Book Snails Book Group discussion

With 63% of the tie breaker vote, our first Quarterly Read of 2018 will be:

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, weighing in at around 660 pages. And about 1.6 to 2 pounds, depending on which version (unless you choose the eBook, of course).

Let us know if you plan to read it with us Book Snails, or if you've already read it! General comments or questions are welcome (no big spoilers, please).

BOOK SUMMARY:
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(view spoiler)[
Told in Kvothe's own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen.

The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature.

A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard. (hide spoiler)]
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If you need a copy, try your local library or:

Amazon, B&N, AbeBooks, etc: https://www.goodreads.com/book/626687...

BookDepository (free shipping worldwide): https://www.bookdepository.com/search...

Overdrive.com (free ebook via your library): https://www.overdrive.com/media/20457...

or eBay if you dare: https://www.ebay.com/sch/Books/267/i....

I'm excited to discuss this book with you snails! It is large but I found it to read quickly and I finished it within 2 weeks time.

Very curious about this book! Hope to read it but Monte Christo and The kitchen house are my priorities right now. And the olympics... :-D

Finally got around to this one :)

No spoilers here in the comments from me yet, since I hope some of you other Book Snails are giving this book a shot.

I'm not a huge fantasy fan, but this one seemed quite a bit above average, and I can see why it gets many 4 & 5 star ratings. I didn't have any major quibbles with it. I must be slipping!

Thanks to JustElise for recommending this book and several other good ones to me.

Jennifer: I'm glad you 5-star liked it! Maybe you'll share some general thoughts on it with us later?

Are you Book Snails tackling this book?

I promise, as Jennifer says, it's a fairly compelling/quick read in spite of the page count. Or I hope it will be for you, if you enjoy fantasy tales.

Ok. So I have to admit that I have it from the library...and haven't even cracked it open. Yikes.

I'm on pg 12. It's not going well. I may be in a reading slump, so it has nothing to do with the book.

Grace wrote: "I'm on pg 12. It's not going well. I may be in a reading slump, so it has nothing to do with the book."

Aww no worries...good luck though! ;-)

This book sounds like something I would never choose myself, so it’s fun it’s selected and I’m going to try it anyway! Right now I’m still reading The kitchen house (beautiful) and after that I have A love in Paris, by Douglas Kennedy, because Rothfuss was taken yesterday. But one quarter of the year, it will be mine! ;-)

Based on the first few pages, I thought it was going to be a fairly silly but interesting story that I would like, but maybe not really 5-star love.

And sure, it was silly (or unrealistic) at times. But as fantasies go, it turned out to be, as a whole, pretty entertaining and above average. I think I wound up giving it ~3.5 stars, rounded to 4 because it's not a genre I read often. And I'd read the sequel.

(A few basic discussion questions.)
Feel free to answer 1 or more, or ask your own questions!
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1. Was the story predictable, or did it take surprising turns?

2. Did you have a favorite character?

3. Was it difficult keeping the characters straight?

4. Name something you did NOT like in the story (writing style? ending? a character? pace? etc.)

5. Compared to other fantasy books, is TNOTW better, worse, or about average?

6. Were parts or all of it "unputdownable"? Or were you yawning the whole time?

7. Would you read Book #2?

8. Do you approach the reading of longer books (500-1000+ pages) differently from shorter books?