Category Archives: recommendations

Welcome to Nightvale: The Novel

It shouldn’t surprise any of you that I read a lot.

Similarly, I’m guessing most of you won’t be hugely shocked to discover that I have strong opinions about books. When I like a book, I share it around with near-missionary zeal. And when I’m not fond of one…

… well, when I’m not fond of one. I mostly keep my mouth shut. Because life is too short. Plus it’s rude to shit on another author’s book in public. Plus I’d usually rather spend my time reading good books than bitching about bad ones.

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(There are, of course, rare exceptions to this rule.)

But simply said, reading books is one of my greatest joys. Followed closely by sharing good books and talking about good books.

Which is why I have a profile over on Goodreads, where I constantly talk about books I’ve read.

To call what I do over there “reviewing” books really isn’t accurate. The truth is, I’ve never really read reviews of any sort, so I wouldn’t have the first clue as to how to write one.

Instead, I mostly talk about how I feel about the books. Sometimes as a writer. Sometimes as a reader, or a parent, or as a straight-up irrational fan. Quite frequently as an untidy mash comprised of all of the above.

But over the years, I’ve discovered an odd problem.

If I read a book and like it, writing up a little blurb on goodreads is the easiest thing in the world for me. Takes me 10-15 minutes. Tops.

Mind you, I don’t always do that. A lot of times I don’t have 10-15 minutes to spare, or I’m away from a computer when I finish a book, and by the time I think of entering it on Goodreads, the details have faded from my memory.

But what I’ve discovered is that a lot of times, if I really *really* like a book. If it absolutely knocks me over. If it has a huge emotional impact, I won’t write a review at all.

Oh I’ll *intend* to write a review. I’ll want to write one. But trying to put into words how much I adore certain books ends up being prohibitively daunting. I can think of three books like this off the top of my head. For more than a year I’ve been meaning to review: Gone Girl, A Fault in Our Stars, and The Sculptor.

And a newer book. A book that just came out, but that I’ve been meaning to write a review about for months now. A book that delighted and amazed me in a way no other book has done for years.

This book:

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(This beautiful, stunning, delightful goddamn book.)

I’ve been a fan of Nightvale for a couple years now. And I’ll admit, I pulled favors so get an Advance Reading Copy. I was excited to read it. And I was terrified of what it might be like.

For those of you who don’t know, Welcome to Nightvale is a twice-monthly podcast. It’s like Tales from Lake Woebegone and The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath had a hot, drunken make-out session, then had a beautiful baby together. It’s a great show, unlike anything else I’ve ever run into.

But that’s just it. It’s a radio show. And there’s a HUGE difference between writing a series of 25 minute radio episodes, and writing a 150,000 word novel. Novels are immeasurably more complex in their narrative and character, plus you don’t get to use a lot of the tools that audio production gives you.

So yeah. I was worried they might not be able to pull it off. Not because they weren’t good writers. But because writing your first novel is a whole different game.

Did they pull it off? Here’s the short answer.

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(Click to embiggen if you’d like to read my blurb.)

While I review many books, I blurb very few. The reason for this is that when I’m reviewing a book, I can explain in detail why exactly I like a book. I can talk about what the upsides and downsides are. I can make comparisons to other books.

In short, when I’m writing about a book on goodreads, I have enough space to say things like, “If you don’t like the level of violence in Martin’s books, this will be too much for you.” Or “If your kids have read Harry Potter, they should be fine reading this, too.”

But a blurb is different. When I give a blurb, I’m effectively offering my imprimatur. No matter what the blurb actually says, me having my name on the cover for promotional purposes equates to me saying, “My name is Patrick Rothfuss, and I’m saying you should try this book.”

So yeah. That’s what I’m saying here. This book is amazing and you should read it.

In fact, I’m such a fan of the book, that I’m going to help out with Joseph and Jeffrey’s Book Tour. When they swing through Milwaukee on November 10th, I’m going to chat with them about writing and stuff. Deserts and Dogparks. It should be a good time.

11.10_Milwaukee

You can get more details about their book tour and buy tickets to the Milwaukee event over here. (Note that the ticket price includes a copy of the book, so it’s actually a bargain.)

If you’d like more details about why exactly I liked this book so much, you can check out the review I wrote on Goodreads.

Later folks,

pat

Also posted in appearances | By Pat30 Responses

A Sale That Happens to be on Black Friday.

