Hitting the books!

Tags

Books, Brandon Sanderson, Codex Alera, Discworld, Heralds of Valdemar, Jim Butcher, John Flanagan, Mercedes Lackey, Mistborn, Obsidian Trilogy, Patrick Rothfuss, Ranger's Apprentice, Reading, Recommendations, Tamora Pierce, Terry Pratchett, The Dresden Files, The Kingkiller Chronicle, Tortall

Listening to: I’m Reading a Book – Julian Smith

I read a lot of books. Like, a lot. That said, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I enjoy many of the books that I read, and would like nothing more than to share that joy with others. Throughout my journey through the world of fantasy and sci-fi novels, I’ve encountered a multitude of authors whose works I frequently return two. Here are seven of them.

7. John Flanagan
Noted for: Ranger’s Apprentice

Okay, so Ranger’s Apprentice is basically fantasy lite. It’s YA fiction and makes no effort of hiding that, but it also does a great job of telling a story. The characters are likable, the plots are interesting, and the hero fights with his wits more often than he does with his weapons. The conflicts aren’t typical fantasy fare either, tending more towards small personal struggles rather than epic battles. As YA novels often are, they’re quite easy to read through in one sitting. On a good day, I could get through two or three.

6. Mercedes Lackey
Noted for: The Heralds of Valdemar

Lackey’s pacing seems slow from an outside perspective, but when you’ve buried yourself in one of her novels it’s hard to notice. She’s very good at gradually developing the characters and plots until you’re totally immersed. It’s sort of like being sucked into quicksand, but much more soothing and less potentially deadly. Her world-building is also incredibly entertaining–everything from protocol-obsessed, tea-drinking elven knights (The Obsidian Trilogy) to a fantasy-genre reconstruction of the wars between Egypt’s Upper and Lower Kingdoms (The Dragon Jousters). She’s also incredibly prolific, so finding one of her many trilogies shouldn’t pose too much of a problem.

Imagination and creation: User-generated storytelling

Tags

Choose Your Own Adventure, Dungeons & Dragons, Shadow of Mordor

Listening to: Devil’s Harp – Jan van Dyck (Medieval II: Total War OST)

Recently, I resumed the running of a campaign of Dungeons & Dragons that had been on hiatus for the better part of a year. The initial session of the campaign, involving the party rescuing a company of soldiers from a besieged fort, went off (mostly) without a hitch. Most of the session went as expected: the ranger employed his eagle companion to scout, the rogue scouted out the enemy camps using his ring of invisibility, and the wu jen tried to impress upon the blood magus the importance of cleanliness. Other things were more of a surprise: the party pooled their skills to poison a full camp of enemy soldiers, and decided to adopt what I had originally intended as one-off NPCs as full-fledged support staff for their party.

I spent a good portion of the weekend drawing up character sheets for said NPCs, crafting a series of characters that would accompany our party–fleshing out their personalities as well as their statistics, gear, and specializations. Knowing that my party wanted to bring along a few dozen soldiers significantly altered my long term campaign plans, but it also gave me a plethora of new ideas for other situations that they could get into. Running even a single session filled me with creative energy, energy that will be enough to spark a positive feedback cycle of increased creativity. (I apologize for using scientific terms, but they seemed appropriate.)

My favorite part of tabletop games, and others like them, is not the gameplay, but rather the excitement of banding together with a group of like-minded people and collectively telling a story. Every action that each participant takes has the potential to have a major effect on the storyline. A character who loses his or her temper at the wrong time can destroy other party members’ attempts at diplomatic relations. On the other hand, a significantly silver-tongued player can deftly dismantle combat situations, profiting the entire party without having to lift a finger. Every choice that the players make has the potential to be fantastic, and the choices they make are limited only by their imaginations.

As a child, I was always interested in writing stories of my own, or shaping existing stories to fit what I thought they should be. I was never fond of “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, though: I found them too narrow, too restrictive, and very often telling stories that I didn’t actually want to hear. “I grabbed the sword because I wanted to go kill the dragon that killed me in the other story path, not because I wanted to become king!” (Or similar complaint.)

