Patrick Rothfuss! For real this time

Hey Everyone!

So I didn't actual mean to dangle the prospect of Patrick Rothfuss spoilers over your head and then leave you hanging. Instead, as usual, there was some slight life implosion and then you know what happens? I get tired and don't want to do anything productive. Anywhere. I almost don't even want to read - which makes me feel guilty when I have NetGalley requests hanging around. 

Luckily I'm starting to feel better. I'm feeling the juices of actual motivation to get things done, which includes rereading Silver Borne so that I can finally move on to River Marked. I know! I know! I'm horrible - it's been sitting on my shelf for weeks but I've been reaching for old standards and leaving it unloved. 

Anyway...to get back to the point that I swear I started with, Patrick Rothfuss. His Q&A was almost more of a discussion and very reminiscent of popular fiction courses back from when I was in college. It is not at all a negative thought, just reflection. It's a lot of fun to hear one of your favorites authors expand on a topic like oral tradition and fantasy in today's world. Still there were some questions pertaining just to him personally and his series and this is what I gleamed from them:

*On Nathan Fillion/Firefly - yes Fillion did say something along the lines of if he won the California lottery and had $300 mill he would buy Firefly and give it to Joss Whedon. And yes Rothfuss would be glad to help with this project but that is it. It's not even near any sort of stage where it could possibly happen as many - many - more people would be needed ("30 to 50 geeks with more money than sense")

*He's tried to present a realistic world; a pre-industrial, pre-information age world ("a world that is filled with uncertainty")

*He spends a lot of time looking at how information would move in this world

*'Narrata' - the individual narrative unit (he said it, defined it, so even with no context here it is)

*A lot of stuff in the books  he's created from educated guess about what might/could happen. Sometimes those guess can turn out to be true, can be seen in real world examples from the past. (Eg - silk bras, the buggery (Library of Congress seriously used to de-bug books this way:  the books were laid out in a circle around a log dipped in honey. You close the door and come back later after all the bugs have left the books to eat the log))

*How literate are the people? World more akin to renaissance Europe than anything else; troupers are of course eminently literate but most people have enough learning to read signs and that's about it - reading/writing skills are available, just not very important

*Why does he change the things he changes? Rothfuss makes changes to make the story better. For example, without tension there is no story - you have to have problems if you're going have to something actually happen. 

And there you go people - out of a huge multiple hour long chunk of my life I ended up with 7  bullet points. But weren't those some fun bullet points? 

Yet I still think something is lacking....something...something. GOT IT! You know what this post needs? Some completely without context

Memorable Quotes:

-"I'm writing a realistic world which means...people are dicks."

-"The bar bet is dead"

-"You hear what Newton said?"..."He's high on mercury!"

-"Why are you ruining bouncing?"

-"Cognitive dissonance...then you stroke and you die."

Patrick Rothfuss! Well ok - almost

So yesterday I decided that the best use of my time (in or out of work) would be to take the day off and go see Patrick Rothfuss at the Library of Congress. And you know what? I was exactly right.

Even after moving the event to a 'bigger room' it was completely packed, with Rothfuss eventually having to play traffic controller and gradually moving people standing in the hallway in to sit on the floor. Seriously. It was even more ridiculous when you consider that we were in a dining room that was obviously cut in half with those sliding wall things and it would have been the easiest thing in the world to create more room. 

But again, I consider that one of those logical actions that most people apparently don't like to do.

Sadly for you guys Rothfuss doesn't like being filmed while having discussion like this past one. He's rightfully concerned about small 45sec clips being taken out of context and posted up on YouTube - to his and everyone's detriment. We'll have to just settle for my book nerd-ery in the form of handwritten notes, which will be transcribed tomorrow as I forget to bring my notepad with me :-/ Sorry!

Still let me just assure you that it was a hilarious event and even now one of the things I remember best is how much I want the shirt he was wearing:

Ringing in the New

2009 definitely had it's ups and downs. New job, new friends, new personal losses. All of it combining into year that I could have never seen coming. What I am exceedingly grateful for are the people in my life who make it worth living and the surprising joy I've gotten through writing here. It started out as an idea in high school, an idea that my friends could go to a website, see a list of the books I've read with possibly a thumbs up or down, all to help them make their own new book choices. It's evolved into Reading Amidst the Chaos, where I steadily keep my reading alive and out there for other people. I don't have to know you personally to want you to read the best of what's out there - and I hope that, at least a little, this site helps you find it. With over 100 posts and counting I feel like I finally have a rhythm and purpose with all the feelings that I have about books. I look to 2010 and hope to see this expand even more, with guest writers and contests, video chats and more. We'll just have to see how that goes though...Either way - HAPPY NEW YEAR! And I hope that you spend 2010 with the best books you can find!

To end the year on a high note, I'm going to try and do a not Bible length post about the Worth It and Not Worth It picks of 2009. I can't say that this covers everything, apparently my Google Calendar didn't start until March 2009, but I think all in all this covers most of the year so it should still be helpful.

Worth It: This was the year for sequels. Throughout 2009 I saw a lot of authors come forward with incredible additions to well loved series. Whether it was Magic Strikes by Illona Andrews, the 3rd in her series, or Turn Coat by Jim Butcher, the 11th in his, sequels just roared to the forefront with power and substance. They stood on their own with story lines and characters twists, making the whole series that much more powerful. Whether the author was old or new, sequels totally grabbed my heart this year, with ones like The Mane Squeeze by Shelly Laurenston and Burning Wild by Christine Feehan being read over and over again. Here's the final list of what really caught my attention in 2009:





Magic Strikes – Andrews
Turn Coat – Jim Butcher
Lover Avenged – JR Ward
Burning Wild – Christine Feehan
Dead and Gone – Charlaine Harris
Skin Trade – Laurell K. Hamilton
Mastered by Love- Stephanie Laurens
What a Dragon Should Know – G.A. Aiken
The Mane Squeeze – Shelly Laurenston

Not Worth It: There weren't many books this year that were completely and totally not worth my time. Even the 3 that made this list weren't complete losses, just ones that I wish I'd gotten from the library because they weren't that good and now I'm going to feel compelled to complete the series. Nora Roberts' Vision in White was just not that good. It was typical and mediocre and not an example of the type of eye catching romance that she usually writes. That's what really puts it in this category - I know she can do better and I refuse to accept that this is how she chose to start a new series (especially a trade paper series). Anthologies are always tricky, so Never After's appearance on this side wasn't a surprise, and Covet by JR Ward was just strange. I understand that it was series opener, and thus had a lot of world building and character explanations to do, but I still feel like it could have done better. So the short but sweet Not Worth It list looks like this:

Vision in White – Roberts
Covet – JR Ward
Never After - Laurell K. Hamilton, Yasmine Galenorn, Marjorie M. Liu, Sharon Shinn

Biggest Fake Out: Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.

I did this final part not to blame Patrick Rothfuss, but to mourn the book that could have been. I was SO READY for his next book to come out, and to find that it wasn't even through being edited was a bit of a shock. I'm still excited, I'm still waiting with bated breath for the book to be released, but in 2009 there was no bigger fake out than Wise Man's Fear.

Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss