Old Friends

I remember my first book. Does that seem weird? Probably. But, oh, how I lovvvvvved to read. For me, books were the greatest thing in the world.

I started off on YA mystery books. Three Investigators, Encyclopedia Brown, which were both in the vein of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. I never actually got into ND or HB, I always skirted around them.

As I grew up, I started reading "older" books. My parents bought me some Tom Clancy, which I devoured. Watching the not-so-good mini-series "It", based on the book by Stephen King, sucked me into his world real fast. "It" is one of my favorites, to this day(the book, not the mini)

In college, a buddy of mine got me to read Asimov's Foundation series, which completely and totally blew my mind. It was a tremendous idea, only something that could've come out of the mid-20th century pulp magazine era.

And there was a point when my dad owned a used-book store. As a result, my time home from college was spent as a ghost, haunting his store late at night, reading and reading and reading.

Tremendous experience.

And at that point, I actually tried to read Lord of The Rings, by Tolkien. I'm going to assume we all know what that is, ja? :) And to be honest, it didn't do a lot for me. Lots of characters, heavy-handed prose, and a droll storyline in The Two Towers failed me.

Of course, the movies made up for all of that, rather easily.

But I'm picky. There are books I own that I will never read again. I won't toss them out, but I'll never do more than flip through them for a couple pages. There are some I'll keep, and want to re-read, but won't because the books haven't aged well, or I've aged too much. And then there are some I will re-read and re-read, ad infinitum.

And then there is a small, select group of books by a small, select group of authors. This group is treasured above all others, because the authors made the characters come alive; they came alive in such a way that no matter how old I get, no matter how old the book is, the characters will always seem real and alive.

Those are my favorites. They are like Old Friends to me.

So, I got the surprise of a lifetime, when I saw that Stephen Donaldson had started the "Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant". "Holy Shit", were the words that echoed in Borders yesterday.

The first two trilogies were sold to me on the premise of "It's different". How different? Well, according to Neil Gaiman, it's "New Fantasy". "Old Fantasy" is everyone that reminds anyone of LOTR.

The Thomas Covenant series, well... it's different. The protagonist is a leper.

A -leper-.

Yeah. Sounds fucked-up, doesn't it? And it so very very is fucked up. It's a story about a leper who goes into this other world, that may or may not exist, and... well, it's just fucking nuts. And I love that Donaldson decided to go back and finish this story. It's like seeing an Old Friend, who you didn't even know was around.

If, in my entire lifetime, I write one story, that affects me as much as Donaldson or any of the others had... that someone else gets an Old Friend out of something I write... then my work here is done.

Anyways, off to Borders.

S.
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