Nostalgia Purchase

Back in 2016, I went to a used book store and found that someone had unloaded their entire collection of Piers Anthony Xanth novels there. I loved those books as a teenager, and I jumped at the chance to buy all twenty books. Then, because a few of them in the sequence were missing, I went to other used book stores to acquire what I didn't have. Now, I have the first 24 Xanth novels in the old mass-market paperback format. Along with the first three books of the Apprentice Adept series (plus the seventh, but I'm missing 4-6), and a couple of books from the Mode series.

I normally don't get the little mass-market paperbacks, because they don't go well with hardbacks on my shelf due to their significantly different size. However, I made a special exception in this case, and even made a special shelf for them to sit on.

Last year, I went through and downloaded a ton of the audiobooks for these in the attempt to go back and reread the books I knew and then go forward into the books I never had read. I only made it through book five, Centaur Aisle, however. The books weren't as good as I remembered. It was a whole lot of taking long journeys through Xanth and fighting with the crazy magical inhabitants of the areas, and much less of plot and character. 

It's funny, because I remember Ogre, Ogre being one of my favorites from back in the day, and that's the one I stopped at and never read. Maybe I ought to go back and try listening to a few more of the audiobooks. Maybe if I did a just a few a year or one a month or something, they wouldn't get as repetitive and tedious as they became when I was bingeing them.

Anyway, having these books really takes me back to the early days of me as a reader. If it weren't for Piers Anthony, I probably wouldn't be what I am today. His imaginitive worlds lit me on fire as a teenager, and of course I loved to read books with art like this on the cover:

Just look at that griffin! Isn't it awesome? I sat and stared at that picture for so long when I got that book.