It’s for that reason that I was so intrigued by the release of Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor late last year. On the surface, it’s a fairly straightforward plot: you’re a ranger, you have a wraith buddy, and you fight crime orcs. When you get down to gameplay, though, the story is a lot deeper than it seems. The “Nemesis” system, which uses procedural generation to create unique captains, each with their own personality traits and names. As each one of them gains more power, they become more formidable combatants and gain more followers.

The real story of the game, then, is not about the player, but about their enemies. If you’re not thorough enough in finishing them off, they can survive your assassination attempts and come back more powerful than ever. My friend told me about one particular captain who survived no less than eight attempts to kill him, becoming more and more powerful. The most interesting thing about this plot, to me, was that it was completely incidental. No two stories were exactly the same, just like no two D&D campaigns are exactly the same.

That’s all for now! Once I’m more securely settled in at college, posts will resume on a more regular basis. Signing off, until next week!

Hit the ground running: Establishing setting through action

Tags

Beginnings, Exposition, Fire Emblem, Opening, Stories, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Horse and His Boy

Listening to: My Dear Frodo – Howard Shore (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)

Spoilers follow for: The Horse and His Boy, Inception, Fire Emblem Awakening, and the film version of The Fellowship of the Ring.

In my opinion, the beginning of any story is one of the most important parts. The tone and style of the beginning will set a precedent for the rest of the story. Subverting the expectations of the audience can be an effective tactic, but the general tactic is to use the very beginning of a story as both a high point and a hook into the rest of the story. If the audience is not sold on the opening, they are less likely to finish the story–especially in the cases of longer media such as books or video games.

For instance, one of my favorite audiobooks when I was younger was the Focus on the Family Radio Theater adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy. Those who have read the book know that it starts off fairly slowly, spending quite some time introducing the everyday life of the protagonist, Shasta, before he makes his escape with the talking horse Bree. As far as exposition goes this is fairly normal, but the audiobook adaptation wants to make very clear from the beginning that this is a story packed with action. Accordingly, the adaptation begins with a flashback which shows a child being carried away from a great battle between a nobleman and an undisclosed opponent. In addition to establishing the story as a swashbuckling epic rife with intrigue, it also foreshadows one of the major plot twists of the book, through a single, simple scene under a minute in duration.

In other cases, the scene can be taken from a later point in the work. This technique, known as in medias res (“in the middle of the story”), is used in many works, from Greek drama to modern film. A fairly recent example is the film Inception, which opens with a scene from near the end. Cobb, the protagonist, washes up on a beach and is taken into custody by uniformed soldiers. Taken before their leader Saito, he begins an explanation, which quickly segues into the actual beginning of the story. The chronological beginning provides most of the action, while showing a much younger Saito alongside an unchanged Cobb. This helps to establish the odd, dreamlike chronology of the film while also providing a precedent for the sort of action sequences that will recur throughout.

A much more dramatic version of in medias res opens up Fire Emblem: Awakening. The first chapter, titled “Premonition: Invisible Ties” shows the valiant Prince Chrom and his faithful tactician Robin locked in battle with the evil sorcerer, Validar. Those familiar with the series will recognize Validar as the main focus villain of the game: the series tradition of preceding the final boss with a conniving dark mage holds true, as usual. The real shock of the opening, however, comes after the battle is over: Robin, apparently suffering from some sort of fit, stabs and kills Chrom. Only then does the game itself start, beginning with Chrom and Robin’s original meeting and progressing from there. While this sort of revelation would likely be shocking in the context of the game as a whole, putting it in a premonition at the beginning lends even the pastoral early chapters a sense of foreboding.

As a final example, compare the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring with its source material. There is a clear difference in how they begin. The film, lacking Tolkien’s lengthy preface to give a general idea of the world or how the Ring came to be, uses Tolkien’s myth arc as the hook to draw the audience into the movie. The film is very clear from the start that this movie is an epic fantasy: there are warring armies in shining armor dueling the forces of darkness, an epic showdown with the Dark Lord himself, and a frightening demonstration of the Ring’s corrupting influence. This handily demonstrates everything that a layman needs to know about The Lord of the Rings: it’s grand in scope, sprawling in setting, and steeped in rich backstory. Even when the scene shifts to the peaceful Shire and covers the first leg of Frodo’s journey, it is interspersed with Gandalf’s travels to Minas Tirith and Isengard to gather information about the Ring.

Tolkien himself prefers a more subtle method of storytelling: if you begin at the first chapter of the book rather than the Preface, the information is revealed gradually. Bilbo’s ownership of the Ring is hinted at rather than outright stated, told through the eyes of third-hand sources or cryptically hinted at in conversations. When Gandalf mysteriously fails to show up at the beginning of Frodo’s journey, it’s cause for curiosity but not alarm: we haven’t been told what he’s up to, and wizards are meant to be mysterious anyway. Lastly, without the establishing shots of Black Riders spurring their horses forth from evil towers or cutting down innocent gatekeepers, they remain a mystery: perhaps just a group of oddly dressed solicitors, trying to track down Mr. Baggins to inform him that he has won the Mordor Lottery.

No moral of the story or special ending message this week. I’m considering doing more posts on story structure in the future, so let me know what you think in the comments below. Until next week!

Fiction’s three approaches to conflict, human nature, and the world

Tags

Attack on Titan, Death Note, Tangled, The Dark Knight, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Watchmen

Listening to: Blumenkranz– Hiroyuki Sawano (Kill la Kill OST)

Minor spoilers follow for: Tangled, The Dark Knight, Death Note, Watchmen, The Lord of the Rings, and Attack on Titan.

Last week, while I was listening to Blumenkranz, I decided that it was high time I figured out what its lyrics actually meant. While I learned that the German was not, technically speaking, particularly accurate, there was one lyric in particular that caught my attention: “Diese Welt ist grausam, es ist traurig aber wahr.” Roughly translated it means “This world is cruel, it’s sad but true.” And that got me thinking.

One of the first rules of dramatic storytelling is that there must be some form of conflict to draw the interest of the audience. Without conflict of some kind, the story does not exist. According to Wikipedia, there are four main types of conflict; according to TV Tropes, either seven or eight. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be concentrating on the third and fourth main types of conflict, Man* vs. Nature and Man* vs. Society.

*(In the context of this blog post, Man refers to humankind as a whole rather than being a gender-specific pronoun. Please excuse the political incorrectness.)

Both of these conflict types have Man* struggling against something that must be survived or overcome: in the case of Nature, a primordial force that is natural to the world, and in the case of Society, a construct of Man* imposed upon the world. The idea of “human nature” fills both of these conflict roles quite nicely.

With that said, I’ve broken down three types of approaches to the perception of the world, with handy examples attached.

Type One: The Idealist Approach

“Mother knows best
Listen to your mother
It’s a scary world out there!“
– Mother Gothel, Tangled

The Idealist approach is most commonly used in works directed at children. The Disney movie Tangled is a notable example. While there are, of course, villains, the implication of the setting is that humans, by nature, are inclined towards good. The best illustration of this in Tangled is the “I’ve Got A Dream” musical number, which subverts the usual idea that Beauty Equals Goodness by showing the softer sides of all of the thugs in the Snuggly Duckling. Despite their frightening appearances, all of them are ultimately eager to help Rapunzel follow her dream, and in the end they rescue Flynn despite their dislike of him. This goes sharply against Mother Gothel’s assertions from “Mother Knows Best”, where she effusively and exaggeratedly describes what a terrible place the world outside is. Of course, this being a Disney movie, it doesn’t take more than 90 minutes of runtime for Rapunzel to decide that such a view is wrong, and subsequently reject it–much to Mother Gothel’s shock and anger.

While such a revelation may seem like it would be out of place anywhere but in a children’s movie. the same revelation is used similarly at the end of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. The Joker, attempting to spice things in Gotham up and vindicate his belief that anyone can be corrupted, rigs two ferries–one filled with civilians attempting to evacuate the city, the other filled with criminals from the prison–with explosives, and gives each ferry the detonator for the other with the ultimatum that, unless one of them has destroyed the other before a certain time, he will destroy both. What follows is an affirmation of the inherent goodness of human nature. The civilian with the detonator, despite his assertions that he would feel no guilt over killing criminals to save innocent lives, is ultimately unable to force himself to take the lives of others. The audience is given a scare when an intimidating-looking prisoner threatens to forcibly take the detonator and “do what you should have [done] ten minutes ago”, but expectations are wonderfully subverted when, upon being handed the detonator, he immediately throws it out the window, removing the prisoners’ chance to save themselves at the expense of others’ lives. Even in a movie as grim-looking as The Dark Knight, the final point made is that humans, by nature, are good.

 

Type Two: The Cynical Approach

“This world is rotten, and those who are making it rot deserve to die.“
– Light Yagami, Death Note

This approach is the polar opposite of everything that the previous approach stood for. Here, human nature is portrayed as something ugly and frightening, and to characters in these works, belief in the world’s corruption is prevailing rather than uncommon. In Alan Moore’s graphic novel Watchmen, the vigilantes make their disgust with the Cold War-era world quite apparent. Rorschach, the most bitterly cynical of the Watchmen, has come to the conclusion that humanity deserves to suffer for their actions. Ozymandias, the world’s most intelligent man, has a different plan. By setting up the destruction of an entire city, he hopes to intimidate the world’s superpowers into making peace with each other–peace made out of fear of a common enemy (alien invasion in the original graphic novel, Doctor Manhattan in the film adaptation). Upon learning that his plan has already been carried out, most of the Watchmen reluctantly agree to keep his secret for the sake of preserving the tenuous peace, but Rorschach refuses to submit, even when confronted by Doctor Manhattan. The confrontation culminates with Doctor Manhattan’s assertion that “I can change almost anything… but I can’t change human nature” before he kills Rorschach to keep the secret safe. The implication of this scene is a far cry from the one in The Dark Knight: it suggests that, if left to their own devices, humans will invariably choose evil.

Another notable example of the cynical approach is in the anime Death Note. Light Yagami, a brilliant and ambitious high school student, discovers a notebook–the eponymous Death Note–with supernatural powers. If he writes someone’s name in the notebook while picturing their face, they will die. Light first uses the notebook to kill criminals, but after initial doubts he very quickly decides that he will use the Death Note to re-make the world in his own image, becoming its God, and subsequently begins using the Death Note’s powers to kill the police and detectives attempting to stop his killing spree. Light’s conviction that the world was corrupt and in need of redemption was what ultimately led him down the path of a killer. In both Death Note and Watchmen, the corruption of the world is presented as a problem that needs to be solved, and the implication of both works is that moral means will simply not be sufficient.

 

Type Three: The Realist Approach

“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for!”
– Sam Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings

The final approach is a much broader category, which I have dubbed “Realism” for convenience. Realist approaches to the nature of the world and humanity can be found in a variety of different works. The realist approach acknowledges that both good and evil are natural parts of the world. In Attack on Titan, the newly trained soldier cadets are thrown into a desperate defensive battle as they attempt to evacuate the civilians of Trost District. During a lull in the battle, Mikasa (one of the cadets) reflects on the cruelty of the world. Having witnessed her parents’ murder as a child, and still living under the threat of the Titans, she has an understandably dim view of the nature of the world. However, even after all that she still maintains close ties to her foster family, saying that as long as she has them, she can do anything. (Surprisingly enough, making such a remark does not immediately doom all of them to horrifically gory deaths… though it helps that one of them is the protagonist.)

