Day #1 of the 30 Day Book Challenge

[shadowkat]

I found a book challenge that I liked. It took a while, but I did find one - which a) I haven't done, and b) didn't have favorite in every frigging category. (I don't have a favorite. I find the whole idea of having to pick just one, kind of annoying.)

So this is Day 1 of the challenge. The rules are - don't pick the same one someone else did, don't do the same book twice, and follow the prompt.

The prompt is A book with more than 500 pages.

Mine is Storm of Swords by George RR Martin. The book is actually better than the series, with a lot more nuance.

The book clocks in at a little over 1500 pages.

Here's GRR Martin on Storm of Swords.

Watch on YouTube

Warning: Not for the faint of heart. It's gory. There's a lot of graphic death scenes. And you kind of have to have read the first two books for it to really work.

Comments

[cactuswatcher]

Jean M Auel's The Valley of Horses. 544 p. A fun read.

Her Clan of the Cave Bear comes in just under 500 pages. And sadly I gave up reading this series after the third book The Mammoth Hunters which I found seriously disappointing.

[cjlasky7]

I am Jewish, but not particularly observant. My ties to Judaism are more cultural and intellectual than "religious." This is why Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish was so important to my development. Rosten's humor and deep respect for the everyday culture of the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe both reminded me where I came from and how I could express myself as a Jewish American.

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"And the doctor says my Marvin is suffering from an Oedipus complex.”

“Oedipus-Schmoedipus,” scoffed her neighbour, “so long as he loves his mother!” 

[mefisto]

I'd probably choose The Fellowship of the Ring. Within ASOIAF I go back and forth between books 1 and 3.

[wendelah1]

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish.

Set in London of the 1660s and of the early twenty-first century, The Weight of Ink is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history.

As the novel opens, Helen has been summoned by a former student to view a cache of seventeenth-century Jewish documents newly discovered in his home during a renovation. Enlisting the help of Aaron Levy, an American graduate student as impatient as he is charming, and in a race with another fast-moving team of historians, Helen embarks on one last project: to determine the identity of the documents’ scribe, the elusive “Aleph.”

Electrifying and ambitious, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, The Weight of Ink is a sophisticated work of historical fiction about women separated by centuries, and the choices and sacrifices they must make in order to reconcile the life of the heart and mind.

It's 576 pages in hardcover; despite that, I read it in like two days because I stayed up late and lost sleep. It was that engrossing, that hard to put down.

[kaisa]

Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer-Bradley. I read it when I was around 10 and I think it was the first grown-up book that I read. The TV adaptation is really bad compared to the book, I wish the TV adaptation didn't even exist.