| | Ah, childhood.
Sometime when I was around eight or ten I was in the public library when I discovered, on a spinning rack of science fiction paperbacks, a copy of Dragons of Autumn Twilight. This book altered my childhood, it was the standard by which I measured other adult fantasy. It's the first part of a trilogy written by Tracey Hickman and Margaret Weiss (which then became a huge "shared world" series, Dragonlance), published by the now defunct TSR. It's a book based on the D and D campaign of the same name. I read the first book in two days, then begged my mom to take me back to the library to get the other two. I fell in love with Kitiara, Tanis, Flint, Tasslehoff, Riverwind, Goldmoon, Laurana, Caramon and... Raistlin. I loved Raistlin, no, I LOVED him. It's sad really.
Anyway, every time we went to the bookstore, I would buy books from the series (the general series has sets within it. The first three were known as the Chronicles trilogy, there also was the Meetings sextext, Villians sextext, etc.). I did this for years, five or six dollars at a time, collecting these books because I wanted to know -what happened.- Mind you, the first books were written before I was born, and the first Age ended right around when I was in sixth grade, I was in fact on a Quest more than anything. So I bought and read, and bought and read... even though the quality of the writing was... uneven at best. I stayed in the first age, because my favorite characters were there, although I read the last book of the first age (Dragons of Summer Flame), and was sad to find out how it all ended. Then I stopped buying them (money became tight in college, and then I was buying other books), but I faithful carted the books around with me, from move to move. A couple of years ago, I decided that I should read the big books of the second age, the War of the Souls Trilogy. So I bought them, and read them, and they were... awful. I mean, truly bad. So I put them on the shelf of my childhood bookself (which also has travelled with me from move to move), figuring that was that. But you see, that was two moves ago... and I still have the books (and a gajillion others).
I have two bookshelves that I cart around with me from home to home, the old childhood bookshelf and the college bookshelf. The college bookshelf is out in the livingroom where company can admire it. It has all my history text books, all of my Literature (really, it reads like Snob City out there. Here are the first few books from the top shelf: The Basic Kafka, Tom Jones, Great Expectations, Turn of the Screw, Brave New World, Mother Courage, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Death of a Salesman.). The other one is in my bedroom and reserved for the books I enjoy but aren't books I want to brag about reading, so all my Stephen King books, Amy Tan, Peter Straub, Terry Pratchett, Helen Fielding, Nick Hornsby, George R.R. Martin. Although the outside bookshelf is more impressive, all of the (mostly trade and hardcover) books look in good condition and are alphabetized, it's clear its the bedroom bookshelf that I love. It's crammed with deteriorating paperbacks that are arranged in horizontal piles to best use the space. These are the books that have water stains from being read in the bath, bent covers from the time they spend on the floor next to my bed. Space is at a premium on that old bookshelf, and I realized the other day when Ed and I were cleaning our room, that my old Dragonlance books, proudly taking up a whole shelf on the bookcase, hadn't been read in years.
When I pulled them off the shelf and arranged them, it made me a little sad. I spent so many hours living with the characters of these books on Krynn. I leafed through all of the books and decided I couldn't bear to part with the original three. To the rest I say farewell!
posted by Amber at 5:58 PM
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