Club409
BOOKS DO YOU READ THEM
I'm about 2/3 of the way through book 10 of the series. First six are good seven's okay.
I have some complaints about the series the biggest being Jordan's obsession with new meaning-less characters. I do feel he spends a rediculous amount of time describing every servant/minor character that might happen to be present at a meeting that lasts 5 minutes. Unfortunately this meeting requires 50 pages because of the descriptions. I heard Sanderson brings the story to a manageable point. At some point these authors need to start bringing the story to a close and just don't feel they can do it yet. This is the main reason I won't start reading a Song of Fire and Ice series.
Another complaint I have right now is that book 9 had a huge climactic event. Then we are spending all of book 10 going around and finding out what each of the other characters have been doing up to that point. So essentailly nothing new happens! However I now enjoy the characters and their perspective stories.
There have been nights that I have been able to put the books down! In contrast there have also been nights that I couldn't get through a few pages because I was disinterested in the current plot line Jordan was following. I definitely feel the series is worth the read especially if you are a fan of fantasy novels. I can't wait to see how the story ends!
Book 10 is by far the most laborious to read. Stick with it there's some really cool parts in the following books. The fact that you've been following plot threads for so long really adds to the payoff. Even if the threads were frustrating and tedious.
If anyone is looking for a good sci-fi series I started reading the Gateway series by Frederik Pohl and it's excellent. I've only read the first two books but they've both been fun fast reads.
Once I finish that series it's on to Ender's Game - which is being made into a blockbuster film for 2013 written and co-produced by the author himself and rumored to star Harrison Ford.
I'm working my way through the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. Midway through the second book. Surprisingly dark but pretty interesting read. Plot moves very well and you will want to finish them all once you start the first one.
read them all. good stuff. worth the read.
I read the first book and it's pretting gripping although I've heard the second is the best. I'm planning on reading the rest but I took a little detour to check out Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It's a nonfiction book discussing the different methods of intuitive reasoning employed by our minds and how the heuristics we use to make quick decisions can lead to irrational or illogical thinking. I'm only through the first chapter but it's a fascinating read so far.
Kahneman was a guest on Fareed Zakaria's show and they discussed one of the examples from the book: A baseball bat and baseball cost $1.10 together. If the bat costs $1 more than the ball how much does the ball cost?
Did you initially think the ball would cost [MOUSE OVER]? Well it's actually [MOUSE OVER].
The problem stated above isn't very difficult and some of you may have intuitively got the answer correct (I didn't). If you think about it long enough you can find the right answer but the point about "fast" thinking vs. "slow" thinking is profound. When posed with questions similar to the one above our minds jump to an intiuitive answer which seem logically correct and in most cases these assumptions lead to a valid conclusion but in many cases the answer is completely false. These principles aren't limited to complex math problems but you can find examples in economics politics occupational stereotypes and most likely every facet of our lives.
The book explores some explanations for this and other phenomena and how they impact the decisions we make in our lives.
Here's an explanation in my words of why we get the question above wrong. As stated our minds utilize heuristics to simplify a problem to reach a conclusion in a more efficient manner. For example when you see my gingerbread avatar you automatically know that the character is sad. Why? We've seen faces all our lives and we've become extremely efficient at detecting emotion. This is an example of fast thinking. However when faced with a more complex situation like counting all the letter a's in this post or pinpointing someone's voice in a noisy room we're forced to utilize the slow thinking part of our mind. What happens during this process is that we tend to substitute the actual question for a simplified question we already know how to answer. Instead of applying that example to the real question we conclude that the answer to the real question is the same as the answer to the simplified question. So in the example above we know the total is $1.10 and another number that was given to us is $1 and we need to find a difference so the intuitive thing to do is subtract the two numbers to get [MOUSE OVER].
Anyways I find it intriguing and would recommend at least the first chapter (since that's all I've read so far). I'll let you know if the rest gets boring.
So I've played with this idea in my head for a long time. But now I think I'm actually going to commit to re-writing Episodes 1-3. I feel like Star Wars fans deserve it. There already may be fans versions in existence but that is of no concern. I already have a lot of the major plot points figured out and I plan on referencing Red Letter Media's epic reviews of the trilogy frequently.
Perhaps this belongs in "The Project". I figure I can knock it out in about 2-3 years if I put in at least one good day of writing per month. I may be soliciting my fellow nerds (yes that's you!) for opinions.
jar jar / quai gon romance?