Just a Lifetime

I'll just be discussing what I remember instead of rereading---or more likely lurking vicariously to be extra sure I won't spoil anything.

Some of y'all might be interested in Sylas K Barrett's "Reading The Wheel of Time" series on tor.com, which shares his thoughts, reactions and theories as he goes through his first read of the series. Unfortunately I suspect you will soon overtake his pace---he spent about four and a half months on The Eye of the World, and is now approaching the end of The Great Hunt. Edit to add: They seem to be pretty successful keeping the comments to those posts spoiler-free, or at least hiding any spoilers in the comments.

This sounds similar to the Political Compass, which supplements a left vs. right "economic scale" with authoritarianism vs. libertarianism on a "social scale". The earliest example of this sort of thing that I've stumbled across (from the '50s) is in Robert Daniels's The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia, which used for its two axes "hard" vs. "soft" and "mass-interest" vs. "[ruling-]class-interest". Edit to clarify: My intent in this post is not to explain or advocate the Political Compass or similar approaches, but just to point out the site and refer those interested to the extensive explanations and FAQs it provides. For those hungry for more scholarly approaches to this sort of thing, the site cites Wilhelm Reich, Hans Eysenck and Theodor Adorno as influences.

Hello and welcome to the Shard! We're happy to have you. I'd say you should feel free to go ahead and plug the Tolkien forum you mention. It's been many years since I've actually read Tolkien, though I had fun over the past few months recalling The Silmarillion through tor.com's Silmarillion Primer.

Hello and welcome to the Shard. We're happy to have you. Although I've never gone down the Reddit rabbithole myself, I'm still familiar with the GIFT. What Sanderson books have you read and what was your favorite among them?

I think I've heard this discussed in interviews, and managed to find a mention in the Brief Cases Reddit Q&A from June:

Do characters with seven different names count seven times? Asking for Silmarillion.

The delay is unusual, both because Jim has historically been very quick and because of how optimistic he's been about finishing. At Dragon Con 2017 he was forecasting that Peace Talks would be done by the end of 2017 ("six to eight weeks after finishing Brief Cases") and in the Brief Cases Reddit AMA this past June he was aiming to finish Peace Talks before his wedding this autumn. So it doesn't seem to be like the Ghost Story delay, where the issue was artistic rather than logistical... Ah, this thread inspired me to check the Jim-Butcher.com Upcoming Works page, where just yesterday they added a "Why’s Peace Talks Taking So Long?" explanation, which does go all the way back to the divorce and The Death Of Frost in 2015. (I believe this is the first 2018 update of that upcoming works page.) They have also posted a new DF short story, Christmas Eve, as a gift for fans. Anyway, I remain optimistic that future waits will not be so long now that these issues have been worked through. Jim was a marvel when alternating between Codex Alera and Dresden Files volumes, so hopefully something similar will develop with Cinder Spires. I'm not aware of any other novel besides The Olympian Affair planned in between Peace Talks and Mirror, Mirror, but I haven't been keeping very close watch.

Hello and welcome! Have an upvote or two and some links to threads dedicated to book recommendations and related discussions: What Are You Reading, Part 2 Supernatural Books? Having Fantasy withdrawal symptoms The best author Please recommend me fantasy novels with Female protagonist as main character Looking For Good Books Strangest Book You Have Ever Read? Recommended Stuff You Didn't Like I hope I'm not going overboard with that list...

Get some sleep---it will help you more than cramming.

It's So Meta, Even This Acronym

"Egwene" rhymes with "pain"... a missed opportunity? Roses are red Spoiling's a sin But I have to mention I can't stand Gawyn That there's the limits of my poetical capabilities.

Here's hoping for a Dresdenful 2019. Well, it will be for me in any event, since I still have Brief Cases to read. I'm also very much looking forward to more Cinder Spires in the years to come.

Favorite film(s)?

The Prophet Qa-Sepel is coming to town... I just bought a ticket for a Legendary Pink Dots show in a couple of weeks, which will be my first time seeing them live. While I'm not entirely sure what to expect, this upcoming event has motivated me to start revisiting some of their vast catalog. I could probably spend the entire next two weeks listening to their recordings and still not get through them all, but I expect to focus on my favorites, especially The Maria Dimension, Crushed Velvet Apocalypse and The Golden Age. Edit to add: I discovered that Amanda Palmer has created a Spotify playlist of 30 of her favorite Legendary Pink Dots / Ka-Spel songs. I'll be listening to that tomorrow. (Palmer has many claims to fame, but perhaps most on these forums may be more familiar with her husband, Neil Gaiman.)

I tend to look for positives in anything I read, so I rated each of these 3/5 stars immediately after finishing them (and never picked up the second volume in each series). But as time goes on my memories become less fond. I got an advance review copy of Without Warning by John Birmingham in '09, back when I had the time to write reviews as a hobby---here's my review. Around the same time Pat Rothfuss recommended The Magicians by Lev Grossman. By the time I forced myself through it my reviewing days were over, but I ranted for longer than usual in my reading log: Jim Butcher recommended Fated by Benedict Jacka, which didn't impress me. The (urban fantasy) worldbuilding seemed thoroughly half-baked, to the point that I never managed any suspension of disbelief. Although the story is supposedly set in London, I got so little sense of place that it might as well have been Poughkeepsie. (Perhaps not coincidentally Butcher's Dresden Files have also had trouble managing an urban setting, especially in the earlier volumes. I nearly gave up on The Dresden Files after the third book, but ended up enjoying them much more starting from book four.) In film, I was looking forward to The Death of Stalin (since I like The Thick of It) but did not enjoy it when I finally had a chance to watch it in August. It's especially unimpressive when compared with Burnt by the Sun.

A couple that come to my mind are The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead's Town by Amos Tutuola and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. It's been many years since I read them, though I recall very much liking the latter while finding the former more interesting than enjoyable. I'll round out a top three with The Severed Wing by Martin Gidron, which I described as "somewhat Vonnegutian" in my review. Perhaps a quick honorable mention to some of Neal Stephenson's earlier books---I'm thinking of Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, especially the role of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind in their climaxes.

Hi Pastor Chris, welcome to the Shard. How far are you into the Stormlight Archive? I always recommend that folks read Warbreaker before Words of Radiance, due to certain crossover characters (including my favourite, so I won't name names just yet). Not yet... I'm scheduled to move to Liverpool in just about four months if all goes well, so I'm taking this opportunity to practice spelling 'favourite' with a 'u'. PS. @Overlord Jebus or @Barbarian AL might know some other UK Sharders. I don't see too many others on The Map...

If being harassed and abused by the Forsaken and other Darkfriends with higher status than you is your idea of "fun", well, enjoy. While you might aspire to the top of the pile, you'd necessarily have to start out on the bottom, as everyone's new punching bag. The nice thing about the Black Ajah, of course, is that in addition to secretly being Black you get to join a second Ajah to keep up appearances. Would that be Green? My recollection is that Moghedien was the weakest of the female Forsaken, with Lanfear being the strongest female ever. I guess I'm piling on by being yet another guy aligned with the Brown Ajah. Though, "since it's fantasy", perhaps I can fantasize about joining the Asha'man post-Cleansing while still not being Turned by Taim?

Existence noted. Welcome to the Shard! What brings you here?

Yeah, that's about as obviously nonsensical as Internet nonsense can get, not least because the time is being spent revising, rather than writing. Unfortunately, The Invested Beard, you seem to be applying for a position that has already been filled.