by Kevin Coolidge
What are you reading? Is it something new? Something borrowed? Something tried and true? I get asked what I am reading a lot, partially because I work in a bookstore, and probably because I’m always reading something. Working in a bookstore for an avid reader is a lot like a diabetic working in a candy store. There’s always more than I can possibly have time to read, and I’m still adding books to my “to read” pile, but any book that falls into my favorite category is a book that is worth being reread. Here are some of the books that made that list.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss: I originally read this in the summer of 2008, and devoured this 700 page book in the course of two evenings, staying up late into the night. Name of the Wind is everything a fantasy reader wants to read---rich, complex characters, believable action, poetic writing, and great storytelling. The second book in the trilogy was just released in the beginning of March, and I put aside the book I was reading and dived into Wise Man’s Fear. If the third had been finished, I would have started it right then, but I settled for rereading The Name of the Wind…
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi: I recently read that this book would be made into a movie and that reminded me of how much I loved the book. “John Perry did two things on his seventy-fifth birthday. First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army.” It’s the best new science fiction I’ve read in the last five years: it has the feel of a classic, but a modern perspective and some imaginative new ideas. I grew up reading and rereading science fiction by Robert Heinlein and Joe Haldeman and it’s obvious that John Scalzi did too. He shows us that the universe isn’t near as big as what we’d like to think, and not nearly as friendly either…
American Gods by Neil Gaiman: It’s the tenth year anniversary of this American, road trip fantasy, and it was well worth hitching another ride. America is a land of immigrants, and they all brought their own gods, demons, and beliefs, and yet America is a bad place for gods. Americans love progress and are too willing to give away their power. Meet Shadow, a man with a past just released from prison. All he wants to do is live a quiet life, but opportunities come hard for an ex con. He is soon pulled into a battle between the gods of old, and the new gods of America. He’s hired by a mysterious man named Wednesday, who knows more about him than any stranger should. Things are about to get very wyrd…
Rereading can give you that opportunity to notice the small details you may have missed during your first read, especially if you were rushing to the end. These are just some of my many favorites that I’ve enjoyed more than once. I’m looking forward to some of my new favorites that I haven’t had time to reread … yet, but look forward to visiting again and again…
Read once? Or Read it again? Drop me an email at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com and let me know. Miss a past column, or would just like to read your favorite again? Visit the blog at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com A cat has nine lives, and has lots of time to reread, so Hobo the cat chooses to reread “Hobo Finds A Home” as good the ninth time as the first. Can’t get enough Hobo? Look for Hobo, the greeting card coming soon from Stonehenge Cards.
Showing posts with label wise man's fear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wise man's fear. Show all posts
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wise Man's Fear
Although some would disagree, book people will tell you that sometimes it’s nice to read a book again. Reasons to re-read are numerous, and often overlapping – to indulge in the pleasure of a familiar, beloved experience, like comfort food; to obtain a new perspective on a book you read years ago; to review the material for an academic reason; to refresh your memory on the plot and characters because a new installment of a series has been published.
Re-reading a book is one thing; re-using a column is, perhaps, another. Nevertheless, I hope you will forgive me for re-visiting a book review I wrote in July 2008. This, then, is a piece of that review:
Sometimes, the superlatives aren’t enough. … I have been accused of tending towards hyberbole. I have a hard time holding myself back, though: I say “H-U-G-E!”, drawing out the letters for emphasis; I say “awesome” and “amazing” quite a bit; I also like “fantastic” and “fabulous”. As a person who loves life and feels things deeply, it’s not unusual that my descriptions would be on the dramatic end of the spectrum.
This presents a bit of a problem, on occasion, when reviewing books. I love books. It’s easy to give all kinds of books an enthusiastic thumbs-up, employing any one of my favorite words noted above. But then what to do when a truly special book comes along? How to explain that this book, this author, the writing here, set themselves apart from anything else you’ve read in a long time?
Well, is that enough build-up, or have I exceeded my exaggeration threshold once again? If you can’t hear me on this, then look at what authors Ursula LeGuin, Terry Brooks, Anne McCaffrey, and Orson Scott Card – to name just a few – have to say about Patrick Rothfuss’s debut novel, The Name of the Wind. In just the short time since the first printing in hardcover in April 2007, Rothfuss has garnered praise from major newspapers all across the U.S. and Europe, as well as earning multiple-starred reviews in The New York Times, the Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and The Onion A.V. Club. Reviewers didn’t just intimate that Rothfuss was the next J.K. Rowling or J.R.R. Tolkien, they crowed it from the rooftops.
Just as I reassured readers in that past review, so I must emphasize again that, even if you don’t normally read a lot of ‘epic fantasy’, you may very well “still enjoy The Name of the Wind and the books to follow in ‘The Kingkiller Chronicles.’ Rothfuss’s writing is so mature, so capable, so smooth, that it transcends genre. In the same way that Tolkien wrote his Middle Earth books inspired by the legends of Classic Literature that he taught, so too, Rothfuss’s story reads like a modern telling of the heroes of old, the story of a man who became a legend in his own time. Rothfuss’s protagonist Kvothe reminds me of a Ulysses or Achilles, or more recently of Tolkien’s Aragorn. His story is by turns sentimental and sweet, intriguing, sad and desperate, triumphant, exciting, frightening. Both plot and the telling kept me turning pages well into the night.”
At the end of my review that July, over two years ago, I encouraged readers to sink their teeth into a wonderful new book, the start of an exciting, satisfying new trilogy. My last sentence was a blasé little warning: “The only problem… [is] waiting for Rothfuss’s second installment, The Wise Man’s Fear,” which at that time was due out the following April of 2009, less than a year from my first read of The Name of the Wind and my subsequent review.
