I Read Books!

So, Darren beat me to the proverbial punch with his review of Inception, and kudos to him for a solid review.  Now what am I to do this week?  How about that post about the intricacies of geeks living in community and our tendencies to hide or flaunt our geekiness?  Nah, not finished with my research…(sounds awesome doesn’t it now that you know I’m doing “research”?)

For years I have been stuck in a reading deathtrap.  As a kid and early teen, TSR (God bless their departed souls) and WotC had me sinking money into stacks of fresh fantasy novels from Waldenbooks, Bookland, and the infamous Book Exchange in Goose Creek (my brother and I ran up quite the comic tab there once).  Now, as a transplanted New Yorker, I have been exposed to the joys of Borders, however the epic selection of our now local bookstore wouldn’t have even made me flinch. I was only interested in a single row of books.  I would make a beeline to the one that had stacks of Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Greyhawk, and Kara-Tur novels. R.A. Salvatore, Margret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Ed Greenwood, Christie Golden, and James Lowder were instrumental to my youth.

Yes, before I ignite severe cases of geek-rage, I realize two writers of timeless contributions to fairy tale and fantasy writing are missing.  I never considered J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis on the same level as the aforementioned authors…sorry to them all, but compared to what these two men left us in printed form, all the other writer’s works are Wednesday morning editorials.

For years I never branched from the TSR\WotC publishing house. I dabbled once with David Gemell’s writing and even completed an entire series by David Eddings (who I still credit to helping me branch out). My preferred flavors of reading were high fantasy and sword & sorcery.  And this very same trend has followed me for years into adulthood.

TOR Publishing and Del Ray became the next step for me as I began the now famous Wheel of Time series by Robert Jorden.  I also revisited Eddings and Gemell.  I found the fantastic Wolfwalker series by Tara K. Harper.  I fumbled around trying some of Salvatore’s other non-D&D centered writings but could never get into them.  Likewise, Jordan failed to hold my attention, as did Sara Douglas, Terry Goodkind, Stephen R. Lawhead, and others.  I found a number of problems I felt that plagued the fantasy genre during this time of my life.  Interestingly enough these discoveries had a lot to do with why I began writing.

I found myself rereading a high number of those old faithful TSR books.  After the 4th time through all of the Drizzt Do’Urden novels by Salvatore, I was looking for something else but loathe trying most new authors as many back cover snippets all sounded the same to me.  So I went an interesting direction, I visited all the used bookstores in my area and began collecting older novels from the ‘80’s and earlier.  I discovered the very tongue-in-cheek Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels from the late ‘70’s.  Anthony’s style led me to Terry Brooks’ similarly fairytale\fantasy Magic Kingdom of Landover novels.  These both were a welcome respite from the heavy and bloody novels I was used to.  It re-sparked my interest in fairy tales (as did the film industry with works like Pan’s Labyrinth, Chronicles of Narnia, and Harry Potter).  During this time I happened upon an interesting 6 part series, called Dungeon, from the late ‘80’s.  An eclectic work of stories that at times was admittedly hard to get through and ranged from the Victorian and familiar to the sci-fi and bizarre.

At this point I took a long break from “fun” reading as life was changing for me.  When I did read, I found myself falling back to the old faithfuls on my dusty bookshelves or I would read theological works, philosophy, modern historical-fiction, mystery novels, and the occasional classic.

Finally a little over a year and a half ago, as I rediscovered the table-top strategy game Warhammer through my friends interest in Warhammer 40K, I began reading the novels that took place in this futuristic sci-fi setting. These works by William King, Graham McNeil, Dan Abbnet, and others began a new phase in my reading.  About 9-12 novels later, my wife had been telling me for months to read a series called the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks.  So I finally gave in and began reading them with a half-forced interest.  The books were awesome and I highly recommend them.  Those books were responsible for me searching my Kindle for something else, and thank you Amazon for guiding me to the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.

Now Brandon Sanderson is a name you may recognize if you keep up with Wheel of Time series formerly written by Robert Jordan.  After the author passed, his widow asked Sanderson to finish the final novel of the series.  Sanderson however, presented TOR Publishing with three more novels because he loved the series that much and wanted to do it justice.  That being said, his Mistborn series was either a genius work of storytelling or a great idea that got stretched to long and required “creative writing” to complete.  It is certainly worth a read, especially as a writer. But I’ll save that for another post…

So anyway, now I find myself an author of what I have coined as a mid-fantasy steampunk story.  I find myself revisiting the literary influences of my past and began to wonder about those of our readers.  What are you reading?  What literary ruts have you found yourself in the past? How do you go about breaking them?

If you’re not a reader, I’m sorry. You should take some advice from the wise Paul Frank and “go read a book.”