Today I had a very nice visit from the post man. He was kind enough to bring me two books which I had recently ordered from the UK. The two books in question were the newly released ‘Dragon Lance: Chronicles‘ omnibus and a new Harper | Collins reprint of ‘The Hobbit‘.
I have read both these books (Trilogy in the case of Dragon Lance) though have misplaced the books after packing up and moving countries a few times. When I saw them on sale on Book Depository I quickly lapped them up.
I would have much preferred to find the original Dragon Lance chronicles in separate books (call me old fashioned) but it was near impossible to find and those I did find were more than twice the price they originally sold for in the 80′s. Anyone who read the Chronicles back then would remember the very cool Elmore art work that covered the three covers of ‘Dragons of Autumn Twilight’, ‘Dragons of Winter Night’ and ‘Dragons of Spring Dawning’. While the artwork is not as good or as reminiscent as the old covers; Matt Stawicki, has managed to reproduce the heroes and dragons in a very flattering image.
The book itself has of a slightly larger footprint than regular novels though at over 1,000 pages thick the book still sits nicely in the hand. I think I’ll probably be taking this one with me on my upcoming trip home to Australia.
The Hobbit, on the other hand, is a book I only ever read once. I read it so long ago, 20+ years, that I can’t really remember that much about it. Not the details anyhow. With the new movies coming up in the near future I thought it might be a good idea to re-read the story and jog the old memory.
The book format looks great with the typical confrontation picture of Bilbo vs Smaug that seems to have become the norm for re-prints of the story. The inside first couple of pages provide the familiar journey map and a basic introduction to the language used at the time; including the written Runes. The story is spread out over 364 pages and in a rather large font.
I’m glad I was able to pick these novels up and look forward to reading them.
