(no subject)
Thursday, October 27th, 2005 10:49 pmSo, when I remember reading Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer et al, I see out the corner of my eye either the house on Robert St or the house on Wellesley, which means I must have read it back in '81 or '82. (Which, googling, turns out to be about the time the first volumes were released. The fourth volume came out in '83, which means Palmerston Gardens. In the 80's I moved about once a year on average, a habit I gave up in '93, and about time too.)
I can't think why I gave my copies away or abandoned them or whatever, any more than I can figure out why I no longer have a copy of The Three Imposters. But I did and I don't. Details from them linger in the back of my mind, like bad dreams, and it was only recently that I figured out where those fragmentary memories came from. (If it's not Wolfe it's the Black Company, which was '85 on Brunswick.) Now the books have been rereleased in two volumes. With tiny eye-straining print that removes all pleasure from reading and, oddly, a lot of the flavour from the prose itself. So I shall continue to haunt the second hand bookstores, though Wolfe's books almost never show up in them. C'est dommage.
I can't think why I gave my copies away or abandoned them or whatever, any more than I can figure out why I no longer have a copy of The Three Imposters. But I did and I don't. Details from them linger in the back of my mind, like bad dreams, and it was only recently that I figured out where those fragmentary memories came from. (If it's not Wolfe it's the Black Company, which was '85 on Brunswick.) Now the books have been rereleased in two volumes. With tiny eye-straining print that removes all pleasure from reading and, oddly, a lot of the flavour from the prose itself. So I shall continue to haunt the second hand bookstores, though Wolfe's books almost never show up in them. C'est dommage.
