Happy New Year! As a bit of a project, adding a dollop of purpose to this website, I’m going to kick off some ruminations on books I loved in my teens and twenties that I haven’t dusted off in a while. We’re in a house with room for proper bookshelves now, after all, so my books are actually conveniently located. Happy days!

This does, of course, mean that I’ll need to actually re-read these books… which, given the changes in sensibilities over the years, might lead to some interesting thoughts.

Interesting to me, anyway.

Will I still love these books when read with mid-2020s, 50-plus-years-old eyes? Have these books aged more like wine or like milk? I guess there’s only one way to find out. I mean, other than asking The Internet. Let’s not do that.

I’m kicking things off with the inaugural installment of one of my most favorite fantasy novel series back in the day: Raymond E. Feist’s Magician.

Yes, the whole weighty tome, mainly because that’s what’s on my shelf, and really if you try to stop at the original break point (the end of what was originally released as Magician: Apprentice) you’re stuck with an absolute cliffhanger. There’s no point in evaluating half of a story.

I don’t yet know if I’m going to write about these books in discrete installments or just post a big wrap-up at the end. Locking myself into a set of requirements before I even know how this is going to play out seems like a bad idea. Hopefully this first go-around will help me sort out how I want to handle this project going forward.

And with that, it’s time to go curl up under a suitable lamp and indulge in some reading.