Fantasy Book Club discussion

Fourth year of the challenge!
(Previous years: 2017 | 2018 | 2019)

Read prior to 2020: 62

DNF/Not interested: (view spoiler)[



(hide spoiler)]

Unread: 68

Completed for challenge:
1.

+ The Ten Thousand Doors of January
+ The Girl and the Stars

Good luck. All the books threads are still open too.

Time for a little update! I ticked three books of the list so far.

Warbreaker was very fun and easy to read. Good world-building, interesting magic system, characters's growth and plot twists - Warbreaker has it all. It's not my favorite Sanderson's book, but that just shows how much I love all of his books.

I really enjoyed The Blade Itself. While the pace is very slow (I can't help but think the entire book is a setup for the trilogy), the cast of disturbingly likable characters makes up for it.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane was my first Gaiman and, I have to admit, it disappointed me a bit. In the light of all those raving reviews, I found the book underwhelming. All in all, I did enjoy it but... I don't really understand all the excitement around the book.

Given how I started, I should be able to attain the 12 books without too much difficulties. I read so little books from the bookshelf so I already had at least 20 on my to-read list to begin with :) I think I'll just do as much as possible; they all seem to be very good books.

Great job. I'm still trying to get my first one.

Sanderson is great. Gaiman I either love or hate!

Virginie wrote: "I think I'll just do as much as possible; they all seem to be very good books. "

Most are very good books.

Well, after neglecting this challenge for close to 6 months... I can finally add The Way of Kings as my fifth book!

Aaaand... I just finished my number 12, Prince of Thorns. I had a lot of free time in August so I went into a 'reading rampage' :D

Finished Uprooted. My first Novik, and a great story. I made me ache for the spooky and yet peaceful Swedish forests.

Finished King of Thorns.

Finished Steelheart. It was predictable but highly entertaining.

Finished To Ride Hell’s Chasm and The Crown Tower for number 16 and 17.

Finished Half a King.

Finished The Whitefire Crossing.

You are killing this!

Helen wrote: "You are killing this!"

Thanks, Helen! I'll do this challenge again in 2018, I still have a lot of interesting unread book on the group's bookshelf.

Edited for 2018.


Read prior to 2017: 9
1. The Final Empire
2. Assassin's Apprentice
3. The Hobbit
4. A Game of Thrones
5. Poison Study
6. Tigana
7. Graceling
8. Elantris
9. Fool's Assassin

Read in 2017: 24 + 4 BOTM
1. Warbreaker
2. The Blade Itself
3. The Ocean at the End of the Lane
4. Nine Princes in Amber
5. The Way of Kings
6. The Golem and the Jinni
7. Words of Radiance
8. Blood Song
9. The Crown Conspiracy
10. Wheel of the Infinite
11. Avempartha
12. Prince of Thorns
13. Uprooted
14. King of Thorns
15. Steelheart
16. To Ride Hell’s Chasm
17. The Crown Tower
18. Half a King
19. The Whitefire Crossing
20. The Shadow of What Was Lost
21. Half the World
22. The Death of Dulgath
23. Storm Front
24. Neverwhere

+ Red Sister
+ A Night in the Lonesome October
+ Oathbringer
+ Senlin Ascends

1 book added to the challenge, bringing it to 99 unread books.

Yeah!

Great job in 2017. Good luck in 2018.

Bill wrote: "Great job in 2017. Good luck in 2018."

Thank you!

I completed my first book for the 2018 challenge, The Princess Bride. Now, on to Norse Mythology!

4th book completed with The Black Company. Took me a while to get into it but I absolutely adored it!

Mmmmh. Considering I now have 5 challenge for 2018, I'll dial back this one to 12 books. Anything more than that is bonus :)

Books 5 and 6 completed: Legend and American Gods.

I definitively like Gaiman's work better in audiobook.

I listen to American Gods in audio also. It was very entertaining.

I'm currently listening to Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, it's hilarious. So much that I laughed out loud, and then realized I did so while passing by the local cemetery. Whoops :p

Gaiman does a great job as a narrator & I really enjoyed American Gods as an audio, too. He has an excellent voice & tone, although his volume can get too low for me at times. That's a combination of old ears listening while using power equipment, though.

I'm a big fan of audio books. They're about 2/3 of my reading now. I rarely seem to find much time to just sit & read, but I can listen as I do all sorts of things. Luckily, my libraries have a great selection.

Jim wrote: "Gaiman does a great job as a narrator & I really enjoyed American Gods as an audio, too. He has an excellent voice & tone, although his volume can get too low for me at times. That'..."

