books read this year

[Portia]

Two Stegner and a Flaubert were my favorite: Recapitulation, Crossing to Safety, and Madame Bovary.

[thatonemom]

The first book is called Cinder.

I just heard of this yesterday, do you like it? Is it worth it? I'm always wary of series and tend to stick to stand alone books, but the premise is really cool.

I really did. It's supposed to be a four book series and only two of them are out right now. I think the third comes out in Feb. or March. So it could always be one of those series where it starts out really great and then clunks. I hope not, though. I hate when that happens.

But I thought Cinder and Scarlet were both fun and creative. They're pretty quick reads, too.

[SmurfBlueSnuggie]

So is "Wheel of Time" actually good and worth reading? Like, is it well written? I can only imagine that a series that long has to be full of thick and "have to think through it" kind of writing, whereas I like to read fluff books, because reading is a relaxation activity for me.

Wheel of Time was easily my favorite this year. I absolutely love Tolkien, but I also really enjoyed Jordan's style with WoT. It requires heavy thinking only in that a lot is going on and can occasionally be difficult to keep track of. It's not really required to keep track most of the time. Confusion is often intentional, but does provide clues to what's really being plotted out. I probably took that further than necessary because I had fun tracking different characters and guessing at what the bad guys were planning. You say you aren't a fan of Tolkien. Let me assure you that these authors aren't comparable. I love them both, and literally cannot compare them because their styling and stories are too distinct.

The first six or so books move at a good pace, although I didn't really fall in love with the story until the end of the first book. At about the half-way point it does slow down a lot. There's at least one book that I'm pretty certain covered less than a week of time. The entire series takes place across two years.

The shift in writers after Jordan died wasn't very pleasant. I liked Jordan's styling better, although I think overall Sanderson is a cleaner writer. And Sanderson did dedicate a lot of time to character development on my favorite character. It was really just the first half a book adjusting to his style that was really rough for me.

Overall, the characters are engaging, the plot is brilliant, the world is extremely well-developed, and you can read it at several levels of detail, depending on your style.

I kinda loved it. It was totally worth the 6 months it took me to read.

[Dragon Lady]

I've read all the WoT books twice. (Except the last book and New Spring which I've only read once.) The first time I actually read them. But I only had one wee babe at the time who didn't mind as much being ignored for stretches at a time. I started reading them again ... last year? Two years ago? I honestly don't remember. But after actually reading one book I realized that I absolutely couldn't dedicate that kind of time to all of those books in that stage of life. (I think I had two kids at the time? I'm pretty sure...) So I got an Audible subscription and got the rest on audibook. It helped, I think, that I had read them before. I had forgotten a lot, but I at least had a sense of how things were going and who things were. I think it'd be harder doing audiobooks the first time. There are just So Many People. And places.

But I kind of love the bigness of the WoT world. It seems more realistic to me. When the world is ending, people from all over the world contribute. Not just a short list of main characters and bad guys. There are a lot of political storylines, but not in a boring political sort of way. For the most part. There are a few. There are a lot of complaints about the middle books being slow, but I never really experienced that. I think it might be the difference of reading them all straight through and having to wait years in between and then finally getting a book, only for it to be a slower-paced one. And not resolving whatever plot line left you hanging the book before. (There's one book where a character is left in mortal peril at the end, then isn't even mentioned in the next book, so you spend something like 800+ pages wondering if that character is even still alive.) There are several one-off viewpoints. But I love them, because they're meant to give you a bigger idea of the world and what's going on outside of the main characters, not to build character development. (For an idea of the number of viewpoints per person, check out this list: https://gist.github.com/bjhomer/4481470 It's insane.)

It also leaves loose ends at the end. But that's intentional. With such a big story you *can't* close everything. There's still life ahead of them. And in real life, not everything is resolved at one point. There are always loose ends somewhere. And when you care about at least a dozen or two people, you just can't realistically close all of the loose ends. But they do close all of the major ones.

As for Brandon Sanderson finishing them, I happen to like Brandon's writing *way* more than Jordan's. I'm not a very discerning reader, but I didn't notice a huge change. I couldn't pick out specific chapters or passages and tell you who wrote them. The difference I noticed the most is that Jordan would spend hundreds of pages on one viewpoint. Which made it easy to go an entire book without a viewpoint from a main character. Brandon switches up viewpoints every chapter, which makes it feel like it goes faster and more suspenseful. But then again, he was also writing the climax of the book. So maybe it was just more suspenseful.