The Lord of the Rings also takes a realist approach, though it is somewhat modified. In the Valar and Sauron, proof is given of the existence of both absolute Good and absolute Evil. Human nature (as well as Elven and Dwarven nature), on the other hand, is shown to be a variable thing. This is best exemplified in The Silmarillion. the collection of Tolkien’s mythos set prior to The Lord of the Rings, where the lust to gain the Silmarils causes the Elves and Men to fight with each other as often as they fight with their true enemies. This is echoed with the corruption of the Ring later on in the story. However, there is always a possibility of redemption: Boromir repents of his actions at his death, Sam stalwartly resists the Ring’s corruption despite the temptation to use its power to do good (Light Yagami could learn a thing or two from that), and even Gollum shows remorse over his actions. Not all of the commentary on morality is linked to the Ring, either. While journeying through the forest of Ithilien, Frodo and Sam run across a battle between Gondor’s rangers and a group of men traveling from the South to reinforce Sauron’s army. During the battle, one of the southerners falls near where Frodo and Sam are hidden. Sam wonders “what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace–all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind.” (The Two Towers, “Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit”) From this passage, we can see that Sam at least believes in both sides of human nature.

 

As I am already late in posting this, I won’t bother with a drawn-out conclusion. Hopefully this post has been food for thought, and should help you gain a greater appreciation of how various works deal with morality. Until next week!

The book rant everyone was expecting

Tags

Eragon, Inheritance, Star Wars, The Sword of Truth

Listening to: The Battle of Yavin – John Williams (Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope)

Spoilers follow for: Star Wars, The Belgariad, The Sword of Truth, and of course the Inheritance books.

If there’s one thing that I’m willing to do, it’s give a series a chance. During my high school years, I voluntarily read the Twilight books: not because I expected to enjoy them, but simply so that I could see what the hype was about and, afterwards, be able to feel completely justified deconstructing the hype with all the condescension I could muster. Once that was done with, I never read them again.

The same goes for Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle, a series that the more forgiving side considers a waste of a perfectly acceptable map, and my less forgiving side considers a waste of time and space. As an ardent reader of fantasy novels, I’ve waded through my share of substandard material (as per Sturgeon’s Law), but I don’t think I’ve ever taken such a dislike to a book on first reading. Accordingly, I’ve decided to analyze exactly what it is that I dislike about these books.

Yes, it’s going to be one of those posts.

First to go under the sacrificial knife is the plot, summarized here in the least specific way possible. Various trope links have been added for whatever reason.

Sometime in the distant past (one might say a long time ago), an order of knights with supernatural powers were the protectors of a quite extensive territory. Thanks to this order being composed of individuals from multiple races and sovereign states, there was peace throughout this territory… at least, until one of these supernaturally-powered fellows turned evil and decided that he wished to turn the territory into an Empire under his rule. Together with his top lieutenant (another knight turned evil), the Emperor initiated a massive purge from which only two others escaped. One of them retreated to isolation in a deep forest, while the other, after dueling with the Evil Lieutenant and taking his weapon, went to a slightly less isolated farming community to hide out.

Fast-forward enough years in the future for a child to grow to young adulthood, and we are introduced to exactly one such young man, our Protagonist. He lives in a farming community with his uncle (not knowing that his father was actually Evil Lieutenant!). However, after discovering a Plot Device sent into his general area by a princess, things quickly take a turn for the worse when servants of the Evil Empire show up, kill Protagonist’s uncle, and send Protagonist on the run along with the nearby ex-magic knight, who gives him his father’s sword but not his identity, so that he can go and join the rebels against the Evil Empire and rescue the princess and–

Okay, enough of that. Enough of the plot has been established that it’s instantly recognizable as Star Wars. Or, as it turns out, Eragon. The plots are literally identical, at least until about halfway through the third book of Inheritance, where Eragon stops being Luke Skywalker and decides to kill everyone instead.

