In my reading roundup for 2nd August I read Mark Lawrence’s King of Thorns, which I read on Kindle and listened to on Audible. As I mentioned last week, I’d been convinced to give this series another try despite not really being engaged in the first book, and I’m very glad I did. I think it helped that I both read and listened to it. James Clamp is competent as a narrator (check out a sample), but I suspect I perhaps missed a lot in the first book (which I only listened to on Audible) due to my dislike of the main character. Yes, Jorg is still a bloodthirsty, vengeful character, but he is maturing and is capable of thinking of others from time to time. The concept of the “memory box” and what I means for Jorg as well as the part it plays in the story is very well done. I gave King of Thorns four stars out of five. This is an improvement on the three stars I gave the first book Prince of Thorns. Perhaps Emperor of Thorns will make five stars. I also was fascinated by the references to our own world. I’m not…
After the frantic reading of BookTubeAThon 2013 I don’t have many books to discuss for this week’s reading roundup. The first book I read was Switched at Birth by “Kathryn Kennish”. The quotes are around the author’s name as this book was written in the universe of ABC Family’s drama Switched at Birth about two families who discover their daughters were involved in a hospital mixup. This show has been my recent guilty pleasure when not reading. Other than the character drama the merging of two families causes, I’ve found it a fascinating insight into the world of the deaf – one of the young women concerned is deaf. Many of the scenes involve, or are wholly in, American Sign Language. The writing and acting on the show are of excellent quality, so perhaps my expectations of the novelisation were too high. I found the novel uninteresting and lacking the depth that comes across in the show. It was written from the point of view of the hearing mother and barely touched on one of the most interesting aspects of the book, her learning about the deaf language and culture. I would suggest you skip the book and watch the show,…