These are some of the first books I remember reading or being read to me. The two go together for me, because I could read before I started school and don’t really have any memories of not being able to read. I do remember Dad reading The Once and Future King to me and waiting for him to catch up to where I was and turn the page.

It was always fantasy for me. Lewis, White, Tolkien and Garner taught me to read.

Not sure which I will read tonight. These are snack-sized offerings. And yeah, those are the original paperbacks from the 1980’s, the ‘Armada Lion’s imprint. There is an escaped page from the same edition of the Moon Of Gomrath slipped between the covers…. Need to find that next!

For years I have been unable to read. Or at least, read the way I did for at least 7/8ths of my life. Books that I have read at least once a year since I was eleven have been waiting on shelves.

New stories that everyone I trust to tell me where the best treasures can be found are sitting in damning piles.

It’s not that I haven’t read anything – popular science. Reams of work text (drafts and drafts and drafts). Some ebooks. Plenty of audio books. But my connection to past authors and books that I loved too much to leave behind in England has snapped. Or maybe just frayed to the point of whisps.

I hate it. I hate how short my attention span is, a combination of burn out and hiding from my own thoughts making anything challenging and an exercise in panic and uncertainty. The places that were once my escape and solace have become dangerous paths with lots of bushes that might be bears. Or bears that might be bushes.

The urge to write and to read has been building for a while now. I have been doing some private writing but that’s it’s own trap: if there is no audience (a book of letters I will never send, can never send as the recipients are dead or wishful thinking) then I fall into bitter self recriminations and spiral down so hard I have to hide from language for a while.

So this place has always been somewhere where I can write to an audience, a perpetual perhaps, but not like I am calling attention to it to all and sundry. Maybe some of you might get a notification on a long forgotten dashboard or feed. Or stumble here from somewhere else. You are a reader in potentia, and thus a filter. A safety blanket. A theoretical audience for whom some degree of consideration must be made, and also some degree of craft

If there isn’t an audience there isn’t a strive to polish and to play, to find the best word, the most right arrangement of clause and context. So, while cleaning my teeth I resolved to just write. Tonight at least. And tomorrow to read a bit and write a bit and see where we go. Maybe I am finally on the right drugs. Maybe I am finally through some of the tunnel. Writing was always how I worked myself out and maybe it is how I keep this new energy going, and write myself better.

I have spoken before about the huge impact these books had on me as a kid, and so I have joined in, with great enthusiasm. For those that don’t know the story, it’s a fantasy series that overlaps the world of the UK in the middle of the 20th Century with very deeply resonant myths from our deep past. Herne the Hunter features, and in the rest of the books so does Arthur, and a host of Welsh magicians and mythic kings. This particular book, the second in the cycle takes place over midwinter, starting on the eve of the solstice, and ending in the new year.

I decided I wanted to blog about it as I went, so here we go!

I re-read these books at least anually and normally devour them very fast, but reading in real time is making me slow down and appreciate them. I also have friends reading along for the first time, and that’s helping me see the story with new eyes. I had forgotten how utterly chilling the opening chapter is, as strange and vaguely threatening things start to happen around our protagonist, culminating in the terror in the night.

I had also forgotten how especially immediate writing for young people is. There is a wonderful moment when our hero wrestles with accepting power, and the responsibility and other-ness that comes with it. It is dealt with in a few lines of text, rather than chapters of agonising. But it doesn’t make his choice any less significant or meaningful. I am so far sticking to the rhythm of the story, so I am off now to read the section that takes place on Christmas Eves eve. If you are reading too I hope you are enjoying it! Maybe we can chat in the comments or on Twitter