Neverending Story

This post isn't actually about that book, per se, though I did read it very recently. (Very good, but quite different from the movie, and for some reason, I like each a little more than the other.)

So, if you ever read my journal on my page, you'll see a list of books "On my Headboard". Obviously, these are the books that I've begun, and put down to start another one, with the intention of going back to them. At the top of the list is David Eddings' Pawn of Prophecy, Book One of the Belgariad. Well, I posted that about two days ago.

..I'm halfway through Magician's Gambit right now. :)

These are quite possibly the best books I have ever had the joy to read. I first read them about 16 (!) years ago, and have been in love with them ever since. Much like the world of Fantastica, I have to visit every so often. I truly believe that I miss these characters, and have to "catch up" with what they're up to.

I can't really explain it. There's just something that's profound about the way the characters interact and deal with the world around them. When I read them, I feel pretty much how Bastian felt while reading the book in the attic of the school. I'm THERE, even moreso than when I read any other book (though, thinking about it, the Harry Potter books come close, but without as much sophistication, and Narnia definitely almost hits it). I've never begun Pawn of Prophecy, and not continued until I finished The Seeress of Kell (Book 5 of the sequel series, The Mallorean).

It's magical. It's breathtaking. Well, The Neverending Story explains it best, when talking about Bastian's passion for books:

If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger --

If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up early --

If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to and end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless --

If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand...

-- The Neverending Story, pp. 10

That describes how these books are for me to a "T".

Well, before I begin to repeat myself, I'll go ahead and end this now. I do want to say, though, that I'm still excited about my plans for next year. Writing will be fun. Just look at how verbose I tend to get, when I *do* feel like posting. ^_-