When I arrived at Fair Trade this afternoon shortly before 5p.m. and took a seat along the front window I found a hardcover copy of Stephen Donaldson’s Runes of the Earth (the most recently — I believe — Thomas Covenant book) on the floor. Perhaps, I thought, I was taking over an already taken seat, one occupied by a person currently in the bathroom (or occupied by an invisible person), but I quickly concluded that instead that the person who had brought the book had left without it, so I notified the barista who poured my cup of dark-roast, who was at that moment clearing out the tub of used cups, plates, and utinsils, and he took it with him somewhere behind the counter.
I first encountered Donaldson in our home when I was a child. At some point my mother had purchased the box set of the first Chronicles, and they sat in our basement on an upper shelf of an oak shelving unit with a golden-brown finish that still smelled of both wood and finish if one approached and sniffed. In middle school I then read the first volume for a book report and began the second, which I set aside. In the 9th grade Jeremy Gress, noticing my interest in the books, gave me a volume or two from the Second Chronicles; I hadn’t yet finished the first, with their red, blue, and green covers in their yellow-golden case. A good deal of late-70s and early-80s fantasy novel cover art, predating the digital age, is gorgeous. The cover to the first novel (Lord Foul’s Bane) captures a sublime moment and captivated me as a reader. My other favorite cover from this time period must be the original cover to The Elfstones of Shannara by Terry Brooks — still my favorite of the series — which I acquired shortly before becoming a regular reader of fantasy novels by way of TSR and Larry Elmore’s cover art.
How my mother ended up with Donaldson in her library I’ll never know. She also had a small collection of Piers Anthony’s Xanth novels; I came first to his work by way of the Incarnations of Immortality series, which is still a guilty pleasure. She also had most of Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series, which I never got around to reading, although she and I watched the film version of Clan of the Cave Bear one evening in the mid-80s. She also had Shogun, which I began in the 7th grade for a book report but which I never finished (I did slightly better with War and Peace, but that, too, is something to which I need to return — and Wuthering Heights, which I read in elementary school but which I have completely forgotten). Someone else I know recently recommended Shogun as an engaging read, along with The Count of Monte Cristo, so if I finished my diss. this semester, I would — theoretically, of course — have time to read them.
I managed a few more pages of House of Leaves on the bus today. When Sara introduced it to me two and a half years ago during a conversation with Jyoti at Espresso Royale she mentioned that it’s the type of book that you cannot put down. The fact that I keep putting it down, however, is in no way evidence against her claim, for, indeed, when I am reading it, I do not want to put it down, I just want to continue, and even with its structural peculiarities (a gentle term) it flows, but I find myself reading it at the wrong times — on the bus, at the laundromat when I don’t have much time, just before catching the bus at a coffeeshop. There are few quality books that I’ve read in the past few years that have been so engaging, although The Club Dumas (which I likewise recommend at every opportunity) comes close, and it, too, has peculiarities of its own.
In the department I ran into Charles, received an email from Lynn in response to my response, got free chocolate from Mark, and contemplated the first day of class. Charles gave me his opinion of the texts in Der treffende Ausdruck (which hasn’t been revised in a while, partially because the author is dead).
