Hello from Quarantine

[valhallaVANDAL]

After years of hearing about The Wheel of Time with one my my closest friends, and being a huge fan of Brandon Sanderson (especially The Stormlight Archive) I suspended my entire reading list when my state went into social distancing (and stay-at-home) and decided that now is the time for this huge adventure.

 

It's going well, to say the least!  I'm clocking between 100-150 pages a day, and crossed the 350-page mark of Lord of Chaos this morning.  With each successive volume, my interest, investment, and the time I spend thinking about the world, characters, and plots when I'm not reading increases.  Aviendha is my favorite character thus far and I love the overall structure of the novels, with bunches of characters getting some good time before Jordan moves on to the next group and spins it forward.  The level of detail, and the fullness of the world, are astonishing.  While I was maybe expecting "slow" or "boring" or "dry" sections based on what I'd heard, and disclaimers that others have offered having read it (or bounced off), I haven't found that to be the case at all.  There's a fullness here that is unlike anything else I can remember reading.

 

I've read a lot of fantasy, like everybody here I assume, and I like it so much I got an M.A. in medieval literature about a decade ago.  I also like literary fiction and games of all kinds--especially KeyForge, which my wife and I are playing a lot of while at home for these months!

[Jeannaisais]

Welcome! Congrats on making it so far so quickly - that is quite the undertaking! I will say I didn't notice some of those critiques until Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart. I'm quite fond of the beginning books, and the last two are also quite well done. 

 

At this pace, you'll probably finish the series by the time quarantine's are fully lifted (if they ever are...?). Glad to have you here!

[Elgee]

3 hours ago, valhallaVANDAL said:

With each successive volume, my interest, investment, and the time I spend thinking about the world, characters, and plots when I'm not reading increases.  ....  The level of detail, and the fullness of the world, are astonishing. 

 

I couldn't agree with you more!

I can never decide if reading each book the first time was the best experience, or re-reading it for the howmanyeth time! I'm currently doing a reread again. I must have read the 1st few books close to 30 times now, I kid you not. Each time a new one came out, I would start re-reading from the start. In between, I would also do rereads. The only one I've not reread is the last one. I've tried to blank it from my mind. Not sure yet if I'll include it in my reread this time.

 

Aaaanyhoo ... welcome to DM! Hope to see you around some more ?

[valhallaVANDAL]

22 hours ago, Jeannaisais said:

At this pace, you'll probably finish the series by the time quarantine's are fully lifted (if they ever are...?). Glad to have you here!

 

I'm reading the new paperback editions, and the fourth box set is out next week some time.  The last set isn't due until early July, so I ended up collecting all of the Sanderson books in HC as they'll go nicely on my shelf with the rest of his novels!  At this rate I can just keep going...and I'm enjoying them so much, that is the plan!

[Jeannaisais]

22 hours ago, Elgee said:

 

I couldn't agree with you more!

I can never decide if reading each book the first time was the best experience, or re-reading it for the howmanyeth time! I'm currently doing a reread again. I must have read the 1st few books close to 30 times now, I kid you not. Each time a new one came out, I would start re-reading from the start. In between, I would also do rereads. The only one I've not reread is the last one. I've tried to blank it from my mind. Not sure yet if I'll include it in my reread this time.

 

Aaaanyhoo ... welcome to DM! Hope to see you around some more ?

@Elgee I've only read the last book once, but I personally would include it in a reread. I may not have loved everything about it, but I feel like it would be wrong to leave it out? Idk I read it in 2015? 2014? Can't remember, but it's been a hot minute. Getting a Master's in English Lit took some time away from enjoyable reading - I've read so much 16th/17th century British Lit now, enough for a lifetime lol

2 hours ago, valhallaVANDAL said:

 

I'm reading the new paperback editions, and the fourth box set is out next week some time.  The last set isn't due until early July, so I ended up collecting all of the Sanderson books in HC as they'll go nicely on my shelf with the rest of his novels!  At this rate I can just keep going...and I'm enjoying them so much, that is the plan!

New paperback editions....*rushes to google this news* My hubby bought me the last three books as a Christmas gift in hardback, but the rest are in paperback. I need to remedy this soon.

[valhallaVANDAL]

1 hour ago, Jeannaisais said:

Getting a Master's in English Lit took some time away from enjoyable reading - I've read so much 16th/17th century British Lit now, enough for a lifetime lol

 

It's tough to read for pleasure or escapism when you're reading for work or education.  The same thing happened to me when I did the M.A. thing in English (medieval lit) and it took a while to get back to feeling like I wanted to make time in a chair reading when, well, that's what you do when you study lit!  Fantasy was particularly tough because it's all sourced--to some extent--from Tolkien, which was all sourced from stuff on those syllabi...

