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

[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!