“You may have heard of me.”
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So I have this weird thing where if I really like a book, I have to own it in hardcover. Most of the time this means I end up owning multiple copies of books, like that one time I got a paperback copy of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and then loved it so much I bought the hardcover as well, but then I was like, I don’t need this paperback. So I sent it to Craig. Of course, this doesn’t apply to my Harry Potter books. Obviously in that case, it is my goal to own a copy of every edition ever printed. I have eight copies of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at last count, but only three copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Also, I own like five copies of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (including paperback copies from 1966, several movie tie-in editions because I had to have the ones with Viggo Mortenson and Orlando Bloom’s face on them, and the Centenary Edition because the pictures inside that thing make me want to live in Middle Earth).
The point of all that was that I gave in to my shopping/book addiction yesterday and purchased a hardcover first edition copy of one of my new favorite books, The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, which means that I now have an extra paperback copy. Also, for some reason, when I bought that edition, Amazon decided to send me the British version, so that’s kind of fun. Anyway, I’d like to give it to one of you.
The Name of the Wind is one of the best books I read last year, and the author is hilarious and personable. You can friend him on GoodReads or read his blog. He is extremely nerdy, and his baby is adorable. Heck, even if you don’t read his book, you should read his blog. He’s always full of fun stories like that one time he felt guilty when his baby got caught in his beard and he called him a little fucker. Or the times that he gets really starstruck by Felicia Day and Joss Whedon. And like Wil Wheaton, he goes out of his way to treat fans like real people. Basically, I wish we could be friends. Here’s a summary of the book from Publisher’s Weekly:
The originality of Rothfuss’s outstanding debut fantasy, the first of a trilogy, lies less in its unnamed imaginary world than in its precise execution. Kvothe (“pronounced nearly the same as ‘Quothe’ “), the hero and villain of a thousand tales who’s presumed dead, lives as the simple proprietor of the Waystone Inn under an assumed name. Prompted by a biographer called Chronicler who realizes his true identity, Kvothe starts to tell his life story. From his upbringing as an actor in his family’s traveling troupe of magicians, jugglers and jesters, the Edema Ruh, to feral child on the streets of the vast port city of Tarbean, then his education at “the University,” Kvothe is driven by twin imperatives—his desire to learn the higher magic of naming and his need to discover as much as possible about the Chandrian, the demons of legend who murdered his family. As absorbing on a second reading as it is on the first, this is the type of assured, rich first novel most writers can only dream of producing. The fantasy world has a new star.
To win my copy of this book, leave me a comment with your contact info and one of your favorite book quotes (just for the heck of it) by midnight on the 20th. I will then use one of those random internet generator thingies to choose a winner. Capiche?
I realized last night while I was working at Barnes & Noble that I had forgotten to pick a winner for my giveaway. Whoops! I had an ‘aha!’ moment when I was walking by the fantasy section and I saw The Name of the Wind just chillin’, and then I was like, “Oh, shit!” Then after work this morning, because I’m a professional now, didn’t you know, I assigned numbers to every comment and plugged all y’all’s numbers into a random generator. It gave me the number ’9,’ which just so happens to be:
