Dylan Bogg Bogg itibaren Dachi, Bryanskaya oblast', રશિયન ફેડરેશન
I was so uplifted by this book. A man who knows he will die shortly from cancer writes a ‘last lecture’; something that professors often will do when they leave an institution. He sums up what he believes to be the most important life lessons, in about an hour, in this lecture and then co-writes a book about it. There isn’t anything completely profound and new necessarily but wonderful reminders. He illustrates the perfect positive approach to handling such a difficult situation. I was touched by the love he showed for his wife and children and for his friends and students. The book will stand as a reminder to me that you can choose to be optimistic and truly live life to it’s fullest despite your circumstance. He was an amazing person.
Enjoyed this book very much. Being a secular sort, my knowledge of the Bible was limited to some classes in college and what this author calls the vanilla version of various stories during Sunday sermons. So it was instructive to take a survey course conducted by a humorous, thoughtful skeptic whose views line up with mine. As another Goodreads reader said, however, not for the devout, as they might find it insufficiently respectful. Although the points made are excellent, the questions reasonable, and it would be interesting to see if a believer could answer them.
First off, let me say that I absolutely adore Brandon Sanderson. I think he is an amazingly talented writer. I've read nearly all of his books and I'd say almost every single one is a favorite of mine. I especially loved Warbreaker, though I also of course love the Mistborn series. I'd been wanting to read this series for yeaaaaars but I always had another book that I'd been wanting to read for even longer. I'd actually started Mistborn several times but just wasn't focused enough to really want to deal with learning all new lore and figuring out which metal did what and so on. I finally made myself sit down and start Mistborn a month or so ago and I couldn't put it back down. I read the whole series in a few weeks, though I had to drag myself through a couple of chapters in the 2nd and 3rd book. Keep in mind that I will almost definitely have some SPOILERS in here, so please continue with caution. If you haven't read the books, please do yourself a favor and READ them. ------------------------------SPOILERS----------------------------- The Hero of Ages, while a really great book, was definitely not my favorite of the series. I think I can safely say that I liked it the least, with Mistborn being my favorite, as it's hard to beat the first with such an original concept of a story. The introduction to everything is always so much more exciting, as is a blooming romance(of which I also have issues with here). This book was just SO SLOW. I suppose when you look at what is actually going on it isn't, as they move around constantly and there's drama going on with everyone, but it just feels... slower and less significant, which makes no sense, seeing as how their world is ending and it should be more passionate and interesting than ever. I never really felt very excited about anything here, until I got towards the very end and shit finally got real. Speaking of real, Vin is a complete badass and, if it weren't for her character, the fire of the story would have gone out long ago. I'm sorry but it's so true! I felt like she was really the only character I was very attached to. While I of course liked the others throughout the series(especially Zane, despite all his issues), I never really found myself caring all that much. TenSoon and Sazed were really the only other two I was invested in, aside from Zane. The huge thing for me that made this book difficult to love was that I never really liked Elend, even in the first book, and this is all about him and his new, even lamer self. I feel like he was just a big puss until book 3, when he suddenly becomes a "badass" with stronger powers than Vin(which I get and would normally have appreciated, but not with him). I'm sorry, but that was never a believable role to place on him. You spent an entire book convincing me of what a foppish little wuss he was(though a very smart one) and then you expect me to believe the image of him becoming a hardened leader and warrior? No... just no. He's such an extremely boring character. I would rather have had another character come in the fill that role; one that I didn't already have a set opinion on. Also, the "romance" between he and Vin? Where'd it go? They were kind of cute and awkward in book one, then he became Emperor and things just went downhill. Nothing EVER seemed to happen with them. WHY? There was so much potential to create an epic romance between the two of them, but Sanderson just completely dropped the ball. That was a huge disappointment for me, and I mean huge. I like some romantic subplot to look forward to in my book. Is that so wrong? I loved the majority of the story, especially the action, but that was really just a gaping hole in it for me. There just seemed to be a general lack of passion. I've read some reviews where people say that he kind of rushed through this last book. While I don't necessarily feel he rushed it, per say, I do feel he took a little less care with certain details. I mean, I don't think I could have done much better, so I can't say much. Aside from it all feeling a bit slow, I will definitely say that I enjoyed doing some more learning about the lore in this book. He actually took the time to flesh that out a bit more and I appreciated it. I just wish he'd done some of it a little sooner! I don't know why he waited until the very last minute to divulge so many details I would have loved to know sooner! I feel like everything was building up to reveal all of these details, which is probably why it felt so slow. I loved the action and the general story, and I'm very glad that the slowness of the series came at the very end. If you're already a fan, you will definitely enjoy some of this installation, though I suspect there are people out there who will feel like I did and feel like they're having to drag themselves through several areas of the book. Despite my issues with it, it was still a great book and a wonderful series.