I only started listening to audiobooks a couple months ago, but I believe they represent two third of my reading as well. My library has almost no audiobook but I have a wonderful neighbor with an equally wonderful collection of audiobooks :o

7th book is His Majesty's Dragon! :)

Librivox.org has a lot of free audio books of stuff that is in the public domain, if you're interested. The narrators are all volunteers so can vary wildly, but some are very good, even professional quality. I've even run into a couple on my library site. You can listen to them online, so I often listen to a minute or two before downloading them. There are multiple versions & generally the latest are the best. Many of the early ones were very low bit rate.
https://librivox.org/

My local library does what is called "Intralibrary Loan". This enables one to check out books from across the USA. You can go to www.worldcat.org and find out if a book has an audio version and then go from there. Also, I have an audible account which is where I get most of my audio books. Also, Bill is right, librivox has some great fantasy classics.

While we can get paper books through the Intralibrary loans, we can't get audio books that way, at least not the downloadable variety. Those are limited both by the service used (Recorded Books or Overdrive) & what books they subscribe to on the service. I can belong to any library in the state, though.

In my case, the Louisville library has the Recorded Books service. It's pretty awful (no book covers, corrupted files, 5 book limit, defaults to 3 weeks, & more). The other 2 county libraries where I have a card both subscribe to Overdrive &, unfortunately, the same books. Still, there is little overlap in the books between RB & Overdrive & each has over 6K. I've been listening to about 150 audio books a year now for 4 years or so & still have plenty I'm interested in.

Holy cow 150 audiobooks a year! You are the king of audiobook slayers.

Thank you both for your suggestions. I already spotted a few audiobooks I would like to listen to on Librivox :)

I moved back to France in the past months, and we're not big on audiobooks here :( My local library is quite small and isn't doing any intralibrary loan, sadly. Well, there is mostly translated works anyway, and I try to avoid those if the original langage is English.

I miss Stockholm's library :'( I wish I had access to a US library network sometimes. I make do with ebook daily deals, sneaking some ebooks and audiobooks from Stockholm's library (One of the librarians there likes me. Don't tell on me :p) and borrowing books from my retired-english-teacher, fantasy-loving book-hoarding neighbor :D

Tnkw01 wrote: "Holy cow 150 audiobooks a year! You are the king of audiobook slayers."

Wow, that IS a lot. Are you listening at x1 or speeding them, Jim?

I'm glad you found some stuff on Librivox, Virginie. It's a great resource. I try to donate a few bucks occasionally.

I listen at speed, but it's more a matter of time. I've always read a lot. If you look at my stats here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/stat...
you'll see that in 2013 my number of books jumped from roughly 125/year by 100 books. I'd guess I've been reading that way for about 50 years. Then audio books became more portable. What a boon! I went from nasty cassettes that used to get eaten by my truck's tape player that I could only listen to on my commute to a tiny little Sansa Disk that I could listen to most of the time with no rewinds or fuss.

Originally I was listening at 1x speed, but a couple of years ago I started listening at high speed on my mp3 player. That was about 1.25x I guess, but distorted the voice (chipmunk-sounding). Last year I finally got a smart phone & started using Smart Audio Book Player which doesn't distort the voice. It allows me to listen in increments of .1x & I generally listen at 1.5x. I vary between 1.3x & 1.7x depending on the narrator & content. It's amazing how the brain adjusts to that.

I spend a lot of time working around the farm doing fairly mindless chores like mowing, weeding, & such. Even in the shop when I'm sanding, finishing, or even turning on the lathe I find that it's easy to listen.

I have friends that read 400 books a year, but most of those are short novels that are popular on Amazon. Many are steamy, formulaic romances that I consider novellas, so don't pay too much attention to the exact number of books. It's more of a general trend. Last year I listened to over a dozen short stories (20?) that were shelved as books.

I'd prefer to track pages, but they're a mess here. GR counts by media which seems pretty stupid to me rather than the minute, especially since MP3s often have no media to count & that's about how long it takes me to read a page of text.

I envy you audiobookers. My mind wanders too much. I often read entire pages and realize I've been thinking about something else entirely and have to go back. I can do audiobooks, but they tire me out, and I'm constantly using the go-back-some-seconds feature where it's available. And no one should ever let me anywhere near power tools unless they are certain my mind is completely on the task at hand - or there will soon be fewer hands for there to be tasks at...

All I can say is once I discovered audiobooks I now can drive the interstates without getting any road rage. Sometimes I have to rewind also. But most of the time if the reader/actor is good I don't have much problem paying attention.

Liam, my wife is the same way. It's a shame. Different wiring, I guess.

Tnkw01, I agree about the road rage. Driving is when I use the back feature the most. If something out of the ordinary comes up, I can easily lose 10 seconds or so, but most of the time the book is a boon to me & society!
;)

Jim wrote: "I'm glad you found some stuff on Librivox, Virginie. It's a great resource. I try to donate a few bucks occasionally.

I listen at speed, but it's more a matter of time. I've always read a lot. If ..."

