(contains mild spoilers, but no details) I finished reading The Lord of the Rings! It is a great story. I would certainly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet, if you are proficient at English. Even if you tried reading it before and got stuck at the council in Rivendell: give it another go. Nowhere later on in the story are there so many pages of just talking. Starting with the third book (the beginning of The Two Towers) the story also follows multiple perspectives, to mix it up. It is a great and exciting story. While I knew the general idea of it and have played the board game, there were still a lot of surprises in the book. Probably the biggest surprise was how early on the main quest was completed. Sure, it took over 5 books, but there were still many chapters to go when it ended. This was, however, very good! I was wondering how the story would continue, and it was great to see things wrapped up so nicely. The last chapter was very unexpected to me, and, although I did not quite understand the impact of it, touching as well. And then I read the appendices as well. That took me a long time, as frankly, much of it wasn't very interesting to me. The only parts I really enjoyed were the chronological overview of important events, as it helped to understand the whole story, and the description of the calendar used in the Shire. I was looking forward to the appendix on the languages, but that actually ended up being the most boring one to me, because it almost exclusively deals with pronunciation and writing, while I'm more interested in grammar and etymology. So if you are considering skipping the appendices: don't feel bad about it. They are remarkable, because they show that Tolkien really went into a lot of detail for his fictional world, but the books can do without them.
For the Dutchies: I just finished reading A. F. Th. van der Heiden's "Het Schervengericht" http://www.letterenfonds.nl/nl/boek/518/het-schervengericht It's amazing. If you're into pretentious books, and know your greek history, It's a great read. For the non-Dutch people: I'm sorry: I read basically only in Dutch, always by Dutch authors. Stuff usually doesn't gets translated to Englisch because that market is highly saturated as is, even if the books I tent to read would translate to another langue...
I'm reading Emma by Jane Austen. I prefer Pride & Prejudice (which is the only novel by her I'd read until this one), at least so far, but the last sentence of volume 2 is one of the funniest sentences I've ever read! Of course it's best when knowing the characters, and reading it in context, but I think that even on its own this is good. Mr Knightley seemed to be trying not to smile; and succeeded without difficulty, upon Mrs Elton's beginning to talk to him.
Yeah, Jane Austen is great, indeed. Also this: Isn't really true aymore. I recently started reading the last man by Mary Sherry. (Author of Frankenstein) It's really good. Sure: for little, dyslectic me, some words are too, uhm, "big," but you get used to it. I have read almost three hours in it today, on a normal workday. It's that bad. It is set in the late 21st cetury, which is interesting for a book first published in 1826. Also, it's more emotion-driven than plot-driven, which is something I will always apreciate. Thematically: It's about isolation and the failling of the ideals of the Romantic area, which makes it quite an emotional read for the Romantic soul that I am. A good book. One of the best I have ever read in English. (It will never top Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go) I would defenetly recommend it.
I've been reading the "Stormlight Archives" series recently and I am really enjoying it. It reminds me a lot of Eragon in the sense of the fantasy world but the way the story is told through multiple perspectives is really interesting. It combines magic, swordplay, politics, and other ideas in a really cool way. If you want to read it the first book is "The Way of Kings", I really recommend them.
I love those too! Anything by Sanderson is usually good if not great. My favorite by him is probably Warbreaker. You can even read it for free through his website. (or you could last I looked)
This thread shall not die! I have been recently reading lots of light novels (from Japan- translated into English ofc). I wanted to read bits that were left out of the anime adaptaions so I went to the source material and now its basically all I read now. Most of these are at least PG13 but if I were to give a proper age for them I would say ages 15+, all of these series I picked up after watching the anime and wanting to read further into the story. Ascendance of a Bookworm This series is about a woman who is from Japan who loves books and she dies. However, when she dies she wakes up in the body of a sickly young girl in a new World. This world is a medieval type world and books are not a thing (well the nobility have them but not normal people). The story follows her life as she uses knowledge from her previous life to spread books all over her new world. I hope I didn't spoil anything too much- I left only basic information that doesn't go into too much detail.... also this series has 4 volumes currently translated into English (#5 comes out on the 20th! ) and I think it has like 20+ volumes in Japanese if you can read that, honestly Japanese Kanji looks like jibberish to me lol. The anime adaptation just finished its first season which covers volumes 1-3. Danmachi I am bad at explaining so see synopsis from Danmachi wiki: "The labyrinth city Orario - a huge city that holds a huge labyrinth under the city known as the dungeon. Excitement known as the unknown, brilliant honor, and romance with cute girls. In this place that conceals the breath of people's dreams and desires, a boy meets a small Goddess. A fateful encounter between a boy who wants to become an adventurer but was rejected by other Familias and a Goddess with zero Familia members." Arifureta The main character as well as the rest of his class is summoned to another world to save humanity from extinction. It is soon revealed however that his power is basically useless and so he is bullied for it. You follow his journey as he starts out weak and becomes strong. Tried to pick my favorite series that were appropriate to discuss here. I have a list of 200+ books including these that I started reading since September if anyone is interested via PM only as some of the books cannot be listed here.
