Brian's Book Blog

I started a book blog, mostly about fantasy. I feel no shame in shilling for page hits.

Here is a rather long and gushing review of Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings. Along with Patrick Rothfuss' Name of the Wind, it is my favourite fantasy book. It is seriously fantastic, and if you are a fan of fantasy... even just a little, it is a must-read.

So is my review. Read it.

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2013/12/review-way-of-kings-by-brandon-sanderson.html

Behold! My latest book review is about Lyndsay Faye's historical fiction mystery, set in New York City in the 1840s for the inception of the city's first regular police force: the NYPD. Cool book, if you like mysteries and/or historical fiction, this is a good read.

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2013/12/review-gods-of-gotham-by-lindsay-faye.html

The last review of 2013, I review The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. If you like books with interesting characters, this is a doozy. Glotka is my favourite character from any book I've ever read... and I've read a lot of books!

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2013/12/review-blade-itself-by-joe-abercrombie.html

A new review! This one is of Anthony Rouaud's The Path of Anger. The first half of the book was fantastic! How was the second half? Well...

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/01/review-path-of-anger-by-anthony-rouaud.html

A new blog post! This one doesn't review a specific book, but looks at my five favourite covers of fantasy books. I also gripe a bit about the fact that North American covers are oftentimes inferior to other, international ones.

Check it out.

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/01/my-top-5-fantasy-covers.html

My review for Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, a historical fiction, can be summarized like so:

This is without a shadow of a doubt the best all-round book I've ever read. It's easily a 10 out of 10 for me, and anyone who likes reading at all should read it. End scene.

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/01/review-shadow-of-wind-by-carlos-ruiz.html

In recent years there has been more and more discussion and debate on the issue of women in fantasy. In this blog entry, I specifically look into why there have been so few female fantasy authors compared to men.

Spoilers: there should totally be more female fantasy authors, because those that already exist are kind of awesome.

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/01/women-in-fantasy-part-one.html

In part one I looked at the relative lack of female authors in fantasy literature. In part two, I look at the issue of female characters written in the books themselves, whether the author was male or female.

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/01/women-in-fantasy-part-two.html

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke is the best disappointing book I've ever read. If you want that to make sense, you'll just have to read my review gosh darnit!

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/02/review-doctor-wait-jonathan-strange-and.html

On the first page of God's War by Kameron Hurley, the main character sells her womb to gene pirates to evade her pursuers, gets drunk on whisky and morphine chasers, wastes the money she made selling her womb by losing a bet on an underground boxing match, then goes home with the woman she had bet on... all to try and bring home the mark she's after as a bounty hunter. This book was awesome.

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/02/review-gods-war-by-kameron-hurley.html

That moment when a book you ordered arrives can be the most wondrous experience in your life! Or... it can also be the most excruciating. This is for all the book lovers out there who will undoubtedly do this at least once in their lives.

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/02/that-moment-when-book-that-you-ordered.html

That moment when you finish the book you've been waiting for for years, and you have nothing to do but wait for the next one...

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/03/that-moment-when-new-book-edition.html

If you're going to continue the "That Moment" aspect of your blog, I can guarantee you I will become a faithful reader. I avoid the reviews, but the "That Moment" stories are not only awesome, they are damn near perfect. I've shared them with a few of my friends here in Manhattan and they get a kick out of them.

I do plan on doing more of them as they come to me! I have an idea for another already, but I'll probably save it for a little while. I also want to do some more general posts that aren't reviews, but talk about something like which books I think would make good movies (that's an idea that a friend pitched to me), or cover art, etc.

If you do the books-to-movies review, you should include which might not make good movies, but could be better served as a TV series. Game of Thrones to me is a great example. The books are tedious and uninspiring to me, but they make a great TV series. I wouldn't want it to be movies, however, because you would lose so much of the world and character building that makes Game of Thrones such a great TV show. Another example of one that would be a great TV series but could never truly be done justice as a movie is Wheel of Time. Too in-depth, far too many characters.

If you did talk about the TV show aspect, you'd probably want to cut it into a couple days worth of blogs. LOL

It's been a while, but I have a new post up that reviews a bunch of books I've read since my last entry. They're quick, two paragraph reviews that contain no spoilers!

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/04/catching-up.html

The first in a series of articles I plan on writing about books adapted into film. This post will outline the three main elements I consider to be important in determining the success or failure of any attempts.

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/05/books-adapted-into-film.html

Next up, looking at some film-book adaptations that I liked or thought were decent. Some recurring patterns emerge in the reasons I think they were successful...

http://briansbookblog.blogspot.ca/2014/05/books-adapted-into-film-good-and-meh.html