A lot of this is that these "superior" tools usually try to implement about 50% of the dinosaur's features. For people who don't use that last arcane 50% they're fine - but for people who do, they're useless.

That said the past few releases of Illustrator have been a mess and I've been getting really tempted to try and see if the latest version of Affinity Design can do all the Illustrator things that I've shaped my workflow around for the last decade. But I feel like if I'm going to spend the time to learn a new tool I'd really rather learn one that's going to open up new places, rather than just take me to the same place in a different way. Which is why I have Blender open in another window right now.

InDesign usurped Quark for a couple of reasons: everyone hated Quark, even people who used it on a daily basis, and Quark took forever to move from MacOS to OSX. That gap offered people a huge excuse to spend some time learning a new tool that held out a hope of sucking less.

Ah, which two books did you read?

I've read through Kingkiller. And, like the rest of the world, am eagerly awaiting The Doors of Stone. That's the last time I'm taken by an unfinished series. :)

I love heists, so the first Mistborn book is my favorite — it's Ocean's Eleven meets fantasy. And, I thought that the whole trilogy (and beyond) was so cleverly pieced together that I re-read it each year. I like that everything has its place, even if it feels a bit too convenient now and then.

His Stormlight Archive series took me two tries to get into, but I'm so happy I did. The characters are well-thought-through, and each book (1,000+ pages) focuses on the backstory of one particular character.

And, I think the more impressive part of it is that almost all of his adult-fantasy books are connected, and that he's setting up a very, very large 36+ book arc that — for now — is only there if you look for it, but with each new book, the ties are coming together more and more.

I liked his mistborn series, it had some novel ideas. The rest I have read are too long and generic fantasy.

I think the best modern fantasy I have read is Richard morgans 'a land fit for heroes' series.

I liked the first couple of books in the Malazan books of the fallen series but they got too long and slow.

Sanderson's work in the original Mistborn Trilogy and in WoT are his best work IMO. unfortunately, the care he put into writing those books to get them just right is seemingly lacking from his more recent books. The most recent mistborn trilogy is laughable. It lacks any real tension, and the fallback on the deus ex machina is very very frustrating to the reader.

Sanderson needs to focus less on being a "writing machine" and more on being a writer.

Some of Sanderson's contemporaries like Lynch, Rothfuss, and Abercrombie have avoided this trap a bit better, but they have also published less.

> I'm done reading books in long series that haven't been finished yet

> you may want to check out" The Name of the wind"

...which is the first book of a projected three-book series, of which only two have been published.

I mean they're well-written and so far it's not as bad as the twenty-three wait for the next Chtorr book but, well...