Reading

I've been doing what feels like a significantly increased amount of reading in the last few months. I suppose it started towards the end of last year, when, after not reading anything much for a long time, I decided I'd read Sara Douglass's Axis Trilogy. It had been a long time since I've read it, and the three thick books provided a lot of depth to my otherwise quite shallow reading experiences (Where is the Green Sheep?, Ribbit Ribbit and of course, the Eric Carl classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar (both Japanese and English versions)).

After finishing those in I think about a week and a half, it was time for something similar. I hadn't read the David Eddings stuff for a while. In fact, I hadn't read the Elenium and Tamuli Trilogies since I first read them a few years ago, so I started there. There are (quite obviously) three books in each of those and when I finished them, I began on The Belgariad, which has five books. This was then followed by The Malloreon, another five books, and then just this last week, I rounded off with the two companion books for these series (which I'd never read before), Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress.

If you do a count, in the last two and a bit months, I've read eighteen David Eddings books. I don't think I'll be reading them again for a long time. Furthermore, I don't think I'll ever be reading Belgarath or Polgara again. Ever. If you are going to read David Eddings, the Belgariad and The Malloreon are excellent collections. Don't waste your time with Belgarath or Polgara though, because not only do they not add anything (I found) to the story, they also show a number of inconsistencies that I found very frustrating. Not only that, but the style of writing (journal-y style, summarizing around 7000 years of history with a casual wave of a fist :P) is also irritating. I probably would have given up on Polgara (especially after Belgarath), but my OCD and task driven nature would not let me put it aside unfinished. :P

Yesterday, I began and finished Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George. It was beautiful. A little slow in parts (mostly due to the nature of it being a re-telling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, so you do know where it is going), but very well done with just enough depth to the characters to give them substance, but not enough to take away from the original. Lovely.

What I'll read next I'm not sure, but maybe I'll take a break and make some bunting. That could be fun.