Let me be honest with you. I kinda hate the thought of having a Black Friday sale. It strikes me as a desperate attempt to be trendy and timely.

And as we all know, I am neither of those things.

But we were *already* planning on putting up our signed books for November. And since last month’s books sold out in about two hours, we were going to put up a new piece of Kingkiller jewelry we have from Badali, too. But we realized we might sell out of *those* pretty quickly too….

So we decided to launch a few other things we’ve been thinking about for months, because honestly, with all the donations coming in for this year’s Worldbuilders fundraiser, we need the shelf space.

And then we had so much momentum going, we decided to bundle a few things together at a discount, and put a few things on sale….

If you scroll down you’ll see a lot of details, but not everything.

If you want to see everything we have going on peek over here on The Tinker’s Packs.

And remember, all proceeds from these sales go to charity, so there’s a free warm fuzzy with every order.

*     *     *

Masks Books

Here’s the books, being lovingly packaged by the author himself after signing them.

This is the first book in a new series. They’re first edition too. That’s a lot of firsts….

You can order one here. Be aware, we’ve only got ten, so they’re going to go quickly….

  • Signed copies of Fortunately the Milk by Neil Gaiman.

Occasionally I like to help out a new authors by spreading the word about their books.

With that in mind, I’d like to offer up some signed books from a plucky up-and-comer called Neil Gaiman.

Fortuneately Milk Blog

I know you probably haven’t heard of him before. But personally? I think this kid is going places.

Again, supplies are limited, so if you want one, you should probably do it quickly.

  • Signed, limited-edition copies of The Dark of Deep Below by Patrick Rothfuss.

And finally from Subterranean Press:

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While it might not be the Patrick Rothfuss sequel you’re really dying for. It is a Rothfuss sequel book that you can actually buy right now.

Subterranean Press sent us 10 copies of the just-released second Princess and Mr. Whiffle book. We’ve got five of the hardcover trades, and five of the special numbered editions. (There’s only 2000 of those total. And they include extras that aren’t in the trade version.)

You can grab them from the Tinker’s Packs. Or, if they’ve already sold out, (or if you don’t want to pay extra) you can order copies right from Subterranean Press.

(And if you haven’t read the first book, we’ve got that on sale for a couple days too.)

  • Mystery Book Bundles from Prime.

Prime-Mystery-Bundle

The lovely folks at Prime have sent us a lot of books over this last year. A ton of books. Hundreds. So many books that we’re having trouble finding places to put them.

We’ve got novels and anthologies and collections. We’ve got books by authors like Philip K. Dick and Elizabeth Bear. We’ve got anthologies featuring greats like Neil Gaiman, George Martin, Holly Black, Cherie Priest, and Ursula K. LeGuin….

But here’s the problem, with our main fundraiser just around the corner, more books keep piling in, and we’re running out of space.

So we’re going to try something new. Mixed book bundles.

We’re going to package up a bunch of these lovely Prime books, then sell them to you at a huge discount.

If you buy a $30 bundle, it will contain over $150 of books.

The $50 bundle will have over $300 of books.

What’s more, none of the books will show up in both bundles. So if you buy both, you won’t get any duplicates.

We’re not guaranteeing more than 50 of these bundles, so if you want one, you might want to jump on them fast.

  • Talent Pipe Earrings

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The talent pipe jewelry Badali makes for us has always been one of the most popular items in our store.

But now, we’re offering them in another style – earrings.

The staff of The Tinker’s Packs have been getting questions about these for years, but now we officially have them.

Here’s the thing. We might sell out of this item. But if we do, you can just hop over and buy them from Badali directly.  And, since the fundraiser starts on Monday, they’re having their annual drive which donates 10% of your order directly to Worldbuilders.

The coupon codes will be good from December 2nd through February 1st.
  • US Customers – WBLDUSA13

US customers get free USPS Priority Shipping and 10% of your order will be donated to Worldbuilders.

  • International Customers – WBLDINT13

International orders get $10.00 off shipping and 10% of your order will be donated to Worldbuilders.

Note: This code is good for anything in Badali’s entire store, not just mine, so as soon as Monday hits, you can do a bunch of holiday shopping, save money on shipping, and know that money is being kicked toward a good cause, too.

*     *     *

So there you are. Mind you, those aren’t the only deals we have going. We have other things on sale or bundled into groups as a discount.

