Thursday, June 4, 2009

David Eddings 1931-2009

I only read one of Eddings books and I've been told it hardly represents his best work. Now that he has passed on I feel that I must discover what so many others have about his fantasy writing.

In reading the AbeBooks blog post about Eddings' passing they quoted About.com in the following. I thought this was lovely and something about Eddings' words rang true somewhere inside me.

Eddings was famously old-fashioned, never using a typewriter or computer (he wrote out his scripts in long-hand) and was well-known for being self-effacing, once remarking, “I’m never going to be in danger of getting a Nobel Prize for literature.” He was most pleased when told that his books had turned nonreaders into booklovers. “I look upon this as perhaps my purpose in life,” he explained in a 1997 interview. “I am here to teach a generation or two how to read. After they’ve finished with me and I don’t challenge them any more, they can move on to somebody important like Homer or Milton.”

So where do I start? What are you favorite Eddings books/series? I find something very sad about myself and the world in general that it took his passing for me to decide to read his work.

2 comments:

Scott said...

I really liked the Belgariad series. I actually liked everything of his that I read.

The Bald Monkey said...

Mostly agree with Scott here. The Belgariad series was the first fantasy series I read and got me hooked on the genre way back in middle school. I hadn't heard he died. It's really too bad.

My disagreement with Scott woudl be that Edding's last series The Dreamer's was absolutely terrible. But that is the only bit of his work that I read that was no good. I enjoyed everything else.