Ok, I read...a lot! I’ve read all my life. Well, not really all of my life. I was so traumatized from the birth experience that I refused to read for years. But, eventually I got over it and, once I started, I probably haven’t gone more than a week total that I did not have a book on my night stand that I was reading. I remember looking forward to the annual book fair at Alexander Elementary school. We would be given the opportunity to graze the book selections ahead of time and make a list of books that we wanted our parents to buy. My list never contained less than six books.

My passion is Science Fiction but I am also hooked on Fantasy. On the Sci Fi side, I’ve read all of the classical authors - Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, Roger Zelazney, Orson Scott Card and Poul Anderson just to name some of my favorites. My Junior High days were filled with Asimov’s Foundation Series, Clarke's Childhood’s End, recently made into a three part series on SyFy, and Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land (if you Grok it). Anderson’s The High Crusade was a mixture of Starship Troopers and A Game of Thrones and probably had more influence on my future interest than I knew at the time. But Zelazney’s The Chronicles of Amber has remained one of my favorite serials of all time.

One day in high school study hall back in ‘67, my table mate passed me a book by a then little known author, J. R. R. Tolkien. (Now, my table mate was a real nerd named Ronald Murphy. Thinking about it, if he hadn't been a nerd, he probably wouldn't have been reading LOTR back in '67. So thanks, Ronald, for a lifetime of tales of Middle-earth.) I labored through the opening pages of The Fellowship of the Ring with all of its minutia regarding Hobbits and their habits and was rewarded with what has probably become one of the defining literary works of my life. Thus was opened to me Tolkien’s Middle-earth and my reading interests were forever altered. I have read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy five or six times and The Hobbit at least three. I’ve read The Silmarillion several times along with Unfinished Tales and most recently finished Children of Hurin. Now, these last three are not easy to read having been written in a very high style. But I find them quite fascinating and, in the end, uplifting.

In ‘06, I picked up a book by George R. R. Martin titled A Game of Thrones. I was hesitant to buy the book for its shear length - 819 pages. However, I was soon transported to a land that is a mixture of chivalry, knighthood, clans, magic, blood and guts…with emphasis on blood and guts. Of the five volumes released so far in the series he has labeled A Song of Ice and Fire, the total length is almost 5,000 pages. By comparison, Tolkien’s The War of the Rings trilogy, The Simarillion, The Book of Lost Tales (2 volumes), The Children of Hurin, Unfinished Tales and The Hobbit are just short of 4,000 pages. And Martin promises two more volumes. However, he has not published a release date for the next volume to be titled The Winds of Winter. With the original AGOT having a copyright date of 1996, I wonder if George will live to publish the last two volumes (or more important, this George will live to read them!)

AGOT led me further down the fantasy trail and I soon found myself enthralled in Steven Erickson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series. This is comprised of ten books totaling almost 9,000 pages. Mr. Erickson released his first book this series in 1999 and his last in 2011. (George R. R. needs to call Mr. Erickson for some advice.) While reading the Malazan books, I was interspersing them with Glenn Cook’s 10 book series of The Black Company.

One other author of note is S. M. Stirling. His novels of “The Change” includes 12 volumes in his Emberverse Series and three in his Nantucket Series. In the first series, he postulates an event that results in the death of the combustion engine and explosives. This throws civilization back to swords, horses and long bows. With a little Tolkien thrown in for good measure. The Change is somehow centered around Nantucket Island which results in the second series in which Nantucket Island along with its inhabitants along with the US Coast Guard barque Eagle is thrown back to the Bronze Age. A third unrelated series, the five book The General Series is a military series set in a society resembling the British Raj, though on another planet. The twist is that the lead character, Raj Whitehall, stumbles on a hidden derelict battle station in the desert and the local AI guides his career. It is filled with military maneuvers and strategy, one of my favorite plots.

A specific sub-genre of Fantasy that has become popular in recent years is Urban Fantasy. UF occupies the opposite end of the spectrum from traditional Fantasy. While traditional Fantasy takes place at a time or a place that is purely fictitious, though it may include some aspects of our world such as animals and plants, UF is set in our world in contemporary times; however, UF does include supernatural aspects. Examples that you may recognize are the teenage vampire books made into movies. I totally abhor these. My favorites include the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne and the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.

The character Atticus O'Sullivan, the Iron Druid, is the last living druid. Other characters in the series include just about every pantheon ever envisioned including cameo appearances by Jesus Christ himself. He is guarded by the Morrígu, the Chooser of the Slain, a goddess of the Tuatha de Dannan of Irish mythology. However, the character I most cherished is Oberon, an Irish Wolfhound, and Atticus' loyal companion. Using his druid powers, Atticus has endowed Oberon with the ability to "talk" to him telepathically. Oberon provides the comedic relief in the series, always craving sausages and poodles.

Harry Dresden is a private dick...he is also a wizard who investigates the supernatural occurrences in Chicago. His godmother is the Leanansidhe, a faerie of the Winter Court, based on the pantheon of the Irish. Like Atticus, he also cavorts with members of many pantheons. I guess this beckons back to my early interest in the various mythologies of the world.

While the reader of UF must accept the supernatural aspects of the book, it is set in familiar geography which, at times, makes for easier reading.

For a list of (almost) all of the books I’ve read, click here.