Vacation Reads

Last year, I somehow managed to read 51 books.  This was the year that E arrived at the very beginning of the year, mind you.  I had no lofty goals in mind at the beginning of the year, and in fact, had you asked me how many books I figured I'd be able to read throughout the year, I probably would have put the number very close to 10 - and I mean under 10.

Now, some of these books were short and sweet, and I won't lie, there were a few teen books in there - including the entire Anne of Green Gables series, which I reread.  But still, 51 books, all while caring for a newborn.  I'm pretty darn proud of myself, even if 51 is far below the normal average (what that is, I honestly couldn't tell you, because I've never actually counted before) of what I normally read throughout the year. 

All that to say is that I'm planning on doing the same this year, if not exceeding that goal (with an increasingly busy toddler to run after - yeah, right!).  Originally, I planned to blog about all of the books I read, but in all honesty, a lot of the books I read are "meh" books, meaning that I finish them and put them down, and don't have a whole lot to say about them.  Maybe this is a hint that I should be looking for quality over quantity?  But how I will know if it's good or not until I've read it?  But I digress...  I do intend to review the ones that I really enjoyed, or those that left me thinking about them, long after they were finished.

D, E and I were in Cuba last week.  It was pretty bad.  It rained all week.  Like every day.  All day for the first four days.  Needless to say, I got a lot of reading done, even though, as I complained to Dan on our way home, "I only finished three books."  Still, one of them was the 932 page final book in the Wheel of Time series A Memory of Light.

A Memory of Light was written by Brandon Sanderson, using notes left by the original author of the series, Robert Jordan, who unfortunately passed away before the series could be finished.  I first started reading The Wheel of Time back in University (and no, I don't even want to think about how long ago that was!). At the time, the series was only about 4 or 5 books in, and had I known that it would stretch as long as it did, there was no way that I would ever have begun it.  It almost became a chore reading the series, but I was determined to finish the damn thing, especially since I had invested so much of my time in it.  I was one of those nerds who used to reread all the books in the series before reading the newest volume came out.  That didn't last very long.  Those books were all sacrificed the year before last in the great wedding wreath massacre of 2012.  Still, rereading the earlier volumes did have some merit, in that I was pretty confused for many events happening in this volume, since it's been a few years since I read the last one.  I didn't have the trusty Internet to help me out when I was confused either, since we were on a Internet free resort in Cuba.  It wasn't too bad, but it could get pretty annoying, now and then.  Wait?  Who is this again?  Why is Mat on his own?  Didn't so-and-so die like 6 books ago?  Why do they have a different name now?  Gah!!!

A Memory of Light pretty much covers the Final Battle, or tarmon gai'don, where Rand Al-Thor must battle the Dark One for the final time and save the world.  His battle in and of itself is pretty lame, in all honesty.  It's a whole lot of "well, this is what the world will be like if I win/if you win" visions.  It's the other characters who are all fighting "real" battles outside that the novel is focused on, which is great, if you like battle scenes.  I confess, I did find my eyes glazing over at some points.  I'm not a huge fan of battle scenes.  I'm sure they were impressive, and all that, but I cared about the characters, and finding out who was going to survive the final battle.  I won't spoil anything, but of the original group from the Two Rivers, only one character dies, and the rest all manage to survive. 

Whether or not they have happy endings is hard to say, since we're left just days after the end of the final battle.  There's no conclusion telling us what happened to everybody in later years.  I don't know if this is what Jordan intended all along, or if Sanderson simply didn't know, and couldn't make his own assumptions, but I wanted that second epilogue, damn it!  I'm one of the few people who liked the 102 endings in Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.  I like my endings resolved nice and tidy, even if it's not always a happy one.  Finishing these books was always going to be bittersweet.  As I said, I've invested so much of my time in them, and as in a lot of books, it's like the characters have become friends.  Not having everything resolved just makes it that much worse for me, in that I will never know what happened to these friends.  Still, the book was on my mind for a couple of days after I finished it, so in that regard, I guess you could call it a success. 

Reviews of my other two vacation reads still to come...