Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Fantasy books revisited

I've been reading a lot the past couple of months, and I'm doing something I haven't done since before college: trying to catch up on my fantasy. In high school I read fantasy voraciously, and my book-collecting outpaced even my reading. As I geared up for and attended college, I somewhat lost interest in the genre of high fantasy and switched more to contemporary fantasy and speculative fiction. I always meant to revisit them and finish out the series I had started. That time is now, apparently. I'm starting with Melanie Rawn, and I warmed up by rereading her Dragon Prince Trilogy.

I'm going to concentrate first on those series that are concluded in which I own all the books. There are a few of these: Melanie Rawn's Dragon Star Trilogy, Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion Tetraology, and Maggie Furey's Artefacts of Power, among others. I'm also going to reread Jane Yolen's Pit Dragon Trilogy and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, because, why not?

Then I have several series that I feel fairly committed to reading, but still need to acquire one or more books, most notably Madeleine L'Engle's books about the Austins and the Murrys/O'Keefes (these are all loosely interconnected). And then there are a slew of series which I want to look into by reading the first book: Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry, Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and many others.

And of course there are those interminable sagas that have no end in sight, which I refuse to commit any more time to unless I know them to be complete. These include Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (which I suppose now does have an end in sight :( ), George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, Janny Wurts' Wars of Light and Shadow, and Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern. Of course, I am currently working on the Pern books, so I just ate my words. I've been reading them for almost two months and I'm just now getting to the ones I haven't read. I'm not certain that I will consider the Pern books written or co-written by Todd McCaffrey to be canon or not. However, there is at least one more written by Anne McCaffrey only in the works, so I'll have to revisit Pern at least one more time (but probably not in its entirety!).

And of course, this is all besides the other books I'm reading. I've started reading ebooks from Project Gutenberg on my breaks at work (Don Quixote is one). I am going to try to bring the total of concurrent books to a more reasonable two instead of the four it was last week.

Sometimes I really think I ought to get help for this addiction.

On the running front, I had an excellent mile repeat workout last night, my second-to-last hard workout before the marathon. After my tune-up 15K this weekend, I'll have one more short interval workout and one more light lifting day before the marathon.

One more thing: Arrrr, matey! 'Tis Talk Like a Pirate Day! Avast, and take ye a goodly swig of rum this day! Drink up, me hearties!

5 comments:

DawnB said...

I miss my reading, how do you have time to read so much? are you a speed reader?

Good luck with the 15K this weekend!!

Mir said...

I'm not sure. :) It kind of goes in cycles. I really don't read all that fast.

Anonymous said...

His Dark Materials is an excellent trilogy, though I did think it seemed quite dark for what was essentially a teen book. What do you think?

Is it me, or is the science fiction/fantasy market for children/teens even better than the adult one these days?

Nuke Runner said...

Aargh matey! When I was in the Navy, I used to mess with my watchsection by talking like a pirate (during midwatches when the captain was asleep). Sonaarrrrrr Conn Aye!

Anonymous said...

Good post.