Game of Thrones and Eureka Thoughts

Game of Thrones: What Is Dead May Never Die

As we saw last week, Tyrion clearly realizes that not everyone at King’s Landing who claims loyalty to the Hand of the King is going to follow through and actually be loyal.   He replaced the head of the Night’s Watch last week and this week he finds out which of his trusted advisers has loose lips.  By creating three separate stories about who he’ll wed the princess to, Tyrion can figure out who’s leaking information to Cersei and how to remove them from the inner circle.  Of course, having read the books, I know where a lot of this game is headed and how Cersei will fight back against Tyrion.   Clearly Tyrion sees her as a threat, but not as big a threat as he should.  

Mistborn Read Along, Week Two

It’s time for the mid-week conversation about Brian Sanderson’s fantasy epic Mistborn.  This week’s questions were provided by TBM and cover chapters 7-15 in the novel.

And it’s never too late to jump into things!  You can find out more about the read along and find links to other responses at Stainless Steel Droppings. 

Now, onto week two’s questions.

YA Book Thoughts: Where It Began and The Catastrophic History of You and Me

We all have our guilty pleasure corner of the bookshelf.  For some, it’s a bodice-ripping romance novel.  For others, it’s that hastily written in tie-in novel.*   And then, there’s me, the reader whose general interest is the mystery, science-fiction or fantasy section, drawn for some unknown reason to the world of young adult novels.

*Confession: If I love the property on which it’s based, I’ll give them a whirl as well.  I’m weak, weak I tell you!

It’s OK, you say.  The Hunger Games is a young adult novel and Harry Potter started out that way.   If only that was my only weakness.  No, it’s not just those types of young adult novels that draw my interest.  It’s other ones about teens and their angst.  Heaven help me, but every once in a while I just have to read one, two or three of them.  Part of the reason is it makes me thankful that those angst filled years are far behind me.  Another is that, when done well, a teen angst novel can be just as rewarding, entertaining and interesting as any novel from the adult section of the book store.

The problem is that for every great teen angst book I’ll read (Swim the Fly, most things by Sara Zarr who has a knack for creating authentic if highly flawed characters), there’s a whole lot of other books out there like two I just read–Where It Began and The Catastrophic History of You and Me.

Movie Thoughts: The Five Year Engagement

While visiting a local cupcake store last week, I picked up passes for a sneak preview screening of The Five Year Engagement. 

Last evening, I attended the screening with my lovely wife.   I’ve been to a few sneak previews over the years, but not one in recent years when file sharing is as a rampant as it is.  Everyone going in was searched to make sure we didn’t have any filming equipment and we were repeatedly told not to use cell phones during the screening or else risk being removed from the movie (something I wish they’d do for EVERY screening of a movie, sneak preview or not!   Next, I will complain about young people getting on my lawn…)

So, without getting too spoilery, here are my thoughts on the movie….

Booking Through Thursday — Long Read

A while ago, I interviewed my readers for a change, and my final question was, “What question have I NOT asked at BTT that you’d love me to ask?” I got some great responses and will be picking out some of the questions from time to time to ask the rest of you. Like now.

Bookish Sarah asks:

What book took you the longest to read, and do you feel it was the content or just the length that made it so?

Oddly enough, there have been books that have a huge page-count that I’ve flown through (the expanded edition of The Stand for example), while there are others with a shorter page-count that have bogged me down for one reason or another (a lot of times it may be that a book fails to engage me fully in the first 100 or so pages.  I tend to try and give any book I read at least 100 pages to grab me.  Harder to do with a Kindle, so it’s now either 100 pages or 20%).

Thinking back to the years of assigned reading, I recall that it took me a long to wade through A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.  Part of it was the length of the book, part of it was that it required a bit more concentration and I felt like I needed the “ideal” circumstances to read and understand it (it was for an AP English class and I was going to be tested on it, so I felt like I needed to pick up every detail in case it was covered on a quiz or test) and a bit part of it was that it was an assigned reading book.

During my school career, I found that if I was assigned a book, I was less interested in it than if I chose to read it. I’ve never read Catcher in the Rye or To Kill a Mockingbird in a literary class setting, but sought out both on my own (my father was career military and we moved to different school districts where the ages for reading those books was different) and enjoyed them more.  Whereas  I was assigned Lord of the Flies as a freshman and despised every last second of it.

In fact, my distinct lack of love for Flies led me to dream of someday writing a great, literary novel that English teachers would gush over for years and in my will, leaving a note for a new preface.  The preface would say, “Yeah, all that allegory, allusion and symbolism stuff English teachers say I deliberately put in here…not really.  I never had any intention of putting that in there and now you all know that your English teacher is full of it!”

Yeah, I’ve kind of wandered off topic here….

