Book Review: The Children of Hurin

The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

They don't write them like this anymore. The Children of Húrin is a work completed by J.R.R. Tolkien's son, Christopher. The story reads like a Greek tragedy or legend, as if it was being told around a fire.

The story follows the life of Túrin, son of Húrin, covering his entire life, and focusing brief passages on his key adventures and misadventures. The book does not give you an in depth "play by play" of everything that occurs and it will summarize years passing in a paragraph or two.

What you get are broad strokes about the feats performed by a single man and the tragedy of his life. Rather than a book written for us, this almost reads like a book written for the denizens of Middle Earth, shared with its inhabitants about a tragic hero from the first age.

The readability this book rates high compared to some of the other incomplete works of Tolkien. This is by no means as easy as the Hobbit or LOTR, but it is much more digestible than any of the Unfinished Tales. The stories will be easy to follow, but the locations and names of many of the characters will leave you confused. The book assumes that you are familiar with the locations of places in the world, (again, perhaps it is written for the people of Middle Earth) and doesn't give you much reference.

Christopher Tolkien does an excellent job providing detailed annotations and notes on his father's work along with background information about how he pieced partial manuscripts together.

Overall, this is a great story for anyone who is a fan of Tolkien. If you have read The Hobbit and LOTR and you are looking for a story to make the jump before getting into the difficult ocean of the Unfinished Tales, this is a great bridge book that will give you a good story and also give you the background information about how the world was created.

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My Year in Books - 2016

Here is a look back at my books read in 2016. I leveraged my local library a lot this year utilizing the audiobooks and access to comic comic-books.  I would highly recommend people go and checkout what digital resources your local library has. My library has three online digital resources for audiobooks, ebooks, and comics that all comes with smartphone or tablet apps. Utilizing these will allow you access to all sorts of audiobooks and comics (even movies and music) that you haven't had before. 

Here's to a good 2017 of read. What was your favorite reading? 

September 2016 - Reading List

The year is coming to a close. We are now in the last quarter with fall quickly coming up upon us. For the past couple of years I have really enjoyed reading one of the Harry Potter books during the late fall, early holiday season. I have read the first four books, so I am just starting to now make the turn into the darker side of the series. That also means that the series starts to get a bit longer as we move on. 

I have had an opportunity to read a lot of books this year, especially since I have taken advantage of my library's audiobooks. I can't say though that anything has really captured me with the exception of Ancillary Justice. The collection of Nebula Award short stories was extremely good and I truly enjoyed the Last Wish, which I just finished a few weeks ago. 

I am currently reading an indie book called Render. It is the follow up with Shatter, which caught me by surprised a few years ago. I am hoping to wrap up some series that I have had hanging out there for a while now before diving deep into any new long standing series. I really want to get the Malayan series wrapped up soon as well, since that one only has a couple of books left in the main series. 

I am struggling so far with Render since I cannot remember pretty much who any of the characters are. One of the troubles of reading a follow up series so many months later. Since it is an indie book, I have also been unable to fins a synopsis online to refresh my memory. It has been a struggle thus far to get into the book. 

I am hoping I might be able to knock out two more books before the end of the year. 

February 2016: Reading List

The year is off to a fine start, so let's check in on what I am reading so far. I had a couple of books roll over from the end of the year into January and February. I finished up Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Both were wonderful books and if you haven't read them you really should. You can read my reviews of them at the links above, but they are probably entrenched enough in popular culture that you would know going in whether they would be for you or not.

I decided to start reading Young Miles, which is the second omnibus of the Vorkorsigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. I read the first omnibus book, Cordelia's Honor, a few years ago and really enjoyed it. I am surprised that it has taken me this long to get back around to reading more of this series. The writing in this book is superbly done so far, but for some reason it isn't quite capturing my attention. It is odd as there are parts where I have a genuine smile on my face while reading. Perhaps I am just not in the right mindset at the moment for this book. I will continue through the book though as it is a fairly easy read.  

I also went to the library this weekend and picked up the audiobook of Ancillary Justice. This is another sci-fi book and typically I don't read two of the same genre at the same time, but I have heard just too many good things about this book. First impressions after the first couple of chapters is that this books is really well done. I am enjoying the mixed narrative perspective in this book a lot since our main character is an artificial intelligence that can inhabit more than a single body at once. The narrator for this audio book is quite good as well, being able to reflect the proper tone for different characters. I have listened to the Sword and Laser podcast talk about this book when they read it as a group about a year ago and so far it is holding up to impress so far. 



January 2016 Reading List

The winter is always a good time to sit-down and find some books to read. Some people think summer is to time to read, but for me that is the time to get outside and do something active. The winter weather though is a great excuse to read some good books. 

As I previously mentioned, Megan bought me a Kindle Voyage for my birthday and I have had a great time reading some books on it over the past few months. 

I was able to finally polish off "Toll the Hounds" which was the eighth book in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen Series.  As I have noted a few times before, those books are huge. This one in particular was 800+ pages and it took me a better part of 2015 to get through. It was difficult in part because I just wasn't that into the book. I am going to continue to soldier on through though and finish that series here in 2016. There are only two books left to go.

Once I finished that I needed to find something that was a little bit lighter in reading. I picked up "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" from the Kindle Lending Library to read over the Thanksgiving and winter holiday. No surprise, I loved the book as I have with all of the Harry Potter books I have read thus far. At the same time I also picked up an audio book from Librivox to listen to.  That book was "The Double Traitor" by E. Phillips Oppenheim. This was a nice, low key spy novel. It didn't have much action in it, but it was more about deception and double-crossing by the characters. There was a lot of exposition in it, but it worked out in the end as a good book. 

