Well said and well-reasoned, per usual. Schopenhauer nails it with his characteristic pith: “A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
One approach is ‘if the book you are thinking about buying isn’t going to be the next one you read, don’t buy it.’ Whilst I can’t claim to always adhere to the rule, I have saved a lot of money and shelf space using this approach.
Yeah, I can see the wisdom of this, but you still need some way of tracking the books you might want to read. I used to pick up audiobooks without giving it a second thought, but at some point I realized that I was too promiscuous, so now I have an Amazon list "Audiobooks to check out once the backlog is done." I'm almost through my backlog of promiscuity, so I'm about to find out how useful that list is...
As far as physical books... That's where I really have a problem. I probably need an intervention.
I'd like to say thank you for this great reflection on your reading decisions. You've been a big help to me in deciding what to read over the past many years, so consider this a many years long thank you! (For me, and I assume most of his fans, Sanderson novels are very firmly in the "want to read" category. I find them to just be super fun, to the point where it sounds funny to me that anyone would feel pressured into reading the overly massive Stormlight Archive, but it makes sense that would be relevant to you as a fellow Utahn/LDS member. For what it's worth, I'd still recommend reading Mistborn, just forget about all the deep Cosmere lore, and see if you actually enjoy the book to want to keep going)
Like our host, I also would like to know what anyone here thinks of book five if they've read it. Being LDS myself, I'm concerned about the news that Sanderson is using the book to advocate (as opposed to merely depict) gay marriage. He hasn't attacked the Church itself, but has been openly advocating for gay marriage while saying he'll still follow the prophets. I wonder if this has been influencing the negative reviews, either by the reviewers being biased against Sanderson because of this latest stance, or that he's actually "gone woke", and begun to place advocacy above good writing.
I've read Mistborn, the first trilogy at least. And yeah, that's what got me into Sanderson. And to be clear I'm a big fan of the first three books of Stormlight, and there are large swaths of Book Four that I also love. But 63 hours and poor reviews...
Which of course brings up the question. Have you read book five? If so what did you think?
Well said and well-reasoned, per usual. Schopenhauer nails it with his characteristic pith: “A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
One approach is ‘if the book you are thinking about buying isn’t going to be the next one you read, don’t buy it.’ Whilst I can’t claim to always adhere to the rule, I have saved a lot of money and shelf space using this approach.
Yeah, I can see the wisdom of this, but you still need some way of tracking the books you might want to read. I used to pick up audiobooks without giving it a second thought, but at some point I realized that I was too promiscuous, so now I have an Amazon list "Audiobooks to check out once the backlog is done." I'm almost through my backlog of promiscuity, so I'm about to find out how useful that list is...
As far as physical books... That's where I really have a problem. I probably need an intervention.
I'd like to say thank you for this great reflection on your reading decisions. You've been a big help to me in deciding what to read over the past many years, so consider this a many years long thank you! (For me, and I assume most of his fans, Sanderson novels are very firmly in the "want to read" category. I find them to just be super fun, to the point where it sounds funny to me that anyone would feel pressured into reading the overly massive Stormlight Archive, but it makes sense that would be relevant to you as a fellow Utahn/LDS member. For what it's worth, I'd still recommend reading Mistborn, just forget about all the deep Cosmere lore, and see if you actually enjoy the book to want to keep going)
Like our host, I also would like to know what anyone here thinks of book five if they've read it. Being LDS myself, I'm concerned about the news that Sanderson is using the book to advocate (as opposed to merely depict) gay marriage. He hasn't attacked the Church itself, but has been openly advocating for gay marriage while saying he'll still follow the prophets. I wonder if this has been influencing the negative reviews, either by the reviewers being biased against Sanderson because of this latest stance, or that he's actually "gone woke", and begun to place advocacy above good writing.
I've read Mistborn, the first trilogy at least. And yeah, that's what got me into Sanderson. And to be clear I'm a big fan of the first three books of Stormlight, and there are large swaths of Book Four that I also love. But 63 hours and poor reviews...
Which of course brings up the question. Have you read book five? If so what did you think?