The Belgariad

I went for comfort reading this week. I wanted to find something that wasn’t taxing, provided some good feelings like comfort food. So I turned to Davind Edding’s Belgariad. The first time I read this I was in high school and loved it. At the time, it was the fantasy I was into along with Christopher Stacheff and re-reading LOTR. That particular trio was was reading in constant rotation about once a year in between other things or homework. I kept up this cycle through early college.

Shortly after my daughter was born, I ran out of reading time. I was still in college, so I had texts and homework. In other moments it was children’s books. It would take about a decade to where I would have the long stretches of time I liked to immerse myself in a series. I didn’t think much of leaving those books aside for a while. I had read them with such regularity that I knew the books imtimately.

I picked up LOTR and the Hobbit again just before the movies came out, and read them periodicially since (although those were 2001 and 2012 respectively). I also picked up Laurie J Marks books again (while not part of my early canon) because I heard she is thisclose to publishing the final in the Shaftal series. (Hallelejah!).

I haven’t picked up much else from that reading era, and so I find that I remember the story as a whole, but not nearly the details I used to. I rediscover and remember the story as I go. And because I read them so long ago, I identify with them a completely different way. I am only part way thorough The Pawn of Prophecy and I find that I am more amused by Garion’s adolescent angstyness than identify with it. As it natural I supposed. I hope that I still can feel it’s charm these years later.