Feature and Follow Friday! #2

This is a weekly blog hop hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read. :)

Q: What is your preferred reading format? Hardcover, eBooks, paperback etc?

Honestly for the longest time I was anti-ereader. I just couldn't see myself ever loving reading a screen because I love the smell of books and visually seeing how much progress I was making. While I still prefer reading paperbacks, I finally caved and bought a ereader earlier this year and I love it! I never purchase books unless I know I will love them and reread them. Anything else, I either borrowed from someone or from the library. With the ereader, however, I could literally own hundreds of books and it would only take up as much room as the ereader itself. My husband rolled his eyes when I was gushing about how many books I could own. Can you tell he isn't a reader? LOL.

REVIEW: Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan

TITLE: Knife of Dreams

AUTHOR: Robert Jordan

GENRE: Fantasy

SERIES: Wheel of Time # 11

WHERE I GOT IT: Own it

READ FROM: January 28^th to June 18^th 2013

BOOK BLURB: (taken from Goodreads) The Wheel of Time turns, and Robert Jordan gives us the eleventh volume of his extraordinary masterwork of fantasy.
The dead are walking, men die impossible deaths, and it seems as though reality itself has become unstable: All are signs of the imminence of Tarmon Gai'don, the Last Battle, when Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, must confront the Dark One as humanity's only hope. But Rand dares not fight until he possesses all the surviving seals on the Dark One's prison and has dealt with the Seanchan, who threaten to overrun all nations this side of the Aryth Ocean and increasingly seem too entrenched to be fought off. But his attempt to make a truce with the Seanchan is shadowed by treachery that may cost him everything. Whatever the price, though, he must have that truce. And he faces other dangers. There are those among the Forsaken who will go to any length to see him dead--and the Black Ajah is at his side....
Unbeknownst to Rand, Perrin has made his own truce with the Seanchan. It is a deal made with the Dark One, in his eyes, but he will do whatever is needed to rescue his wife, Faile, and destroy the Shaido who captured her. Among the Shaido, Faile works to free herself while hiding a secret that might give her her freedom or cause her destruction. And at a town called Malden, the Two Rivers longbow will be matched against Shaido spears.
Fleeing Ebou Dar through Seanchan-controlled Altara with the kidnapped Daughter of the Nine Moons, Mat attempts to court the woman to whom he is half-married, knowing that she will complete that ceremony eventually. But Tuon coolly leads him on a merry chase as he learns that even a gift can have deep significance among the Seanchan Blood and what he thinks he knows of women is not enough to save him. For reasons of her own, which she will not reveal until a time of her choosing, she has pledged not to escape, but Mat still sweats whenever there are Seanchan soldiers near. Then he learns that Tuon herself is in deadly danger from those very soldiers. To get her to safety, he must do what he hates worse than work....
 
In Caemlyn, Elayne fights to gain the Lion Throne while trying to avert what seems a certain civil war should she win the crown....
 
In the White Tower, Egwene struggles to undermine the sisters loyal to Elaida from within....
 
The winds of time have become a storm, and things that everyone believes are fixed in place forever are changing before their eyes. Even the White Tower itself is no longer a place of safety. Now Rand, Perrin and Mat, Egwene and Elayne, Nynaeve and Lan, and even Loial, must ride those storm winds, or the Dark One will triumph.

MY THOUGHTS: WOW! This one took me quite awhile to get through! I mean I LOOOOOVE the world and the characters but damn taking numerous books to resolve a few things really made the book drag on and on for me. It probably also didn't help that a week or so after I first started reading it back in January, my oldest daughter (who is 2) pulled out my book mark and it took me a month or so before I felt like picking it back up and finding where I had left off. Robert Jordan has so many characters that it is hard to keep track of them all, especially when they don't appear in the books regularly so I tend to forget who they are and what they were doing. At some point I just started blending all the Aes Sedai that I didn't recognize anymore into one lump, figuring that in any rereads I could maybe try to keep them straight then. At this point I just want to get through the series to find out what happens when the last battle finally arrives.

I still don't really like Elayne and by the end of the book my feelings of dislike intensified. I mean how stupid can she be! Near the end she made a few stupid choices that made me want to reach into the book and throttle her! Thanks Elayne for not only putting yourself in danger but those around you at the same time for NO reason at all. Others could have taken care of it without you at the forefront.

My favourite characters still are Egwene and Nynaeve. I found that any time I came across a part of the book that dealt with them I couldn't put the book down. Unfortunately they were not that many parts that dealt with them. Perrin used to also be a favourite but after a few books of him still trying to locate and get his wife back his story line just got boring to me, plus his wife is another character I can't really stand either. Mat's path was also interesting as well in the beginning but it basically has started to drag on too. Rand is semi interesting but he has changed so much from the first book that I don't necessarily like him as much as I did before. However, I can cut Rand some slack since he does really have a lot on his shoulders. I wouldn't want to be in his position.

