{"id":5676,"date":"2017-11-27T04:24:25","date_gmt":"2017-11-27T12:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=5676"},"modified":"2017-11-27T08:45:01","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T16:45:01","slug":"flights-of-fantasy-2017-reading-challenge-wrap-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/flights-of-fantasy-2017-reading-challenge-wrap-up","title":{"rendered":"Flights of Fantasy 2017 Reading Challenge Wrap-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Flights<\/p>\n

The Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge<\/a> motivated me to read some books that had been on my TBR list for many years, and it also enabled me to re-read some of my favorites. Fantasy was my first favorite genre, but I haven’t read a lot of it lately because it seems to have lost its magic, as I wrote about several weeks ago<\/a>. In fact, all of the fantasy I read this year was written before 1993.<\/p>\n

My year in fantasy fiction began with a fantastically original series of three books by Barry Hughart collected in an omnibus edition known as\u00a0The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox.\u00a0<\/em>You can read my review of the entire series<\/a>, but the quick rundown is this is a series not to be missed.<\/p>\n

The fantasy reading soared along with a re-reading of\u00a0The Hobbit<\/em> for Brona’s Hobbit\/Lord of the Rings Read-along.<\/a> The read-along continued at a leisurely pace for the next seven months as I read the Millennium Edition of The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, and it was enjoyable to revisit Middle-earth, as always.<\/p>\n

I also revisited a well-loved book from my youth,\u00a0Empire of the East<\/em>, by Fred Saberhagen. It was just as good as I remembered<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the best things about the Flights of Fantasy challenge was that I finally read three books that I bought well over twenty years ago, a series known as The Elenium<\/em> by David Eddings.\u00a0The Diamond Throne<\/a>, The Ruby Knight<\/a><\/em>, and The Sapphire Rose<\/em><\/a> were a bit of a disappointment, but I’m glad I finally read them all.<\/p>\n

Finally, there were two books that were completely new to me, one of which is a new favorite; the other…not so much.\u00a0Ghost Stories of an Antiquary<\/em> is a wonderfully ghoulish collection of ghost stories by M.R. James that I will definitely re-read<\/a>.\u00a0I had a few issues with\u00a0The Worm Ouroboros<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by E.R. Eddison, but in the end I was glad I read it.<\/p>\n

The Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge reignited my interest in reading fantasy fiction, especially books that I read in my youth that are now available as ebooks. I look forward to reading more fantasy next year, and I hope there’s a Flights of Fantasy 2018.<\/p>\n

\"The\"Empire\"\"<\/p>\n

\"The\"The\"The<\/p>\n

\"Ghost\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge motivated me to read some books that had been on my TBR list for many years, and it also enabled me to re-read some of my favorites. Fantasy was my first favorite genre, but I haven’t read a lot of it lately because it seems to have lost its magic, as I wrote about several weeks ago. In fact, all of the fantasy I read this year was written before 1993. My year in fantasy fiction began with a fantastically original series...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Flights of Fantasy 2017 Reading Challenge Wrap-up #FlightsofFantasy","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[901,922,988,158,180,30,65,989,854],"class_list":["post-5676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-barry-hughart","tag-david-eddings","tag-e-r-eddison","tag-fantasy-fiction","tag-fred-saberhagen","tag-tolkien","tag-lord-of-the-rings","tag-m-r-james","tag-the-hobbit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/fantasy_castle.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-1ty","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5676"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5746,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5676\/revisions\/5746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}