Bill Kte'pi > Recent Status Updates

I've read It God knows how many times, beginning with staying up late reading the library hardcover while the Olympics were on. I have to think it's my most re-read Stephen King book, and so up there with my most-read books tout court. I got the audio book intending to listen to it over the course of October, but made slower progress than expected. It's been a trip - I notice or appreciate things differently in audio

I just have no investment in finding out what happened or will happen.

A reread, but I’m pretty sure it’s the first time since it came out.

There are at least three chapters about which I could say, this chapter alone makes the book worth buying. And fine, I’ll read Master of Kung Fu.

The shift in authorship is a lot more noticeable when binging the series than it was when I first read this book.

The best characters as of this point: Loial, Siuan, Perrin, Min. Still not loving Mat - I remember liking him, but he’s just obnoxious.

The exposition is particularly clunky in the first book (imagine checking in to a motel and listening to the clerk go on about state history for five uninterrupted minutes) of course, but it’s still wild how much of the setting is alluded to or hinted at here, not to be fleshed out or explained until years later.

Also: Loial!

I had forgotten that in the first book, most of the Edmond’s Field characters are characters I either dislike initially (Mat and especially Egwene) or dislike always (tugs braid).

Given that it’s a 14 book series I guess it makes sense mathematically that this one feels like mostly prologue.

I’ve read this before of course - two or three times? And I’ve finished the series, but never binged it. But with the TV series coming up, well — once more unto the breach.

Every time something in this otherwise solid book trips me up, if just happens to be related to Asian food - describing fish sauce as less elegant garum, calling miso fermented rice (a similarly large error about Western cuisine might be saying that ketchup is made of potatoes) ... we’ll see what fumbles remain in the last third.

I read most of these comics when they came out, but it's WILD how little explanation there is in this volume for anything that's happening. The sheer number of characters, and the difficulty of succinctly explaining who they are or their importance to one another, is such a good example of how complex the X-books had become by this point - and that's without even getting into the actual premise of the storyline.

I had forgotten how much of a regular fricking guy Bond is in the books, just this pretty ordinary guy who's a really good shot and has an unusual job.

This is a reread, but what's striking me this time is that it is maybe the oddest King book (and one of the oddest Straub books), if for no other reason than that whole sequences are written in present tense second person with an omniscient narrator, and the main character doesn't show up until about 11% through the book (70-some pages), after only being mentioned a couple times before that.