The Wheel of Time

When I was visiting in Ontario last month, a friend of mind gave me a present for my birthday. I’m not really comfortable receiving presents, and I am not sure why. I suppose that I either don’t feel I deserve one or that now I have to deal with the emotions involved in the whole present giving thing. I do appreciate gifts, but like I say, I’m not sure how to deal with them other than being grateful.

 

The gift that Cathy gave to me was a book which is always appreciated. The book is “The Eye Of The World” by Robert Jordan. She told me that it was a fantasy adventure book that harkens back to Tolkien. Since I am a big, big fan of Tolkien, I was kind of intrigued. I didn’t have time to look at it until this week and when I did, I noticed that it was Book 1 of the Wheel of Time series. I am always hesitant of starting Book 1 of anything, because I have been caught up in serial books before.

 

I started reading the “Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean Auel in 1980 and I read every book in the series until I read “Land of the Painted Caves” the last of the series in 2011. That’s six books over a period of 31 years which is a considerable time and emotional commitment. Jean had some legal problems which held up the publishing of different books from time to time. I am still hoping for book seven, but somehow I have the feeling that jean or I will die before the next book is written.

 

I have also been following Anne McCaffrey for a long time. I read the first Dragon book in 1964 and have been reading ever since. Anne died in 2011, but her son Todd has co-written the last few books in the series with her and I think he will continue to write Dragon books for the foreseeable future. They aren’t quite as good as his mom’s books, but I have a near fifty year investment in this series.

 

Like millions of other people, I eagerly read and waited for the Harry Potter books to be written and then the movies. I have read Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov from my teen years until they died. 

There is an excitement that is hard to explain when waiting for an author to write his or her next book, and when that last book is written or the author passes away, a hole opens in your mind that can never quite be filled.

I am hesitant to start a new series of books, and although I was grateful for Cathy’s gift, I was also worried about what kind of investment that I was signing up for. I Googled Robert Jordan and found that he had passed away in 2007, after writing 14 books in the series. The first book is over 800 pages and according to my research, I have about 12,000 pages to go. Thanks Cathy, I was kind of wondering what I was going to do with my life for the foreseeable future.