Hiya, Fluffsters!

I’m continuing the series on “old friend” books.

Today, I’m going to be talking about the series “The Belgariad”, and why it totally qualifies as an “Old Friend” book / series.

First of all. For those of you who enjoy fantasy and haven’t read the Belgariad series yet, fix that. NOW. Seriously. Go get the first book. Stop reading this blog (for the moment) and go check out “Pawn of Prophecy” from the library or, better yet, purchase the entire set.

Now that you’re back, I’ll continue. 🙂

I was first introduced to The Belgariad when my Mom read them aloud to the family in the car. My family has a marvelous tradition of reading out loud in the car on “long car drives.” My sister and I would always love long days of travel, because Mom would read out loud to us. (Seriously. We’d ask “We’re not there yet, are we?” instead of “Are we there yet?”.)

Anywho. We started The Belgariad shortly after finishing the Lord of the Rings, and it quickly became one of my absolute favorite series. Since you’ve all read the Belgariad at this point (or else you ignored my second real paragraph…) I don’t need to tell you that it’s a fantasy coming-of-age quest story that is waaaay underrated.

I love these books.

But that’s not entirely the purpose of this post. The purpose is to explain why The Belgariad qualifies as an old friend.

Well, as mentioned previously, Mom read them out loud to us, starting when I was relatively young. So once more, I’ve known these books for a while.

But more importantly, these books have characters, and character. Eddings has a wonderful way of describing things that always evoke pictures, at least for me. So rereading these books is very much like going through a scrapbook or picture album, with lots of favorite memories. And because of the characters in the books, it’s as though the characters are commenting on the scrapbook as well.

In other words, the characters are so lifelike (at least to me) that you could basically hear them having a conversation with you whenever you read them.

If having a conversation with favorite characters doesn’t count as visiting old friends, it should certainly be a close second.

So, yeah. These books (Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, Magician’s Gambit, Castle of Wizardry, and Enchanter’s Endgame) are some of my favorite “old friend” books. I hope they are, or become, some of yours, too. And that was way too many commas in that sentence.

Well, I hope you enjoy rereading them!

Hiya, Fluffsters!

And Fluffy, really. Didn’t you think I’d have posts stocked up ahead of time?

I “might not be able to generate content”? From Wednesday’s post?

…Fine.

Anywho. Today’s post is in the category of “what books are old friends, and why?”

The book Redwall definitely qualifies.

Redwall, for those of you who don’t know, is a book by Brian Jacques about an abbey full of talking animals. (There are no humans in this world.)

The story is fun, full of adventure, and has great characters. The righting style uses a few more adverbs than is strictly necessary, but I still enjoy it.

This one is definitely an old friend type of book. For one, it’s very understandable, and a children’s story. That means that even if you haven’t read it for a while, you can still know exactly what’s going on, kindof like when you talk with an old friend who you know really well, even after a long time.

For another reason, this is one of the first books I actively remember my sister reading out loud to me when we were much younger. So, it’s an old friend because I grew up with it, it’s old, and the book is basically a friend.

But I would wager that for many of you, even if you haven’t read it, Redwall could become a new “Old Friend” book. So, give it a try!

Have a great day!