Good Omens: Good Book

"Archbishop James Usher (1580-1656) published Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti in 1654, which suggested that the Heaven and the Earth were created in 4004 B.C. One of his aides took the calculation further, and was able to announce triumphantly that the Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 B.C., at exactly 9:00 A.M, because God like to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh.

This too was incorrect. By almost a quarter of an hour"

When Leah and I went to Phoenix for our anniversary we made a detour to a Border's to kill some time.... big surprise there. ( That reminds me that we need to post about the two small bookstores that we found on our trip - awesome stuff!) Leah picked up an auto-biography on the drummer from Guns'N'Roses and I went searching through the Sci-Fi/Fantasy for something that looked interesting. Now, rewind a couple months and at different Border's I noticed that the movie Coraline was also a book of the same name. Up to this point, I had never heard of Neil Gaiman and mentally added the book to my list of "read someday" books. Fast forward to September and I look past Coraline and notice Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Good Omens for short. After reading the book I was definitely interested. I added that to a small stack of novels - Sanderson, Good Omens, and some other book that was just meh - and went to sit on a step stool next to my wife that was sitting in a comfy chair.

As you can probably tell from the quote above, the book could be incredibly humorous in a slightly irreverent way. The book certainly delivers, but without much irreverence. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett come up with an apocalyptic story that doesn't leave you crying for the protagonist - like The Road (which I would highly recommend... one of the best books that I've read this year). The end of the world is coming and an angel and a demon aren't ready for what's about to happen. They've come to enjoy life among the humans and would prefer to forgo all the destruction and leave things just like they've been. Enter in a couple mistakes, a few wacky characters, and a very young anti-christ and you have Good Omens. They've done a great job at being fun with a serious subject. It does contain QUITE a bit of british humour that I don't always understand, but with a little Monty Python background you should be able to grab bits here and there. I also recommend reading the footnotes for pure enjoyment.

I don't want to spoil any of the book for you - it's just a great 300+ page read that you won't want to put down often. I know that we had a recommendation of Christopher Moore and, by my guess, this is probably as close as we might get.

"God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players*, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."

Rating: 9 CBs - it'll make you want to read more from both authors. Gaiman seems to lean towards short stories, and Pratchett has a bunch of Fantasy Novels.

Shadows of DOOOOOOOOOOOM

Shadows of Doom must be a rare book as it's buried 5+ pages in on Amazon's Dennis McKiernan list and priced at a whole cent! I'm assuming that it must be at least a wheat penny in worth. It's the second book in the Iron Tower Trilogy and exactly 300 pages. I found the series at a used book shop(or something similar) on a family trip. I vaguely remember a barn sized room with tons of books. It's been a long time and I'm hoping that my review on finding the first book will sync up with this telling. It might be worth saying that the journey to find the books was probably more interesting than the story itself.

In the first review, I mentioned that Dennis McKiernan is more of a classical fantasy author. He's not really treading any new ground with this series. But after reading the second book, I think I've moved on to a new assumption. It feels like Dennis had The Lord of the Rings open on his desk and was using it as a sort of fantasy story concordance. <---LORD OF THE RINGS SPOILER ALERT---> I imagined it went much like....."I need something interesting to happen" ::searching through LOTR:: "Here we go.... find entrance to lost dwarven kingdom, use magical word to open door, and have a kraken attack and bust up the door". In case you haven't read or seen LOTR... THAT HAPPENS! He'll throw in some other random bits throughout the book, but this felt like it was taken right out of Tolkien's books and pasted in. =\ We have a Fellowship of Four in this book. <---END OF SPOILER--->

Just a few quick items to take with you:

1. If you are slightly interested in reading The Lord of the Rings, but don't want to read so many pages then go watch the movie. If you can't watch the movies(specifically, the extended versions) then read these books. You have about 900 pages between the three which should be a few less than LOTR.

2. I learned a new word and also learned that using old spellings should sometimes be curbed for proper definition. The new word was fulgently. It's such an awesome word that Blogger believes it's misspelled. It means dazzlingly bright. Next, secret and secrete don't mean the same thing. Don't use secrete to attempt to sound more like Olde English!

3. Leading up to the LOTR cave rip-off, I'm assaulted by the knowledge of some ghastly beast that ran tens of thousands of Dwarves from their favourite home. The beast was imprisoned during the great war and the prison was forgotten. The Dwarves dug into the prison and released the evil within. It proceeded to kill many a dwarf, some elves, and probably a few rodents. Even one of the great Dwarven heroes made it as far as the second corner before dying. The Gargon, ghastly beast, could only be contained by the long-dead wizards, and the group didn't have any of those. Wouldn't you think that this monster was something special? Nah, the moment comes and it ends up being an eight foot tall bipedal lizard. =\ At that point, the lizard ends up being taken out by one elf, one dwarf, one human and a hobbit... err, Warrow. The bane of all cave dwelling existence... slayer of all kind... gets killed by four "heroes". 

Meh.....

Rating: 3CBs - becoming more disappointed as the series goes on.

-D

Vanity of Vanities

I think it has been over a month since I have posted anything on this blog.  So what happened to a book a week? 

Do you ever put yourself on an unintended sabbatical from those things which you really enjoy?  You just slowly move away from that which brings you joy and then a little while later sense the distance by the small amount of empty space in your life.  Okay, maybe it's just me, but my unintended sabbatical (in the midst of a challenge to read a book a week for a year) has been from reading and then writing about it here.  Not that I haven't been reading at all, I just have not been reading everyday.   The thrill is gone. 

The culprit?  Vanity Fair! 

