It's all a Fantasy.... 

Despite being originally very much a fan of Science-Fiction, I did periodically dip my toe into the Fantasy realm and I liked it (mostly). Although tales of dragons and swords didn’t manage to push all of my buttons they certainly pushed enough to get me coming back for more. But, over time, I slowly lost interest. But lately I’ve been thinking of trying again – at least to venture into a few books (or even series) per year.  

Fortunately, just as I had been expecting, The Matrix was listening – as it always is – and I was recently presented with a long-form YouTube video where the presenter outlined his plans to read the best 500 Fantasy books of all time. Attached to the video was the list he was intending to work from which I downloaded. Running through it I removed those I’d already read and didn’t want to re-read plus a handful that I have no intention of reading. It still left quite a LOT. Obviously, I have zero intention of working my way through 400+ works of Fantasy, but it has given me some very good ideas of where to re-start my quest. 

Added to this motivation I’ve had a few recent re-encounters with Michael Moorcock and Ursula K LeGuin. I used to be a HUGE Moorcock fan back in the late 70’s/early 80’s and was looking through my paperback collection just yesterday to re-discover what I own. I have three complete trilogies/series of his ready to go as well as most of the Elric and Jerry Cornelius books. I’ll see if I do in fact have the missing books somewhere else, but I might end up going incomplete. I’ve also never read the LeGuin Earthsea books which I’ve heard are highly praised. As a BIG fan of her other work I thought I’d give it/them a try too. 

I’m not expecting a sudden significant influx of Fantasy titles so don’t expect that! I’ll aim at three this year not including Alice in Wonderland which I was already scheduling. I’ll probably start off with something short – and maybe just short stories to be honest – to begin with to see if my desire for more catches fire. We’ll see.