A few years ago, my kids joined the swim team at our neighborhood pool. This meant many hours of me just sitting on a chair at the pool, having nothing to do but read. So I assigned myself a “pool book” — one that was longer than I might normally read, just so that I would never run out of stuff to read during practice. So far, just while the kids have been practicing, I’ve read all five books in the A Song of Ice […]
A Solid Path in the First Half but Like Slogging Through a Swamp in the Second
Do you ever read something and just know it was written by a man? Particularly when dealing with the subject of women? Of course, I do know Patrick Rothfuss is male, but I mean, sometimes you just get this feeling of deep knowing in your soul… more on this later. The Wise Man’s Fear is the second book in Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicle series, and I feel like the book was really split in half for me in terms of enjoyment: literally, I liked the […]
Inside the mind of a girl who names things
“She’d strayed from the true way of things. First you set yourself to rights. And then your house. And then your corner of the sky. And after that… Well, then she didn’t rightly know what happened next. But she hoped that after that the world would start to run itself a bit, like a gear-watch proper fit and kissed with oil. That was what she hoped would happen.” Auri is a character introduced in the Kingkiller Chronicles. The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a […]
1, 2, the Chandrian’s comin’ for you…
Part coming of age story and part sword and sorcery adventure story, The Name of the Wind is a masters class in fantasy world building that unfortunately gets bogged down when the action switches to a University setting. Kote spends his days running the inn on the side of a road in a tiny town. Dark days have descended on the land. Black spider like demons terrorize the populace, raiders are common on the roads, and whispers of an ancient evil are becoming louder. One […]