Mistborn Read-Along, Week One

During the recent Lies of Locke Lamora Read-Along, I stumbled across a read-along for Brian Sanderson’s Mistborn: The Last Empire.  Like Locke Lamora, Mistborn has been languishing on my TBR shelf for a while now and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to read it and enjoy some conversation and insights with fellow readers.

So, here’s the first week’s set of questions, that covers the first six chapter in the book.

This week’s questions come from Carl at Stainless Steel Geeks. 

Review: The Drop

The Drop by Michael Connelly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After reading The Fifth Witness I lamented that while it was good, it wasn’t up to the recent standard of excellence Michael Connelly had set for himself. But given how prolific Connelly is, it wouldn’t be long before he’d have a chance to start a new streak.

Thankfully, Connelly does that with his latest novel The Drop though I had to admit for the first couple of chapters I had my doubts.

Harry Bosch is back working cases in the cold crimes unit. Three years away from retirement, Bosch wants to try and solve as many of these old cases as he can. On the morning he and his partner, Henry Chu set out to look into a new one, Bosch is requested by a local politician. The politician wants Bosch to look into the death of his son and determine if there was any foul play.

Bosch decides to pursue both cases, though he’s much more interested in the cold case for much of the novel.

Just as Elmore Leonard did with Get Shorty, Connelly gets great mileage out of the double meaning of his latest title. The Drop refers not only to the cold case being dropped many years ago, but to the way in which the politician’s son met his untimely demise.

Sitting down with a Connelly Bosch novel is liking visiting with an old friend. Connelly has become so assured in his storytelling and his ability to craft a page-turning mystery that he almost makes it look easy to juggle two cases in the course of novel, keeping both interesting, suspenseful and compelling. And like all on-going series, there’s some developments in Bosch’s personal life as well from the relationship with his teenage daughter to a potential new love interest. And while his other on-going character Mickey Haller doesn’t appear in this novel, I get the feeling that Connelly will use some of what develops here for the next Haller installment.

Connelly is back on top is his game. And the winner is his fans.

View all my reviews

2012 Hugo Nominees

The 2012 finalists for the Hugo Award have been announced…and I’ve not read a single one of the five novels nominated for this year’s award. I’ve seen all of the tv series nominated for the short-form award and most of those nomimated for long-form dramatic presentation.

Looks like I’ve got a couple of titles to add to my to-be-read list!

Here’s the finalists.

Game of Thrones: The Night Lands

Another week, another king laying claim to power in the kingdom of Westeros.  As Cersei points out, that makes at least five people trying to claim power in the kingdom.  And that doesn’t even take into account Dany with her dragons across the sea.

A lot of time this week is spent examining how various factions within Westeros are trying to consolidate or hold onto their power. Tyrion exiles the Janos Slynt to the Wall for his role in the betrayal of Ned Stark and his role in carrying out Joffrey’s orders to have all of Robert’s bastards put to the sword.  As Tyrion points out early in the episode, he can be more ruthless in playing the power game than Ned Stark was, but he still has issues with killing innocent children in an attempt to hang onto the throne and power.  Clearly Cersei has less of a problem with this, confronting Tyrion on the point and challenging his ability and wits to play the game.   This could just be part of Cersei attempting to play the game herself and truly rule from behind the scenes, pulling the strings of Joffrey until he’s old enough.

The Lies of Locke Lamora Read Along, Week Five

It’s the final week of The Lies of Locke Lamora Read Along.  This week’s questions cover the end of the book and the entire book as a whole, so there are SPOILERS here.  If you don’t want to know how it all ends, bookmark and come back when you’ve finished reading!

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This week’s intro is courtesy of Little Red Reviewer

Hi Everyone!   Can you believe it? this is the final week of our read along of Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora, and what a wild, wonderful ride it as been!  Everyone give a warm welcome the newest member of our lunatic read along team, Lynn, from Lynn’s Book Blog, who provided our discussion starters today.  The last chunks of the book are pretty dense, and there is a lot to cover. Feel free to focus on as many or as few of these discussion starters as you like, or add in your own!

Due to massive quantities of spoilers, please don’t post anything until Saturday morning.  I know a lot of people are travelling this weekend, so if you aren’t able to post during the weekend, don’t worry about it, post something whenever you have a chance during the week.  Send out your links as you publish so everyone else can visit you.

A huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated in this read along, it couldn’t have grown into the giant monster of the most incredible read along I have ever been a part of without you!

Here are Lynn’s questions/discussion starters:

1.       The Thorn of Camorr is renowned – he can beat anyone in a fight and he steals from the rich to give to the poor.  Except of course that clearly most of the myths surrounding him are based on fantasy and not fact.  Now that the book is finished how do you feel the man himself compares to his legend.  Did you feel that he changed as the story progressed and, if so, how did this make you feel about him by the time the conclusion was reached?

