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Old 10-18-2017, 05:21 PM   #26491
Dazrin
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I finally got around to reading A Memory of Light, the 14th and final volume of The Wheel of Time. It took me about 21 years to get to this point.
I know I was really frustrated with how long it took to get books in that series but looking back at it, the series only took 23 years to finish and considering the author died in the middle that's quite a feat.

In that time he released 14 main-line novels (plus a prequel) that total about 13,000 pages and 4 million words. That really isn't too bad. It FELT a lot longer and there were a couple larger gaps but the largest was only 4 years (#11 was 10/15/2005 and #12 was 10/27/2009) and that was where Brandon Sanderson came in to take over when RJ died.

I guess it all comes down to anticipation and perspective. It's hard to have patience when you are anticipating something and that makes waiting feel extra long.

Spoiler:
As a comparison, the other epic length, ever ongoing fantasy series has released 5 books in 21+ years with gaps of 3, 1, 5, 6 and 6+ (TBD) years and is only 1/3 of the length so far.

Another author I have seen complaints about in the last couple years has published 15 main-line books, started the series after the two authors above, and has only had one 3+ year gap. Everything else was less than that. Plus this author has published a couple short story collections and a couple other series in the mean time.

The other most complained about SFF author that I can think of has published 2 main-line novels, a novella, and a few short stories since 2007, so averages over 5 years per novel release (with no release date for #3 scheduled yet).
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Old 10-18-2017, 10:53 PM   #26492
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Originally Posted by Dazrin View Post
I know I was really frustrated with how long it took to get books in that series but looking back at it, the series only took 23 years to finish and considering the author died in the middle that's quite a feat.

In that time he released 14 main-line novels (plus a prequel) that total about 13,000 pages and 4 million words. That really isn't too bad. It FELT a lot longer and there were a couple larger gaps but the largest was only 4 years (#11 was 10/15/2005 and #12 was 10/27/2009) and that was where Brandon Sanderson came in to take over when RJ died.

I guess it all comes down to anticipation and perspective. It's hard to have patience when you are anticipating something and that makes waiting feel extra long.

Spoiler:
As a comparison, the other epic length, ever ongoing fantasy series has released 5 books in 21+ years with gaps of 3, 1, 5, 6 and 6+ (TBD) years and is only 1/3 of the length so far.

Another author I have seen complaints about in the last couple years has published 15 main-line books, started the series after the two authors above, and has only had one 3+ year gap. Everything else was less than that. Plus this author has published a couple short story collections and a couple other series in the mean time.

The other most complained about SFF author that I can think of has published 2 main-line novels, a novella, and a few short stories since 2007, so averages over 5 years per novel release (with no release date for #3 scheduled yet).
Names, names, names!
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Old 10-18-2017, 11:23 PM   #26493
Dazrin
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Names, names, names!
No guesses?

I will post some links in the morning when I have more time.
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Old 10-19-2017, 08:15 AM   #26494
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I'm guessing:

Spoiler:

George RR Martin
Jim Butcher? - Not sure about this one. I didn't really get on with the first Dresden book.
Patrick Rothfuss


I started Wheel of Time in 1993 or 1994, and I still haven't read the last 3. They're on the list. I've waited this long. Why rush now.
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Old 10-19-2017, 09:56 AM   #26495
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Originally Posted by Dazrin View Post
No guesses?

I will post some links in the morning when I have more time.
Spoiler:
Martin
Sanderson
Rothfuss
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Old 10-19-2017, 10:55 AM   #26496
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Currently I'm almost half-way thru Star Trek: Discovery: Desperate Hours. So far it's an OK read, still holding out on full judgment
Finally finished the book.

It's OK, but it didn't felt like a Star Trek book. The storytelling was OK at first but became slow and sometimes forced. Parts of the plot/storytelling didn't fit in the overall scheme of things.
Spoiler:
The whole Spock/Burnham mind meld flashback is really unnecessary and breaks the tension that the author was trying to build. Beyond the mind meld the using Spock and Burnham as plot points and trying to set the tension using characters that is "well known" in the canon, didn't work as you knew from the start that they survived, so the tension the author is trying to build is already negated
I slogged thru the last of the book, just to find how all the strings finally come together.
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Old 10-19-2017, 12:06 PM   #26497
Dazrin
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DrNefario View Post
I'm guessing:

Spoiler:

George RR Martin
Jim Butcher? - Not sure about this one. I didn't really get on with the first Dresden book.
Patrick Rothfuss


I started Wheel of Time in 1993 or 1994, and I still haven't read the last 3. They're on the list. I've waited this long. Why rush now.
We've got a winner.
Have a

A Song of Ice and Fire - G.R.R. Martin
The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher (he has also started and finished the Codex Alera series and started the Cinder Spires series since starting The Dresden Files)
The Kingkiller Chronicle - Patrick Rothfuss

I didn't list Sanderson because while it has taken a little while to get the Stormlight Archive going since initial publication (2010), book 3 is due this year and in the mean time he has also written three books for the Wheel of Time, three books in the Mistborn universe, a complete trilogy in the Reckoners universe, and several novellas and collections. Yes, it might be a while between books of the Stormlight Archive but he has still averaged a couple books a year.
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Old 10-19-2017, 12:32 PM   #26498
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Good job DrNefario!

