"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking." - John Maynard Keynes
Well hey, I didn't die in a tornado this weekend (and that's not a random thought-- it was considerably more likely to happen this weekend than at any other time in my life). It didn't come near us at all, up at Lake Gaston as we were. Good thing too, since the house we were staying in was very, very long and very, very thin and therefore had very, very few interior rooms.
We watched the news, and worried about our family and friends who were actually in the direct path, and my best friend and I read book 9 of the Ranger's Apprentice series (Halt's Peril) aloud to each other. We left my house at about 10 Saturday morning and got back at about 9 Sunday night. That book is 386 pages long. Right before we pulled into my driveway, we reached page 360.
Go ahead and mock us for spending so much of our time together reading a book, but we don't regret it. The book is seriously freaking awesome (it's my second favorite series EVER-- second to Harry Potter, of course), and it wasn't as if we were reading constantly without ever saying a word otherwise. In our defense, we also painted a room and went for a boat ride. And talked a lot, for we are Teenage Girls so we tend to do that sort of thing.
Reading this book together made me realize a few things:
1. My best friend is seriously awesome, and while I already knew that and she knows I think so, I thought it would be a good thing to mention.
2. The writing isn't perfect (he tends to use the same word in the same paragraph in that way that's sometimes annoying, if you know what I mean), but I don't particularly care, because the characters are Just That Awesome and Real-Feeling and the plot is super-intense.
3. The characters are Awesome and Real-Feeling, and their interactions with each other, and the strength and power of their relationships are even better. Halt is probably one of my favorite characters ever, and Book 9 in particular really spotlights his relationship and meaning to Will and Horace.
So you really, really should request book 1 (The Ruins of Gorlan) from the library, and actually go to the library to get it when it arrives, and then read it. And if you don't, I may just have to sit you down and read it to you myself. And then read you the second one. And the third one. I'll make you read some of the chapters because my voice will be rather tired by then. And if you aren't completely hooked on the series by the end of the third book, well, I'll just move on to the fourth one. Book 10 comes out on Tuesday, so I'm sure we'll be spending a lot of time together. ;)
(Also: OH MY GOD BOOK TEN I AM SO EXCITED.)
I'm going to write another post about Ranger's Apprentice tomorrow, probably. One that focuses more on the actual content of the series rather than how muh I love it. But for now, just know that it has my highest recommendation.
Glad to hear you didn't die, hope your family and friends fared similarly!
ReplyDeleteI recently read book selection advice that went as follows. Rule One: Don't read series by authors that need more than three books to finish. Rule Two: If you must disregard rule one, at least stop at the third book in the series.
Of course I often disregard both rules one and two, and they are kind of arbitrary since you can cram a much longer series into three books if you are sort of unskilled as an author and unwilling to listen to your editor (yes Tolkien, I most certainly am talking about you). But still, book TEN!
Not counting books that are loosely affiliated with each other but not properly a series, such as Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, I think the only two series with ten or more books in them that I have read have either steadily degraded until they totally crashed and burned, or had the author die before finishing the series.
Yeah, that's usually true, but these are the exception. I expected them to go downhill a long time ago-- they haven't.
ReplyDeleteSee, the series began with the author writing short stories for his son in an attempt to get him interested in reading. Those short stories grew into the series. There will be 12 books total, or so he said when I saw him in October. I'll get started on the other post now in hopes of explaining better. These are the exception, not the rule most certainly.