[Tristan Jay]

Hi there. I'm kind of a new(ish) reader, in the sense that I'm only up to House of Chains and making my way through that one right now. Partly, my progress through the series is slow because I'm a slow reader, so there's a time commitment involved every time I start a new volume of the size these books are.

When starting up this new volume, I asked myself, how much do I want to review important points from previous volumes? For ease of reference, I had already jotted down a small handful of scenes to refer back to from the first three books, the kind of scenes that feel instinctively like they contain pivotal information. There's our first introduction to the Silanda, and all the mysteries left behind by the crew and the fate that befell them. And then there's Ganoes Paran meeting with Draconus inside Dragnipur, a shifting scene that includes all kind of foreshadowing, and ideas about the nature of the series' conflict. A return to the Dragnipur scene reveals the foreshadowing of what the Tiste Edur are up to, hints at what/who they've become involved with, and introduces Drift Avali. Re-reading that sequence getting to a certain point in House of Chains was really fun from a big-picture building standpoint.

I also got the audiobooks, so that I could listen through them at leisure, to make the "re-reading" process easier. This has been rewarding and gives more of an indication of how astonishingly dense each individual book can be. It's also surprised me, by showing me how much of the little details it's easy to forget, and makes me question sometimes "How did I forget this bit?? I really liked it the first time, why would I forget that!?"

A week or two ago, I got to the part in HoC where the Tiste Liosan are introduced...just a short time after Trull and Onrack have a conversation about the nature of magic, and defining boundaries, and the subtle power this imposes on Ascendants and gods, and gives hints about how the Tiste Edur were crafted/created. This was the point where I went hog wild trying to index material from the books for ease of reference. For a couple of hours I was skimming through the previous volumes, looking for any references to the primordial history of the Tiste races, and the whole deal between Mother Dark and Father Light. While on a role, I indexed passages on Otataral, the history of the First Empire and the beast ritual, and hinted cultural/evolutionary background of the Moranth, Barghast, and Tiste Edur.

This is the habit of an obsessive. But these are big books, and I felt the need to be able to refer back to some of these passages, because they are incredibly interesting and have been relevant to new information that is revealed as I continue to read on.

The Malazan Re-read of the Fallen was helpful in chasing some of the more elusive passages for indexing.

The thing is, when I started HoC, I began reading with an attitude of "Eh, screw it, just go with the flow, and whatever you remember from previous books is what you remember." What dislodged me from the casual approach is the way the books are so full of different puzzle-boxes that you feel like sometimes you've been given enough information to put clues together and come to a conclusion. But then sometimes I wonder, have I forgotten enough that I'm not able to put these pieces together, while other readers have made the intuitive leap.

Obviously, there's an aspect of vanity on my part. How do all you fellow readers keep track of the details? Take notes, or index, or refer to the Malazan Re-read project, or just re-read all the prior books before starting the next one (OMG!), or just go with the flow and don't sweat the missed or forgotten details?

[Puck]

I keep my own wiki, but I am perfectly aware that this is over the top crazy.

My usually approach is just to read a new malazan book. Some time later, I reread it and mark any interesting passages, on anything. Then I go through it again and sort the information I marked into my wiki, with page numbers. I've been at it for years, though, so not an approach I can recommend. And I started after reading the entire series through.

However, from what I understand, many people just reread the series once in a while. It's impossible to keep all the details straight, especially at a first read. It's a highly rereadable series, where information gained later on makes the reread better. I would recommend to not sweat it, enjoy the rise and take whatever approach is most fun for you.

[worry]

I write each page down word for word in a journal.

[Coltaine -]

Malazan Wiki. Tons of information and we are doing our best to prevent you from being spoilered. But it is still possible as there are nearly 4000 pages and some of them are rather short. Still a lot of work to do.

I think one complete reread/rehear of the series is necessary to really understand how fantastic it is. All the details, references and foreshadowing.

[nacht]

If you buy the Kindle editions, you can search for characters etc.. I have all the books on Kindle.

[Siergiej]

I try to keep track of interesting passages in Kindle, this is how my partial re-read from earlier this year looks like:


Apart from this, a lot of browsing the Wiki and Tor reread. Plus Malzan Empire, obviously

[Tristan Jay]

Puck: I didn't realize a person can keep their own wiki! But then, I'm not very tech savvy, new memes and concepts are slow to get through. I'm pretty much committed to relaxing and enjoying the ride, and jotting down index notes of passages that I don't want to hunt for. I like your description of how you've gone through the series. I haven't intentionally codified an approach, but my pattern so far is to read a book, then get the audiobook and listen through that before moving on. More recently, when listening to the audiobook, which reminds the memory of sections I've forgotten, then I've used the audiobook to relocate where it is in the book, and written an index entry.

Worry: That sounds like an amazing, monumental undertaking! I can't even begin to imagine how many journals that will use up. Go for college-rule journals rather that wide-rule, you get more lines to write on per page. ;p

Coltaine: I had some initial trepidation about consulting the malazan wiki, but it's good about sorting information about a topic by book, so I've looked in on in to chase down reminders of information I haven't remembered. I think it's pretty well done.

nacht and siergiej, I've dabble a little with readers and downloadable books, but I hadn't thought about the possibility of search options and highlighting passages, and notation. Regarding note taking, if it's not too personal, do you mind if I ask about the nature of your notes, Siergiej?

I've done a little bit of note taking to try and sort out information. The passage between Ganoes Paran and Draconus in Dragnipur, combined with a section in HoC made me feel the need to sort things for clarity's sake, in order to figure out who seems to favor Chaos, or order, or who favors a balance between them, or an imbalance. That kind of thing. I've also written a few thoughts in journal entries. I imagine plenty of people could write walls and walls of text doing something similar to the TOR Re-read of the Fallen blog.

This post has been edited by Tristan Jay: 02 September 2016 - 10:41 PM

[Siergiej]

I use highlights to save passages that I like for the writing quality and not necessarily relevance to the plot. And I use notes to keep track of interesting parts of the story. Kindle isn't really great for typing, so my notes are usually very simple ('fod foreshadowing', 'disproves my theory about tellan' or just 'whoa!!!') but just enough to allow me to recreate my train of thought when I later review them on the web. On Amazon's website the highlighted and annotated passages are listed in the order they appear in the book, so it's also a convenient story recap.

[PLUGO]

I'm an audiobook listener and found the first third-to-half of most books almost incomprehensible, but then a critical scene i.e. Tattersail's card reading would lock it all into place, though surely many details and connection came to mind on a second listen. I'm now on a 4th listen and am set to include I.C.E's books along the way, I read Night of Knives after Midnight Tides (that was fun), got about a 3rd of the way into Return of the Crimson Guard before stopping and turning to Reaper's Gale. I'll get back to RotCG once I've finished RG. I don't really take notes but I'll do drawings and doodles of scenes and or characters I'm particularly focused on at the moment.

I should post more of those doodles. . .