{"id":1413,"date":"2009-08-12T12:35:02","date_gmt":"2009-08-12T20:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/?p=1413"},"modified":"2009-08-13T08:23:49","modified_gmt":"2009-08-13T16:23:49","slug":"an-aside-join-me-in-this-weeks-sfsignal-mind-meld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanmoher.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/news\/an-aside-join-me-in-this-weeks-sfsignal-mind-meld\/","title":{"rendered":"An Aside | Join me in this week’s SFSignal Mind Meld!"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favourite features of SFSignal has always been their Mind Melds<\/strong>, where they get together a big group of well-known authors\/publishers\/bloggers and all pit them with a question.<\/p>\n\"SFSignal\n

Well, this week, along with the likes of (Hugo Winner) Mike Resnick, David Drake and a bunch of others, I was asked to answer a simple question<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

What book or books hold special memories for you? What are they?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

To which I responded:<\/p>\n

I hate to stumble into a dreadful clich\u00e9, but the title that jumps immediately to mind for me is J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit<\/strong>. You see, I’ve always been a voracious reader, but during my grade-school years it was always Adventure (The Gammage Cup<\/strong> by Carol Kendall, which, in retrospect, is probably more Fantasy-ish than I realized) and Science Fiction (Tom Swift<\/strong> by, erm…Victor Appleton II and any novel I could get my hands on by Michael Crichton) and dismissed Fantasy as being ‘full of unicorns and princesses, only for pansies and my mom” – an eloquent, but not terribly original opinion for a 10-year-old boy, but there it is.<\/p>\n

Then, in the summer after Grade Six, for some unfathomable reason (probably very subtle hinting from my mother, if I know her), I picked up The Hobbit<\/strong>, and, well, the rest is history.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, Tolkien blew away my preconceptions and opened a myriad of doorways to whole new realms of possibility. He began my love-affair with Fantasy and I try my damndest to read The Hobbit<\/strong> once a year, counting it as my second-favourite novel, behind only…<\/p>\n

The Shadow of the Wind<\/strong> by Carlos Ruiz Zafon sat on my bookshelf for, literally, years before I finally read it. I think, more than anything, I was afraid that it wouldn’t live up to the hype heaped upon it. So it sat, neglected and gathering dust … which is rather fitting, when one considers the story within.
\nThen, with a 2 month Eastern-European backpacking trip around the corner, I figured it was finally time to dive in and give the book a shot. I began it on the plane ride over and Zafon’s words still haunt me, almost a year later.<\/p>\n

The obvious combination of a life-changing nine-week period coupled with a hauntingly beautiful book have carved a special place in my heart, and I’d give almost anything to be able to be back in that place – rumbling traincar; the beautiful, rugged landscape of the Czech Republic and Slovakia; The Shadow of the Wind<\/strong> glued to my hand. Ahh, memories!<\/p>\n

The final book that sticks out is The Dragonbone Chair<\/strong> by Tad Williams, the first of his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn<\/strong> trilogy, a classic in the genre. What’s interesting about it, though, isn’t how I fell in love with it from the first page, but rather how I couldn’t<\/em> get into it, despite wanting to fall head-over-heels.<\/p>\n

In fact, I read it three-and-a-half times before I finally discovered the beauty! The first couple of times I managed to finish it, even reading a bit of the sequel, The Stone of Farewell<\/strong> once, but just lacked interest in the story. One time I couldn’t even make it past the half-way point.<\/p>\n

But, being a stubborn jackass, I picked it up for a forth time… and fell completely, utterly in love. I still can’t explain what the difference was this time (I was older; I had enjoyed Shadowmarch<\/strong> by Williams; I was a fan of slower narrative novels, like Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy<\/strong>), but everything just clicked and I burned through the rest of the trilogy in short order. I now considering Memory, Sorrow and Thorn<\/strong> to be my favourite completed Fantasy series. Not a bad turn-around, eh?<\/p>\n

Of course, the list could go on forever (if I included the likes of Ender’s Game<\/strong> by Orson Scott Card, which saved me from getting jaded on reading; or The Elfstones of Shannara<\/strong>, which filled that void after I had finished Tolkien; or The War of the Flowers<\/strong> by Tad Williams, which is a huge inspiration for my Work-in-progress; or The Anubis Gates<\/strong>, which took me forever to track down and was worth every second of the search), but I won’t ramble… too much.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Taking part in Mind Meld<\/strong> has been something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, so it’s a bit of a thrill to see my name, and my list of books, up there with the rest of them. Of course, next to the rest of the folk, I sounded like a rambling little babe, just crawled out from the crib, but it was fun nonetheless! I even got to write a bio for myself.<\/p>\n

Be sure to check out the rest of the replies HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favourite features of SFSignal has always been their Mind Melds, where they get together a big group of well-known authors\/publishers\/bloggers and all pit them with a question. Well, this week, along with the likes of (Hugo Winner) Mike Resnick, David Drake and a bunch of others, I was asked to answer a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n