Wheels of Time keep turning

Here's the skinny about me and the almost obsession with Jordan's Wheel of Time series: I not only own every one of the ten volumes in hardcover, I also own every one of the available titles, nine right now, in paperback. And not only do I own them in paperback, I own double copies of the first three volumes. The hardcovers sit on the main book shelf with all my Edding's volumes, King titles, and the other assorted books I like to stare at when I can't look at the computer screen any longer. The paperback versions are kept in the attic until the yearly reading begins and then I haul them out and store them in a pile on the floor until the reading is done. When I'm at home, I read the hardcovers and when I'm mobile, the paperbacks go with me. I had started the yearly read before I went home to care for Mom but when I got there and finally realized my short trip was going to be a long stay, it was simply easier to go out and buy new paperback copies of a few titles rather then send for them.

Jeff, who really hates how many books I buy and collect, was not aware until I moved back to Bashert that I'd bought new copies and now had doubles. He couldn't even get his mind around it and I was left alone.

The plus side to buying duplicates for those particular paperbacks was not completely lost on me. I sort of stalled on Book 4, The Shadow Rises, when Mom started getting oogy and the constant spine-cracking and page-flipping when I wasn't really reading took it's toll. These huge 800+ page books normally come unglued and split but this one just simple came apart into three solid chunks and page 78 just came off all alone. Then the cover ripped and fell off. So for the last two and a half months, I've been carting the whole of the book around, bound up by wide, dirty rubber bands. The whole thing, not just the section I was reading which doesn't make sense to me other than I'm the kind of person who would collect the hardcover and paperback versions of the same title so I'm going to read a whole book, cover and all, even if it has to be held together with duct tape and ka-ka.

It's all moot now though, since I finally finished that fucking, God-forsaken door-jamb of a book last night and have moved into Book 5: The Fires of Heaven in which I'll be enjoying 956 pages of the Lucifer-like Evil One slow-roasting the world in all it's sweating, drought-inducing fever. Not exactly the timing I'd like going into a summer that promises to be as hot and humid as living on the sun, but if I don't get through all these so I can finally read the tenth book which came out in January of this year, I'm going to poke my eyes out with a dirty stick.