guess

When does the hugo packet come out? This is the first year I am voting? there are alot of good reads in it.

delete my last post. I see I already posted this and for some reason the post was bad. Sorry.

The Time Travellers Wife is the best audiobook I ever listened to. The movie sucked. The quality of the performances was outstanding. The audiobook of 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy was great too. The movie for that one was lousy also. I think those were the two best audio books I listened to based on quality of the presentation and the quality of the book combined.

As Brandon has noted on his blog... the entire series is up for a Hugo Award. TOR has put the ENTIRE series in the Hugo packet. So if you sign up for Gencon as a 'voting member' which is roughly $44 (exchange rate since its in England this year). You get the entire series for $44. You also get the 4 other nominees as well. So if you want to get into the WoT... here is a way to get it cheap.

by bookmarks this means you can't sync where you left off? I have a droid phone, ipad, and a windows pc. So if i get to a certain point in an audiobook, i cant resume on another device? i have not used audiobooks? how hard is it to find where you left off? Can i get to a specific chapter easily? There are periods where I dont audio alot of books. I go into phases. can you set up email alerts saying 'you need to use or lose your tokens?' so i dont forget?

Brandon Sanderson probably isn't that rare of a name. So though this is funny, I doubt this reference is to this Brandon.

I thought I read somewhere that your monthly token can't be used for all books. Are there many books that you can't use your token on? How long can you stockpile tokens for? There may not be a book every month that I want and I may not want 12 audio books in a year.

just got a jawbone up24. Looks like it had more features than fitbit. The top of the line fitbit got pulled from the market. For those who dont know its a bracelet that tracks your movement, calorie, burn, sleep cycle and charts it for you. Im dieting, so i figure Id give it a shot. Only takes height/weight/gender for calculating calorie burn. Doesn't do body fat percentage. This is dissappoint because the sites I have visited that do take body fat percentage, and I compare to those that don't. They over-estimate calorie burn. The sleep part of it is interesting, apparently I woke up 3 times last night and only had 2 hours of really deep sleep. Not sure how accurate this. Its kind of neat so far. Make me want to move so I can get to 10,000 steps/day (I Have a desk job). Its more of a toy than a necessity. The new one is pretty expensive ($150 at best buy). anyone else use these? Im on a diet. Down 20 pounds so far this year. I have been doing p90x3 (new 30 minute version starting week 11 out of 13) and I do hot yoga 5 nights/week.

I listen to alot of audio books. I like them because I don't have to sit when I do it. It helps motivate me to move. I like them when the weather is nice. I like to listen to them when I ride my bike, take a walk, do the elliptical. Motivates me to go longer because I want to find out what happens next. Audible is $15/month and you get 1 book. Are these new releases? What do I get for my service fee? Though I listen to audio books, I doubt I would need more than 12-15 audio books/year. However, I dont want to sign up for this if its just a fee, then I have to buy all the books I want anyway. Ill just buy the audio books or get some out of the library.

The Time Travelers Wife is the best audio book I ever listened to. The story has two characters in the first person and the audio book has a male and female actor voicing each. The quality of the audio book is outstanding. The movie is garbage. Its not just that its a good book, but the quality of the reading is terrific. I listen to alot of audio books. I like to listen to them in my car and when I take walks/ride my bike/workout, etc... It motivates me to move since I get to listen to a good book. I can tell the difference in the quality of the readings. This is the best one I have listened to. This is from a guy who does not like romance.

congratulations. I discovered you when I found out you were picked to finish the WoT. I think alot of WoT fans are now Brandon Sanderson fans. Not sure I helped. I bought the audio. I am avoiding the forums here since I wont get to audio it for a few weeks. Its been cold in DC. I like to audio books when I take walks for exercise.

I can't guarantee Ill make it. The post was also for Brandon's team. I don't know what airport he is flying into. Dulles would be easier. If you come from the airport you can take the free express part of the dulles toll road that has no traffic. If he is flying into Reagan getting out west is going to be tough that time of day.

as an fyi to anyone coming from out of town... there is often alot of traffic in this area even at 7 pm on a weeknight. just park anywhere at the mall. there will be maps. you can't miss the B&N. Its 2 stories. That bookstore is usually pretty busy. one other thing... how spoiler free are these events? I won't have read the book by then. Ill be getting the audio book and Im going to save it for warm weather. I like to listen to warm books when I ride my bike or take long walks around the neighborhood. Too cold now for that.