For example, we’re doing two calendars this year, and they’re already bundled together so that if you buy two or three, you’ll save a chunk of change.

Calendar-2-for

If you’d like to see *all* the new items, discounted bundles, and sale items we put up today. You can find them here.

Thanks for being awesome everyone,

pat

P.S. If you’d like to tuned to future Tinker’s Packs shenanigans you can follow them on Twitter and Facebook.  They do cool promotions on there that I don’t mention here on the blog.

Also posted in The Tinker's Packs, Things I Like, Worldbuilders | By Pat29 Responses

Delicious Geekery – October 2013

Back in August, we tried something a little new for Worldbuilders. Kevin Hearne and several of his anthology-mates sent us some signed copies of their carnival-steampunk collection, aptly named Carniepunk.

The books were signed by multiple authors, and rather than save them for our end-of-the-year Worldbuilders extraviganza, we decided to throw them up in our online store. We doubled the cover price because they were signed by some cool authors and because all the money goes to charity

… and despite that, the books sold out in just a couple of hours.

Since people were obviously excited about the idea, we’ve decided to make a monthly habit of bringing you some new signed books in The Tinker’s Packs:

Since this is our first month, I tapped a few of my author friends. And, because they’re all awesome people, they jumped right in.

The first to agree was Brandon Sanderson.  His book Steelheart came out a few weeks ago. It’s the first in a new series…

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Look at it, looming over you like it can write faster than you or something…

Sanderson Signature

Not to mention the fact that his signature is beautiful and flowing and doesn’t at all look like a 4 year old stole a pen from you…

I got a chance to read an ARC of this and loved it even before it went through final edits. My blurb on the back says, “Unfortunately for my ego, Steelheart is another win for Sanderson, proving that he’s not a brilliant writer of epic fantasy, he’s simply a brilliant writer. Period.”

If you want to know more about what I thought, you can check out my goodreads review here.

Or you could just jump right over to the Tinker’s packs and buy it.

These are signed first printings, and we’ve only got ten of them. So, fair warning, they’re bound to go quickly.

And remember, all the money we make in the Tinker’s Packs goes to Worldbuilders, helping Heifer International do awesome things all over the world.

Sustainable Community Development Project for Chitwan, Nawalparasi and Palpa (22-0531-23)

Our second set of books comes from my long-time friend Nnedi Okorafor. She and I go way back to the Writers of the Future Volume 18 in 2002, where we were both bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, newbie writers.

Me-and-Nnedi-730772

Awww… look at me, all young and thin and tiny-bearded.

Both Nnedi and I have both come a long way since then. Her book Zahrah the Windseeker won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. And in 2011 Who Fears Death won the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

Her newest book Kabu Kabu just hit the shelves, and she’s been nice enough to send us some copies hot off the press.

Nnedi Signature

In addition to signing, she’s gone the extra mile and decorated them too….

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As you can see, each of these is signed, dated, and has it’s own individual doodle along the top and bottom of the book. She sent along 10 of these, and we’re putting them up in the store for you.

Fair warning: There’s only nine left because I just bought one. I haven’t read this one yet.

Last we have a lovely donation from Scott Lynch (who I’m doing an event with soon in Lond0n).

It’s the third book in the Gentleman Bastard series: The Republic of Thieves…

Lynch Cover

I’m a huge fan of the first two books in the series, and recently wrote a review of The Lies of Locke Lamora on Goodreads that was so gushy with love that his publisher contacted me to ask if they could use it as promo copy.

Scott went all out on copies he sent us, as you can see if you embiggen the below pictures.

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Yeah, he’s a great guy. Because of that, I’ll try not to resent the fact that his handwriting looks like a stylish font.

By strange coincidence, I just started reading my copy tonight over dinner. And honestly, I wish I were still reading it instead of writing a blog post. It’s one of *those* books.

They’re available for sale over here.

*     *     *

We’ve also got one cool non-book thing we’re adding to the store. Something we’ve been saving for pre-christmass.

We’ve got the complete The Legend of Neil DVD series:

Legend of Neil DVDs

If you haven’t heard of Legend of Neil, well… not only do you lose some geek points, but you’re missing out on some of the best geek humor out there.

I’m not just a fan of the show, I bought the t-shirt. (Several copies of the t-shirt, actually.)

patrick rothfuss- Murder shirt

(Note: This is not the best shirt to go through airport security in.)

