Tad Williams's memory, sorrow, and thorn (reading notes, adhd)

[elainegrey]

I finished the 4 lb, 2672 page (if bought in paperback) epic fantasy series, Memory, sorrow, and thorn, from Tad Williams last night. I obviously enjoyed it, but i did have a sense of reading to get to the end, making it a little more chore like. I am interested in examining this behavior i learned in my family where everything one wants to do, even for pleasure, is turned to work. My sister and i referred to it recently as we discussed my father and his dating site ... etiquette? discipline? ... where he seems to have taken on the emails of matches as prompt for a bunch of tasks to be optimized.

I think, because it was so long, i recognized i could not devour it all in one bite. I did a better job than usual with the novels of putting them down and not reading too late at night. I am glad to have some evidence of being able to stretch out a pleasant diversion. I reflected a little while reading on the very clear parallels of the peoples characterized in the book and some of the parallels with Europe as we know it. The fantasy world-building wasn't quite the level i wish for. But i enjoyed reflecting on that.

What i wish for a reading for pleasure practice: i wish that i could read for set time periods and find it pleasant to stretch it out by closing the book within ten minutes of an intended time. I want to find a way to be more than devourer of words, but i don't want to make reflections on the reading into work. I'm not sure how to do that. Really, the ability to STOP is such a stretch goal for me. I wonder about reading for the pleasure of words, and for insight. I know there was a period of reading the Honor Harrington series where the parallel of being a woman in leadership surrounded by a certain amount of dishonorable and dysfunctional characters was cheering for my then work situation. I think the pleasure of reading the Memory, sorrow, and thorn series was juxtaposing it between Tolkien and more recent fantasy i have enjoyed, such as Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric series.

I listened to the Gormenghast trilogy ages ago, when riding Caltrain home to San Francisco after work in Mountain View. I can barely remember the series, but there was a dream quality to the experience, which i partly put down to soporific qualities of a train ride in the dark. This series' dream experiences and descriptions of some places and experiences also created for me the same dream-like displacements i experienced with Gormenghast.

Comments

[amaebi]

I have read Gormenghast three or four times-- or at least the first two. I may have let myself off Titus Alone a time or two. It is very strange and dreamlike (and wonderful). And now I imagine it unwinding for you as you rush or lumber through the darkness.

When I was about twelve, my mother sought to improve me by giving me a SBS paperback on How to Succeed in High School, because I was so clearly Doomed, Doomed, I tell you. It included a list of [literary] books One Should Have Read By Each Year of High School which now strikes me as kind of deranged. (Yes, clearly every high school senior needs to have read Sophocles's Oedipus plays!) Not only did that result in my getting an early lick at a lot of interesting (and some very dated) stuff, but it led me to read badly for years. As if I were dashing for a finish line. It was hard to recover, but getting myself to slow down is one of the things I've been happiest about.

I haven't read Tad Williams-- would you recommend the series?

[elainegrey]

I remember reading Tad Williams as he wrote part of the Shadowmarch series as an online novel in the early oughts and that being a much more fascinating world. The Memory, sorrow, and thorn series references a sort of European-esque world. What was more intriguing for me, which could be flaw or charm, is the sense of time. The novel spans a year in which some main characters mature from their youth. Other characters are older, but despite the narrative moving from the youth's point of view, the older characters seem to have the same sense of things being so very long ago. The author didn't seem to have the insight of how things that seem so long ago to someone born recently seem so much closer to someone who lived through it.

It is apparently a well respected series, but -- without having reread Shadowmarch recently, i suspect it's better.

[amaebi]

Interesting. Thanks!

[tamena]

that series sounds SO familiar, I definitely recognize the author and I'm pretty sure I read it back in the day cause I'm old as dirt LOL
Tolkien I could never get through but had no issues with GRR Martin and Game Of Thrones, go figure
current genre for my clan is RPG Lit, Dungeon Crawler Carl if you've ever played any type of MMORPG or just RPG in general is funny as hell and a quick read
My issue with reading it that I get going and just don't want to stop, not so much as it becoming a chore but more becoming too invested at the moment to stop. Maybe a different way of looking at your situation? Reading is an escape and everyone needs an escape, if you're reading like that you might need to read like that for the time being if that makes sense?0

[elainegrey]

I get caught up in books and can't put them down, which means i deny myself reading for pleasure because i feel i will get caught up and not stop. I respect i am reading to escape, but somehow i need to be able to stop running. I'd like little escapes!

[tamena]

I totally get that, I really do think that's one of the biggest problems with being a "reader" =) We're all guilty of it at some level I'm sure
The last series I read I was reading half a book a day because I enjoyed it, the let down when I was done though sucked.

[yourlibrarian]

I could relate to what you wrote about both rushing through reading and also the train + story experience.

Perhaps because I am always reading in bed, I noticed I have this tendency to always be looking at the remaining page count. Part of it is because I know I'll need to parcel books out to 3 or more nights (depending on the book size) so I am always thinking of a stopping point. But it does contribute to a tendency to rush through stories (or stay up too late).

I've wondered if a combination of activities tends to lend itself to longlasting impressions. I've noticed, for example, while doing jigsaw puzzles or exercising that the activities have combined with certain stories in my head. I still associate Death in Paradise with doing puzzles and the show Evil with doing exercises because I watched them for long stretches while doing these things.

[elainegrey]

There are audiobooks that take me back to different commutes, and I will probably associate the TV show Lucifer with worries about my mother -- i binged on it a particularly rough times over her post stroke period. I've events in my mind tied to a variety of crochet projects, too. I know that doodling during lectures or meetings did mean that, for some time after, the doodles were a chanel into remembering the event.

[yourlibrarian]

I wonder if studies have been done about how people best recall information. For example, I could see that being focused but not trying too hard to absorb information could actually result in better subconscious recall.