Man, these books are long

I can't believe I'm still reading A Feast For Crows. I was reading one or two books a week before I started A Song of Ice & Fire, and now I just can't complete this last volume.

I'm still not taking back my previous rant against abridged books, though.

What I'm reading now: A Feast for Crows

I'm addicted to George R. R. Martin' medieval fantasy series "A Song of Ice & Fire" ever since I started reading it out-of-order with volume 2: A Clash of Kings. I'm now on volume 4 (of 7),
"A Feast for Crows".

It's as good as the first three, but they swapped a great audiobook voice actor Roy Dotrice, who read the first three books, for John Lee, which is a great disappointment. Not only was Dotrice excellent, but John Lee isn't merely mediocre: he's bad. John Lee seems to be trying to inject drama & anger into everything that every character ever says. I may have to drop the audiobook and read the hardcopy if I can't get used to it.

What I'm reading now: The Tipping Point

I just wrapped up an audiobook of Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point". I really enjoyed my last read by the author ("Blink"). However, this one ended too fast - and the credits revealed that it was an abridged copy. I can't ever understand why people abridge books. Wikipedia takes a stab at it, claiming that a book might take 40 hours to listen to, where it can be abridged into a handy 2 hours. This makes no sense to me. I could spend less time on any task if I do a half-ass job of it. Why bother reading a book if not enjoy the whole thing?

The wikipedia article shows an example of what text is abridged:

A passage such as "John sped away in his automobile, a red 1967 Mustang he'd purchased from a junkyard and spent most of his college years restoring with his father" could be abridged to "John sped away in his car."

To me, this is a travesty. Those details are important. They help us learn who the characters are, what their history is, and that's what engages the reader to care about what happens to them. Everything interesting about a story can be abridged out, while they refine it down to just the actions people take and the words they spoke. It's the difference between reading Brideshead Revisited vs. a high school history book.

Now I'll have to get the hard-copy of The Tipping Point and re-read it, else feel I only skimmed a few pages.

The 49ers need Brett Favre

This morning's news is that the bucs or jets are likely to get Favre. I think the 49ers should be fighting for him. Favre only missed the superbowl by a mere 3 points in last year's NFC championship, and he had success all season even with unreliable rushing. With the train wreck of an offense that the 49ers have fielded for years, and the complete failure of #1 pick Alex Smith, Favre could be a 1-season or 2-season savior that put people in the seats and give SF some hope.

Current music: Charlotte Sometimes, Metallica

What I'm listening to now is mostly Charlotte Sometimes album, Waves & the Both of Us. For some reason, the album doesn't contain this great piano rendition of Build the Moon that is on youtube. Too bad.

I also queued up Metallica's St Anger album, which has been sitting on my hard drive since it was released, waiting for me to decide to listen to it. Apparently, that's been over 5 years. wow. So far, all I can say is that the title track is long, and nothing else stands out.