Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Tag: Dragonlance

  • Loss of Words

    I went to see the Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug Friday night even after a friend had commented on Facebook about being disappointed with it. See, I’m a fan of the genre, I’m a fan of the book and three that came after – I could recall many of the parts that made up the Lord of the Rings trilogy but found I couldn’t for the Hobbit, that partially explains why my friend Rob was disappointed but I enjoyed the movie.

    When I was watching the dwarves and Bilbo on the mountain – I found myself thinking of Flint Fireforge from the Dragonlance series and I got a little misty thinking about when he passed on and Tasslehoff’s tears… yet, knowing I read the Hobbit you’d think I could recall all the details of that, but I cannot. I remember Smaug, I remember there being dwarves, a spider and maybe some elves… but that’s about the extent of it. When I think of Dragonlance, I can recall intimate details and feelings about Raistlin and his brothers relationship, knowing how Tanis Half-Elven was torn between the ageless elf and the sultry Kitara… Maybe I loved that series more? I don’t know, but the Lord of the Rings trilogy stayed with me longer.

    As I was thinking on it I think of all those books I read when I was younger and how they seemingly changed my life:

    A Brave New World

    1984

    Flowers for Algernon

    Way of the Peaceful Warrior

    A ton of stories from Jack London

    A Clockwork Orange

    You know, I can’t recall details of those books, I have a memory of how much they meant to me at the time and how into them I was, but they didn’t stick. I remember a line from Way of the Peaceful Warrior “we only sell fruit juice here and don’t call me Pop” and I recall being truly frightened reading A Clockwork Orange… but I don’t really have any details, I can’t quote them or reference them with any authority as they’re gone.

    I have them on my Kindle, I bought all these books because I used to own them and I wanted them to be a part of my collection again. And I might have to reread them again, to see if the magic is still there – if they grab me and take me to the world the author wanted me to experience with them, to see if I still get frightened during or if this time 1984 scares me more.

    I don’t have memories of people from the late 70s to 80s either, they’re just gone. There are people from two different high schools that I’m supposed to know and I can’t seem to place them, they seem oddly familiar but they’re just not inside my head anymore. Kind of weird really. I pretend, it’s easy on Facebook to pretend I remember, but I don’t… There come times though when I run into them in real life and then the pretending go well, cause I can’t lie about it… happened a few years ago when I was visiting a friend I do remember and two of our high school mates showed up, but I couldn’t recall them and I should have been able to, and it’s happened since and will likely happen again. Part of why I stay in touch with some many people from past jobs is I’m afraid if I don’t I won’t be able to remember them – it could happen.

    Anyway, I’m looking forward to rereading these stories and going to another world with the authors.

  • Tales of Old Re-Read Anew

    In 1985, I was either a Freshman or Sophomore in Whitehall Memorial High School (who was it a Memorial to? I have no idea) and we were required to go to the school library to attend the R.I.F. event. [The library was not one of my favorite places anyway, learning the dewey decimal system was required – yeah, that’ll get me interested in books or suicide, lets risk it.] We’d been having R.I.F. events at school each year, maybe twice a year and I was never really interested in the speel they’d give before they let us pick a book or even the books that were available to us. At this particular R.I.F. event I was there with my friend Ted and after the opening remarks we started looking at the books, not too hopeful at all that there would be anything good.

    We stumbled upon a book or two that had dragons on the cover and in the title. Both were from the same series Dragonlance Chronicles and were the 2nd and 3rd in the series. Ted grabbed Dragons of Winter Night and I grabbed Dragons of Spring Dawning and agreed to read what we could and talk about them with one another. Ted and I were already talking about comic books regularly and all that was going on there so this was a natural progression I suppose. I don’t know why the first book wasn’t available nor why I didn’t seem to grasp the whole idea of a story progressing from one book to another…

     

     

    Over the next few weeks Ted and I would share what we were reading and became enthralled with the characters of the books and the story that was happening. Being on the third book I was really rather lost as to what was going on and the significance of the characters as they related to the whole story. But it was still a good story that kept me reading from one page to the next – Ted too. At some point we switched up the two books. Fortunately for Ted he was following the progression, but I was a bit confused and tried to piece it all together. Later on when we found the first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, we’d both be in the same boat. After starting at the middle and the end we both re-read the books from the beginning to the end and really appreciated them all the more. We loved the story, the characters the ideas that stretched our imagination.

     

     

    Most importantly, we kept reading other things – so R.I.F. was successful for us. It got two guys that mostly only cared about comic books to read other things. It didn’t mean either of us put our comics away or that we were only going to read about stories with dragons and wizards, but it did mean that we actually came to find the enjoyment only a book can offer.

    Recently these titles have become available for the Kindle and I just finished re-reading the first book and fell in love with the characters and story all over again. In moving and aging somehow I lost my original books to this series, I have a collected works that has all these books in one large volume, the cover and first few pages have come off and it’s aged and yellow. I really love this old story and reading it again.

    Thank you Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Margaret McNamara and the 1975 U.S. Congress for helping me find something I enjoy so much.