In some ways, it reminded me a bit of the relationship between Superman and Clark Kent.  Superman is what he can do, Clark Kent is who he really is.  Similar thing with Locke and the Thorn.  The Thorn is a persona of what Locke says he can do and he’s allowed the reputation to build and be embellished over the years, but in the end Locke is who he really is.   As for how he compares to the legend, I think he ends up falling short because no mortal could ever be everything that the Thorn’s reputation makes him out to be.  Locke can try and we see how the reputation does come back to bite him at several points in the story (or should I say the lengths Locke must go to in order to maintain the reputation.  Another pop culture reference could be Fonzie from Happy Days.  In an early episode, Fonzie is trying to teach Richie about being tough and points out that everything thinks the Fonz is tough even though we’ve never see Fonzie hit anyone.   Similar thing here.  Locke has built a reputation possibly based on a couple of previous deeds but it’s all about maintaining it).   Unlike the Fonz, Locke can’t maintain the air of coolness and toughness as the novel plays out and we end up finding out that the actual Locke is a pale imitation of what he’d like the Thorn to be.

2.       Scott Lynch certainly likes to give his leading ladies some entertaining and strong roles to play.  We have the Berangia sisters – and I definitely wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of them or their blades plus Dona Vorchenza who is the Spider and played a very cool character – even play acting to catch the Thorn.  How did you feel about the treatment the sisters and Dona received at the hands of Jean and Locke – were you surprised, did it seem out of character at all or justified?

Not really since it seems that Locke and Jean are equal opportunity bastards.

3.       Towards the end we saw a little more of the magic and the history of the Bondsmagi.  The magic, particularly with the use of true names, reminds me a little of old fashioned witchcraft or even voodoo.  But, more than that I was fascinated after reading the interlude headed ‘The Throne in Ashes’ about the Elderglass and the Elders and why their structures were able to survive even against the full might of the Bondsmagi – do you have any theories about this do you think it’s based on one of our ancient civilisations or maybe similar to a myth??

Reading this, I had to wonder if Lynch is setting up some things for future installments in the series.  Again, it all goes back to world-building and since this feels like the start of a longer fantasy series, it only makes sense that there are pieces being put into play that we’ll have to wait for future installments to see how they play out.

4.       We have previously discussed Scott Lynch’s use of description and whether it’s too much or just spot on.  Having got into the last quarter of the book where the level of tension was seriously cranked up – did you still find, the breaks for interludes and the descriptions useful or, under the circumstances did it feel more like a distraction?

The early stages, I found the interludes all about world building and creating the universe for the novel and series.  As the story progressed, I have to admit I found them a bit more intrusive than I did in the early stages.  I was so caught up in the scheme unfolding and the peril to Locke and company that it was hard to step away and have the interlude for a couple of pages.   Honestly, I skimmed these on first reading and got back to the drama unfolding and then went back to the interludes and gave them fuller attention once I’d got the final page and found out how everything turned out.

5.       Now that the book has finished how did you feel about the conclusion and the eventual reveal about the Grey King and more to the point the motivations he declared for such revenge – does it seem credible, were you expecting much worse or something completely different altogether?

The Grey King is almost a mirror image of Locke, only without the guidance of Chains to shape him.   In many ways, you can see how the Grey King would believe he is the hero of the story.  Those kind of characters–the ones who are absolutely convinced that what they’re doing is right–make for the best adversaries or villains in a story.  And I like that Lynch gave us the motivation for the Grey King.  It doesn’t make him any less a bastard…but at least we can see that he’s got some very good reasons for being one.

6.       Were you surprised that Locke, being given two possible choices (one of which could possibly mean he would miss his chance for revenge on the Grey King) chose to go back to the Tower  – especially given that (1) he would have difficulty in getting into the building (2) he would have difficulty in convincing them about the situation and (3) he would have difficulty in remaining free afterwards? Did anyone else nearly pee their pants when Locke and the rest were carrying the sculptures up to the roof garden? 

Surprised?  Yes and no.   It does show some character growth to Locke from the first pages of the novel where he’s willing to let the rules apply to everyone but him.  Or he disregards them.   And it goes along with bits of the Thorne persona that Locke has created for himself.   In the end, I get the feeling that the Throne is who Locke wishes he could be in an ideal world.  And here was a chance to put that into practice, so he did it.

7.       Finally, the other question I would chuck in here is that, following the end of the book I was intrigued to check out some of the reviews of LOLL and noticed that the negative reviews mentioned the use of profanity.  How did you feel about this – was it excessive? Just enough? Not enough?

I read this with a real world book group as well this month and one comment that a lot of us had was that there was an awful lot of cussin’ in the novel.  It was a bit more obvious in the first fifty to one hundred pages but once I got used to the voice and language Lynch was using to tell his story and create his universe, I will admit it didn’t seem quite as glaring as it did in the early pages.

8.       Okay one further, and probably most important but very quick question – having finished, will you pick up the sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies?

I plan to be back for the next round of read-along questions, yes.

You can check 0ut other responses HERE.