At least near the end of the book things have started to slowly come together. A few things happened that shocked me. I know that at least in the next three books I will get some answers. Hopefully I will read through them faster then this one. Although looking ahead to book 12 I see that it is actually 300 pages longer then this one. I look forward to seeing how Brandon Sanderson finishes the series and am also sad to realize that for the most part this book was the last one that Robert Jordan fully completed himself. I still can't believe it has been six years since Robert Jordan passed away. May he rest in peace.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Feature and Follow Friday!

So this is my first blog hop! Hopefully I do everything correctly. :) 

 Q: Create a line of poetry with your book spines (take a picture)! 

This is such a neat idea! I wish I could go through all my books and make a poem but they are all unfortunately packed in boxes in the basement. This sort of reminds me of those magnetic poetry pieces you can get (which I also have somewhere to). My favorite poem however has always been "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. I remember one of the first times I heard it was on an episode of the cartoon Beetlejuice and fell in love with it.

What I'm reading Wednesday

Or should I say what I've been watching. This this last week I've barely picked a  book because I have been devouring every single episode of Ugly Betty. By the time I reached the end of the first season I was hooked and just like a good book it's so hard to stop reading/watching until you are done. This show pretty much has become one of my favourite shows of all time (up there with Seinfeld and Freaks and Geeks).

I loved all the characters, especially Marc and Amanda, and loved how you could see each of them grow as people throughout the four seasons. The only downfall of watching the show so quickly is that now that I have watched all the episodes  I feel the loss of them.

I like how the last episode tied up all the story arcs for each of the characters and I like how the writers waited until the last few episodes to really show Daniel consider that maybe his feelings for Betty are more then just platonic. I never considered them getting together until those last few episodes. I can see myself watching this show again sometime soon.

Betty's progression of character and her accomplishments made me really stop and examine my own life. She was so fearless in chasing after her dream even though it seemed like it was somewhat out of reach at the start of the show. Everyone laughed at her when she first arrived at Mode, but she never gave up and proved her worth in the end. Who knows maybe someday I will finally have that novel that has been floating around in my head published.

I am still reading A Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan. I decided to forgo starting any other book at the moment or I will never get through it. I was happy to finally reach a point in the book about Egwene and her battle for the White Tower which made the pages go by quicker. Unfortunately I am now reading about Mat's and the reading pace has slowed down again. At least I am more then 3/4ths of the way through the book now.

Hopefully I will have more time to read now that I won't be glued to my TV screen, that is unless I find another show to be obsessed with.  :)

What I'm Reading Wednesday

I thought I would start a weekly post to update everyone on what I am currently reading and what I have in the wings to read. I am really bad for starting and reading more then one book at a time. I basically read what I am in the mood for at the time.

Right now I am still slogging through Book #11 of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I know slogging sounds harsh. I really love the story he has created it's just taking soooo long to get to the end. I started rereading the beginning of this series last January! As in 2012 January! This story is huge with so many characters that it is really hard to remember everyone and what is happening if you put it down and then come back to it. I made it through 7 books straight without reading anything else before I needed to take a WoT break. What I said before happened but thanks to things such as the Wheel of Time wiki anytime I forgot who someone was I just look it up. I only decided to reread the series from the beginning again because it had been a while since I read any of the books and because I knew that the last book was finally going to be out this year. I was pretty much bang on that it would take me a year to get to the last few books.

So that brings me to Knife of Dreams! I am now about 75% through it and then only have 3 more books to go before I find out what happens to everyone. Right now the book is starting to drag again and I am in no mood to read big walls of text so I might take a break from it and read one of the three books I just got in the mail yesterday. Figuring out what to purchase is always hard for me because I want to buy books that I know I will love and ones that I will reread. Everything else I read I either borrow from someone or borrow from the library.

The first one is Margaret George's The autobiography of Henry VIII. I have wanted to get this book for a long time. It is a behemoth of a book though over 900 pages. I read her book The Memoirs of Cleopatra in 2010 which I absolutely loved! Two of my favorite time periods are of the Ancient Egyptians and anything to do with the medieval era. I'm not quite sure where my love for either came from but I can't get enough of either of them.

What really sold me on getting Henry VIII was the fact that it seems to be written in letter or diary form. It sounded interesting and Henry VIII is well known, I just don't know his full history.

 I also purchased Ken Follett's, The Pillars of the Earth and it's sequel, World Without End. I am looking forward to reading both of them as well. I first became interested in those books when watching the World Without End  miniseries on TV. At some point I saw that it was based on a book and naturally I had to add it to my TBR list.

I've also been asked to review a book called The Pavement Gardener by Nyla Naseer. I will be starting that very soon. It sounds to be a very interesting read!

That's all for me this week. :)