Reading Responses at 2am – SPOILER ALERT!
My spoiler saturated thoughts on the books I read
I think this is one of my favorites, just because of the way he treats death (Death and death, ha ha) in relation to those who are alive. That it isn’t just a job, that the reaper needs to care about the harvest. Oh, and zombies are fun! And snowglobes are scary. đ
 It was another really bad night. Nights are the worse. I donât know if it was because the sun was going away or it was the end of the day or what, but my depression and anxiety would spike between dinner and when I would fall asleep. And a week ago it was pretty bad.
What does anxiety feel like? Itâs like the boss music is playing but there is no boss. Itâs a physical tightness that is like a knot inside and a weight on the outside. It is waiting for your brain to make up its mind and either implode or explode.
I, no joke, prayed that my husband would be able to know how to help me. And then, no joke, he said âhey! I read the first chapter of this book that I think youâll like. You should read it!â
So I did. And then read the next chapter. And the next chapter and the one after that and would randomly steal his phone over the next week to finish it.
The voice is fun, the story ridiculous and everything about it was so quirky that it just felt NICE inside my head. My only complaint was the ending. I was promised that she was going to save the day with bread, and instead the horse girl did. It was a let down. Otherwise everything was pretty great and I look forward to sharing it with my kids.Â
Ok, so the first two-thirds of this one was just kind of amusing jokes about the film industry and Hollywood in general, but wasn’t quite as funny as I was used to. Maybe I’m getting snobby with my ability to be amused. That being said, the last third was really fun with a climatical ending!
I love Rincewind. I just do. My favorite books are the ones that he’s in, hands down, and this one is no exception.
Quick note: I didn’t write reviews of books 3-7, it was before writing reviews was a thing I did. Anyways, on to my great and profound thoughts!
Here be dragons! đ. Carrot made me happy. They all did actually.
*sigh* That just felt wonderful – in a literarily sense. After so many books that have such structure in their worlds and especially his later ones that were just fantasy novels set in the world he created, it felt good to read pure nonsense. Just the randomness was refreshing along with the poking fun of the world in general, how it was just unstructured fun – it was something Iâll always need every now and again. I love Riencewind – I think I always will.
This really is one of my favorite books.
Oh my gosh there is another one. I just sat there going back and forth between the last few pages and the glossary, looking for more but there wasnât anymore! I was completely distraught because this author gave every indication that they knew what they were doing. Then I thought âhummm I wonder if there is another book…â
Yup. Problem solved.
Reading when you have mental illness is fun. Some days it is like an escape from the pain between your ears, sometimes it is the reason for that pain, and for a lot of this book it was the latter. I’m trying to read more ya fantasy as most of the agents that I’m looking at request similar titles and I just don’t have the breadth of books I need to even begin finding ones that are similar, so getting through this book was something I felt like I had to do, even though my brain was barely up to the task. Not that anything was wrong with the book, it was safe in all the right ways as far as triggers go, but books tend to have tension and conflict, and when your brain is barely holding itself together these things can become taxing.
What things can I actually say about the book? The love triangle drove me crazy, because even though I knew that Shahrzad and the king were going to end up together I loved angry boy. But then as time went on I was more in love with the main couple and more annoyed at angry boy and by the end I wanted to smack him over the head. So that was pleasant to go through that change. I feel manipulated by the author in the best way.
I loved Shahrzad, she was the perfect amount of kick-butt but still needing someone to stab people. She was strong in every way I wish I was. But then you would need to be that type of person to try and pull off what she planned to do in the beginning. I’m not going to be plotting to murder kings anytime soon. Ha. Ha.
As for the premise, I love the Arabin Nights. I have a three-volume set of the original translations and got through about half of the first one – which is a realllly big deal. It really is just one story, just like they say, but it has stories within stories within stories with side stories and those stories have stories – ug. It is also in super small print and they don’t hold ANYTHING back as far as flowery language and over-done imagery and witty dialogue between side characters. It also is SUPER not family-friendly, very much in R rating with some really weird stuff that they could NEVER make a Disney movie about.
And I love them. I know it sounds ridiculous but I want to go crack it open and get lost in that random crazy world. Maybe I will after we move as they are currently packed away. And, you know, after I read the next book out of this series…
Assuming I can hold my skull together long enough to do so.
It was ok. I felt like there wasnât really a plot or story or something – I donât know – but it was off. I can blab about places where it felt wrong, but because I donât know what exactly was causing it or how to fix it Iâm not going to do that. I was disappointed that I didnât love this book as Iâve loved her other ones, but Iâm not turned off by this author. It was fun to see pioneers meet Spirited Away.
Ok, that was a close one there. Ever since we read âthe sorrow of warâ senior year of high school the thought of being alone always terrified me, which is silly because lots of people donât find someone and turn out ok. But the thought of Susan, and how alone she is because sheâs so different that there really isnât any hope – and then bam! There is another guy like her! You saw the thought sticking in her head like a firework that never stopped lighting up the sky, but then it all falls apart when he becomes full out Time – then she walks into the closet and heâs there – and itâs clear what happens but not what it means for her, but maybe that enough for right now.
There were a lot of crazy philosophical stuff about time. I actually came to the same conclusion that there is no past or future, neither of them are real – there is just now. And at first I thought Wen the eternally surprised was just a funny joke like so many of them, but then it turned out to actually, like so many of these books, to be beautiful. If youâre really paying attention, you will always be surprised.
There was the thing that Death was going on about, that emotions are what makes us human – and that was a punch in the gut. When I have a bad depression stint, I donât HAVE emotions. I have nothing- and it is terrifying. Like that I really donât exists anymore. I tell myself that I still do – you donât stop being a blueberry bush just because you donât grow blueberries- but maybe you really arenât human anymore and thatâs why it is so scary – because you can see it happening from the inside.
Ok, enough heavy. Iâll never think about ridiculously clique saying that same again – and I will always remember Rule One.
Update: this is my third time reading this book. That means I should buy it. My brain is still crawling up the wall, so I needed a book that I knew had a happy ending, and that I knew pretty much what happened through out it as well. đ
I bought this book because at some point Brandon Sanderson recommended it or something (it was a long time ago) and it has been sitting around doing nothing for a few years.
The this weird need to move forward in my writing hit me two months ago and I grabbed it so I could âwork on my craaaaft.â (Imagine that last part in a snoody accent.)
And it was really good. The first part where heâs just spit balling different ideas for sci fi topics was fun but not the helpful. Then he got into story structure and the MICE quotient and what it means to write well and examples and I just couldnât eat it up fast enough. It just felt RIGHT, if that makes any sense.
Iâve been trying to listen to podcasts and read things to help me write better, but really all they have done is make me panic because I wasnât thinking about âpacingâ or âpromisesâ while writing my book, though Amit says that my book does do a good job of all them. I was just writing a book that I would want to read, nothing special. But all this stuff that I need to be paying attention to makes me feel like Iâm never going to be able to write another book again.
Then I read this book and yeah, it was covering a lot of theory, but I came out of it feeling like I can do this, that I have talent, that these are things I already kind of knew but it was helpful to have those gut feelings named and shaped a little more.
I loved how he talked about how writing and storytelling is an art. It is something I forget a lot of the time. Iâm going to go write something now. Yay!
Reading Responses at 2am - SPOILER ALERT!