My disenchantment with just about everything released with the Wheel of Time name on it since 2007 had me convinced she was just some hack who was merely an editor by courtesy of her husband's acclaim. After all, the series is full of people overestimating the value of the romantic partners, so maybe RJ was pulling a Rand to her Min. But I have been rereading Glen Cook's "Black Company" series and "Shadow Games" is dedicated to Harriet McDougal "whose gentle hands guided Croaker and the Company out of the Darkness."

Huh. Who'd have thought.

The other half of the dedication is to "Lee Childs of North Hollywood for historical research and valued suggestions." I doubt it's the author of the Jack Reacher novels, though, since there is no "s" after his name, nor has any biographical information I have ever seen or heard about him associated him with California. AFAIK he's British and lives there. He certainly hadn't gone Hollywood with his books yet, and I don't even think he had published anything as far back as "Shadow Games" was written.

That reminds me of a wierd phenomenon. Did you ever overtake a recommendation for a particular work or series? For instance, with Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" series, my mother recommended them to me, and loaned me one in the middle to read, and I thought it was okay, and then at a point where I wanted something to read in spare moments, I started reading the whole series. When the first movie came out, I wanted to talk to her about it, and it turned out she had not read a number of the books, including the one on which the movie was based. On the other hand, she has a bad memory for what she reads, as she has actually no recollection of "Game of Thrones" but I can recall her describing the parts she found most evocative, and the characters who resonated with her, at the time she was reading them.

But then, she told me about CJ Box's Joe Pickett novels, which I really liked for the rather unique political slant, and read all the way through. I was kind of surprised at her positive reaction to the books, because she has VERY strong feelings about bad things happening to kids, and the protagonist's family loses a couple of kids to tragic violence along the way in the early books. Then it turned out, once I was finished (or caught up, since the series is ongoing), that she had not even read most of the books in that series.

And last summer, my brother, when he was back home for another brother's wedding, urged me to watch "Rick & Morty" on Adult Swim. We did that thing where each of us made the other watch an episode of a TV show we each liked. I made him watch an episode of Community and he made me watch the episode with the gaslighting family parasites & Mr Poopy Butthole. I thought it was worth a look, and later watched the whole series. When he came back for a birthday party, someone mentioned the recent April Fool's episode, and I noted that it was something of a sequel to an early episode...and he had never seen it! And still had yet to see the whole first season!

This keeps on happening way too much. Someone tells me I should read or watch something, which I do, but it turns out once I am done, they haven't even taken up their own recommendation! Is it just me? Do I read unreasonably fast, or are people being tools for recommending things on which they have no valid basis to do so?