I just can't seem to propel myself through this one.  I know there must be some of you out there who will cry out (in horror), "It's such a good book."  Really?   I can't say I follow.  I have been reading this book for a month (A MONTH) and I am not even half way through it.  But, I insist on plodding through until the end, because I doubt I would pick it up again (and if I did, that I would remember ANY of the characters, because I only vaguely can point them out now).    At the moment it is hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I am pressing on. 

Have you read a book you thought would never end, but perservered?  Was it worth it?

Any encouragement would be appreciated.  There just may be a scathing review in it for you.

-L

The Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson

If you're new to the website you might not know that my wife was able to get me an advance reading copy of Brandon Sanderson's new novel The Way of Kings. That's the first time that I've received a book that wasn't ready or out for publication - pretty cool stuff. It's also my first Brandon Sanderson written story. The last Wheel of Time novel was written and finished by Brandon, but the story and notes were all based off of Robert Jordan's work. I was still impressed, but it's nice to get a feel for the author inside his own works. In saying that, I do believe that Sanderson is going to fill the role of epic fantasy author for the next few years.

The Way of Kings is the first novel in what appears to be a project on scale with The Wheel of Time or George R.R. Martin's epic. A good friend of mine assures me that Sanderson completes his stories much faster than the last two authors, and I do hope that's true. I'm not sure two decades of waiting for the story to finish is always a worthy cause. This is a new world with new rules. In a lot of ways, it has that in common with Jordan's or Tolkien's work. The creatures, landscape, magic system, and capabilities of it's inhabitants are fresh. You won't see a Trolloc roaming around in TWoK, or find yourself wondering where Galadriel might pop up. The world itself has an aquatic nature to it. Most flora and fauna are based off of sea life - think crabs, barnacles, shrimp, and sea sponges. The magic is innovative and imaginative.

The book travels across a world that's being torn by war, but otherwise pretty quiet. You follow four main characters with the book focused mostly on two of those. They seem to all be heading towards a central point but this book doesn't quite get you there. The Way of Kings is almost a taste of what's to come... or better yet, a thousand page prologue. You learn a little bit about the world, a little bit about the characters, and a little bit about the danger that the protagonists will face in the next book. If there was something that would take away from the story, it would be the lack of a true conclusion or climax. The revelation in the last 40 or so pages wasn't as awe inspiring as in other books, but wasn't necessary. It's an engaging book that should whet the appetite for the rest of the series. Robert Jordan was the same way with WoT and it's worked out quite well for him.

If you're looking for a new fantasy author to pick up, then definitely try out Brandon Sanderson. I might recommend reading through one of his other series for the sake of finishing up the whole story. With The Way of Kings you'll be stuck waiting a while before coming to a conclusion.... that'll be a big problem for those that don't re-read books like I tend to do.

Rating: 8 CBs - he'll be a worthy successor to the fantasy epic, or at least give some of the establishment a run for their money(that's you Tad Williams, Martin, and Cook)

-D

Wholly unrelated to book reading - FOOD & DRINK!

Just a quick update - if you head by our other blogs(those little circular images on the right hand side) you can see where we ate and what I (L isn't drink adventurous) drank during our anniversary. We live in an area that doesn't have great food. =( In fact, we drove 30 miles yesterday just to get to a Chili's restaurant! That's how "meh" the Desert is when it comes to food.

Enjoy!

-D

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

We'll start with the good news. I'm back to more normal work hours and that's something to consider as a good thing with the way the economy has been lately. The bad news? It's cuts into my reading hours. Fortunately, there are a few classics that are pretty darn short. The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving happened to be one of them. I picked up this book on the nook and was able to read it using my phone. Pretty nifty when I have a couple minutes and don't have a real book to browse through. So over the last few work lunches I've been able to catch up a little on my book pace.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow ended up being quite brief and maybe not my type of book. It falls more into an old wives tale than a hashed out story worthy of doing a movie after. It's a very brief story that involves unrequited love and a possible ghost. Perhaps part of the appeal of this short story is the idea that you don't truly know what happened to the main character. Was there or wasn't there a ghost? Was he or wasn't he killed by the ghost and, either way, what happened to him?

If you're looking for a short quip or need something to read during lunch it's a worthy little tale. If you're looking for more gumption time then head over to one of the other classic authors.... James Fenimore Cooper will certainly put you to slee.... well, it's longer. ;-)

-D

Rating: 4 CBs 

Something Changed

Hey Fellow Readers,

I finally got to changing the website. We'll maybe work in to having the books in background. I like the added flair but the wife isn't too fond and since we weren't making a decision I never followed through with adding the buttons to our other blogs on this website. Over on your left you'll find Seldom Made and The Reliquiarium. We started those separately and have now meshed them together... sorta. The Seldom Made is my wife's cooking blog where she'll regale you with stories of all the food adventures we have had since getting married. The Reliquiarium started off as a repository for my "too long for facebook" rants. It's since become a catch-all for travel, food, music, and movies...... and some rants.

I wanted to get the new look and the buttons up for our next few posts. We went out of town for our anniversary and we have something to share on all three blogs! I'm sure that the book bloggers might enjoy food and a good drink every once in a while so we'll link over there for their respective posts. We also have at least two new posts about some great bookstores that we saw on our vacation. Uber-exciting! I'm also hoping to get around to doing our Q&A on The Road movie to tie-in with reading the book. But, for the time being thanks for being patient while we've been lazy(500 pages into The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive), 400 pages into The Stand, and one finished The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow that will soon be reviewed) and out of town.

Let us know if you have any constructive criticism on the layout of the website. I'm not completely sold on the font or it's positioning on the header. I'm also thinking that I'll redo L's button for Seldom Made and use a picture of her food instead of a stock photo I found. Make it more personal.

Thanks again!
-D