Author Archives: Michael Dodd

Terror and Wonder at the British Library

I’m happy to admit that I’m not really one for Halloween. I can never be bothered with fancy dress, and trick or treating just doesn’t appeal, so I’ve largely tended to just ignore it, and treat the 31^st October as I would any other day. This year I have at least made the concession of starting an occult/horror book in order to get a little bit in the spirit of things, but wait…there’s more. What better way for a Halloween miser to spend a (bizarrely sunny) Halloween afternoon than by visiting the British Library and its Terror and Wonder : The Gothic Imagination exhibition?! Huzzah! At last, something to do on Halloween that I can sink my teeth into! Ahem…sorry.

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The Wise Man’s Fear – Patrick Rothfuss

After the jaw-dropping, life-devouring debut novel that is The Name of the Wind, comes The Wise Man’s Fear, the second in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. At 600+ pages the first in the series was a proper, epic fantasy-length novel, but it pales in comparison with The Wise Man’s Fear which runs to 992 pages in hardback (paperback is 1000+). Make no mistake, this book is huge. It’s not only its physical size either, but also its scope; the increased wordcount allows Rothfuss to broaden the horizons of his story, exploring more of his world and starting to fill in some more of the blank spaces on the map.

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Lost In A Good Book

I’ve been reading for so long I’ve actually grown a beard…

To borrow a well-used phrase, and a Jasper Fforde title, for the last few days I’ve been well and truly lost in a good book. Actually, two good books – I’m re-reading the first two Kingkiller Chronicles novels from Patrick Rothfuss. I’ve already re-read and reviewed the first one, The Name of the Wind, rhapsodising muchly, and now I’m about two thirds of the way through the second, The Wise Man’s Fear. Between the two they amount to over 1500 pages of fantasy goodness, just the kind of stories that I’m liable to get completely caught up in.

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Hooked Before the Book Is Even Open

You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, right? Everyone knows this to be true…but we all still do it. Admit it. I do, for sure. I’ll browse around a bookshop just waiting for something to jump out at me, idly scanning the books on display, looking for anything that stands out amid the endless copycat covers. In fact it’s not even just the covers, it’s titles too. I’ll yawn and skip over anything that’s entitled ‘The Something-Or-Other Code’ or ‘The Girl With/Who/What (delete as applicable) Does Something I’ve Heard Of Before’, generic titles doing as much to put me off a book as generic covers. It’s in our nature, and it’s why books are no longer published in plain, single-colour covers; there’s so much competition, books have got to stand out somehow. Or in the case of the copycats, they’ve got to find a way to ride the coat tails of the trailblazers. Just think about how many cringe-inducing romance books hit the shelves in the wake of Fifty Shade of Grey…they all looked the same (dark cover, something supposedly erotic in lighter tones, possibly draped with a silk scarf) and had titles like ‘Thirteen Shades of Blue’ or ‘Revealed to You’.

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The Name of the Wind – Patrick Rothfuss

Once in a while a story comes along that demonstrates why the fantasy series is such a wonderful thing, a story which justifies every single word written, and so far, two books in, Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles is one of those stories. Unlike the great series like the Lord of the Rings or the Wheel of Time, this forgoes the fellowship-style cast of characters and viewpoints for a single narrative, following a single character through his journey. That character is Kvothe, called Kingkiller, Bloodless, Lightfinger, Sixstring, and the first volume in the series is The Name of the Wind.

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Are Books Value For Money?

Value for money. That’s about as subjective a topic as it’s possible to get, as everyone has their own opinion as to what constitutes good or bad value. When it comes to books, where do you sit on the subject? Are you happy to pay for a hardback of the new novel from your favourite author, as soon as it comes out? Or do you wait for the paperback, look out for the special offers or trawl through charity shops to get your literary fix? Maybe you’ve converted to the joys of the e-reader, and get all of your books in electronic format, taking advantage of the proliferation online of free or 99p ebooks. There is even a final option, of course…the library!

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Gollancz Top Ten

What would your choices be if someone asked you to pick your ten favourite science fiction and fantasy books of the last fifty years? Pretty hard to decide, right? Let’s narrow it down to just a single publisher then, and make it nice and simple. Take Gollancz, the longest-running publisher in the UK to specialise in sci-fi and fantasy. A quick look at the list of authors on their books returns names such as Terry Pratchett, Ray Bradbury, Stephen Donaldson, George R. R. Martin…the list goes on. And on. Many, many truly great books have come to us, the readers hungry for more, through this one publisher. So how about now, could you pick ten from their roster of authors? Still no? Me neither.

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Reader to Writer

When does a reader become a writer? For those who really read a lot, who describe themselves as ‘readers’ (you know who you are) as opposed to someone who happens to read, there seems a curious inevitability to the change, gradual or otherwise, from reader to writer. After all, it’s a rare writer who isn’t (or at least wasn’t) already an avid reader. I should point out here that by ‘writer’ I don’t necessarily mean published author, but rather someone who chooses to contribute somehow and somewhere with the written word, be that in the form of fiction, non-fiction, books, blogs or anything else.

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Reading Out Loud

When was the last time you read something out loud, more than just a few words? A poem, a story, even just a page or two from a book. For those without children at home or in the classroom, the answer could well be quite a long time ago. As adults we tend not to do a lot of reading out loud, unless we work as actors, teachers or news reporters. Once we finish our education and are no longer forced to partake in read-throughs of Shakespeare or classic literature, we tend to confine our reading to the insides of our own heads. Personally, I think that’s a shame.

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Japanese Poems Steal Brains – Haiku Salut

For a band who describe themselves as “Baroque-pop-folktronic-neo-classical-something-or-other”, releasing a book of haiku probably isn’t too much of a stretch, creatively. Especially when that band is Haiku Salut, the Derbyshire three-piece who tour their aforementioned mixture of musical styles around the UK in an old postal van, playing songs like ‘Sounds like there’s a Pacman crunching away at your heart’ to an ever-growing fanbase. Illustrated by Katrine Brosnan, ‘Japanese poems steal brains’ is a collection of 100 haiku written by the band whilst on tour over the last three years.

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