Thursday 27 November 2008

Update

The Wheel of Time re-read has been completed. Expect a review of Knife of Dreams in the next day or two after I have marshaled my thoughts sufficiently.

The re-read/new-read pattern I've been following for the last few weeks has proven surprisingly effective, and I may use it again in the future, certainly for the Song of Ice and Fire re-read I'll be embarking on in the New Year. One of the appeals of the blog was an excuse to revisit some old favourites, and I've been lax on that front in favour of the new ARCs that have been coming my way instead.

For the next few weeks, however, the emphasis will be on new (or newer, at any rate) releases. I'll be reading Terry Pratchett's Nation next, and Gollancz have sent me the entire seven-volume Chronicles of the Raven series by James Barclay. Having enjoyed, with reservations, his Ascendants of Estorea duology last year, I'm looking forward to checking out this series. There's also Iain M. Banks' Matter to check out as well.

On the gaming front, I've been pouring most of my free hours into Fallout 3, which overcomes its problems (an occasionally shaky Oblivion engine and some ripe dialogue) to be the most enjoyable SF RPG I've played in quite some time.

5 comments:

Jebus said...

I finished Nation last night and absolutely loved it - more a young adult novel and not the same amount of humour as Discworld books, but it's a fantastic and beautiful story and a very easy read.

Can you maybe do a post on your reading habits? You seem to get through books quite quickly - do you have a specific place you like to read? Have music on? Average pages per hour kind o thing?

I'm always curious about other people's habits as I am a bit of a sporadic reader and I work around my alcoholism and downloading of TV schedules.

Peadar said...

He does get through a lot, doesn't he?

Adam Whitehead said...

I wouldn't put a whole post about it, but briefly I was unemployed from May through to November of this year, meaning lots of time for reading. I started my new (but temporary) job a couple of weeks back, so my schedule now consists of 1-1.5 hours' reading during lunch and breaks at work, then about another half-hour to 1 hour whilst I'm cooking and eating dinner in the evening. Whilst this is definitely slower than my former pace whilst unemployed, it's still pretty steady.

Jeff C said...

I'm jealous of the Barclay package! I LOVED the first book in the Estoria series, though still need to read the second. One day I will break down and import all 7 Raven books. I want to read them very badly, but just haven't wanted to import such a large number of books.

Hope you get some time to review them.

Jebus said...

Ah I see, cool. I generally get in about 1.5 to 2 hours reading a day (depending on beer consumption and how into a book I am) with maybe 40 pages an hour so I'm a fairly slow reader. I'm planning on a few re-reads soon as well (WoT, Hugh Cook's "Chronicles of an Age of Darkness" and maybe even some McCaffrey and Forgotten Realms books) so the old book new book pattern is something I may just have to try.