I am now working on another "light" novel and reading the "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes". This is a great book so far. Very light stories and this particular novel is a collection of short stories. I didn't realize that it was actually the third Holmes book, so I will have to definitely pickup the other two. These books are all in the public domain so you can get them for free over at Project Gutenberg or on most of your ebook reader stores. 

Kindle Voyage

For my birthday this year Megan bought me a new Kindle Voyage. I have been using my original Kindle 3G (the one with the keyboard) for close to five years now and I have it to thank for getting back into reading. I have been eyeing one of the new Kindles for quite a while now, especially one with the glowlight on it for nighttime reading. I had some major jealousy going on to Megan's Nook which had the glowlight. Problem was that my K3G was in perfect condition. Not a crack on it so it was hard to justify an upgrade. 

Well timing worked out well and Amazon a few weeks back was doing a good trade in credit for the old Kindle and it just so happened that my birthday was around the corner. So I have a fancy new Kindle Voyage, which is really nice. I have people occasionally ask me why I don't just read on a tablet. I do actually read on my iPad on occasion, but the LCD screen really isn't ideal for longer reading sessions. I am a big proponent of single purpose devices, not "do it all" devices so getting the best tool for the job I want is really what I am looking for. For reading, it has to be e-ink. It is just so much easier on the eyes. The new voyage also has a glass screen which really makes the e-ink pop in a great way. 

August 2014 Reading List

My volume of books so far this year hasn't been really high, but that is probably because the majority of the books that I am reading seem to be in the 800+ page range. I have continued to work through the Malazan series and I am now on book #7 with Reaper's Gale. 

This book so far has been the hardest to get through and it is really a slog. I personally just don't have much of an interest in the story line that is happening in Lether and the characters really are not that interesting. I am close to 50% of the way through the book and we have finally be reintroduced to some of our Malazan favorites and I did get one new character called Beek, who seems like he will certainly turn into a great character in the future. 

I think after this book I will need to take a break from the Malazan series and catch up again on some of my Sci-Fi reading. I am really looking forward to reading Unstable Prototypes, which is the follow up to Joesph Lallo's Bypass Gemini. I also have on my radar to get back into the Entire of the Rose series. I read the first book in that series several years ago around 2001, and while I wasn't a fan of the main character, I did find the world very interesting.  

I would also like to read the follow up books to N.K. Jemison's Inheritance Trilogy. A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was one of the best books I have read in the past few years and I really would like to see where that world goes as well. 

B&N selling off the Nook business - I hope that is good news for Nook


News has been all over the web that Barnes & Noble has decided to split off its Nook division and sell it off. I hope this actually means good things for the Nook in the next couple of years. I am an Amazon Kindle user, but most of my family uses Nooks (sink versions). I personally think they are fantastic ereaders and they do have a really nice interface. It seems like B&N itself didn't know how to properly push the Nook devices out. Perhaps with some new management they can aggressively target the Nook like it needs to be targeted. 

It seems like the biggest problems that the Nook has had in its existence so far has been its marketing and its online services. When was the last time you saw a TV ad for a Nook? The answer is never, whereas Amazon has done a very good job of producing Kindle TV ads around the holidays. The Nook has also suffered quite a bit with its online delivery services. They have had some significant problems and they tried to implement a Whispersync type of service to sync your progress up to the cloud and other apps. For a long time it only partially worked. If a new team can get in there and fix two of these main problems I think it could help a lot. 

I would also say that they should ditch the tablet version and the whole multi-media approach. B&N has its history in books and literature. I think the Nook company could really own that space if they ditched the videos and music and went all in on the books (and may be magazines). I would love to see them really make a premium line of sink readers. Push that sink technology hard. The Kobo Aura HD has the highest resolution sink display right now and for hardcore readers that is a niche market I think could be profitable. Publishers seem eager at this point to fight back against Amazon just as they did with Apple and iTunes a few years ago. Nook could have an opportunity to strike some really good publishing deals. 

Also, if you have ever been on the Nook sites they actually have a pretty good social media team going. They have some excellent blogs and online communities that push out some great content for fans of reading. It features some good interview and other content. They also have continually offered their "Free Book Friday's" deals which I think are a boon for readers. The problem is, it is near impossible to find these on B&N's website. 

The Nook (and B&N in general) also really should highlight more that they are leveraging the epub format. Technically any book bought from the Kobo or Google Play stores can be side loaded onto a Nook without issue. KIndle's can't do that. It would be nice if Google Play or some other service could license a way to wirelessly send books purchased on these other stores right to the Nook wirelessly to alleviate the friction of side loading. The idea of having multiple stores accessible to your device is something that could be a great sell for the Nook hardware business. 

March 2014 Reading List

Despite everything that has been going on lately, I have still been reading some books. The most notable of the books I have recently read have both been graphic novels. I read The Sandman: Dream Hunters, which is a wonderful novel in the Sandman universe. It is apparently volume #11 in this series, so I will have to go back and read the other novels. The book had a wonderful fairy tale sort of feel to it. 

I also read a book call Kabuki, Vol 1: Circle of Blood. This is a pretty adult graphic novel that follows a group of assassins  who are modeled after these TV personalities. It is a bit hard to describe from that angle, but really just picture a dystopian future where a shadow organization is trying to control the world around it. 

Jumping back over to novels I read an excellent indie novel called Bypass Gemini  which was written by Joe Lallo. I picked this book up as part of the Storybundle way back when. The book was a very pleasant surprise and was an excellent fun, light sci-fi read.