The Elfish Gene

Holly, Carlie, Jack and I went to the local library a few days ago and while all of them were off looking for books to occupy their time this summer I was browsing the stand with the new hardcover books on it while I held Jack. I came across this book about a guy who was addicted to the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game as a teenager and it looked like a good read.

In the end it was a decent enough book, but I found much of it to be repetitive. He told a lot of stories that were very similar just with altered details such as one time he was dealing with an elf character and the next time it was a dragon. Overall the message of the book was good, don't let things such as Dungeons & Dragons take over your every waking moment, but there wasn't a whole lot of meat to the story.

Wheel of Time Book 12: Now Three Books

This news is at least a week or two old, and I meant to post about it back when it was fresh on my mind, but I can post about it now that I have a few spare minutes in my day.

The Wheel of Time series has been ongoing for years, and it is one of my favorite series of all time, only recently surpassed by Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. I've been waiting for Book 12 of Wheel of Time for almost 4 years and it was scheduled to be released this coming October as I have mentioned previously here on the blog.

As it turns out while working on the book, Brandon Sanderson, the replacement author for Robert Jordan, has discovered that he cannot possibly write the story in the way it was intended in any less than 800,000 words. To put that into perspective consider that most mass market books are published at about 200,000 words at most.

So, with this revelation the editors and publishers decided to release the book as three parts, the first of which will be titled The Gathering Storm and will be released in mid-November of this year. The following two books should be released in November 2010 and November 2011 respectively unless something crazy happens.

Here are some pertinent links to the information:

1. Tor Books Press Release

2. Comments on the Situation by Brandon Sanderson

3. Interview with Harriet (Robert Jordan's wife and editor)

In the end, I think I am okay with this situation. I simply don't want to wait past the end of this year to get some more of the story that I can read. If it takes three more books to finish things the right way, then by all means, I will buy each and every one of those three books. Besides, I'm a huge Brandon Sanderson fan, and I'll take all of his writing that I can get.

Wheel of Time Reading Project

One of the most anticipated book in the fantasy genre is being released after 4 years of waiting this coming October. It is Memory of Light by Robert Jordan, the 12th and final book in the Wheel of Time series. Robert Jordan passed away recently, but one of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, is finishing the book for him and I can't wait!

So, in celebration of this epic release in October my goal is to reread the entire series and finish just in time to read the 12th book when it comes out. That means 11 books and a whole lot of pages before I am done. Here is the breakdown of pages for the entire series:

1. The Eye of the World — 814
2. The Great Hunt — 681
3. The Dragon Reborn — 674
4. The Shadow Rising — 980
5. The Fires of Heaven — 964
6. Lord of Chaos — 986
7. A Crown of Swords — 855
8. The Path of Daggers — 704
9. Winter's Heart — 766
10. Crossroads of Twilight — 704
11. Knife of Dreams — 1000

So, that makes for a grand total of 9,128 pages that I need to get through before probably about October 1st at the very latest just to play it safe. Rumor has it that book 12 is going to run north of 1300 pages on its own however, so that should be an epic read in its own right. There are a total of 255 full days remaining before October 1st, which means I need to average at least 35 pages per day in order to meet my self-made challenge. I think that is doable, very doable.

Wish me luck!

#77: Fahrenheit 451

Well, I finally started working on my ultimate goal to read the Top 100 novels of all time this past week. I started with a book I already had a feeling would be enjoyable for me and that I had been wanting to read for a very long time. So, I went to the Provo Library last Saturday and picked up a copy of Fahrenheit 451 to read. It's only about 160 pages, so I finished all in one day, but it was a pretty good read. I can't say that I know everything about the message it was trying to convey, but for me the thing I got out of it most was the idea that free-thinking should not be suppressed. Yes, sometime free-thinking can be dangerous, dependent upon the person and what their thinking inspires them to do, but a large majority of thinking for ourselves and forming our own opinions on what is good, what is bad, what is worth remembering, etc allows us as an individual to avoid monotony and stagnation. It is a fine balance that all of us have to be careful of when filling our minds with thoughts. We have to make sure that our free-thinking isn't going to really cause a lot of detriment or harm to those who are around us.

The wife in Fahrenheit 451 was a slave to her visual stimulus and didn't want to think for herself, she just wanted to go along with the craze or fad of the time and be happy with that. Guy Montag on the other hand started to question what he was about, who he was, and what else there could be to make him happy. That was the biggest idea in the book to me. You have to make sure that you are happy because otherwise you have no point in being alive.

So, as the 77th book on the list, I was pleased with the outcome. Now, I just have to find another book that is actually available from the library to read next. It seems most of them are always checked out. However, it will need to wait until I finish a fantasy novel I'm reading, Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.