So there’s no real excuse for this.

When I was in eighth grade, I think, I started reading a series called The Wheel of Time, written by a man known as Robert Jordan. (That’s a pseudonym, for no good reason that I know of. He just always wrote this series with this pseudonym, and others with different ones.) It’s epic fantasy in the most ridiculous way possible. By which I mean: it’s quite literally epic, in that there are currently 12 books (with two more forthcoming) and over 10,500 paperback pages (thanks, wikipedia). Yeah. By comparison, The Lord of the Rings is three books long. George R.R. Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire (which I read three books from in high school, and ended up finding surprisingly distasteful) is four books long (although three more are projected). Terry Goodkind’s godawful (the first two were good, and then I got disgusted) Sword of Truth series is eleven books long, I guess. WoT (as it’s often abbreviated) has sold almost twice as many books as the Goodkind series, around 44 million copies. Martin’s series is considerably shorter. The only fantasy series I ever liked as much as WoT was Tad William’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy (beginning with The Dragonbone Chair and feeling very much like something Lloyd Alexander might’ve written). (To be fair, I didn’t finish the third back in that series until years after I first tried it. But that doesn’t fault the beginning.) There is also some more elf-heavy fiction, which I’ve managed to almost block out of my mind. Like Terry Brook’s Shannara series, which I’m kind of happy to forget.

Anyway, I guess the point is that most fantasy isn’t quite so large-scale as Jordan’s, and clearly I’m not the only one who admires that. Anyway, over break I picked up the series (I started on book two, and ended up just keeping on going), and now I’m reading book eleven. Twelve was released in November, I think, co-written by Brandon Sanderson because Jordan died three years ago, now. Leaving copious notes, and a wish that the books be finished.

I do acknowledge, reading these for my third time, that there are lots of things that bother me. I especially notice the things that maybe only happen twice a book, but happen twice every book. There are things like braid-pulling that happen way too often. Phrases like “his cloak would’ve made a tinker blush” are used every time a certain character appears (he’s supposed to wear a too-colorful cloak). I am frustrated when characters do stupid things. For example, characters who are not only on the same side, but also friends, don’t share important information with each other. Sometimes motivations are weak — I still don’t quite get why many of the villains switched sides not just to a different side but to the evil side. It’s one thing when the villain is, you know, a king who wants to rule the world. It’s another when the ultimate villain is the Dark One, a devil who touches the world and enjoys torture, death, and destruction, and expects his followers to as well. Someone who’s jealous might turn on their friends, but not so far as to embrace sadism. Or maybe once, but not over and over again. Right? Maybe I’m being re-naïve.

In any case, this is tons of fun. I like reading these books. I’m reading the eleventh one for the first time, I’m pretty sure (I didn’t own it, and I don’t remember it), and then I’ll have to switch writing styles and read (well, listen to, on audio book) the twelfth. And then I’ll be dry at least until November.

I’m not even going to try describing the plot. Wikipedia does an okay job, but if you’re at all interested then you should pick up the first book, The Eye of the World. It’s kind of pulp fiction, but well-written and well-thought-out for the most part. The characters have distinct personalities. Occasionally you get lost, but there are websites for looking that sort of thing up. Also a brief glossary in the back of the books.

Actually, there are a ridiculous number of websites dedicated to WoT. Not just wikis, of which there are at least two, but “scholarly” sites where people write up their theories, or think about the roots of Jordan’s ideas, or any such thing. It’s quite fun. And useful, when you’re lost, or want to know whether people think the same thing you do. Unfortunately, the websites DO assume you’ve read everything (obviously), and so sometimes give out spoilers.

In other news:

Today, I went rock climbing! It was quite a lot of fun. I feel a bit more comfortable at the place, although I still don’t really say more than two words to anyone other than the woman working at the desk. Still, it feels good to be exercising more than yoga on occasion, and if I couldn’t do anything difficult and felt tired quickly, then it’s well that I finally bought a ten-visit pass and will be going in ten times over the next three months. At least. I’ll try and use it faster. If I go twice a week, then I’ll buy a monthly membership. That’d be fun!

On Tuesday, despite being exhausted, on a whim I bought a tiny (1.5 kilo) chicken from the butcher’s (that’s a bit more than 3 pounds) for €4. The guy threw in two chicken carcasses for free, too, which was nice. So I roasted the chicken that night, more or less following this recipe. More “more” than less, except that I only left it to rest for an hour and a half or so. Even so, it turned out splendidly. Crispy skin, moist breasts, maybe a tiny bit soggy since the lemon had a lot of juice. I had the chicken and potatoes for dinner that night and last night as well.

I also saved two things: first, the chicken carcass, bad meat, joints, and skin. Second, the oil and drippings left in the pan. The latter I used for tonight’s dinner, which was fantastic: I took the last pieces of chicken, and fried them in a bit of (lemon) chicken fat with green peppers, just to warm them. I made rice with stock. I sautéed mushrooms in butter (Michael Ruhlman has an excellent meditation on how best to cook mushrooms, which I didn’t quite follow, since I used butter, but sort of did). And then I made tacos, just peppers, mushrooms, rice, and chicken. Delicious.

The reason I had stock to make rice in, of course, is that I made it. Two raw chicken carcasses, plus one roasted chicken carcass, plus a €1 selection of celery, leek, and carrots from the supermarket, plus some leftover cilantro and some garlic and an onion. I bought a new, bigger pot today, primarily because we needed one (for €15 — I doubt it’ll last more than a year, but I’ll be gone then), and it sat with water turning into stock for around five hours. (I followed Ruhlam’s book for this one. He knows that stuff back-and-front.) I’ll put the stock in the fridge for the night, and then make soup tomorrow, I think. But for now, it made some very soft, flavorful rice.