Perhaps You'd Better Start From The Beginning

When I discover a book series, television show, comic book, and musical act that's new to me but has been around for a while, I like to start from the beginning.

This goes back to when I was a child and loved to read but I wouldn't buy X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman or Superman comic books because their story was already in progress. When Marvel started the New Universe I collected several of the title since I could start at the first issue.

When I hear a song from a band or artist, I check their discography and start from their first album. Thankfully streaming services let me listen to the album in full before I decide to buy. For my birthday and Christmas, I ask for iTunes gift cards to expand my collection. It's frustrating when I hear an awesome song then discover it's on the artist/band second or third album. Even more so when I listen to the first album and don't like any of the songs on it.

Books are forgiving because most of the authors I like rarely do sequels or trilogies. When I was a younger geek and a Dragonlance fan, two bookshelves were dedicated to the world of Krynn.

Grocery Bag Book Covers

One perk of my Dad owning a grocery story was using the paper grocery bags to cover my textbooks to replace the ones school provided for me at the beginning of the year.

Sometimes it was the cheap glue wearing out, or the books going from the locker to my backpack which damaged the covers

I preferred the grocery bag covers because they had more room to draw on.

In addition to the grocery bag book cover, I’d color in the white space of this notebook. The lucky kids with the quad colored pen would do large sections in a different color or “tye-dye” it. I only had blue or black ink pens so my covers were boring.

Reading

I used to enjoy reading, to the point where I laid in bed all day reading Wizard & Glass in the Gunslinger series from Stephen King. Now I’ll read for 5 minutes and that’s enough for a month.

So I decided to remedy this situation by rereading a favorite series, The Spellsinger by Alan Dean Foster. Thanks to the Amazon gift card from my brother, I bought the first book. It was tempting to buy the complete series since it was $49.95 but that would have used up the gift card.

It’s been a slow start and Alan can’t be blamed, I still enjoy Jon-Tom’s introduction to Mudge. I could have spent time reading last Monday since I had a day off from work, but was still recovering from New Year’s Eve (I ate too much baked brie and cookies & cream)

This past Monday, I sat down, cracked open my iPad and read the rest of chapter 1. I still laugh from the humor of Mudge and Jon-Tom’s outlook of the strange world he’s now a part of.