This got me curious. What NYT article do you think he is referring to? I live in Northern Virginia, so I can't make out it out to this. I don't know if its a secret so I can wait until afterwards. Anyone know if this speech will make it on youtube? Brandon is good about letting fans post his stuff on the web. This got me curious.

This are very good. I discovered Brandon when he was selected to finish WoT. Like most WoT fans I was 'who is this kid?' Though your writing style is very different than RJs, I think you were the best choice to finish the series. The series needed a real fan who was also an experienced writer. It needed an author who has the right personality to collaborate with Team Jordan. To be honest, I had issues with a fair amount of what you did in the series , but that is understandable. Your writing style and the way you compose words is very different than RJ. I have pictured what it would be like for RJ to finish the Stormlight archive when I read A Memory of Light and knew that his style would contrast with yours alot. These posts are outstanding. For anyone really interesting in what Robert Jordan was like, I highly recommend going to youtube and searching for 'team jordan' there is a session at Jordancon where they talked about RJ and some of the stories are hysterical. Hey peter: how about a blog post about your role in this? I have a hunch you have had a more important role than most people realize?

hope he doesn't have to pay german taxes. i heard they are typically about 50% of income.

I just googled the usa today list. going #21 is very good. Fantasy books tend to only go really high when its a series and anticipation has built up over a number of books. sounds like you guys are dissappointed. you shouldn't be.

i devoured 5 of these books about 15 years ago. I vaguely remember anything about them. Its rather telling. The story was a page turner, but not memorable.

i am surprised that no women on here have said 'Id like to date brandon' or possibly peter. Yeah I know their married. just a little poke at him...

that was a typo. I dont see an edit option. my bad.

That was the first week. I noticed it was 7th the second week. Congratulations Brandon. Two #1 bestsellers in the same year and 2 Hugos. I guess it won't be long until he keeps a house in the Hamptons. On a related topic, I have a question about the NY Bestseller list.... Can a book be on both young adult and the regular bestseller list? Not sure if the Young Adult is there because they have lower sales. I noticed that there are 2 series by 2 authors that have been on the list for 40+ weeks and pretty much dominate it. Not sure if Harry Potter would be on both. Anyone know how sales of the fiction bestsellers relates to the young adult bestsellers in terms of numbers? I am just curious. I wasn't sure which forum to put this in. I am not asking the question to try to rain on Brandon's parade. He now has 2 #1 bestsellers in 1 year.

I think the publisher has most of the say on your book tour since they are paying for it. Many authors don't get paid book tourts. Considering that Brandon lives in Utah, the cost to fly him down to the south east on top of everywhere eles he is going may be more than the publisher is willing to pay for. Plus you have to factor in time for the book tours. It is time away from family and its hard for authors to get any writing done when they are on tour. So it affects their ability to produce. I think book tours are literally, land, either go to hotel and check in or go directly to bookstore and be ready to be the center of attention for hours. Then either stay over night and fly out the next morning or catch a latenight flight to the next city. They have to factor in time for this since flights take time and the publisher probably doesn't want to pick up extra hotel days and extra days to cover food. Im not in the publishing industry. It is what I have gotten off of author blogs.

Elona: Roguelike rpg with tile based cartoon graphics. The Elona+ variant is the one being currently developed. Again its free. When you google 'elona' and go to the wiki, there will be a link to Elona+ (its just elona with more of the world developed and new features) .Download site is in japanese. Internet Explorer should give you an option to translate the page. Dont be fooled by the low end graphics. The game is insanely detailed. It is also evil. They saying about this game is that 'this game hates you and will make you hate it'. Its not fair. you will die in unfair ways. Highly recommended that you not have any readily available firearms present or you may shoot your screen. The game actually laughs and makes fun of you when you die. It tries to kill you. Has an only chat that makes fun of other people when they die (but its single player). The interface takes some getting used to it. It uses keyboard mainly. At first its not entirely obvious. See wiki for starter guide and about the keys. you can be stoned to death for playing a piano in a tavern. you can have alien eggs get into your body from drinking from the wrong well and then burst out of you and kill you (this evil. you wont know when you do this and it wont happen for a while so you waste time). the game is just mean. Its also what makes it fun and very challenging. If you see the 'lets play' on youtube. they all talk abou how hard and unfair and evil the game is.

