When I started my re-read of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, I initially planned to read all 15 novels (including the forthcoming A Memory of Light), and do a single, if lengthy, review at the series at the end of it all. Since then, a few things have happened to change my mind about my approach.
First, Bubbawheat of Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights suggested I give updates a few times during the course of the reading. Which got me thinking on whether it was really valuable, blogging-wise, to write a post announcing the start of the reading project and then not say anything else on it until it was finished several months later. I’m thinking no. Secondly, a few books down, I realized that if I were to review each novel individually, even if I gave only a paragraph to each, in addition to the quite-necessary overview of the series and how the novels interconnect that my final post will have to have… that’s going to be a staggeringly long blog post. Besides being difficult to write, a long post can sometimes be hard for people to read, even if well-formatted (and I’m pretty long-winded as it is) — and I did just have one of my longest posts ever essentially “air ball” in terms of garnering comments. But most importantly, I realized I had forgotten to account for just how quickly I can actually read. I’d allotted myself about three weeks per book. Three weeks into it, I’ve read two beyond the one I had just finished when I started the post. When I first read these, it was at a rate of about one a week. I had thought other activities — such as the more frequent movie watching I do as an adult — would slow me down, but it doesn’t seem to have had as much of an impact as I had thought. I may need to space things out and deliberately slow myself down some to keep from having a situation where I’m waiting months between the penultimate book and the ultimate one. And in that situation, even though I’m taking a lot of notes, it’s possible I’d forget what I meant to say about each individual book.
So, slight amendment to the plan. I’ll still have the big overview post at the end of it all, but before then, I’ll be making a post every three books. Starting today, with the prequel New Spring: The Novel, and the first two books, The Eye of the World, and The Great Hunt. Continue reading
