, it's a novel that's short enough that even I could have wrote it. The Stormlight Archive series is know for audiobooks that run over fifty hours in length, but this one was only six hours and twenty-four minutes. So, I made sure to push it to the front of my holds, because I knew I could get through it quickly and clear up another spot in my holds queue.

It wasn't a bad book, but it certainly didn't light any fires in me. It contained none of the characters that we've grown to love in the series. What Sanderson does is tell the main stories of his books, and then intersperse those with vignettes of random characters that we've never heard of before and will never hear of again doing things that are semi-related in far flung corners of his world. This book is just another one of those vignettes that grew too big for its britches.

The main character doesn't appeal to me very much. At the end of the book in an author's note, Sanderson says that she is one of his favorite characters, and upon hearing that I just shrugged. To each his own, I guess. I found her to be annoying, and her character arc did not include becoming less annoying by the end.

The story was fine, but felt inconsequential. I've always hated those vignettes in the Stormlight Archive series, because there's no context for them, and they don't come back, so they feel like a waste of time. There is a little bit of a throughline to them here and there, but for the most part, I've forgotten what they were about before the throughline comes up, so I don't remember to connect the dots. Having a giant-sized vignette didn't make me extra happy or anything.

The biggest problem about the book is that I can't remember all the stuff that we learned about the world/magic/history and so forth since the last book...and I sure as hell don't want to go back and reread them to remember. The fuckers are longer than a standard work week. It might be best to just hold off on all of these books until the entire series is done, then spend a year or two bingeing my way through them, because then I would be able to keep the details in my memory long enough for them to matter when they come back up again later.

The book was fine, but no big deal, in other words. Sanderson is a fine writer, and the story was good, but it didn't move me like the main story has. I have the most recent main contribution to the series called Rhythm of War in my hold queue, and I'll probably be listening to it soon as well. I wonder if it will be a pleasant experience, or as frustrating as this one because I can no longer remember all the details. 

I expect it will be worse than this one, because it's also 57 hours long. Last time, I had to check the book out on two separate occasions to be able to finish listening. Maybe, since I've been bingeing so hardcore recently, that won't be the case this time, but I suspect it will. I'll have to listen as long and hard as I can, then put the book on hold and wait a few months to reach the front of the line to hear the rest.

Game Of Thrones, But Real

I've been talking about books that I own a lot on here, but I thought it might be cool to talk about the books that I'm reading as well. And when I say reading, I mean listening to. I almost never actually read a book with my eyes. It's mostly ears these days.

Sometime last year, my friend suggested that I should check out a book series by Bernard Cornwell called the Saxon Stories. He'd been watching the BBC/Netflix show The Last Kingdom, and knew that it was based on these books, and he thought I might like them. Kind of funny, if you ask me, to recommend books to someone based on the TV show they're made from, but there you go.

The first book was called The Last Kingdom, as was the TV show, and I found it on Audible and gave it a shot. My nephew was loaning me the use of his Audible account at the time, and he had a ton of unused credits, so he said to go ahead and get it.

It was an interesting book. It's a historical fiction novel set in 9th century England, but it could just as easily have been a fantasy epic set in Middle Earth or on Pern or Westeros. It feels very much like that kind of a story. There is even enough mysticism involved with the ancient pagan religions and the early Christianity that you could be convinced that there was magic involved too.

It was a brutal and graphic as any Song of Ice and Fire book as well. I listened, and thanked my lucky stars that I was born in the 20th century and not the 9th. People say these books are like Game of Thrones but real...or realish, anyway. There's a great deal of liberties taken to make a story out of the history.

I enjoyed the book, but then my nephew decided he wanted to use his remaining credits to buy the Expanse series, so there were suddenly none left, and I couldn't continue it that way. So, I didn't listen to any more for a while.

However, while I was on my cruise a few months ago, I wanted something to occupy my time as I lounged around on the pol deck, and my wife told me I should get on Libby again. I had done that library app in the past, but I'd stopped using it for some reason, and hadn't gone back. I was already on the ship, and we were about to sail away to where there was no internet, though, so I hurried and downloaded it and looked for a book to listen to. I settled on the next Bernard Cornwell book in what is now known as the Last Kingdom series instead of the Saxon Stories in the same way that The Game of Thrones TV series kind of renamed the Song of Ice and Fire.