GOG stands for good old games. They sell older games. Many of the games they sell are available as abandonware. Patents run out after a period of time, so its not pirating. GoG does a good job of taking old DOS games and getting them to run properly in DOS box on windows boxes. That being said alot of the games they sell you can find with a quick google search on abandonware sites and many are already plugged into dos box. For those who dont know, dos box is a dos emulator for windows. Older games wont run on the new windows operating system. its pretty easy to get games to run on this yourself. There are youtube videos. That being said GoG is a quality site. They actually give the class game Ultima 4 away for free and its all set up in Dos Box.

Tyrants Law by Daniel Abraham: 3rd book in his dagger and coin. I really like this series. Its original and its loaded with regular people. After reading abraham, I find I get bored with 'hero' type super dude charcters that kick butt in other series. His books are loaded with people you can identify with who make realistic and believable decisions. The plots are unexpected and make sense. Left Hand of God (audio): Really liked this book. Creative. Dark, original. Has a twist on religion. Highly recommended. Reamde (audio) by Neal Stephenson: do not recommend. Boring. Starts off fascinating when he talks about computer games, but then it breaks down into a generic chase the bad guy through the world book. I like Stephensons books, but did not like this. The bulk of the reviews on amazon seem to agree with me First Assassin Trilogy by Robin Hobbs: Liked this. Liked the bitter sweat ending. Liked the first person. Got frustrated with the 'inability to be honest and talk' stuff which added to tension. It was kind of annoying. I don't like building tensoin that way. I understand how it fit the character, but it was more annoying than good. Ill probably read the next assassin trilogy to see where the characters went. I like the complexity and the bitter sweat ending. Memory of Light by Brand and RJ: I discovered Brandon when took over the series. Started reading the series in 1990 when I was 16. So same experience with it as brandon (but I never imagined becoming a writer). I thought the ending should have been darker and more people hurt. However, that isn't in RJs personality. In a series this long all fans will have their own way they would want certain pieces to go. That being said, we never would have thought about those pieces of RJ didn't come up with idea and story in the first place. I think Brandon did about as good a job as we could hope on the series and was the correct choice since he is clearly a big fan and his work ethic (19 drafts?) is amazing. That being said, his writing style and voice is radically different than RJ that it took away from the story for me. For me, (and alot of people) Wheel of Time isn't just about the plot, its about RJs voice. I think I would feel the same way if I get to book 9 of Stormlight Archive and some other author finishes it. It will feel off. I don't think any other author could have done a better job in large part because Brandon is such a big fan and I think his being a fan and wanting to end like RJ wanted (and not twist it to his type of story) was critical. Plus his incredible work ethic in writing and refining and taking criticism. It must have been hard when Harriet and co kept sending back all those re-writes. About Harriet Rigney: I dont think she has ever won an award for best editor. I think the Wheel of Time/Sanderson fan base should push for her to get a nomination for the Hugo and campaign (though we cant vote) for the Nebula. I understand that people on this site will push for Brandon for A Memory of Light (and I tihnk Brandon/RJ deserve it for the whole series), but its really Harriet that we should push for a nomination. She had all the money she needed, she lost her husband, I think she is what 70 years old now?, and she worked hard to finish the series. She discovered jordan, edited Enders Game(and card credits her in the book), helped edit Way of Kings(and brandon credits here there), and I believe edited several other best sellers. I dont believe she has ever been nominated for an award. Its long over do. I wish there was a way to nominate the rest of team Jordan for some kind of award as well. Slate of books to read Abaddons Gate (about 4/5s through) by James SA Corey Last Four Things (sequel to left hand of god) Lord Valentines Castle (been meaning to read marjipoor for a while) Iain M Banks Culture book. coming to him late. Dragon Egg by Robert L Forward (orson scott card raved about this book in his book on how to write sci-fi) Ken Scholes latest book (was shocked when I saw this on the bookstore shelf. got no publicity. didnt know it was coming out. first 3 were fun).