Recent Reads/GGK Book Club: Tigana

[mizkit]

I have, terribly belatedly, read April’s GGK book club novel, TIGANA. Well, re-read it, because it’s down on my Reading List four times and I’ve read it at least twice that many times, because the reading list didn’t get started until well after the book came out.

TIGANA is, pretty much without a doubt, my favourite book. I’ve never previously

Comments

[tersa]

So your post reminded me I'd wanted to ask you an opinion question about something only related to GGK-books...but then I read the post, and now it would feel tres gauche to aside from that.

Just...wow.

<3

[mizkit]

...now I'm of course very curious as to what the question was. *laughs*

[tersa]

*laugh*

I've gotten into audiobooks (or at least an audiobook) to listen to while forcing myself to walk. I'm about at the end of the only one I have in electronic format and thinking about the next, and found two GGK books, Song of Arbonne and Lions of Al-Rassan, narrated by a gentlemen who I know via video game voice acting.

However, I also seem to recall not liking either of those overly much, from the one time I read them...christ. Maybe 15-20 years ago now...so wanted to get your abashedly biased opinions on whether to "re-read" them that way or not.

[mizkit]

Oh, that's an unintentionally loaded question to ask me. :)

A SONG FOR ARBONNE is my least favourite GGK book. I'm actually kind of looking forward to re-reading it, because it's the only one I've never had any interest *in* re-reading and I really want to find out if I just totally missed the thrust of it 20+ years ago or if it genuinely doesn't work for me. (I believe, to balance that, that it's desperance's favourite GGK

[tersa]

Actually, that helps ENORMOUSLY. I don't really want to plunk down $20+ for the audio version of a book I remember disliking and now have had corroborated that it isn't just my fuzzy memory that makes me think that.

:)

(I just made an Amazon Kindle Whispersync purchase of another book by the same author I'm currently listening to, Laura Kinsale, who has a different video game VA narrator I'd like to read me the phone book, for about half the price of the Audible.com audio-alone version which is crazy sauce. And debating doing something similar with Skin Job, which I still haven't read.)

[mizkit]

Oh, good, cool, I'm glad it helps! :)

(Don't even talk to me about how far behind I am on Jim's books. SUMMER KNIGHT, anyone?)

[tersa]

(Good grief. Now that you're done with Urban Shaman, you have no excuse! Go forth and read, you do it with other authors!)

[mizkit]

(It's worse than that, even. I actually read SUMMER KNIGHT as a rough draft online before it underwent significant revisions for publication. I need to just start at the beginning and read them all. :))

[msagara]

A SONG FOR ARBONNE is also my favorite GGK, structurally, fwiw.

I did not have the same explosive reaction to LIONS that you did. I did resent the use of the very very subjective "a good man" in the penultimate chapter, though.

[mizkit]

They were both good men. It is my violently-held opinion that he killed the wrong one, and that furthermore he knew it and consequently tried to obfuscate it in the final chapter, which I had to read five times in order to be sure which man had died.

Seriously, I haven't read the book in 19 years and I'm still pissed off about it. Not that I hold grudges or anything.

[chrysoula]

Have I told you my experience with Lions? In which I was maybe a quarter into it and I thought, "This character is the Diarmuid of the book. He is going to die," and before I could stop myself I flipped to the end and I was right and I put the book down and I didn't actually pick up another Kay book until Ysabel.

But Tigana was my favorite book for at least a decade anyhow.

[mizkit]

You were much more insightful than I. :)