The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[ownedbycats]

It took me six months to get through Lord of the Rings, and that was without any major pauses in reading. The somewhat antiquated writing was kind of hard to read and often had to go over a paragraph a few times to figure out what was going on.

I did laugh at the part where somebody blows a horn until it "burst asunder," because I just got the mental image of him looking down at the broken horn, then shrugging and tossing it away.

[andyh2000]

I've just started Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Wish me luck.

Andrew

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by maddz

I think that was a post-war thing...

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

I read that was introduced by the occupying US administration immediately after WW2.,.

That's neither here nor there.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

When reading an omnibus, I like to take a break between books. Unfortunately this often leads to instances where I pick it back up and completely forget what was going on.

Same for me, which is why I don't often read series. When I do, it's best I just plow through.

An exception are series where the books aren't related, like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe books. Those you can read at any time in any order. Nothing from one book continues to the next except for Marlowe and we don't learn about his life outside of his cases.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

I've just started Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Wish me luck.

Andrew

Good luck man! Picked up the bundle of those myself.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

It took me six months to get through Lord of the Rings, and that was without any major pauses in reading. The somewhat antiquated writing was kind of hard to read and often had to go over a paragraph a few times to figure out what was going on.

The Silmarillion makes LOTR seem modern. Deliberately so. The Publisher sent it back, hence posthumously published. The Hobbit is certainly easier.

[Sirtel]

I had no problems reading either LotR or the Silmarillion in the early nineties, and my English was a lot worse then (they were translated into Estonian several years later, I have not read the translations). But English being my second language may actually have been the reason I breezed through them; at the time I was used to serious, official, even antiquated English from reading some English-language classics in high school. It was the everyday English with lots of slang and colloquialisms I was not familiar with. So I found Tolkien no struggle at all, while I struggled with modern, contemporary novels I started to read a bit later on.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

It took me six months to get through Lord of the Rings, and that was without any major pauses in reading. The somewhat antiquated writing was kind of hard to read and often had to go over a paragraph a few times to figure out what was going on.

I did laugh at the part where somebody blows a horn until it "burst asunder," because I just got the mental image of him looking down at the broken horn, then shrugging and tossing it away.

I've read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings a number of times and no problem any time. Even as a kid (I don't recall my age when I first read them but it was in the 70s) I read them.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

When reading an omnibus, I like to take a break between books. Unfortunately this often leads to instances where I pick it back up and completely forget what was going on.

I figure it'll come back to me as I read and generally it does. In the long run, I get more satisfaction by taking a break than by banging through.

[hildea]

Argh - I read a review (https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/...ice-coldbreath) which made me want to buy a book, but when I got to the author's site, all buy links were to Amazon, and I can't find her books in other bookshops

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by hildea

Argh - I read a review (https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/...ice-coldbreath) which made me want to buy a book, but when I got to the author's site, all buy links were to Amazon, and I can't find her books in other bookshops

There are plenty of books only available on Amazon. Usually they're part of the KDP Select program and that means exclusivity. Just buy it from Amazon. I know you don't like Amazon, but to refuse to buy a book you want to read is, IMO, cutting off your nose to spite your face; Amazon won't care and the only ones who suffer are you and the author; by not getting to read the book and not getting paid by you, respectively.

(by the way - the review seemed interesting at first, until the bit about one of the main characters groveling. I absolutely hate it when authors make their characters do that, no matter how deservedly. Immediate do-not-buy for me.)

[Aleron Ives]

Buying from Amazon is getting less and less practical if you don't own an old Kindle, though, since Amazon is making it more difficult to decrypt its books.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Buying from Amazon is getting less and less practical if you don't own an old Kindle, though, since Amazon is making it more difficult to decrypt its books.

hildea has an Onyx Boox; she could install a Kindle app on that and read the book there.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

There are plenty of books only available on Amazon. Usually they're part of the KDP Select program and that means exclusivity. Just buy it from Amazon. I know you don't like Amazon, but to refuse to buy a book you want to read is, IMO, cutting off your nose to spite your face; Amazon won't care and the only ones who suffer are you and the author; by not getting to read the book and not getting paid by you, respectively.

Personally, I have more books that I want to read then time to read, so skipping a book that is an Amazon exclusive is no big deal.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

There are plenty of books only available on Amazon. Usually they're part of the KDP Select program and that means exclusivity. Just buy it from Amazon. I know you don't like Amazon, but to refuse to buy a book you want to read is, IMO, cutting off your nose to spite your face; Amazon won't care and the only ones who suffer are you and the author; by not getting to read the book and not getting paid by you, respectively.

Unless you're not a Kindle user. Yes, there's workarounds. But I'm not going to pay for a book I can't read on my preferred device.