Acceptance

The book will not get finished.

The one I'm trying to read before I get the Harry Potter book on Saturday.

This book, in fact.

Finished, it won't be.  At least, not before Saturday.

After clocking myself at around 45 pages to the hour, I had to face facts.  I've still got more than 5 hours of reading left, and (unless I happen to take off work tomorrow) no chance on earth that I'll have 5 hours to read.  Not when I have a show to see tomorrow night, and the review to write on Friday.  (Not to mention, y'know, a new Doctor Who episode Friday night.  And the mail is piling up.  And I didn't even wash the dishes in the sink.  And maybe I could keep the floor vacuumed if I'd take a half hour and clean the Roomba.  And it's a woot-off.)  So, yeah, book not finished.

I hope I'll at least stop at a good stopping poing, and remember who the hell everyone is when I pick it up again.

Ironically, I will have a very similar problem when the Harry Potter book shows up -- as, with the rather obvious exception of a couple of very key plot points that happened at the end of the most recent book, I hardly remember where I last left everyone in that universe.  Had even been hoping to catch the current movie before the book came out so I'd at least be reminded of Book Five.  Ah well.  I hope I'm not supposed to remember who the heck everyone at the Ministry of Magic is -- could never keep them straight anyway.  (You know what I remember about reading Book Six?  I remember reading some character's name right there in Chapter One, and thinking, "Man, I know I've read that name somewhere before, but hell if I know who it is.")

I'm basically a one-book-at-a-time type of gal.  I do my job the same way.  I usually work on three or four cases each month -- and by the time the month is over, I'll go back and read the stuff I wrote on the first case, and won't remember it.  ("I wrote that?  How very brilliant of me.")

So, the gang from Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself is going to have to go some for me to remember them.  I'm down with that, though.  I understand that this is the first book of a series and I won't get the second for some time, so I'll be playing this game again (the first book is only available in the US in hardcover -- I'd picked up the paperback in London 'cause I like taking a chance on new authors).  Wonder if they'll change the book much for the US release.  They'll probably revise all the references to one's "arse."

Funny -- the little voice in my head that does the narration (and, thank you, kindergarten, for teaching me to read aloud in my head) reads in American English rather than English English, and it always trips over the "arse"s.  The rest of it reads fine in American.  (Harry Potter used to read fine in American, too.  But now that the characters are so intertwined with the actors who play them, the little voice in my head actually goes with those actors' voices.  I mean, sometimes, you can just hear Alan Rickman being all Snapey.)

I can better report on The Blade Itself once I've finished reading it.  I can give you that it's well-written and has the advantage of (at least) three protagonists (and we get into the heads of each of them).  I'm still not entirely clear on what it's about, though.  Took the first half of the book to establish each character, where they are in the path of life, and what they'd like to get out of it -- and, right about halfway into the book, we're finally getting their paths to cross, so maybe something a little more traditionally plot-like is going to appear.  And it's funny -- not "ha ha" funny like Pratchett, but more of a dark funny.  Out of the three main characters, the one who is the least likeable isn't the barbarian or the guy who tortures people for a living.  Twisted.  I dig it.