The Book: The Wise Man’s Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss

The Story: This is the second book in the Kingkiller Chronicles, so I’m not really going to tell you any of the story.  The first book is The Name of the Wind and I don’t want to ruin it for you.

What I Thought: I finished this book a couple of weeks ago but I’ve waited to post a review because I just wanted to get my mind around it.  I wanted to be able to post this balanced review that was void of gushing.

I literally cannot do it.

This is the best book I’ve read in years.  I know that I’ve pimped Patrick Rothfuss out on my blog since day one, and I really don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

This guy can just effing write.  It’s lyrical but not overwritten.  The characters are so real they jump off the page.  The world-building is unparalleled.  I want to marry Kvothe.  I want to go to the University.  I am obsessed with this crap. Seriously.

I’m not kidding you- this book takes off on a martial arts kind of direction for a minute.  I loved it.  I will repeat that if you want me to.  I loved reading about martial arts.  If you can make me enjoy that…. let’s just say you’re pretty talented.

Honest to God, I just cannot put into words how good this book is. It is magical. The world is magical, the writing is beyond magical…. I could go on all day.

Read this.

Conclusion: If you don’t read anything else this year, read the first two books in this series and join me in the wait for number three.

Head over here and comment to enter.

I’ll announce the winner tomorrow!

On Thursday night, I made the trek to the Dayton area.  My parents live there, so I sort of pretended that I just wanted to see them for a long weekend. Really, I wanted to see Patrick Rothfuss.  He was at the Books & Co. in the area and, yes, I’ll admit- I traveled over 3 hours to be there.  Stalker?  Maybe.  Fan girl?  Fo’ sho.

I cannot even tell you how fun it was.  We got there and it was PACKED.  I knew that he had loyal fans, but oh my word!  I got there about a half an hour early and I was given number 159.  Crazy.  I was lucky enough to end up with a place where I could stand and see him, but people were seriously everywhere.

Before he signed books, we got to listen to him talk about his son, gerbils, Tunnel Bob, how surreal it is to be #1 on the NYT Bestseller list*, poetry, his fear of video cameras, how he pictures Kvothe, trying to nurse his son, and got to hear him call a guy a jackass for asking a spoilery question.  Ha.

Super down to earth guy, really relaxed and so funny.  This guy deserves every bit of success that he gets. I frigging love him.  So fun.

Here’s the part that sealed the deal for me:  When he was done taking questions, he started going over how the signing was going to work.  He launched into a little story about an earlier signing and a guy coming through with this sleeping baby and how sad it was and how he misses his son… so could everyone agree that if people are here with young kids that they can go ahead and come through first?  Tears literally sprang to my eyes.  Sweetest thing ever.  I had been holding my little guy the whole time and it was past bedtime.  I was already considering just heading home because I didn’t think he’d last a 2 hour line.  So instead of being number 159, I was number 2. I’ll say it again:  Sweetest thing ever.  Seriously. Ever.

Anyway!  I couldn’t go to a book signing and not pick something up for you guys so… waa laa:

First Edition**, signed copy of The Wise Man’s Fear.  All for you.

So!  Here’s how this is going to go down:

Just leave a comment here and you are entered to win!  Be sure to put your email address in the little box or I will have no way to get ahold of you if you win.

If you blog/tweet/facebook pimp this contest, leave an additional comment with the link to your pimping and it will count as another entry.

You have from now until Monday, March 21st to enter.

That’s it!  Good luck!

*He had just found out.  It won’t be on the list until March 20th, but he made it!  Woo!

**They are already on the fourth printing, so this is a pretty big deal, folks!

The problem: there’s not that many good, current ones out there!

There are, admittedly, about half a million current YA series.  For some reason, the YA genre lends itself a little better to series.  It seems like most of these series right now are about paranormal stuff and vampires and… blah.  Spare me.  I did read Twilight, but there wasn’t any real love there and I can’t really handle the vampire/werewolf/yadda yadda thing as a whole so I just pass.

Here are the YA ones that I’ve read and enjoyed:

Harry Potter, of course.  I resisted the pull for a really long time but finally read them last year and fell in absolute love.  I’ve been thinking of doing a re-read of these because I straight devoured them the first time though and would like to go back for some savoring.

The Hunger Games series was pretty incredible.  I love a good dystopian novel any day, but a dystopian series? Yum.

The Gemma Doyle series is full of stuff that I’d never liked, but somehow I loved it.  It came to me highly recommended and I’m glad that I picked it up.  Good stuff.

And that’s pretty much it as far as more current series go.  There are a handful of classic ones that I loved growing up, but that’s another post entirely.

There have only been three adult series that I’ve found that I’ve liked very much.

I read The Dark Tower series last year with a couple of friends.  There are seven books and they are seriously incredible.  As a big Stephen King nerd, I was so impressed with how many of his books he tied into the series.  It kind of made everything come together.  The characters were incredible and so memorable and I was totally enamored the whole time.  Seriously great reading.

The Kingkiller Series is still being written.  The first one, The Name of the Wind, blew me away and I’ve been recommending the heck out of it and buying it as gifts and giving it away on my blog pretty much non-stop for over a year.  The next one comes out early next year and it’s going to be a big day for me.

I’m still not done with the Millennium series.  I’ve read the first two and thought that they were pretty great.  I’m waiting until the last one comes out in paperback before I get it, but I’ve heard that it’s great and I can’t wait to give it a go!

And that’s it. Sad, right? I’m not really very much into fantasy and it seems like all the big series are fantasy.   I’d love to get all wrapped up in a new series, but nothing is really calling my name right now.  Do you know of any great series that aren’t fantasy that I might enjoy?

The Wise Man’s Fear finally has a release date. FINALLY.

