When I was about 12, I picked up a book in my father’s library and read its blurb (you know, the text on the back). It simply said: ‘There are only two kinds of people in this world: those that have read this book and those who are meaning to read it’. That book was The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. As my father only had an English copy of it and I was still too young to understand Tolkien’s stately English, he summarised the story for me and gave me the old I guess you’ll just have to wait until you grow up… However, being a rather curious little fellow (both in the sense of curiosity and curiousness), little Fred didn’t wait to grow up. The year after I managed to put my hands on The Hobbit - that rather dull prequel to The Lord of the Rings, but originally meant as a children’s story, so a little easier - and when I turned 15 I bravely started the 1,000 odd pages of TLOR. And I absolutely loved it.
For me it was the beginning of a true obsession with English fantasy literature. I'm talking about those fist thick books with shiny covers with relief lettering about magicians, dragons, ancient tales and heroic quests, that sort of thing. You've seen them. Besides Tolkien’s other work (his philosophical The Silmarillion and his collection of Unfinished Tales), I also devoured the American author Raymond Feist, who wrote (and is still writing) complete sagas, such as The Rift War Saga, including books with ringing names like Silverthorn or A Darkness at Sethanon. I must have read over 5,000 pages of fantasy literature I realise just now, but then, probably somewhere around 2000, just like that, I gave up on it. Until last Saturday that is…
Last Saturday I woke up and realised it wasn’t going to be my day. It had been a somewhat shitty week and it promised to be a similarly shitty weekend. So I had to come up with a plan to make things better. So I went into town, just to get out more that anything else, and sure enough, pretty quickly I ended up at a big bookstore. As I walked through the aisles stacked with the mental offspring of TV chefs, books with athletes’ stories and guides to rearranging your chakras, my attention was suddenly drawn towards the fantasy corner. Indeed, the week before I had happened to talk about fantasy literature with someone who was absolutely in love with the books by Dave and Leigh Eggers, and sure enough, there it was: The Redemption of Althalus. Shiny cover, drawing of a guy carrying an ornate bronze dagger, and close to a thousand pages of that new book smell. I couldn’t resist the temptation.
What happened next was nothing more than a frightful fantasy binge. Since 4 p.m. on Saturday I have already read close to 800 pages of The Redemption of Althalus. It spins a crazed tale of a thief meeting a talking cat who teaches him to read and use a magical book written by Deiwos the God of Creation. Utterly stupid, of course, with its clichéd archaism and pseudo-philosophical narrative, but ah the guilty pleasure of turning page after page after page, and the endless escapism! If you’ve never tried fantasy, I strongly recommend you do at least once. If it works on you, it’s sheer bliss.
Because, you see, fantasy is like the inverse of other literature. Unlike much reading, fantasy literature is not about making sense of the world and your place in it, it’s about losing yourself and the world.
And tell me, don’t you want to get rid of you once in a while?
For me it was the beginning of a true obsession with English fantasy literature. I'm talking about those fist thick books with shiny covers with relief lettering about magicians, dragons, ancient tales and heroic quests, that sort of thing. You've seen them. Besides Tolkien’s other work (his philosophical The Silmarillion and his collection of Unfinished Tales), I also devoured the American author Raymond Feist, who wrote (and is still writing) complete sagas, such as The Rift War Saga, including books with ringing names like Silverthorn or A Darkness at Sethanon. I must have read over 5,000 pages of fantasy literature I realise just now, but then, probably somewhere around 2000, just like that, I gave up on it. Until last Saturday that is…
Last Saturday I woke up and realised it wasn’t going to be my day. It had been a somewhat shitty week and it promised to be a similarly shitty weekend. So I had to come up with a plan to make things better. So I went into town, just to get out more that anything else, and sure enough, pretty quickly I ended up at a big bookstore. As I walked through the aisles stacked with the mental offspring of TV chefs, books with athletes’ stories and guides to rearranging your chakras, my attention was suddenly drawn towards the fantasy corner. Indeed, the week before I had happened to talk about fantasy literature with someone who was absolutely in love with the books by Dave and Leigh Eggers, and sure enough, there it was: The Redemption of Althalus. Shiny cover, drawing of a guy carrying an ornate bronze dagger, and close to a thousand pages of that new book smell. I couldn’t resist the temptation.
What happened next was nothing more than a frightful fantasy binge. Since 4 p.m. on Saturday I have already read close to 800 pages of The Redemption of Althalus. It spins a crazed tale of a thief meeting a talking cat who teaches him to read and use a magical book written by Deiwos the God of Creation. Utterly stupid, of course, with its clichéd archaism and pseudo-philosophical narrative, but ah the guilty pleasure of turning page after page after page, and the endless escapism! If you’ve never tried fantasy, I strongly recommend you do at least once. If it works on you, it’s sheer bliss.
Because, you see, fantasy is like the inverse of other literature. Unlike much reading, fantasy literature is not about making sense of the world and your place in it, it’s about losing yourself and the world.
And tell me, don’t you want to get rid of you once in a while?
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