It won't for as long as I continue reading books. Woah, that's quite the difference. Wait, you aren't reading 200 books at the same time, are you?...
I may be an unpopular opinion here, but I'm currently in the process of turning all the books I have into digital copies. (If possible)
That's interesting! How, and why? Although I can think of a couple of reasons for why (but they might not be yours): being able to easily search for a specific passage and being able to do analysis on the texts.
Simply put, lack of room. Apartments cost at lot in America, but those with room for everything you have cost even more. It's a sad choice I have to make, but if I am to be honest, I don't read all the books. I read them all, at least once, but then they were shelved.
Oh, you're planning to get rid of the books! I don't think it's legal to keep copies, then. :/ (which makes sense, as people could sell the books)
Don't worry, I plan on donating the physical copies as soon as I get the digital downloads. I don't plan on replacing every physical book I have with a digital download, just the ones that I think will be worthwhile.
Yeah, the difference is because the publishers have to wait and decide which books to publish in English (which ones will actually sell in the US) and then they have to actually translate the books. Most light novels run 220-300 pages on average and the most popular ones take 3 months between new English releases- mostly because apparently translating from Japanese to English is not the same as just throwing the whole book in Google Translate lol... Nope, but of those 200 books only one series is a complete series and the rest of them are ongoing (I get to read a new volume every 3-6 months). The one complete series was probably my favorite series except the end of the series left me with too many questions and the ending was not my favorite (hoping the author changes the ending in the official light novel release- I read the web novel which the author started self-publishing online and fans translated it).
Why should that make me not worry? As I said, it's probably illegal, as you could sell them, and moreover even if you donate them... you are making people not have to buy the book. So the result's as bad, although you don't earn from it. Makes sense. You'd hope they won't decide to translate every other book or something like that, though, if the story is chronological.
So I know I just recommended "Danmachi" in my previous post but volume 14 of the series released in English not too long ago and.... oh my... 459 pages long I read it in 4 hours- my eyes were glued to my screen. I mean at this point I have no idea how the author will top this book. It will probably be a while until volume 15 comes out- not even a release date is up, so I would guess at least 6-8 months (this series has actually pretty much caught up to its Japanese publication- usually the Japanese versions are at least 5 volumes ahead but this series is at volume 15 in Japan which likely means more wait time between volumes as now we have to wait for the author to actually write them and then have them translated rather than just wait for translations (seems he writes a new book to the series every 6-8mos)...).
I wonder if you mean he finishes a new book every 6 to 8 months? I assume he can't write it in one go like you're reading it.
I apparently haven't followed up on this! I did really enjoy Emma. Near the end, there's a major plot twist every single chapter. I had seen some of them coming, and others not at all. I won't spoil any of them, though! More recently, I read The Rosie Project. Yes, I read a modern/recent book. It's really good! I thought it would just be a romantic story about someone with autism, but there's also a bit of a mystery involved, which makes it a lot more exciting to read, especially in the latter half of the story. There is also quite some character development in the book, and it makes me want to read the sequels to see how it continues. A recommended read! If you don't have autism yourself, it might actually be interesting to learn more about it in this way, and maybe be able to understand people like me a bit better. Although I've got to say some particulars of Don's story (Don is the name of the main character) do seem unrealistic: probably exaggerated for comedic effect or storytelling purposes. But that's fine. Can we also recommend informative books, here?
