Capturing the moment

Sorry, no recent deep theological or philosophical reading or reflection - just another fiction trilogy.  And again one of Robin Hobb's!  Well, I haven't fully mined the lode of her writing yet!

I was told that this series (Shaman's Crossing, Forest Mage, Renegade's Magic) was either loved or disliked by her regular readers.  Currently I am getting towards the end of Book 2 - Forest Mage, and I can see why.  In many ways it is so unlike previous books/series.  This one takes forever to "get anywhere"!  Well, in the adventure sense, or in the timeline.  Whe I started reading and the hero went to the military academy, I thought it would be a chapter or 2 and then bang - he would be on to the big stuff!  Wrong! It took all of book one to get through the academy - and even then, didn't.

I found myself skimming a lot of pages trying to get past what I saw as the preliminary stuff.

The key to the book, however, lies in the minutia. In earlier blogs I have talked about the decisions that authors make in terms of painting the picture - how much detail, how many pages for a certain scene etc......  In this book, Robun Hobb focuses down to the detail.  There are places where she describes the hero being short of food - hungry/starving - but then gaining some small mouthfulls. She then describes in detail how he savoured each taste, each morsel, each substance - taking hours to eat the small offering.  This seems to be a message to the reader - savour the pages - don't see the words as a means to get to the story's end - rather savour each word, each phrase, each sentence.......

So I an trying........

For about 3 years, we had the pleasure of having our daughter, son-in-law and grandsons living close bye - and then with us before they dissapeared to Canada (well, they are still there on skype, on blogs, and we have the tickets already to visit them later in the year!!).  We knew they were going.  In the last weeks and days I did particlarly try to savour the moments...drink in the experience of sharing our lives with them.  Children seem to live in the present - the butterfly in front of them, the story book you are reading to them, the chocolate frog poking out of the shopping basket.

Back to the book.......