The series was written and directed by the inestimable Sandeep Parikh who agreed to let us sell the DVD to help raise money for Worldbuilders.

We’ve got some regular DVD’s and some signed by Sandeep, writer/actor Tony Janning, and geek glitterati princess Felicia Day.

We’ve got the DVDs and the posters available for sale individually, or you can buy them together at a discounted price.

We’ve only got a limited number of these, especially the signed ones. Fair warning.

*     *     *

And finally, a piece of news:

The Lauren Zurchin Fantasy Calendar just came back from the printers. That means as of today, we’re no longer doing pre-orders. If you buy one, we’ll be shipping it out to you straightaway.

oliver-updated

The same is true if you’re buying a couple calendars in a combo packs to get a discount. We’re shipping those out immediately too.

So… yeah. There you go folks. Plenty of geek swag you can add to your vasty horde or use to get a jump on your  holiday shopping.

Have fun,

pat

Also posted in a billion links, The Tinker's Packs, Things I Like, Worldbuilders | By Pat19 Responses

Preview, Review, Redo

Still recovering from the fundraiser and my recent trip to LA. Most of my time is spent catching up on sleep, writing, and spending time with my boy…

Even so, I’ve got some stuff I ought to share. Three things, actually. Because… well… y’know. Three.

  • First off…

…here’s a Kickstarter thing I’m involved with for next year. A cool, fantasy-themed photography calendar.

What they can’t mention on Kickstarter is that the proceeds from the project will go to support charity.

What charity, you ask? Why Worldbuilders, of course. And another favorite of mine, First Book.

But Kickstarter won’t let you discuss charity stuff on their site. So Lauren, the photographer spearheading the project, goes into it in more detail over here.

  • Secondarily…

Anyone interested in the classics might want to take a look at my goodreads review of Go, Dog, Go!

Here’s a teaser for those of you disinclined to click a link….

I respect what the author is attempting to do here, thematically. Eastman is a philosopher at heart, examining how things relate to one another. Are we a green dog or a yellow one? Is it day or night? These are big questions, and they need to be asked….

You can read the whole thing over on goodreads. Or, if you’re really trying to avoid doing any work today, you can browse through all my reviews on there…

  • Thirdly and lastly…. 

For those of you who have not yet seen the pictures, last week at Confusion I did a thing with some other authors.

I will speak no more of it, merely provide a link.

Be careful, once you’ve seen it, you can’t un-see it.

If you happen to be the odd sort of person who *wants* to see something like that, perhaps even multiple times, you can bid on a rare, multiple-autographed copy of it over here.

Proceeds, as always, go to charity.

pat

Also posted in being awesome, Fucking With You | By Pat27 Responses

The Dirty Streets of Heaven

One of the coolest things about being a published author is that I occasionally get sneak peaks of books before they’re officially released.

These books are called ARC’s. (Advanced Reading Copies) And publishers send them out to booksellers, reviewers, and authors with the hope of getting promotional blurbs.

This leads to one of the oddest things about being a reasonably popular author: getting asked to blurb books.

As I’ve talked about before on the blog, giving blurbs is something that doesn’t come easily to me. Talking about books is easy. But giving a short, snazzy statement that’s marketable while also being honest…. Well, I often make a mess of it. It’s only recently that I feel as if I have it even halfway figured out.

But in this last year or so, I’ve had to deal with another mind-bending permutation of it all. Getting asked to blurb books by authors I’ve admired my whole life.

For example:

Do you know how weird it is to have a promotional blurb on the front of your favorite book?

You know what my original blurb was for this book? The blurb that I had to get out of my system before I could write the civilized one up there?

It went something like this:

Are you fucking kidding me? You want *me* to tell you why this book is good? I’ve been published for, like, five years. This book has been shining like a pure white diamond of divine fire since 1968. It’s one of the cornerstones of modern fantasy. What is wrong with you? Do you need a blurb on a candy bar telling you it’s sugary and delicious? Jesus, Krishna, and Siddhartha, how can you even consider yourself a fantasy reader if you haven’t read The Last Unicorn? Seriously. Read it. Read it or I will kill you….

Yeah. Like I said. I’m not that good at writing promotional stuff.

And things have only gotten weirder. Earlier this year I burbled a reprint of a Terry Brooks novel. Terry Brooks. His books were some of the first serious fantasy I read back in high school.

Then now we come to this….

For those of you that don’t know, Tad Williams’ newest book just hit the shelves about a week ago. Two words: Angel Noir.

And on the back?

(Click to Embiggen.)

I’m up at the top there. Glibly blurbing away. As if I could somehow sum up how I feel about Tad Williams turning his hand to urban fantasy in 30-40 words.

Part of me wonders where this madness will end. Because honestly, this sort of escalation can only go on for so long….

Okay. Back to the point here. Tad’s book.

Here’s the short version: I really enjoyed it. It might be my favorite book of his to date, and that’s saying something.

Here’s the moderate-length version:

Back around Juneish, I went on a bit of a family vacation. I needed it, and I owed it to my family to get away from work for a while.

So went up north with Sarah and Oot to hang out with my dad. I left my work at home, but I did bring the ARC of Tad’s book. Because for it to really be a vacation for me, I have to have something to read.

I start to read it on the drive up into the north woods, and I got pulled into the story. So pulled in that I would rather read the book than sleep. So pulled in that I end up reading the book late, late into the night. So pulled in that I ended up sitting in a stairwell for hours and hours, until 4 AM, effectively hiding from my family, because I didn’t want to wake anyone up by having a light on. And also because I didn’t want my dad to wake up, see that I was still reading, and give me that look that says, “You know, we’ve got stuff to do tomorrow. You should really get to sleep.”

Yeah. So it was pretty much like high school all over again.

If you still need more encouragement than that, you can read the review I wrote over on Goodreads.

Later folks,

pat

Also posted in the art of blurbing, the business of writing, Things I didn't know about publishing | By Pat50 Responses

Two great books, and a chance to win a free DeLorean

Commander Harken: Seems odd you’d name your ship after a battle you were on the wrong side of.
Captain Reynolds: May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.

That’s all I feel like saying on the subject of the recall election right now.

*     *     *

There are two things happening this week that all proper geeks should be aware of.

First off, Redshirts, is hitting the shelves.

I know, I know…. you can’t really judge a book by its cover. In my opinion, if you’re going to judge, you should do it by the blurbs on the back:

(Click to Embiggen.)

As I mentioned on the blog a couple months back, I got an early read of the book early on this year. As a result, I ended up laughing my ass off at a local restaurant, while everyone stared at me like I was a crazy person. Which is fair enough, I suppose.

If you’re interested, you can read the review I wrote, including the bit where I threaten Scalzi with violence, over here.

The second piece of vital geek news today is the fact that Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, went on sale in paperback this week.

Now this would be news enough by itself, because honestly, Ready Player One was probably the best book I read last year. (And I read a lot.)

But no, the REAL news is that to celebrate the paperback release, Ernest is giving away a DeLorean. Which is somehow manages to be the coolest AND the geekiest promotional thing that I’ve ever run into.

(Seriously, he’s giving away a DeLorean.)

How can you win it? Well, he’s hidden clues in his book. You find the clues, you play some games, you can win his sweet ride.

For the details, you can head over here.

I’ll also mention, just as an aside, that both John Scalzi and Ernest Cline were very cool about donating stuff to Worldbuilders last year. So if you were right on the edge, and just needed one more reason to rush out and buy their books, there it is…

pat

Also posted in contests, cool news, geeking out | By Pat28 Responses

SMBC Theater

For a couple years now, the guy behind one of my favorite webcomics, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, has been doing humorous shorts on youtube with a crew of like-minded deviants and malcontents.

I’ve been meaning to mention them for a while, but I’ve just never managed to get around to it.

But one of their recent videos made me realize that the time had come:

Ladies and Gentleman, I give you: Existential Crisis and Dragons:

and another of my favorites:

Honestly, I could link about twenty of their videos saying, “oooh oooh, this one too!” But I’ll let you explore on your own. I’m guessing y’all know how to browse youtube at this point in your lives.

Fair warning, a lot of these videos aren’t safe for work. Depending on where you work, of course.

If you worked for me, for example, you wouldn’t get in trouble for watching a video where somebody said a naughty cuss. No. You’d get in trouble for dicking around on the internet when you should be changing into your Emma Frost outfit and fanning me with a large palm leaf while I write.

Anyway, the folks at SMBC theater have about 150 of these little gems on subjects from caveman to Russian roulette to Batman. If you like irreverent humor, odds are you’ll probably dig their stuff….

Share and Enjoy,

pat

Also posted in NSFW (Depending on Where You Work), videos | By Pat23 Responses
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