On the multiple occasions when I’ve given this rant to die-hard fans of the book, I’ve received pretty much the same response. “Of course it’s similar to Star Wars! The Hero’s Journey is an archetypal plot!” While it’s true that both Star Wars and Eragon follow the basic steps of the Hero’s Journey, so too do more complex works such as The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, and The Journey To The West. The Hero’s Journey is a generalized outline that can be applied to many things. The plot of Star Wars is not.

On the other side of these sweeping generalities are the details, in which the devil lurks. While I could go on about one-handed swords five feet long, or impressive strategic moves that are anything but, there are only two details that continued to bother me: Eragon’s instant expertise at everything he puts his hand to, and the ultimate defeat of the villain. (Yes, this is the spoiler in question.)

The instant expertise is perhaps more jarring from a realistic standpoint (insofar as realism can be applied to a fantasy novel). In the space of the several weeks that Eragon spends traveling with Obi-wan Brom, he is tutored in magic, swordplay, and other useful things that The Chosen One might find interesting. Curiously, he discovers his magical power when, in a pinch, he shouts a word that Brom had said earlier in the book (which, in context, was described as swearing). Apart from the convenience of that, the mental image of someone deciding that their best chance of survival in an impossible situation is swearing loudly is always worthy of a giggle. Magic swearing. Still, magic is magic, which means that the ways of learning it can’t be related or applied to any real-life pursuit, so his quick pick-up of that gets a pass.

His mastery of swordsmanship, however, gets no such pass. I once read a study that postulated mastery of any one subject was most handily achieved by practice, practice, and more practice (thus vindicating both my mother and my piano teacher in one fell swoop). Ten thousand hours of is the most generally agreed-upon figure for such mastery to occur. The existence of magic provides an easy loophole should you be willing to take it, as demonstrated in the third book of Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth novels. The eponymous magic sword allows a true wielder, the Seeker of Truth, to draw upon its power, giving them the expertise of every single previous wielder of the sword, which makes the Seeker’s unique brand of sword-fighting into a kind of magic. Eragon’s sword, however, apart from being fancy and apparently unbreakable, has no magical powers of its own, which makes his metamorphosis from farm-boy to master duelist even more puzzling. Or stupid, depending on how charitable your inclinations are. But enough on that. The villain’s death bugged me more anyway

You see, at the climax of the fourth book, the Evil King Galbatorix has gathered together all of the Dragon Balls soul gems eldunari from the dragons he’s killed, giving him almost unlimited magical power, as well as using the True Name of the Ancient Language to hijack magic itself so that nobody else could use it during the epic battle against the protagonists in his dark citadel. However, after events begin to go against him (since this story’s composite version of Darth Vader decided to let the True Name of magic slip), he uses a spell of unmaking (the precise wording is translated as “Be not”) to create a massive explosion in which he dies. And that’s that.

What bothers me about this is that this precise plot device had already been used in a fantasy novel that I read previously: David Eddings’ Magician’s Gambit, the third novel of The Belgariad, which was first published in 1983. At the climax of the book, the sorceror Ctuchik (don’t ask me how to pronounce it) engages in an epic battle against the protagonists in his dark citadel. However, after events begin to go against him, he uses a spell of unmaking (the precise wording is “Be not!”), which backfires and causes a massive explosion in which he dies. And that’s that.

My third argument is more of a gripe than anything else. If the name of the series is The Inheritance Cycle, that raises some interesting questions. If Inheritance is the last book of a cycle, does that mean that these events are a recurring loop? Could it be possible that, in fact, the events of Star Wars are actually the same recurring time loop, thrown forward thousands of years into the future after happening again and again and again? Could this be a stealth prequel?!?

No. Probably not.

What makes a book worth re-reading?

Tags

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Listening to: The Return of the King – Howard Shore (The Return of the King)

Greetings, fellow denizens of the Internet! After some light urging from my lovely girlfriend, I’ve decided to begin keeping a chronicle of my miscellaneous thoughts on subjects from music and movies to books and video games. The site title refers to my hope that, no matter who you are, you will occasionally find one of the posts I make to be a worthwhile and enjoyable read, regardless of how obnoxiously extensive my vocabulary may be.

