Books! And the sound of my soul crushing.

Hello there, ol' blog. This may have been my longest blogging break - over five months! I actually forgot what my blog looked like, yet it feels like I just wrote my previous blog post a couple weeks ago...

I figured I'd be very noncommittal and set the bar very very low with my first post of the year, and will just talk about books. Much easier than figuring out my feelings of having an unexpected baby (now toddler!) in the house, going to court and the overall stress of dealing with terrible government workers on a weekly basis.

This year, in between buying a house, caring for the previously mentioned baby in addition to the terribly headstrong two-year old Devin, starting my master's degree, and working full-time as a nurse, I finished 36 books as part of my 2017 reading challenge. This was a total of 12,577 pages! My goal was 30, so I felt pretty great going over it. I'm setting my goal this year at 30 again, because I'd rather overachieve than underachieve.

I can easily say my favorite book this year (or rather, two books) was The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, which is part of the Kingkiller Chronicle. I came across this series by complete accident, and looking back it seems like they were the most "meant to be" books I've ever read. A coworker had recommended a book to me, saying I would love it. I wrote the name down, but I accidentally washed the paper and months went by with me forgetting to ask about it. One day after rating a book on goodreads, I saw a comment from Patrick Rothfuss saying something along the lines of "I'm a really great and accomplished author of an epic series and I have a beard and this book made me cry," so I meandered over to his page to see what this asshat looked like and to see if he really was accomplished. Lo and behold, I came across his insanely accomplished and successful series and recognized the name as being the one my coworker recommended, or so I thought.

I refuse to read books that are part of a series unless all of them are out because I hate being left on a cliffhanger and have learned my lesson one too many times (namely, Harry Potter. A million times over.). Diligently, I looked up all three of his books on goodreads to make sure they were out and they each had thousands of reviews, so I figured they were all released. WRONG.

Anyways, I started the first book and wasn't completely taken in within the first few chapters. I told my coworker I finally checked out the book he recommended, but I couldn't remember the name so I said, "Ya know, the one about the wind and it's like a story within a story? You said it's good, right?" He was adamant that I'd love it so I pushed through. Well, I ended up finishing all 662 pages in about a week. And then when I checked out all 994 pages of the second book, I finished that in a week. While dealing with three members of my family having norovirus, with two of the three shitting allllll over my house.

Ahem.

So as you would imagine, I was SO ready for the third book and when I went to check it out from the library, it wasn't there. Oh well, off to Amazon to pay whatever amount they want because I'd pay a million dollars to know how it all ends. But. BUT. IT WASN'T THERE. Because there IS no third book yet and I don't think I've ever been so enraged in my life? Just ask Sara, I probably texted her 9,000 times telling her how deeply upset I was and I could just feel my soul being crushed. And this went on for monnnnnnths, you guys! Months! I'm not even kidding! I just couldn't get over it.

My first course of action upon not finding the book was to go to goodreads, and guess what all the reviews were? People asking when the book was going to be out. I dieeeeeee.

When I went to yell at my coworker for recommending an unfinished series, he said he had no idea what I was talking about because the book he recommended wasn't part of a series. What?! Turns out, he recommended Shadow of the Wind, which is also a story within a story but a very different story than I read.

Anyways, on December 31st of this year, while thinking of all the books I've read, I figured I'd see if there was an update for a release. Apparently Patrick has been promising for seven years to release the book and I was hoping 2018 would be the year. But no. It's not and he's already said it won't be released in 2018, so I'm angry once again about it. Ha! So all this to say that this trilogy, what's released of it, is easily in my top five, maybe even top two, favorite books (behind the seven Harry Potter books). Read it if you don't mind cliffhangers, otherwise don't. Just don't. I still feel the crushing pain like it was yesterday.

Cheers to more books in 2018!