In this article about spring cleaning – the hard task of getting rid of books you no longer have any intention of reading again – my eye was caught by one of the books in the picture: Robert Jordan’s A Crown of Swords.

This is a book I read recently (I’m now on it’s successor, The Path of Dagger, the eighth book in the series) and a book that I will, in time, sell to a used bookstore. The Wheel of Time series is thirteen books long and I think may have one more to go, so no, I’m not going to re-read it. Also, it’s not that well written. Jordan fails to make his sprawling cast of characters as interesting as George R. R. Martin makes his. But still I keep reading. And I will finish the series. And then probably pick up another.

I have read people blame Jordan for the recent proliferation of multi-volume series that stretch beyond even the usual trilogy and sometimes I wonder how it is that I am on the eighth book and how the author keeps finding ways to keep the story going (and he does keep it going, I’ll give him that; it may be flawed, but it never feels like he’s stretching things out just to stretch it out, but rather that the task is so large that it necessarily takes a while and he also has a good idea for how political impediments can so easily multiply and tumble down upon each other).