This blog has evolved dramatically from what I was attempting to create when I transferred my blog from Blogger to WordPress just about a year ago. And at the risk of scaring off all my new readers who come here just for the funny stuff, and I’m pretty sure that those posts are what’s responsible for the ten-fold increase in traffic I’ve achieved since I started posting them, I feel the need to flash back, at least for the moment, to that original purpose: To help me deal with my problems!
Way back in my Addiction and The True Calling post, I talked about how huge a problem my addiction to reading had gotten to be at one point. These days, because of the problems I had back then, I rarely do more than the light reading required to keep up with my favorite blogs and to do research for my own blog posts. This, to me, has an almost tragically ironic significance, since I come from a background where almost everyone, for reasons of their own, avoided reading as if it were some kind of disease.
But just because I fear having problems with reading again, that doesn’t mean that I don’t miss it. The fact is that it has always been my intention to resume my passion for reading, only at a somewhat less “manic” pace. It is also a fact that I never actually finished the series of books that I was reading when I was first hospitalized in 1995. That series is called The Tales of Alvin Maker by Orson Scott Card. It was while reading the second book in that series, Red Prophet, which detailed a particularly bloody massacre of Native Americans, that I experienced the first of those unstoppable crying jags that have become so symptomatic of my condition.
Well I finally got around to checking on the availability of the finale to that series, The Crystal City, and discovered (surprise!) that it has been published and available for years now. While I was in a checking mood, I also decided to look into replacing the two volumes of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series by Stephen R. Donaldson that were never returned to me after I loaned them out. And that’s when I discovered that Mr. Donaldson has already published two books out of four books in The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series that I never even knew existed! For those who don’t know, that would bring the total number of books in the three “chronicles” to ten!
Well! Now everyone knows that you don’t just pick up and read a sixth book in a series when it’s been ten years since you read book five. You’ve got to re-read the first five before you start the sixth! And that would only get me through The Tales of Alvin Maker! It’s been even longer since I read any of the Thomas Covenant books! Suddenly, what started out as a desire to simply “catch up” on my reading has turned into a “mission” that will necessitate the reading of sixteen books!
To be honest, back in the days when I lived for nothing else, I would be damned near to drooling at the prospect of having that much great reading to look forward to. But now the prospect is more than a little bit terrifying! I’m really going to have to think about this. I may even have to talk this over with my shrink as well.
Who else in this crazy world is afraid of a little reading?
BTW, I found these wonderful site for Orson Scott Card fans: Hatrack River – The Official Web Site of Orson Scott Card and Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, as well as these wonderful sites for Stephen R. Donaldson fans: Stephen R. Donaldson… the official web site and Kevin’s Watch. Enjoy!
I want ice water.
I Want Ice Water! 
Oh my god, I love Orson Scott Card! His Ender’s Game series is fantastic! I own every book and have read all but two in the series.
I used to rip through books like they were nothing. Huge novels that my fellow sixth grade students found ridiculously over sized I saw as a light bit of reading. Now I can’t even be bothered to read Frankenstein. *sigh* I truly do miss my love for novels. My grammar and ability to spell has drastically decreased since I stopped reading.
Not to add to you’re list or anything, but you really should look into the Ender’s Game series. I read Ender’s side of the story first, and then I went back and read the Shadow part of the story. Although, Ender in Exile only came out last year, so I still need to read that. I think there’s 7 or 8 books to the series.
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Ender’s Game was actually the first Card book I read! I even read most, if not all, of Xenocide, skipping over Speaker for the Dead. As much as I loved Ender’s Game, the rest of that series (which I didn’t know about until much later) disturbed me in a way that I wasn’t ready to deal with. Remember, I was VERY sick at the time! And sense the two books I had read were borrowed anyway, I needed more to start investing my own cash. I would love to read them some day, IF I can get past the task at hand! 🙄
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Hey Mak,
I could repost this at WP Writers Group. Allow me?
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Wow! It’s been a while! Please go right ahead. And could you include a link back?
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The entire series is truly amazing. I have to admit, I started thinking about things differently after I read it.
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As great as the story was, the things I remember most are the little educational “tablet-style” computers that all the students carried. Awesome! We’ve come a long way since then, but we’ve still got so far to go! 🙂
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Lol. Really? But then, I had to reread Ender’s Game for honors English over the summer so my memory is certainly much more updated. *sigh* ok, now I really want to finish the series. Where am I going to find the time to do that?!
