It has been quite some time since I started this little contained trilogy of examples of the losing of some of my precious marbles . . . but never the less here we are again right in the thick of me going “A bit batty.”

[A quick side note – how was that for a build up of an intro?!]

Let me begin by pointing out (emphatically) that I am a bit of a dork. With that said, I will now try very hard to give a bit of the necessary back story to the particular predicament at hand while also trying hard to keep any toes from dipping into the rivers of tangents that sometimes get me lost . . .

(That sentence alone lost me a bit just by itself – but we move on.)

I started reading this series of ridiculous fantasy novels right around the time that the first one came out in 1990 . . . and I am currently reading the 11th (eleventh) book. Even though by all reports the author (Jordan, Robert) has been needlessly drawing the series out, I have to see this thing through to the end . . . I have already read something like 7000 (seven thousand) pages and it simply isn’t possible that I can stop now . . .

So – there I was in a big book store – and to my delight I saw a hard-back of what we will call (for the sake of keeping a tiny bit of dignity) Book #10 (number ten) for the low low price of $5.00 (five dollars). I usually buy the soft-covers (did you know that those are called “Mass Market Paperbacks”?) – but this was so so sooooo cheap – and so I bought it.

I read and read and read and progressively got more miserable as it went on. I even took it on a mini vacation where I tossed and turned wondering why everything was so drawn out and repetitive. When my wife asked how my dorky book was I felt beaten “I just hate it . . . it’s just so not good . . . it is poop . . . in the guise of a book. It is a poop book . . . a poop book.”

[To be fair that whole “poop book” thing is an embellishment – I never really said that – but that is how I felt on the inside . . . so I figured it valid to add it here.]

When I got home, I was 500 (five hundred) pages into the book and for days I had been getting more and more frustrated at the rampant repetition . . . and then a lightning bolt came through the fog of confusion that I had been feeling . . . and I ran to my friend the internet who sat me down on it’s knee and finally let the cat out of the bag . . . I was 500 (five hundred) pages into a book that I had read less than a year before . . .

Not 10 (ten) or even 50 (fifty) – but a full on 500 (five hundred) pages . . . and since I had no idea how it ended . . . I had to, in my shame, read through the last 200 (two hundred) pages not only to prove a point to the book that I was going to beat it in the end . . . but again because I had an honest curiosity as to what the end held.

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Now we move more to now for a quick update. I am currently 200 (two hundred) pages into the 11th (eleventh) book and all of the repetitive problems seem to have magically gone away.

The series is supposed to end with the next book which will be strange because I have 16 (sixteen) years invested in this whole thing . . . and I wonder how it’ll feel once it is all over. I really like it when things have a semblance of structure and if they belong to any kind of serial, then I like to read/see them in order because then I get to experience a feeling of achievement/stability from going from point A to point B (though – I honestly get a similar feeling of achievement whenever I manage to finish a jar of peanut butter) so it has been one of my biggest fears (along with nutrias) that something would happen to the author (Jordan, Robert) and the books would never be finished . . .