Reading habits of a bookworm
So... I've actually been able to get a fair amount of reading done in the last little while. I've been TOCing in a lot of English classes where the 1st 15min are dedicated to silent reading. Many of the highschools in Maple Ridge also have a SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) program, usually another 15min once or twice a week.
What's been recently finished. . .
Over the last month I finished one book, the last in the series;
that is Stephen King's Dark Tower Series.
Yes, I've now followed Roland from those first f
ew lines "The Man in Black fled accross the desert, and the gunslinger followed..." across our world, through Midworld, and in to Endworld... and finally to The Tower.
If anyone has read some of Stephen King's books, especially The Stand, 'Salem's Lot, and Hearts in Atlantis you'll enjoy the many references to his other works, including some of his old characters coming back as major and minor characters. Books 1-3 really set the stage and do a great job introducing the main players to the stage. Book 4 gives a great backstory Roland, the pinnacle character, and Book 5-7 winds it up, starts getting into the metastory levels... I won't spoil these books by explaining what I mean, but King does a great job using a fairly unique writing style with the concluding novels.
The last book is a rollercoaster with some great minor climaxes that almost put the final conclusion to shame. The ending in its own right was kinda neat, the way I envision the ending of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time working out... if Sanderson ever gets that series done.
What I'm on right now . . .
I thought I'd take a quic
k break from epic series, of which I'm so fond, and try a stand alone novel. Neal Stephenson and Philip K. Dick stand out as particularly good one-book novelists (although I will eventually read Stephenson's trilogy). This time round though I though I'd give Neil Gaiman a go. I loved his ultra dark young adult novel Coraline, though American Gods was pretty cool, and laughed my ass off all the way through his novel jointly written with Terry Prachett Good Omens.
I've been quite smitten with his movie adaptations as well. MirrorMask was quite good, Neverwhere was a bit ho-hum, but again his pay dirt with Stardust. So I thought I'd read the novel Stardust and see if it lived up to the level of enjoyment I recieved from watching the movie. Oddly I each time I found a change from novel to screen I've been able to say to myself "ah, I can see why they did that". There are certain parts of the novel though, that were really nice surprises that didn't get in to the film. The film itself has some bits that excel compared to novel. Take for instance the hilarious character of Captain Shakespeare. He's not in the book! No where to be seen.... sure there is a super-minor character of a lightening-capturing ship, but he's a blip on the map.
Well, only 60 or so pages to go... a good read so far, glad I picked it up.