The Good News: Patrick Rothfuss finally announced the release date for The Wise Man’s Fear, the book that comes after The Name of the Wind.  The Name of the Wind is one of the best books I’ve read in the last few years and immediatly after I read it, I heard that number two would be out in a couple of months.  Since then I’ve heard these kind of rumors periodically.  He’s been kind of hemming and hawing about letting fans know when this was actually coming.  Until now, we had just seen a giant stack of papers that was the size of a baby.  He said that it was a draft, but not to get excited because it wasn’t a final draft, just the latest in a long string.

The Bad News:  The release date is March 1st, 2011.  No, seriously.  March.  I know it takes a long time for these things to come together, but geeeez.  What a wait.

Item #2

Dark Tower movie talks are in the works again. AGAIN.

The Good News:  I guess that it is good news that this is still on the table.  I’ve been crossing my fingers and toes that something would come of this soon because I love me some Dark Tower. Also, I can’t wait to see Oy on screen.

The Bad News:  The writers of LOST held the rights to the series for quite some time.  They had said that after LOST was over, they were going to do the Dark Tower series as a TV mini-series or something.  Just last month, they decided to let go of the rights.  Who snatches them up but Ron Howard.  Ron Howard, really?! Not that he doesn’t make good movies.  He sometimes does.  Apollo 13? Beautiful Mind? Great movies.  But epic, fantasy movies that are almost entirely character driven?  Not at all.  This made me roll my eyes until I had a headache.

The Book: The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

The Story: This is the first part of a three part series.  The second and third haven’t been released yet, so even after reading this hulk of a book, only a third of Kvothe’s story is known.

Kvothe is this kind of hero in his culture.  Or a demon.  Or a fantasy.  All depending on who you talk to. In the “present” timeline in the book, he’s changed his name to Kote and is working as an innkeeper in some remote location, hiding away from the world.  He kind of just seems like this normal guy until the Chronicler stumbles upon him and asks him for his story that we find out what his life has been like up to this point.  Kvothe tells the Chronicler that his tale will take three days to tell and that it must be recorded exactly as he tells it. And off he goes.

He was born into a trouper family with the ability to learn almost every subject very quickly.  He is in plays, learns magic, music, history, legends, chemistry, tons of good stuff by his parents and by his mentor Abenthy.  As a young kid, he ends up penniless on the streets and learns to fend for himself and basically just makes it through.  When he feels like he’s old enough and “ready,” he heads off to university.  Antics ensue. Love stories, dragons, heavy drinking, magical everything, good music, mean professors, crazy people, hidden doors… the whole bit.

The “three days to tell this story” and three books in the series is no coincidence.  This is only the first day of Kvothe’s talking, so really we don’t get much further than the end of his time at University.  The series is called The Kingkiller Chronicles, and we didn’t get the reason for that name yet, so I’m assuming that there’s even more good stuff to come.

What I Thought: I know that I’ve mentioned this book on my blog several times and even gave it away in a giveaway earlier this month.  I read it last year on the recommendation of a friend and was seriously blown away.  I convinced the girls in my bookclub to read it for this month’s book so I re-read it so I’d be ready to discuss.

It was just as good the second time through.

I am not really into fantasy.  It’s just not my thing. This is not your typical fantasy book.

What struck me over and over was the genuinely good writing.  He wrote in an almost conversational tone.  I really did get the feel that I was just sat down with the main character and he was telling me his life story.  That being said, the writing was beautiful and it flowed and parts of it were genuinely touching.  There were a couple parts about his parents that really did bring tears to my eyes.  His relationships with his friends and then with the girl that he has a little old crush on… just plain old good writing.  I just felt, by the end of this book, like I knew these characters and I couldn’t wait to learn more.

The plot itself was somehow believable even though it involved magic and dragons and demons and other fantasy stuff.  I get annoyed when I’m reading books and the words are so unfamiliar that I can’t remember from one chapter to the next what they mean.  While there were “made up words,” they just melded into the story in such a way that I was comfortable with them.

The pacing was great.  It is admittedly a long book, but at the end I still wanted more. I could go on, but I can feel myself gushing.  For me, this hit all the right notes and I’m sure that this won’t be the last time that I visit ol’ Kvothe.

Conclusion: This is just unnecessary.  Read this book. Right now.

Thanks to everyone who entered to win The Name of the Wind!  I plugged the numbers into a random number generator and the winner is…. #3!

Jessica, you are now the proud owner of this lovely little book!

Just email me at jacki@lovelylittleshelf.com with your address and I’ll get it in the mail for you asap.

I have a couple more books in my “future giveaways” pile, so keep your eyes opened for that.

No reason other than my Borders is going out of business, and I like you guys.

This, for me, is one of the books that has both. I didn’t expect to like it at all, and I was totally blown away.  I convinced the girls in my book club to read this for our book this month, so it’s been on my mind lately.  I plan on doing a re-read in the next couple of weeks. I cannot wait.

So I bought one for one of you, my faithful readers.

Just comment.

I’m intimidated by the giveaways that have all these stipulations, so I’m opting out of that this time.  Just leave a little comment here and on Friday the 12th, I’ll use a random number generator to see who the lucky duck is.

” ‘There are books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story, Bobby.  Don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that.  Read sometimes for the words- the language.  Don’t be like the play-it-safers that won’t do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and a good words, treasure that book.’

‘Are there many of those, do you think?’ Bobby asked.

‘More than the book-snobs and play-it-safers think. Many more.’ ”

Good stuff, huh?

I was trying to think of, for me, books that have had both. Tough question.

Off the top of my head I thought of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, The Stand by Stephen King, and (of course) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  Maybe there are more, but these are the ones that immediately came to mind.

What books, for you, have both?