Nordic Book Club : Odinsbarn

[tiia]

I'll participate, using the Finnish translation of the book. But as Elenia already mentioned, I still have to wait for my copy to arrive.

[Elenia]

Okay. Should we say the first two chapters (that is, the prologue and chapter one) are due on this sunday, and we can slowly pick up the pace from there?

[Montmorency]

Just downloading the Norwegian audiobook now ... goodness, it's massive! 1.1GB A bit different to the ~200MB which was "Naiv.Super"!
Still, perfect for Super Challenge purposes, I guess.
...oh, downloaded ok. My internet connection must be slightly better than I feared.

Edit: Listened to Prologue (~7 min) and Chapter 1(~16 min). Chapter 1 was split across 2 audio files, and that pattern seems to continue. (I much prefer it when 1 audio file = 1 chapter, but Naiv.Super wasn't done like that either). The reader, Erich Kruse Nielsen, speaks a little faster than Erlend Loe I think, and probably with a slightly different accent. The "tone 1" and "tone 2" differences are not very noticeable until he does dialogue (I think that is what it was), and then it is very noticeable.

[Montmorency]

Now have the (Norsk) ebook (EPUB). For the time being I'm using fbreader on Windows which evidently hasn't been updated for ages, and I suppose all the development is now in the mobile versions. But it's ok for the moment. Here is the content list it displays, with chapter numbers added by me (sing out if I have made any mistakes):

Rettigheter
Odinsbarn
Dedikasjon
0 Prolog
1 Rime er tilbake
2 Den røde vogna
3 Ravnetreneren
4 Odinsbarn
5 Den tomme stolen
6 En gåte
7 Slåsskampen
8 Ilume
9 Steinhviskeren
10 Insringin
11 Lykkejegere
12 Et nederlag
13 Hemmelighetene
14 En tjeneste
15 Løgnen
16 Jordblind
17 Betroelsen
18 Forrådt
19 Evna
20 En plan
21 Blodgress
22 Til ravnene
23 Brenning
24 Tegningen
25 Smykket
26 En seier
27 Ild
28 Eisvaldr
29 Villgutten
30 Ravnungen
31 Tein
32 Gudebildet
33 Festen
34 Samlingen
35 Ilumes vrede
36 Våkenatt
37 Avtalen
38 Den evnesterke
39 Svartelds nåde
40 Mannfalla
41 Den sovende dragen
42 Legerjenta
43 Ritet
44 Stemmen
45 Spion
46 Smerte
47 Dråpen
48 En narr
49 Dukkemakeren
50 Gesas hage
51 Tyrinn
52 Kolkaggas oppdrag
53 Huset vanfarinn
54 Overfalt
55 Slabbas tabbe
56 Skyggen
57 Halen
58 Skygger i Mannfalla
59 Ravnehuset
60 På en knivsegg
61 Ramojas historie
62 Seeren
63 Urds erobring
64 Utenfor frelse
65 Blod
66 Høvdingen og den blinde
67 To ledere på Ravnhov
68 Veiene deles
69 Bromfjell
70 De blinde
71 Dragen våkner
72 Tilbake i Blindból
73 Byttehandelen
74 Stolarvingen
75 Portene
76 Forfatterens takk
77 Om boka
78 Om forfatteren
79 Om denne boken

[Edited 2314 GMT 01.05.2016 - My numbers were out towards the end, sorry. So "Portene" is now chapter 75, making it 76 chapters including the prologue.]

(Those last 4 aren't actual chapters, but end notes).

If we call it 74 75 chapters not including the prologue, at 3 chapters per week, that's about 25 weeks or nearly 6 months.

5 chapters per week would be nearly 15 weeks, which is closer to 4 months. (It would actually take us until the 13th August if we started now. So that's actually 3½ months).

Edit: (If any one wants to go nuclear and do 10 chapters per week, that's 7.4 7.5 weeks, which would take us to about 22nd June).

[Edit: 2314 GMT 01.05.2016: The "extra" chapter doesn't really change the timing much. Could e.g. add an extra chapter one week, e.g. the last week. Sorry about the error! ]

[Elenia]

If we call it 74 chapters including the prologue, at 3 chapters per week, that's about 25 weeks or nearly 6 months.

5 chapters per week would be nearly 15 weeks, which is closer to 4 months. (It would actually take us until the 13th August if we started now. So that's actually 3½ months).

Edit: (If any one wants to go nuclear and do 10 chapters per week, that's 7.4 weeks, which would take us to about 22nd June).

Thanks very much for that, Montmorency! My laptop charger has been broken, so that would have made getting this information complicated for me. So, what pace do we all think we'd like to adopt? Or rather, what finish date would we like to reach?

[tiia]

What about an average of one chapter per day? Then we would end in the beginning of July. Although 5 chapters doesn't sound too bad either.

But I think we can also think of increasing the speed slowly over the whole time? After a while a book usually becomes easier to read, because of less unknown words and towards the end the book won't let you go so easily, so you're more likely to want to read faster.

So in that case e.g. in the beginning 3 chapters/week and in the end 10 chapters.

The book has around 600 pages so each chapter is about 8 (?) pages long . So 3 chapters/week would be around 24 pages/week. 10 chapters therefore 80 pages. The later sounds quite demanding/too much, depending how much time one has during the week (which we don't know yet).

But I guess it might be useful to adapt the speed during the time anyway, since we don't know yet how well we'll get along with the writing style.

To my previous experience of reading, it really depends on the writing style how fast I can read. I can finish 250 pages in two weeks, but another book with 250 pages might take several months. (Especially because of breaks, but those breaks are more likely if the style is more complicated.) However, on average it takes me about one month for a book with 250-350 pages. So with my normal speed this book would take me about two months. But I don't definitely don't expect us to read it that fast, but it might help deciding how fast to read.

[Expugnator]

I prefer three chapters a week. I have other activities, even in Norwegian.

[Montmorency]

Sorry people; I made a slight mistake in my chapter numbers above, which I have now edited in the original post.
If I have it correct this time, there are 75 normal chapters plus the prologue. I don't think the "extra" chapter & prologue make much difference to the overall timing.

I'd be happy with 3 chapters per week, but then see how everyone feels as we go on later on, with a view to possibly speeding up.
(As the Prologue isn't very long, perhaps we could say Prologue plus three following chapters for the first week?
i.e. Prolog, Rime er tilbake, Den røde vogna, Ravnetreneren, using the Norwegian names. )

[chokofingrz]

So in that case e.g. in the beginning 3 chapters/week and in the end 10 chapters.

Sounds good to me.

[Montmorency]

I put the first 3 "real" chapters into separate txt files and looked at them in notepad++ and did a word count:

Ch1 2161 words - 8.6 pages at 250 words/page (if that's what we normally say here), or 7 for 300 w/p
Ch2 1508 words - 6 pages - or 5 for 300 w/p
Ch3 3096words - 12 pages - or 10 for 300 w/p

In the whole book - according to notepad+ which may count "words" strangely, there are - wait for it - 170,252 words!
That's 681 pages at 250 words per page, or 567 pages at 300 words per page (another number I've seen used).

(The text file I used has all the publisher's preamble, and the acknowledgements etc at the end, so the numbers are probably a bit higher than they should be in any case). (I found another way of getting the word count in notepad++ and that gave a different - higher! number about 172,000, which suggests we shouldn't take these numbers all that seriously.)