I was reflecting on silence today.  I was in anything but a quiet environment, given I was wandering through the Mong Kok and surrounding areas in Hong Kong, which is full of side street vendors, traffic, retailer after retailer, busy end of day crowds and  Occupy Hong Kong protestors.

The silence I was experiencing was not the silence of the external environment, but rather the silence one experiences when travelling alone.  I have been in Hong Kong on business and have spent much of the time outside of meetings not talking; something pretty unusual for me.

What has this got to do with books?  Well, I made reference to the restorative stillness and silence I enjoy when reading books in an earlier post (Bed-time stories for world leaders).  Usually reading takes me to a quiet place, but as I walked through the noisy crowds of Kowloon I realised sometimes I want a book to make a noise.  To scream, shout and explode.

Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange was a book that did this well, as did Charles Bukowski’s Post Office and Women. But it was the books of my adolescence that I remember most for this; leaving me breathless for the next chapter or book in the inevitable trilogy or saga.

Fantasy is a genre I never read much anymore, but it is my first love.  The worlds of magic, war, political intrigue and myth created by my favourite fantasy authors provided the much-needed noise to match the moods of my teens and early twenties.  It started with a cult classic, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series, borrowed from my local library, which transported in a thunder-clap of adventure that has rung in my ears for almost 30 years.

I have read a lot of fantasy since, with my favourites including pretty much everything by David and Leigh Eddings (The Belgariad series etc.), Raymond E Feist’s Riftwar Cycle, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, Terry Brooks’ Shannara Trilogy and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time.

But are these books any good?  I have avoided this question for some time.  What prompted me to think about it is the book series I’m reading now by Hugh Howey that includes Wool, Shift and Dust.  While more sci-fi or dystopian future than fantasy, they’ve given me a very similar experience as the fantasy books of my youth.  They viciously pick me up, shout their story in my ear and angrily consume my time. I can’t put them down and don’t want to.

I am incapable of determining if these books, much like the fantasy that stoked my love of reading, are actually any good.  Usually I snobbishly cast judgement over a book within ten pages, but with these books my powers of criticism are powerless against the escapist storytelling, engaging characters and political nuance.

I know it is not to everyone’s taste, but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and so I guess it doesn’t matter if they are good or not; I love them and their words pile up around me like Scrooge McDuck’s gold in his money bin, and much like Scrooge I enjoy diving in whenever I get the chance.