If it helps, a number of people I know felt the first book was slow until about page 150.
Angel: Will you just shut up for once?! Illyria: What? Angel: My God, the speechifying. Has it ever occurred to you that now might not be the best time for when-we-were-muck stories?
'Time Bomb'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
megan walker - Aug 14, 2010 5:22:33 pm PDT #11888 of 28343
"What kind of magical sunshine and lollipop world do you live in? Because you need to be medicated."-SFist
Pix - Aug 14, 2010 10:25:07 pm PDT #11889 of 28343
The status is NOT quo.
Yep, mw speaks true.
Steph L. - Aug 15, 2010 12:47:28 pm PDT #11890 of 28343
this mess was yours / now your mess is mine
I liked the first one all right, but DAMN the second two were good!
It's good to keep hearing that, because I keep trying to get into the first one and it's not working that well. Right now I'm simply too distracted, but I know there's a payoff, so.
I was just coming here to post this -- I started the first one over the weekend (we were out of town), and I'm only on page 70 and just want to chuck it. Seriously, a libel lawsuit, and pages of details about corporate theft or some shit? I'm waiting to care, and yet, I have not.
Also? I totally understand that what I'm reading, since I'm a monolingual American, is a translation, but the writing style, such as it is, is almost enough to make me give up.
So, the second and third are worth slogging through the first?
Kat - Aug 15, 2010 1:06:08 pm PDT #11891 of 28343
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo
Yes. Steph, get through the first 150. Skim the corporate bullshit and the libel lawsuit because they don't matter.
Polter-Cow - Aug 15, 2010 1:25:30 pm PDT #11892 of 28343
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
They don't matter??
That reminds me of William Diehl's books. I read Primal Fear and the sequel (sequels?), and there seemed to be entire chapters dedicated to cases the main character was working on that were completely irrelevant to the plot.
Kat - Aug 15, 2010 1:58:04 pm PDT #11893 of 28343
"I keep to a strict diet of ill-advised enthusiasm and heartfelt regret." Leigh Bardugo
I think the libel lawsuit was really designed to explain WHY Mikael was so able and willing to go out to Whozzits and felt so disconnected from his usual world. I also think they could have been edited down to less than the 150 pages it filled.
But from a Larsson standpoint, they were probably critical.
Steph L. - Aug 15, 2010 3:27:01 pm PDT #11894 of 28343
this mess was yours / now your mess is mine
Has anyone read China Miéville's Kraken? It sounds AWESOME.
sj - Aug 15, 2010 4:37:14 pm PDT #11895 of 28343
"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea."
Has anyone read China Miéville's Kraken? It sounds AWESOME.
It's in my to read pile, but I haven't gotten to it yet.
Calli - Aug 15, 2010 4:42:42 pm PDT #11896 of 28343
I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul—Calvin and Hobbs
So, I'm about 40 pages into An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard. Does a plot show up at any point, or is the whole thing just word pictures from the point of view of a kid in the 1950s ? 'Cause I'm still waiting for something to happen. Or even something to suggest something will happen between now and page 255.
Typo Boy - Aug 15, 2010 7:17:45 pm PDT #11897 of 28343
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.
Hmm: Literary Buffistas, do you think the following a fair take on Defoe's views on faith vs works? (based upon Robinson Crusoe, Journal of the Plague Years and Moll Flanders.) :
===================
Defoe saw evil and improper acts as distractions that made it impossible to pay attention to God. Evil was always foolish in that it made you blind to God. Virtue included pragmatic self-interest so long as only proper action was taken in pursuit of that self-interest, and so long as self-interest was not all there was to you. Virtue did not ensure salvation, but salvation was unlikely, perhaps impossible without it. The virtuous had the choice of paying attention to God, in way the wicked did not, almost did not.
Defoe did not think you attained salvation by wrestling with the devil and winning. To Defoe, you obtained salvation by wrestling with God and losing.