The next time I enjoy the first book by a new author as much as that, I’ll remember to bite my tongue. April of 2009 arrived, and no book from Rothfuss. Also, no news, no word from him or his publisher, nothing from the distributors. Finally, after two or three months of wondering what on earth happened, news showed up on Rothfuss’s blog. He admitted to his fans that the pressure had been incredible: for years, he was simply a creative writing professor at a small university in Wisconsin; then, suddenly, he was internationally known. True hardcover first editions of The Name of the Wind are now selling for thousands of dollars. Rothfuss and his wife were expecting their first child. Bookstores, fans, his publisher and his agent were demanding that he go on a wide book tour. The re-writes of his second book had slowed to a crawl. Rothfuss asked his fans for forgiveness and patience. The part of that appeal that won me over was how Rothfuss explained that, as a reader, he truly understood how it feels to wait on the next installment in a series you love, but that as a writer, he was not going to release this second book until it met his expectations for himself.
After another missed release date in the early summer of 2010, we are finally at the gate for the real release of The Wise Man’s Fear, on March 1, 2011. Now, of course, I will have to go back to re-read the first story of Kvothe, to see how he got to the point where the second book opens in March. Was it worth the wait? Join the legions of Rothfuss fans to find out.
Hobo assures you that it will also be worth the wait for his second book. Want to re-read other book reviews in the meantime? Check out our blog at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com
Re-reading a book is one thing; re-using a column is, perhaps, another. Nevertheless, I hope you will forgive me for re-visiting a book review I wrote in July 2008. This, then, is a piece of that review:
Sometimes, the superlatives aren’t enough. … I have been accused of tending towards hyberbole. I have a hard time holding myself back, though: I say “H-U-G-E!”, drawing out the letters for emphasis; I say “awesome” and “amazing” quite a bit; I also like “fantastic” and “fabulous”. As a person who loves life and feels things deeply, it’s not unusual that my descriptions would be on the dramatic end of the spectrum.
This presents a bit of a problem, on occasion, when reviewing books. I love books. It’s easy to give all kinds of books an enthusiastic thumbs-up, employing any one of my favorite words noted above. But then what to do when a truly special book comes along? How to explain that this book, this author, the writing here, set themselves apart from anything else you’ve read in a long time?
Well, is that enough build-up, or have I exceeded my exaggeration threshold once again? If you can’t hear me on this, then look at what authors Ursula LeGuin, Terry Brooks, Anne McCaffrey, and Orson Scott Card – to name just a few – have to say about Patrick Rothfuss’s debut novel, The Name of the Wind. In just the short time since the first printing in hardcover in April 2007, Rothfuss has garnered praise from major newspapers all across the U.S. and Europe, as well as earning multiple-starred reviews in The New York Times, the Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and The Onion A.V. Club. Reviewers didn’t just intimate that Rothfuss was the next J.K. Rowling or J.R.R. Tolkien, they crowed it from the rooftops.
Just as I reassured readers in that past review, so I must emphasize again that, even if you don’t normally read a lot of ‘epic fantasy’, you may very well “still enjoy The Name of the Wind and the books to follow in ‘The Kingkiller Chronicles.’ Rothfuss’s writing is so mature, so capable, so smooth, that it transcends genre. In the same way that Tolkien wrote his Middle Earth books inspired by the legends of Classic Literature that he taught, so too, Rothfuss’s story reads like a modern telling of the heroes of old, the story of a man who became a legend in his own time. Rothfuss’s protagonist Kvothe reminds me of a Ulysses or Achilles, or more recently of Tolkien’s Aragorn. His story is by turns sentimental and sweet, intriguing, sad and desperate, triumphant, exciting, frightening. Both plot and the telling kept me turning pages well into the night.”
At the end of my review that July, over two years ago, I encouraged readers to sink their teeth into a wonderful new book, the start of an exciting, satisfying new trilogy. My last sentence was a blasé little warning: “The only problem… [is] waiting for Rothfuss’s second installment, The Wise Man’s Fear,” which at that time was due out the following April of 2009, less than a year from my first read of The Name of the Wind and my subsequent review.
The next time I enjoy the first book by a new author as much as that, I’ll remember to bite my tongue. April of 2009 arrived, and no book from Rothfuss. Also, no news, no word from him or his publisher, nothing from the distributors. Finally, after two or three months of wondering what on earth happened, news showed up on Rothfuss’s blog. He admitted to his fans that the pressure had been incredible: for years, he was simply a creative writing professor at a small university in Wisconsin; then, suddenly, he was internationally known. True hardcover first editions of The Name of the Wind are now selling for thousands of dollars. Rothfuss and his wife were expecting their first child. Bookstores, fans, his publisher and his agent were demanding that he go on a wide book tour. The re-writes of his second book had slowed to a crawl. Rothfuss asked his fans for forgiveness and patience. The part of that appeal that won me over was how Rothfuss explained that, as a reader, he truly understood how it feels to wait on the next installment in a series you love, but that as a writer, he was not going to release this second book until it met his expectations for himself.
After another missed release date in the early summer of 2010, we are finally at the gate for the real release of The Wise Man’s Fear, on March 1, 2011. Now, of course, I will have to go back to re-read the first story of Kvothe, to see how he got to the point where the second book opens in March. Was it worth the wait? Join the legions of Rothfuss fans to find out.
Hobo assures you that it will also be worth the wait for his second book. Want to re-read other book reviews in the meantime? Check out our blog at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com
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