I’ve spent the past couple of years rereading various mystery series from start to finish so I could get the full story of the character. Normally, I just picked books at random so sometimes a character is married, sometimes is just meeting the love of his/her life, sometimes is in full parental mode. All while being a cop or agent or private detective, of course.
After reading more than twenty thousand novels (plus thousands of non-fiction books), I’ve found a sameness to the stories, characters, situations, so that novels tended to overlap, which is why I didn’t think it would matter if I read these series again. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy the books as much as I thought I would since (for me, anyway) most novels don’t have a lot of depth. What you see is what you get. I even went back and read books I’d read over and over when I was young, but the stories didn’t have the same pull for me now that they did back then. Of course, I’m not the same person now as I was back then, either.
Lately I’d been rereading the first eleven books of The Wheel of Time. (I have no interest in ever rereading the last three books by the makeshift author. Although readers seem to prefer them to the first eleven books, I find them to be overhyped drek.) There are so many layers to the books that Robert Jordan himself wrote, there are so many inspirations from and references to real life, so many interlocking characters to keep track of, that it’s taken me a long time to piece it all together. I’d think the difficulty of remembering in book ten what happened in book two would be a failing of my aged memory, but I do know one thing — I would not have had the patience for these books when I was younger, so any comparison is irrelevant. Nor would have read them then — I never liked that whole good vs. evil theme. It always seemed contrived. Besides, I know more of the world and its culture now than I did then, so the underpinnings of the story are more obvious to me, and those that aren’t are fun to discover.
I’m to the point, though, where I might have gleaned as much of the meaning and found as much of the puzzle as possible, so I might have to pack the books away, but for now, they still sit prominently on my book shelf while I read The Kingkiller Chronicle. Only the first two books of that Patrick Rothfuss trilogy have been published, but I’ll probably reread these books, too. Although there doesn’t seem to be much referencing to our myths and legends, there is a lot of inworld referencing that I’ll need to piece together someday.
I’ve been trying to find more rereadable books and series that I can sink my life into, but so far, no luck. The problem is, I’ve developed an aversion to going to our library (I’ve searched those shelves a thousand times and just can’t force myself to look even once more), so I will have to find rereadable books if I want to continue my lifelong habit of reading. There are a few other books on my shelf to go through, and there are the books I’ve written, of course, which are enjoyable to reread. (Though I have to confess, I’m a bit embarrassed by the reviews I posted here of those books. Talk about self-aggrandizement! So not my thing. Besides, every author feels the same way about their books, which makes those reviews even more cringeworthy.)
And after I’ve finished reading and rereading the books on my shelf? I don’t know. With any luck, I’ll find books to serve my reading needs.
On a completely different slant about these two series: I found a chapter-by-chapter outline by a reader showing where the final book of the The Kingkiller Chronicle might be going, which would be a good way to conclude the series if the author doesn’t ever manage to do it. I’d hoped to find something similar for The Wheel of Time, where the fans outlined what they hoped would happen, but I suppose having the finale written, no matter how badly, put the kibosh on any such online project. And anyway, I pretty much created my own ending, if only in my mind.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.
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