Also, I can't get through LoTR. I've only tried once, but just the prologue was so dense and, well, boring. It was years ago, but I'm too scared to try again. lol. Despite owning them. Maybe someday I'll try again. But WoT is very much an easier read.

Lastly, if you want to give them a try, the first book can largely be a stand-alone book. There is a hint of a cliffhanger at the end, but if you don't like the book at that point, it won't grip you enough to make you want to keep reading. Also, they say the first three books could be a stand-alone trilogy, if you want to give them more of a chance than just one book, but don't want to commit to the whole series, but I'm not entirely sure I agree. You *could* stop there. But personally I was way too captured at that point to let the open storyline hang. But if you don't love the story, it's probably a good place to end.

[Portia]

Two Stegner and a Flaubert were my favorite: Recapitulation, Crossing to Safety, and Madame Bovary.

And to round out my top five, for non-fiction, I loved Thinking, Fast and Slow, and The Innovator's Dilemma.

I probably bought more books this year than I ever have before, which is saying something.

[mic0]

Oh yeah, I was going to tell you all about Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, which I just finished last night. It was really enjoyable, with a huge cast of multi-layered characters. DL, I remember you said your brother (maybe?) said that it had some... R-rated parts, maybe, and that is definitely true. There are scenes with sex and abuse (not always together, but sometimes), and some drugs, and death (not a spoiler, death on the third page!). I had to put it down after a certain scene because it was really upsetting. Yet, it is also very thoughtful and I just loved the perspective on all their intertwining lives.

[Digit]

Most of you sound like much more voracious readers than I. How much time per day do you spend on average doing it?

[Portia]

Most of you sound like much more voracious readers than I. How much time per day do you spend on average doing it?

Probably 2 hours on a typical day.

[mic0]

It really depends. I go long periods of time without reading for fun. When I'm reading a book, during the semester I probably read 30-60 minutes before bed, and when I'm not in school probably a couple hours. More if I'm really into it, but that doesn't for every book.

[SmurfBlueSnuggie]

I have a Kindle, which has increased my reading back closer to high school averages, when I had few responsibilities and summer breaks. So I usually read at least 45 minute during lunch. And during my breaks. And for an hour or more in the evening if there are no activities going on in the ward.

[Whistler]

My husband binge reads and sometimes I mimic this habit.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

I read probably 15-30 minutes per night before bed. However, I'm sure I, like the rest of us, read more quickly than the average population, even the average "free-time reader" population. So I've read quite a few books this year.

[blpsara]

I have no idea how many books I've read this year, but seeing all of your numbers makes me wish I kept track.

I probably average 2-3 books per week.That's just a guess though. It could easily be higher than that.

I am more of a fiction person than a non fiction person, and I have been on a YA kick.

Some of the ones I enjoyed more through the year (in no particular order):

-Steelheart, Brandon Sanderson
-The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson
-If You Find Me, Emily Murdoch
-My Story, Elizabeth Smart
-Throne of Glass and Crown of Midnight, Sarah Maas
-The Seven Realms series, Cinda Chima

I could keep going and going. I love books.

[Portia]

There are 30 official books on my Goodreads, but considering all the books or book excerpts I read as a student, and my habit of reading several books at once and not always finishing them in a timely fashion, that's a bare minimum. More that our readers here may enjoy:

Fiction
Decline and Fall, Evelyn Waugh
Dangerous Liaisons, Choderlos de Laclos (filed under "D" at the BYU Bookstore because ARGH)
Old New York, Edith Wharton
All the Little Live Things, more Wallace Stegner
Metropole, Ferenc Karinthy
Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett (made the "Time 100")
The Love of the Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald (I'VE READ ALL HIS NOVELS NOW I CAN DIE HAPPY)

Non-Fiction
Black Count, Tom Reiss
How the French Invented Love, Marilyn Yalom
A History of the Wife, also Marilyn Yalom
Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg

Poetry and Short Stories
The free illustrated Kindle edition of The Raven recommended on the Board
I read a ton of short stories by Fitzgerald this year. That was a good decision. I own three or four overlapping collections. Also Hemingway I think I like more as a short story writer than a novelist.
I also read a lot of other 20th/21st century short stories for school.

[Portia]

So a random project that sounds fun is to do the old "compare and contrast" type essays you do in middle school with random books. I'm dying to do that with All the Little Live Things and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest. The history of those two fascinates me. I have to credit The Program Era for piquing my interest on that one. (Haven't finished that book, yet. But it's very good. And probably convinced me not to get an MFA.)