Library of Childhood

Recently I watched a top 10 forgotten fantasy series video. The creator of the video had a bit more than 10 but he was going through a list mostly of his personal favorites of series that were popular in the …..1900s( I both love that and despise that it is a thing) I enjoyed the video and the idea that many of my favorite series made his list. But it did get me thinking about all the series I used to read and if they are still in circulation, talked about, whatever. Or do they only sit on certain bookshelves, relics of the past and possibly to be discovered by a new generation of readers….

It was around 1986, I was spending time at my grandmother and great grandmothers homes, they were neighbors in a trailer park. The space between those homes was a central part of my childhood. My uncle who was in the Navy had a room in one of the trailers and would come home on leave, spend time with family and then back to the service. He had a bookshelf full of fantasy and science fiction that he stocked a bit more each time he came home. Now at this time I was not yet a teen, just a scrappy tiny little kid that had an advanced reading level but really didn’t enjoy reading that much anymore. See, I had started off strong, was reading at a highschool level by 2nd or 3rd grade but the books available to me were just not my vibe. So I spent most of my days playing with action figures, drawing, and playing roleplaying games. Then one day I was handed the Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first book in the Dragonlance series. A world and a book series based in Dungeons and Dragons. Something unlocked in me. That first book led to a second, then a third and the end of the trilogy. I needed a new book, what else was there, how many books could I get my hands on? My uncle was kind enough at that time to gift me access to all of his books, I had an Aunt that I saw on holidays that encouraged me to join a rather popular(at the time) book club and my grandmother would ask questions about the books I consumed. I read all of Robert E Howard’s Conan books, Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, I burned through his single bookshelf in a matter of weeks. The lands of Pern, Xanth, Hyperboria, The Four Lands, Faerun, and so many more became my home.

Many of those places were conceived and written about well before I was born. Those books didn’t get forgotten, they lay in wait like a dragons hoard, a treasure trove that was waiting for someone to discover it.

I plan on revisiting some of the books I loved frome the 80’s and 90’s but I may also wander back to the books that saw their creation in the 30’s and 40’s. I

hope some kid that loves to read is just now discovering the Forest Kingdom, or the Drenai Empire, maybe even the Kingdoms of Melinbone. What a world of adventure they have to look forward to.