This one was very much in the same vein as the last. Brutal and graphic, but interesting and entertaining. I listened my way through half of the book on the cruise, then finished it up a week or so after getting home. I'd recommend this one as well.

From there, I was off an running. I was on Libby, so I could get any audiobook that they had as long as I was willing to wait my turn. I put holds on what felt like dozens of books, but had to wait a long time for almost all of them. Surprisingly, the Saxon Stories were all available without even a wait. I could just grab the third book, because no one was waiting in line for it. So, I did.

The third book was probably my least favorite so far. It was still very good, but felt more fake and contrived than the others did. I think it was based less on historical fact and more on the author's imagination. From what I understand, there was only the loosest mention of the story of this book in historical annals. I still enjoyed it, but the one that I really liked was the fourth book.

Sword Song felt like the pinnacle of the series so far. It kept me interested and turning pages...and by turning pages, I mean continuing to listen in every spare minute I had...until I reached the end. I think I consumed it in about three or four days. I loved everything about the book.

So, that's where I'm at so far. I just checked out the fifth book, and I'm about an hour or so in. I'm listening to these books in between the other holds that I've made on Libby. It's hard to work out the holds. I asked for a bunch of books, and they claimed it would take a long time for each to come in, but instead, they all came in at the same time, and I had to delay my hold on most of them. That's one of the main reasons I love this series, because the later volumes don't require holds right now, so they're always available if I want them. That makes me happy.

I also started listening to Bernard Cornwell's King Arthur series called the Warlord Chronicles (though I suspect it will be renamed the Winter King series, because it was made into a TV show by that name as well). I'm two books into that one, and I guess I'll talk about those on here too when I get the third and final book.

March Book...uh...Progress?

I've been trying to use the time that I am doing menial tasks and my mind is unoccupied to listen to audiobooks. I got into the habit of listening to YouTube videos instead, and while that can be informative and educational, it usually isn't. It's usually drivel that wastes away the hours of my life and makes me stupider for the effort.

So, from January 1st to February 28th of this year, I listened to fifteen books, getting seven in January and taking it up a notch to eight in February despite it being the shortest month. So, how did March go? Well, let's say I kicked it down a notch...or six. Here's what I managed in March:

1. Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

That's right. I only managed two books in the entire month. Pretty weak if you ask me. The real problem was that the books didn't really appeal to me nearly as much as the ones I read in January and February. Particularly the Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski. I absolutely loved those books, and swallowed them whole like a...well, like me with a cheesecake or a pizza.

Pawn of Prophecy was recommended to me by my nephew, and it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great like the Sapkowski books were. Maybe as I get further into the series I'll appreciate them more. Right now, the books have a terrible problem of blueballing the reader over and over. The main character is the chosen one of prophecy, and he is being guided along by ageless sorcerers who know all the answers to his questions but mostly refuse to answer. "I'll tell you when you are older and ready to know the answers" they say over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Maybe in the next book, the kid will be old enough that we can allow the reader to know what the hell is going on.

Also, the guy who reads the David Eddings books gets on my nerves. He's like those Hispanic TV anchors who speak in perfect English,  but when a person with a Hispanic name comes up in the news they drop into perfectly accented Spanish forcing you to look up from your phone because you are wondering if they somehow switched out one anchor for another while you weren't looking. All the names in Pawn of Prophecy were pronounced with a strong accent that sounds legit until you realize that it's all made up words anyway, so pronouncing them with your regular American accent is just as valid as this stupid thing he's doing with the rolled Rs. 

It was never more pronounced than in the prologue, which was so dense with character names and place names that I could barely stand to listen to it. It was also written in a way as to sound scriptural or old-worldy mythical, so it was even more difficult to understand. I really wish that fantasy authors would ditch the trope of the prologue, because prologues suck. Work the info into the regular text. I'd prefer someone saying, "As you know, Bob, half of Kal Torak's body was obliterated when he touched the Orb of Aldur," than having to sit through a huge prologue where I am told the whole legend in its entirety.

