What are you reading in 2025?

[Retros_x]

it isn't even The Phantom Menace

I've just recently rewatched the prequel trilogy and The Phantom Menace was even worse than I remembered. Are you sure about that comparison? Ep I doesn't even have a real plot, things just happen in a weird unconnected way and you always wonder: who is supposed to be the main character? Its such a mess. Back in 2000s I thought Ep II was the worst one, but now I think its actually Ep I.

Back to reading: I am still on "The Wheel of Time" Bd 1. Really pleasantly surprised. I do enjoy the characters and plot a lot (although Mat is a bit annoying) and what I also love that I am 65% in and Rand wasn't even in one serious fight. They always flee, break through, talk themselves out etc and I like that. They know that they are just a bunch of untrained country bumpkins messed up with much higher forces and run for it. The paranoia keeps growing, enemies are everywhere and I do like the world building although it relies on the occasional info dump by some side character. But again, I enjoy it much more than Sanderson and I guess I will drop my Sanderson marathon for WoT. Or at least I drop Stormlight Archive for now, I am still interested in Mistborn.

 

[Parmandur]

I've just recently rewatched the prequel trilogy and The Phantom Menace was even worse than I remembered. Are you sure about that comparison? Ep I doesn't even have a real plot, things just happen in a weird unconnected way and you always wonder: who is supposed to be the main character? Its such a mess. Back in 2000s I thought Ep II was the worst one, but now I think its actually Ep I.

Back to reading: I am still on "The Wheel of Time" Bd 1. Really pleasantly surprised. I do enjoy the characters and plot a lot (although Mat is a bit annoying) and what I also love that I am 65% in and Rand wasn't even in one serious fight. They always flee, break through, talk themselves out etc and I like that. They know that they are just a bunch of untrained country bumpkins messed up with much higher forces and run for it. The paranoia keeps growing, enemies are everywhere and I do like the world building although it relies on the occasional info dump by some side character. But again, I enjoy it much more than Sanderson and I guess I will drop my Sanderson marathon for WoT. Or at least I drop Stormlight Archive for now, I am still interested in Mistborn.

Mat is pretty annoying at the start of the series. When he starts getting viewpoint chapters in book 3 is when the series really starts cooking with oil, though, he becomes fantastic and often people's favorite character. In fact, one of the main criticisms of the Sanderson portions is that he gets inside the heads of most characters...except Mat. He didn't quite capture what Jordan did with Mat

Jordan really has a strong command of cause and effect, which is what became a problem for him mid-series: he had certain things that needed to happen, and for several books that spiraled as the events became really.complicayed and he felt the need to get it all gamed out in detail rather than hand-waving the plot along.

 

[Parmandur]

Just for fun, this is a brief interview that Jordan gave explaining what he was doing with the Wheel of Time that is included with the audiobooks:

I began writing the Wheel of Time because a great many notions had been bouncing around inside my head and they started to coalesce. I wondered what it was really like to be tapped on the shoulder and told you were born to be the savior of mankind. I didn't think it would be very much the way it is in so many books where someone pops up and says, "Hi, I was born to be the savior of mankind, and here's the prophecy," and everybody says, "Oh well, let's go then." I thought self interest would play a big part, on other peoples' parts.

And I was also wondering about the source of legends and myths. They can't all be anthropomorphizations of natural events. Some of them have to be distortions of things that actually happened, distortions by being passed down over generations. And that led into the inevitable distortion of information over distance, whether that's temporal distance or spatial distance. The further you are in time or space from the actual event, the less likely you are to know what really happened.

And then finally there was the thought about something that happens in Tolkien and a lot of other places. The wise old wizard, or whatever—the wise old fellow shows up in a small country village, and says, "You must follow me to save the world." And the villagers say, "Right then, guv, off we go!" And well, I did a lot of growing up in the country, and I've always thought that what those country folk would say is, "Oh, is that so? Look here, have another beer. Have two, on me. I'll be right back. I will, really." And then slip out the back door.

There were a lot of things that came together, and even once I started, of course, a lot of things built in, and added in, and changed.

 

[Reynard]

This is really good:

The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I went with this. Looking forward to it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've just recently rewatched the prequel trilogy and The Phantom Menace was even worse than I remembered. Are you sure about that comparison? Ep I doesn't even have a real plot, things just happen in a weird unconnected way and you always wonder: who is supposed to be the main character? Its such a mess. Back in 2000s I thought Ep II was the worst one, but now I think its actually Ep I.

What kills me about Episode 1 is how resolutely immune to feedback Lucas clearly was. There's no way that no one brought up the wildly racist voices he gave characters (which were shocking even upon release), that we're casually tossing slavery into the canon, or that you can apparently measure Force sensitivity with a blood test, or stopping the action dead for a cute kid to go "wahoo!" (George, kids like the original two movies just fine without any kid characters to root for), or that if we're supposed to like Jar-Jar Binks, he probably should be releasing the bombs at the end on purpose.

We don't talk enough about how the good stuff about Star Wars almost certainly comes down to Marcia Lucas saying "George, come on, man."

 

[prabe]

We don't talk enough about how the good stuff about Star Wars almost certainly comes down to Marcia Lucas saying "George, come on, man."

We don't talk about how much of the good stuff about Star Wars came about despite George Lucas.