Ahira's Hangar

My moods for reading, and especially re-reads are impossible to resist or change.

If I crave TC then I jam Lord Fouls Bane in my mouth, if I want some Sci-Fi I'll start Dune over.

I really just read with the flow, I've learned not to try and fight myself.

Yeah, that's about how I read these days. But it's making me lazy.

--A

Sometimes it can be good to force yourself out of your comfort zones. Of course sometiems the result can be unpleasant - but it is still good to experiment intellectually from time to time.

My current cross to bear seems to be the classic early fantasy novel The Worm Oromborus (spelling?). I have tried to read it a few times, and it is rapidly coming to the top of my TBR stack once again! The thing is, I know it is a classic and it does seem to be a very well written book. I just haven't been able to get into it yet.

Perhaps this time I will force my way through the thing - and by the time I am done, I will probably love it.

Classics are my worst...books that you know you should read, but are just too lazy to.

--A

It has only been in the last couple of years that I have been getting back into the classics. I have been trying to read some that I have either never read, or read decades ago. I think I got a bad case of burn out on them back in college, when I not only had a ton of English classes, but had a year of intensive Great Books classes as well and even a pretty intense Russian lit in translation class. Those classes were all wonderful, but...my brain came out of it wanting a long winter's nap.

My option really isn't up there-I read slowly and go back to double check things alot. So I memorize at least 80%. I found going back to Covenant, after 25 years to be most enlightening-especially looking at it with more 'mature eyes' but, believe it or not it is hard for me to reread (an entire book or series) for dissections, like Donaldson or Martin. I need to reread Runes to really contribute to the dissection discussion, but I'm having a hard time doing so...

However the more I get away for the comp the faster I've been reading--I've read two and a half books in the last two weeks which is clearly a record for me over the past 6 years. Maybe once I finish The Demolished Man and get off my Bester kick, I can zoom into Runes-it would help, at least, make me appear to know what I'm talking about at Elohimfest...

I found that to be the case even more with Mordant's Need - the first time I read it, I had problems getting impatient with the character Teresa. Reading it again twenty years (and a lot of years of life experience later) I felt compassion for her rather than impatience.

I also think that part of it was because the first time I read it, I was only a few years out of an abusive childhood - and that reading it just brought up too many unresolved issues that I couldn't deal with at that time.

I am really glad I did reread it - I now think that it might have some of Donaldson's best and most subtle writing.