I'm going to continue on with the David Eddings series nonetheless, because it wasn't too bad, and my nephew bought all five of the books with his credits on Audible, so I think I owe it to him.

The other book, Brave New World...well, the less said about that the better. Suffice it to say that I hated that book. If there was a physical copy of it that I could destroy, I would have pulled a Rish Outfield and thrown it with all my might against the wall. It's a classic, though, so I soldiered through. At least I can say that I finished it. It has some interesting ideas about what a dystopia can be, and how wrong we might possibly take our society. Sadly, some people thought it was a guidebook and not a warning, so we've put as many of the possible horrors into practice that our modern science can, and we're on the verge of incorporating many more soon. The execution of the story, however, left a lot to be desired.

Because I didn't appreciate either of the books that I read this month very much, I slipped back into my old habits of wasting time on YouTube videos and other less worthy garbage. Hopefully I can change my ways back now that I've made it through those two books and can move on to others. I hope to be back with a better report for April.

Here's where I stand at the 1/4 mark of the year:

1. Memory’s Legion by James S.A. Corey 
2. A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony 
3. The Source of Magic by Piers Anthony 
4. Castle Roogna by Piers Anthony 
5. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski 
6. The Sword of Destiny Andrzej Sapkowski 
7. The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett 
8. Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski 
9. The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett 
10. The Time of Contempt by Andrzej Sapkowski 
11. Baptism of Fire by Andrzej Sapkowski 
12. The Tower of the Swallows by Andrzej Sapkowski 
13. The Lady of the Lake by Andrzej Sapkowski 
14. Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski 
15. Centaur Isle by Piers Anthony
16. Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings
17. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Looking at that list, I should be able to read around 68 books on the year, however, not if I have a bunch of months like I did this past month. If I stopped having months like I did this past month, I could read many more. If I got eight books a month for the whole year, that would be 96. So, I guess we'll see where I manage to take this.

Book Progress

February is over, and here are the books I read this month. A whole lotta Witcher this time.

1. Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski
2. The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
3. The Time of Contempt by Andrzej Sapkowski
4. Baptism of Fire by Andrzej Sapkowski
5. The Tower of the Swallows by Andrzej Sapkowski
6. The Lady of the Lake by Andrzej Sapkowski
7. Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski
8. Centaur Isle by Piers Anthony

That puts me at 15 for the year. My full list for the year so far is:

1. Memory’s Legion by James S.A. Corey
2. A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony
3. The Source of Magic by Piers Anthony
4. Castle Roogna by Piers Anthony
5. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
6. The Sword of Destiny Andrzej Sapkowski
7. The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
8. Blood of Elves by Andrzej Sapkowski
9. The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett
10. The Time of Contempt by Andrzej Sapkowski
11. Baptism of Fire by Andrzej Sapkowski
12. The Tower of the Swallows by Andrzej Sapkowski
13. The Lady of the Lake by Andrzej Sapkowski
14. Season of Storms by Andrzej Sapkowski
15. Centaur Isle by Piers Anthony

I got one more book in despite having a shorter month. Of course, I loved the Witcher books so much that I was listening to them with every single spare moment that I had, so that makes a big difference. We'll see what I can manage in March now that I have no more Witcher books to listen to.

Book Goal

Despite the title of the post, I don't really have a book goal. I mean, I don't have a particular number that I'm shooting for on the year or anything. I just decided this month that I would stop wasting my free time listening to things that only bring me down and make me angry, and instead get back to listening to audiobooks that make me happy.

I have a lot of time that I could be listening to books, and I feel like doing so would likely help me with inspiration for my creative endeavors as well.

So, here's my list of books I managed to read this past month.

1. Memory’s Legion by James S.A. Corey
2. A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony
3. The Source of Magic by Piers Anthony
4. Castle Roogna by Piers Anthony
5. The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
6. The Sword of Destiny Andrzej Sapkowski
7. The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

I feel like that's a pretty good start. Most people in the world don't read seven books a year, and plenty don't read that many in ten years, so I should be somewhat proud of that. 

 

Now that I've gotten started, we’ll see what I can manage next month.