I use the same app. I generally listen at 1.3x, up to 1.7x depending on the narrator. It usually take me half a minute to adjust, but then normal speed sounds so slow after :o

I do mindless chores with audiobooks (doing the dishes, weeding, etc.), but also my commute, hiking and working out (well, more like pretending to work out :p)

I started to add my graphic novels with GR so my book count is all over the place. Since I'm in a friendly reading competition for another group, I'm using our google spreadsheet to track number of books/graphic novels read, page count, support and various other things. I'm constantly thinking of new stats to integrate to my spreadsheet, it's getting ridiculous :p

Liam wrote: "I envy you audiobookers. My mind wanders too much. I often read entire pages and realize I've been thinking about something else entirely and have to go back. I can do audiobooks, but they tire me ..."

I didn't think I could do audiobooks for the same reasons (especially since English isn't my first langage) but tried it for books I DNF in the past for lack of attention (Last Argument of Kings and Speaker for the Dead). I finished those, and loved every second of the audiobook :o

There are books I can't listen to though. Long, complicated epic fantasy books, I have to read. I couldn't get past the prologue of Oathbringer and had to switch to the written version.

My sister can't do audiobooks either. She says that her brain "cancels it out as background noise".

Virginie, it sounds like we're a couple of peas in a pod when it comes to audio books. One big difference is I don't listen to them when I'm hiking or riding. I miss too much of nature if I do. I often hear birds & small animals which alerts me to look for them.

I also keep a spreadsheet on my reading, but mine is an Excel spreadsheet full of macros for sorting them out so I haven't put them online. I doubt anyone really wants to see the details of my reading, either.

One of the more important stats that I track is the star rating of my reading. The average doesn't tell me much, but the numbers of 4 & 5 star books compared to lower ratings sure shows just how my book picks have gotten better. I also like tracking how many fiction books I read compared to nonfiction. As I age, I'm reading more nonfiction.

The stats can get ridiculous, but I'm also thinking of adding more. I've never kept private notes & I'm thinking of using that for the length of audio books. If I put the minutes or page count of one edition in there, then I'd get a better idea. I'm not sure it matters & would take a lot of time, though.

I've also found that DNF paper books became enjoyable in audio, but it can work the other way, too. If the author is repetitious or overly detailed in their writing, I can skim in text. Audio doesn't allow that as well. I hate skipping forward a few seconds. Far too easy to miss something important & it's very difficult to flip back as I can in a physical book.

Nonfiction books that rely on charts, tables, or graphics aren't good in audio. Sometimes the material is dense enough that I'll find myself wishing for a text version. I'll buy it in some cases. Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals is one example. It was great as an audio book, but alternately skimming & studying sections of the hardback later really helped. It's one of those books that doesn't come to many conclusions. I gave both editions 5 star reviews.

I think we need to learn to listen to audio books. I found it best to listen to books I'd already read when I first started. If I basically knew the story from reading it 5 or 10 years before, I didn't get so frustrated when I missed a bit. After listening to a few, I'd developed the capacity properly.

It is a skill & there are some habits that need to be developed to support it. Knowing when to hit the pause button is a big one. Doing so before concentration is needed is a big plus. Knowing how to rewind a bit is another, but mostly it is segmenting the mind properly. It's really weird just how fast that can develop. Like listening at faster speeds. Being able to slowly edge up was a big help & now anything at 1x is just too slow, yet normal speech doesn't seem to be.

Now I can listen to some pretty complex lectures & books & retain the information well. I do write long reviews for the books since most are really notes to me. I can't pull the book off the shelf & skim to find important points, so I keep them in the review.

Jim, I love listening to nature's sounds as well. I usually listen to audiobooks during the difficult parts of a hike, instead of simply looking at my feet and repeating "10 more meters. You can do it! Yay, good job. Now, just 10 more meters" in my head hahaha.
I managed to finish one of my goal hikes thanks to Last Argument of Kings: a 1.5km elevation gain hike to the border France-Italy :)

I would actually be interested in looking at your reading stats. I love learning about people's reading habits :)

As for tracking pages for audiobooks... Well, the competition requires we use the page count of the most popular edition on GR for fairness.

Great idea! I never thought to use a book to get through the tough parts, but I don't do that sort of hiking any more. I mostly wander around my own farm or with the old woman & she's got a bad hip, so we take it easy.
:)

If you want to see my stats in my spreadsheet, you can find it here
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...
I think. Google docs takes a while to render it. There are tabs for importing & then ones for each year that contain books. I joined GR in 2007, but didn't really start tracking my books well until sometime in 2008, so I just lump everything from 2008 & below together.

The Totals tab at the far right is overall stats. I think the categories & shelves are pretty self-explanatory.

Added several books to my "Don't want to read for now" categories. I might get to those books one day but certainly not in the next few years. I have tons of books that interest me a lot more :) (please don't hate me if your favs are in there :p)

The only exception are Janny Wurts' books. I really want to read them but I think I would enjoy her beautiful prose a lot more with a better mastery over the English language.

Got #10 for 2018 with Age of Myth!

And I completed the challenge with The Night Circus!

Let's see if I can do 24 this year again :D

You are a machine.

Tnkw01 wrote: "You are a machine."

Thanks! 😈