Boys,
Your mom and I watch a show when we go to bed called 90 Day Fiancé. The details aren’t important, but everyone should be watching this show. There are currently four iterations of this show currently on — 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days, 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way, 90 Day Fiancé: Hunt for Love…. they’re all basically the same thing.
The details aren’t important. Anyway, in one of the shows, there is this storyline where one of the husbands doesn’t want his wife to look at his phone. We, the viewers, assume this to be the case because he’s hiding some secret DMs or watching things he shouldn’t be watching, or doing some sort of shady business that he doesn’t want her to see. Thus and therefore, the wife has trust issues.
I don’t have to worry about that. I will leave my phone out when I leave the room and your mom knows my passcode. Aside from Instagram always trying to put butts in my algorithm, I’m not really afraid of her “finding” anything on my phone.
A few months back, I did a post on my Mount Rushmore of Books, which was a secret post aimed to bore your mom into not reading the whole thing so I could tell you about my secret interest in fantasy books. Well buckle up, buttercups, because I’m kind of all in at this point.
I used to be a respectable reader. I read Atlas Shrugged and Anna Karenina for God’s sake. Now, it took me a few years to read each of those, but just like my one time running a full marathon, I can say that I did it (and will never do it again).
SIDEBAR: I am also running a half marathon in a week and a half that I am vastly underprepared for, so if by the time you read this I have some kind of chronic leg issue, it probably came from my stubborn refusal to acknowledge that I probably shouldn’t be running 13 miles when I’ve barely cracked five miles in one swoop. Irregardless…
Alas, I finished The Final Empire and then also got into and finished the second and third books in the Mistborn trilogy. For reference, that is 81 listening hours (albeit at 1.2x speed because I got things to do!) for one story.
Were they the best books I’ve ever read? No.
Were they good? Yes. In fact, very good.
It was then I knew I was hooked.
Now before I get into it, I am a book listener. There are people who would argue that listening to a book isn’t the same as reading a book, which is fair. There are those who would say that I never “read” a book if it was an audiobook, which is fair. I have more respect for people who read books instead of listen to them, but I’ve never been very good at sitting down and just reading a book for hours at a time. I wish I was sometimes, but most of my reading caps out at an article or two of The Golfer’s Journal and that usually only happens on airplanes.
…but I love listening to books.
Oh, and I also say that when I finish a book, that I read it. Again, if someone takes issue with that, I’m not here to argue that point. The correct way to say it is probably that I listened to it, but I hate the idea of being in a conversation about a book and if someone asks if I read it, I’d have to caveat it by saying, “well, technically I listened to it…” No, if you asked if I read the book and I completed it, I read it. Get off your high horse.
So, after Mistborn, I read Red Rising (another trilogy) and two Dungeon Crawler Carl books. I also listened to about three more Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn author) shorter books, and the first two books of Stormlight Archive, both of which were over 50 hours long.
It is what it is. Naturally, I could never talk to your mom about any of these books, aside maybe from Dungeon Crawler Carl because Troy is listening to them too and they’re going to make a show out of it, which will be interesting to say the least.
The last book I read was one of those Stormlight Archive books, and after 50+ hours of listening to a story about knights with magic swords, giant bugs with gemstone hearts, and the finer points on something called spren, which live somewhere between the physical and cognitive realms, I needed something different.
So there is this account on Instagram where this guy reviews fantasy books. He read a lot of the same things that I listened to and liked, so I was curious about this book he read that he said was his favorite book of all time.
Now before I get into what that book was, which is ultimately the point of this post, I have to acknowledge that I might have already lost your mom again, which is fine. I feel like a part of her still holds onto this idea of me where I was either playing guitar in my 20s or running OCR and doing well in it. I feel like with every post like this, a bit of that version of me dies in her mind and is replaced by whatever stereotype you picture fantasy readers to look like. Not my stereotype, mind you, but other people’s stereotype. Probably looks like…
So this guy said his favorite book was Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. So I was about to read a (sigh) vampire book. The cover looks like this.
Now, when you listen to a book on Audible and you click the button on the side of your phone to put it in sleep mode or idle mode, sometimes the cover of the book you were listening to stays on screen along with the clock. As I listened to the book, I absolutely did not want to have a conversation with your mom about it as she would pull out all the stops in terms of what insults she could throw at me.
Now I should say that I have nothing against vampire stories. In fact, your mom and I kind of got into True Blood when it was on (we never finished it) and I watched the newest Dracula movie on a plane one time, which I didn’t love but it was fine.
That said, I was never interested in the Twilight movies or anything resembling romanticizing vampires in any way. I was looking for something darker, and wasn’t so thrown off by vampires as not to read a book that might be really good.
The book was fine, but I was paranoid about that lock screen! Let her see my feed of butts but gold help me if she sees that I’m reading a book about vampires — especially one where the dude has his shirt off on the cover!
I would scramble if we got into the car and I plugged in my phone and the audio started. Did I need to? Probably not. I feel confident enough about it now that I’ve finished the book; there is something about saying that I read it that feels more “whatever” than saying “I’m reading” it.
Again, there is a less than 5% chance your mom has made it this far, so we good.
The book wasn’t bad. It was basically this story about a boy who finds out he’s kind of a half-vampire, and he grows up with other half-vampires whose mission it is in life to kill all the vampires. The interesting part isn’t so much the story, at least not for me, rather the way in which the story gets told. From the beginning, this guy is already captured and is the last half-vampire left in the world. He’s telling his story to a vampire who is documenting his life since he was the best vampire killer ever. He’s kind of a depressed drunk at this point, so you are never really sure how accurate his retelling of his life is.
It was fine, and it was also the first book in a trilogy. I don’t think I’m going to continue it. I have way too much Sanderson to get through to get stuck in a meh trilogy.
So now I’m reading a Sanderson book called Edgedancer. The obscure title doesn’t really lend itself to criticism. It’s a story about a girl who has the magic ability to become really slippery and she fuels her magic by eating food. Not a thing to be embarrassed about there!
OK enough for now.
Oh, and don’t tell your mom to finish this post when you read it, or I’ll have to explain that I’m not into vampires like she thinks I am about Avatars.
That is a story for another time.
Love you boys
Dad
PS – I was able to block those butts in my feed. So I got that going for me, which is nice.
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