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Oh yeah! I read it not long after college, where I studied electronics – before PC’s even existed! That kind of technology, while it might not seem so far fetched these days, was like the “holy grail” for electronics enthusiasts back then! Man! Just thinking about it makes me want to read it again! But that would mean adding another nine books to the sixteen I’m already planning to read!
BTW, have you read any of the books I mentioned in the post? I would rank them ahead of darn near everything else I’ve read! Right up there with Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Rand! 🙂
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Oh lol, that would make sense then. You should read on then, if technology is what you’re looking for. While Ender’s traveling to the colony planet, his friends back on Earth create a banking program for him. That’s all I’m going to say about that, because I’ve already ruined how she came into existence. I had to read through five books to finally figure it out.
No I haven’t read any of the others. I’m still not finished with the Enders Game series! I’m also supposed to be reading All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Remarque. I haven’t touched that yet though.
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Don’t feel bad. I never read the so-called “classics” either. One of the benefits of being a drop-out I guess!
If I understand you, one of the artificial intelligences in “Ender” somehow becomes a being that walks amongst us. Am I right? I’ve read several great examples of this, the best of which was Heinlein’s “Time Enough For Love.” I’ve also read examples of where humans achieved immortality by becoming programs “living” on the net. The best example of this that I’ve read was in the last book of Frederik Pohl’s “Heechee Saga.” To me, THESE (including the one’s we’ve talked about) should be considered the TRUE classics! 🙂
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Yes, she does. But at the same time she doesn’t. It’s all so beautiful the way Card describes it. And the aliens! Oh I forgot about them! The aliens… Ok you really need to read these so I can talk to you about them lol. Because I will NOT be responsible for spoiling the story more than necessary to get you hooked.
Immortality by living on the net? Interesting… I wonder if the same concept would apply in Ender’s Game. Especially since… never mind.
They made the fourth Harry Potter a classic. Did you hear about that? Only the fourth one, because some how the other six weren’t as magical. haha
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Never fear! I’m already hooked, but the teasing IS driving me batty! 😆
You know, I never was much for the ‘fantasy’ stuff early on. That’s why I never read The Lord of the Rings. But I finally got around to reading The Hobbit in the early 80s, and was about to go out and get the whole series when my friend loaned me the first Thomas Covenant book. After that, I just couldn’t imagine that the Tolkien books could top them. But now I do kinda wish I’d read them first. 😐
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If you do read then Ender’s game series you HAVE to read them in the order they were written, which is Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, then Children of the Mind and then the Shadow books. Otherwise the story will be spoiled by itself lol.
I’ve only read the hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy seems like a bigger bite then I could chew.
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Oh I’d NEVER disrespect an author I like that way! 🙂
Apparently, to call oneself a Lord of the Rings “master,” one must go far beyond just reading the trilogy! Tolkien published quite a bit more to flesh out the mythology of “Middle Earth.” But who am I to bitch? I’ve already read six of the Thomas Covenant books, and I’m about to start on the nest four! And I haven’t even mentioned the Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein series on top of the one by Card! Oh and have you ever heard of The Destroyer? There are well over a hundred of them, and I’ve around 75! 🙄
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How on earth do these people have that much time on their hands that they can write soooo many novels?! It would take me months to read through all of those, and that’s if I was locked in a room with only a bed and the books.
Lol, I salute you. The fact that you’ve attempted to read them all, and are continuing to read an enormus list, is something to be proud of.
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I think that my family, and maybe even my shrink, might have a different opinion about whether I should be proud of all that reading. There ARE many, many, other series that I’ve not even mentioned! 😆
But I started reading because I wanted to see the world through the eyes of people from different backgrounds – And I sure got plenty of that! 😆
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Yes, well the method in which you attempted to read them probably wasn’t the best.
I really enjoy Card because in his newest books, I can clearly see the things that are happening in our world and the stories. For instance, when Peter becomes hegemon, he attempts to do something very similar to the what England is doing right now with the… EU? I think that’s what it’s called. We had a representative of there’s come to my school and talk about what the government of England not too long ago.
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Card did something very similar in The Tales of Alvin Maker, where he used real American history to show what life might have been like if magical folklore had been real. Amazing stuff. Alvin was “the seventh son of the seventh son.” 🙂
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*shakes head* I really want to read all of these books now, but I honestly don’t have the time lol. I’ve been online too long today as it is haha.
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Take your time! Don’t think you have to absorb the knowledge of the worl like I did. Just look at where that got me! 🙂
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Sorry, that should be *their’s not *there’s in the last sentance.
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