 

1 hour ago, Jeannaisais said:

New paperback editions....*rushes to google this news* My hubby bought me the last three books as a Christmas gift in hardback, but the rest are in paperback. I need to remedy this soon.

 

They're very minimalist and uniform in their design, I thought very Game of Thrones-inspired with a solid color for each and the serpent wheel logo in varying locations, but altogether (the five I've finished at any rate!) they look super slick on the shelf.  I suppose it'd be nice to have all 15 of them in that new design, but the classic fantasy art is pretty amazing, too.

 

Also: I can't imagine wanting to wait for the June 30th ship date for the last box set to read the last two books...

[Jeannaisais]

2 hours ago, valhallaVANDAL said:

 

It's tough to read for pleasure or escapism when you're reading for work or education.  The same thing happened to me when I did the M.A. thing in English (medieval lit) and it took a while to get back to feeling like I wanted to make time in a chair reading when, well, that's what you do when you study lit!  Fantasy was particularly tough because it's all sourced--to some extent--from Tolkien, which was all sourced from stuff on those syllabi...

 

 

They're very minimalist and uniform in their design, I thought very Game of Thrones-inspired with a solid color for each and the serpent wheel logo in varying locations, but altogether (the five I've finished at any rate!) they look super slick on the shelf.  I suppose it'd be nice to have all 15 of them in that new design, but the classic fantasy art is pretty amazing, too.

 

Also: I can't imagine wanting to wait for the June 30th ship date for the last box set to read the last two books...

 

I'm a high school/junior high English teacher (think 11-17 year olds) so I do a LOT of reading for education and work and sometimes it's hard to find time to just read for fun. Even with distance learning I'm finding it difficult since I sent them home with novel sets and am rereading the texts with them (Lord of the Flies and Chopin's The Awakening).

 

I already have the first eleven in paperback, and a Spanish version of I think part of book five (different title lol). Sometimes those waits are torturous.

[Elgee]

I hated Lord of the Flies. Gave me nightmares.

[Jeannaisais]

@Elgee TBH most of them aren't actually reading it and are just reading the SparkNotes summary.....at this point, it's exposure to literature and they're reading something so I'm not going to fight it. This group really enjoyed Andreson's Speak though.

 

The juniors who are actually reading The Awakening are a bit obsessed with it. One finished it last week and was quite upset by the ending....gotta love what literature can do, right?

[valhallaVANDAL]

That's crazy--I also teach high school English!  We're on The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged), but we do a Lord of the Flies unit earlier in the year, as well.  It's always a good time but yeah, pretty disturbing at times.  Seniors do a good job with that one (when they read it, and not the summary ?) and it's a pretty good unit.

 

Also, update!  I'm headed towards the halfway point of The Path of Daggers--it feels crazy to be past the halfway point of the story and it's still so rich and deliberate, and the building of the subplots towards the Last Battle is really fun to track.  Some surprises, too!

[Hayl3y]

Welcome to DM, Val ! ?

Since English is not my mother tongue, I didn't have to read all these books for school... but I'm sure that French Literature isn't as cool as the English one.

 

Good luck on your WOT reading journey ?

[Jeannaisais]

20 hours ago, valhallaVANDAL said:

That's crazy--I also teach high school English!  We're on The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged), but we do a Lord of the Flies unit earlier in the year, as well.  It's always a good time but yeah, pretty disturbing at times.  Seniors do a good job with that one (when they read it, and not the summary ?) and it's a pretty good unit.

 

Also, update!  I'm headed towards the halfway point of The Path of Daggers--it feels crazy to be past the halfway point of the story and it's still so rich and deliberate, and the building of the subplots towards the Last Battle is really fun to track.  Some surprises, too!

I'm ashamed to say I have yet to read The Counte of Monte Cristo. I typically have juniors go through The Crucible, The Great Gatsby, and Hamlet and most years we finish with a short story and then writing/research unit but with the distance learning and the fact that I had enough copies of The Awakening I figured, heh why not?! Freshman did excerpts of The Odyssey, TKAM, Romeo and Juliet (dear lord don't let me do that with freshman again because yikes), and they are doing a short story unit for distance learning with pieces like "The Utterly Perfect Murder" by Bradbury, "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry, "The Most Dangerous Game", "The Cask of Amontillado", and "The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant". Eighth grade is where I've struggled getting good pieces for them to connect to because where I'm at they read The Outsiders in seventh grade and then have such high expectations for our first major piece in 8th. We started with Anderson's Speak and some really got into it, then we moved to the play version of Anne Frank's diary, and now on Lord of the Flies which is awful for distance learning but I didn't know that was coming when we started it.

 

And hooray for being half way through!!!