I've not read Butcher, and I didn't really think Sanderson was the right answer because he does seem quite productive.

Another impressive writer that really cranked out the books was Steven Erikson and his "Malazan Book of the Fallen" series, which released April 1999 and finished with Book 10 in February 2011. There are several other related books also.
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Old 10-19-2017, 04:54 PM   #26499
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Originally Posted by DrNefario View Post



I started Wheel of Time in 1993 or 1994, and I still haven't read the last 3. They're on the list. I've waited this long. Why rush now.
I read #13 The Towers of Midnight when it was published in 2010. I just felt no burning desire to read #14 when it came out in 2012.
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Old 10-19-2017, 05:32 PM   #26500
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Just finished The Hunchback of Notre Dame By Victor Hugo. Incredible. This second of his books that I have read. I think the defining elements of his style are a focus on 'the big picture', rather than the story actually being told in the book, a somewhat detached point of view, and the way he defines his characters by their weaknesses rather than their strengths.
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Old 10-20-2017, 07:06 AM   #26501
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Just finished The Hunchback of Notre Dame By Victor Hugo. Incredible. This second of his books that I have read. I think the defining elements of his style are a focus on 'the big picture', rather than the story actually being told in the book, a somewhat detached point of view, and the way he defines his characters by their weaknesses rather than their strengths.
I loved that book! I find the translation makes a big difference though. One version I had was full of wonderful flowing prose, another more stilted.
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Old 10-20-2017, 07:24 AM   #26502
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I loved that book! I find the translation makes a big difference though. One version I had was full of wonderful flowing prose, another more stilted.
Many translations are heavily edited. The standard English text of "The Count of Monte Cristo", for example, is that of the anonymous translator employed by Chapman and Hall for their 1846 British publication of it. It omits large sections of text dealing with a lesbian character, because that would have been unacceptable for a Victorian British readership. That's still the version normally read in English today, although a recent translation by Robin Buss for Penguin Classics in 1996 is, thankfully, now available.

An even more egregious situation is that of the most commonly-encountered English version of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", published by Griffith and Farran in 1871. It renames the book's major characters: eg the protagonist, "Axel", becomes "Harry" in the translation, while his uncle, Professor Lidenbrock, is renamed to Professor Hardwigg. Entire chapters of the book are omitted, or completely re-written. Eg the detailed account of how Axel decodes the manuscript which leads to the path into the volcano is entirely omitted, with "Harry" just mysteriously deciphering it without explanation.

(I've uploaded both the original translation and a more recent, enormously more faithful one, to the MR library.)

So please, when you say you've "read" a book in translation, tell us which translation. You may have actually read a book which has only a tenuous connection with what the original author wrote .

Last edited by HarryT; 10-20-2017 at 08:11 AM.
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Old 10-20-2017, 12:32 PM   #26503
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Many translations are heavily edited. The standard English text of "The Count of Monte Cristo", for example, is that of the anonymous translator employed by Chapman and Hall for their 1846 British publication of it. It omits large sections of text dealing with a lesbian character, because that would have been unacceptable for a Victorian British readership. That's still the version normally read in English today, although a recent translation by Robin Buss for Penguin Classics in 1996 is, thankfully, now available.

An even more egregious situation is that of the most commonly-encountered English version of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Centre of the Earth", published by Griffith and Farran in 1871. It renames the book's major characters: eg the protagonist, "Axel", becomes "Harry" in the translation, while his uncle, Professor Lidenbrock, is renamed to Professor Hardwigg. Entire chapters of the book are omitted, or completely re-written. Eg the detailed account of how Axel decodes the manuscript which leads to the path into the volcano is entirely omitted, with "Harry" just mysteriously deciphering it without explanation.

(I've uploaded both the original translation and a more recent, enormously more faithful one, to the MR library.)

So please, when you say you've "read" a book in translation, tell us which translation. You may have actually read a book which has only a tenuous connection with what the original author wrote .

Thanks for the pointer. I just bought the Robin Buss ebook version. It actually took a bit of work to find it on amazon. The trick was to make sure the listed publisher was Penguin rather than Amazon. I'm pretty sure that the only version I've read was the older edited version.
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Old 10-20-2017, 02:13 PM   #26504
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Yes, I bought a new translation of The Mysterious Island by Jordon Stump in hardback several years ago.
The names of some characters are different from the Victorian translation, most notably Cyrus Smith instead of Cyrus Harding.
The Victorian translators were not always credited but I think W.H.G. Kingston was responsible for several of them.
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Old 10-20-2017, 03:04 PM   #26505
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Started and dropped Philip Pullman's The Subtle Knife. I spent all of The Golden Compass not really caring, and that continued to the second volume, so off it went.

Gap-filled in audio with PRI's Selected Shorts episode of three Carson McCuller's short stories - all of which were excellent.
The stories are "Correspondence," "The Discovery of Christmas," and
"Sucker."

I am currently reading Central Station by Lavie Tidhar on my Kobo and debating doing a re-listen to all of The Lord of the Rings in audio while I continue to pack.
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