Spoilers for The Lord of the Rings follow, but I should hope that doesn’t present a problem. If you haven’t read them yet, drop everything and do so before reading the remainder of this post. (You monster.)

As it turns out, this week’s topic is worthwhile and enjoyable reading. I’ve been a voracious reader ever since I learned how it was done, and over the years there have been a few books that never seem to tire me, no matter how often I come back to them. I’ve read through The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit more times than I can count; enough that I can likely recite whole sections of them with minimal errors. One of my fondest childhood memories is my dad reading sections of them to my sister and I every night before bed. Not knowing where the story was going next was an exhilarating, giddy feeling. I remember being shocked and dismayed when Boromir’s lust for the Ring overtook his loyalty to the Fellowship, overjoyed when Gandalf came back from the dead to “complete his task”, and so tense during Frodo and Sam’s passage of the Dead Marshes that we had to stop reading and move on to a different, less frightening book.

I was all of six at the time.

Two years later, I would take our copy of The Two Towers off of the high shelf that it had been sitting on, dust off the cover, pull out the bookmark, and continue reading. After I finished The Two Towers, I moved on to The Return of the King. Then, abruptly realizing that I had forgotten how the characters had gotten to where they were in the first place, I did an abrupt about-turn and headed back to The Hobbit to experience the entire series once again, as if for the first time; then for the second, third, and fourth time. By the time that I saw The Return of the King in theaters on my 10th birthday, I had probably read all of Tolkien’s core works eight or nine times.

A desire to remember what happened is the most basic reason to re-read a book, though unfortunately my memory gives me little occasion to do so. I’ve idly mused on several occasions how nice it would be if there was some sort of device that allowed selective amnesia, allowing you to experience your favorite works with a fresh perspective, while being able to retain your previous viewpoints of the work to keep back for later. (“Experiencing them for the first time” doesn’t work as well in this situation, since it is, technically, inaccurate.) I’ve concluded that such a device is, in fact, theoretically impossible, since the human memory isn’t as tangible as, say, files on a hard drive. Deleting certain memories would be an all but impossible task. Contrary to what most modern fiction portrays, amnesia isn’t very precise or simple. Technobabble translation: Brains are hard to do.

Of course, there are numerous other reasons to re-read books. Take The Lord of the Rings as an example once again. To the six-year-old child that first listened to his father reading before bed, it was an exciting fantasy-story, a catalyst for dreams of adventure. To the slightly more worldly and sophisticated eight-year-old that scaled the bookshelf to retrieve a book, it was both a loose end (much like Gandalf’s incomplete task) and a chance to experience a story that Dad had assured me was very much worth my while. To the ten-year-old getting ready to see the story on the big screen, it was a familiar friend; to the twelve-year-old aspiring to be a writer, an excellent study in what the truly gifted could do with words. As my view broadened and I read peripheral works such as The Silmarillion and The Histories of Middle-earth, each subsequent reading brought new things to light, and deepened my appreciating of the work as a whole. Trivium: Strider was originally “Trotter,” a hobbit with wooden feet. Imagine Viggo Mortensen in that role.

The appendices, which had been little more than an afterthought to my younger self, utterly fascinated me during my middle- and high-school years, and I spent hours absorbed in them appreciating details both large–such as the painstakingly accurate Elvish syntax and grammar–and small–such as the offhand mention of the phases of the moon over the course of the Fellowship’s journey. It’s things like that that make a book re-reading: with each step you take, there’s no telling where you’ll be swept off to.

Our family’s original hardcover copies of the Lord of the Rings books have practically disintegrated by now, having gone through the hands of not one or two but four children, with a fifth only recently through her first Daddy-daughter reading of them. Entire chapters have fallen out only to be carefully replaced, and the familiar symbol of the Ring of Power on the front cover has almost faded away. That, in itself, is a testament to a book worth re-reading.