User blog comment:SpartHawg948/SpartHawg's Book Corner!!!/@comment-1895434-20100820121518

An impressive list you've got going. I'd like to add my two cents... Without going into my own personal tastes or preferences, I'll just say that everyone should read 'The Once and Future King', by T. H. White, and that 948 in particular, I think you'll find it odd but memorable (judging by the books you've listed above). As wikipedia states, it's basically a retelling of Arthurian legend, but it's done so in an incredibly meaningful way. To mention the little things first: the book is filled with so many anachronistic references and witticisms that I wouldn't be surprised if many pass right over your head without you ever noticing (as one example, a random woman makes a remark that happens to be the first lines of Robert Burns's poem "To a Mouse," and had I not read it in my high school English class, I would've never recognized that the satire was there in the first place, since it's such an insignificant part of the story. Recognizing that bit simply provides a quick grin, and it adds more flavor to the atmosphere). Far more important than his style is the way he portrays all of the characters, to the point that the book becomes just as much a study of the humanity as a tale of past Western civilization. Don't worry if you're familiar with the story of King Arthur's life, or even if you've completely memorized the entirety of Le Morte D'Arthur - this isn't just a fresh retelling of the well-known legend, it's an entirely different entity that I've yet to see matched by anything else (Lord of the Rings is epic and monumental, to be sure, but its formula doesn't seem all that unique to me). My point is that, when you read it, you're not reading about King Arthur and what he did and how he did it so much as you're reading about how mankind once tried to implement Justice and why things turned out the way they did.

I've gone on long enough, so as a last effort to draw you in, 948, I'll mention that White partially wrote the book based on his sentiments regarding World War II. The book is composed of four parts (the first one is light-hearted, and it steadily becomes more and more profound, so don't just toss it if you didn't like the Disney version of "The Sword in the Stone"), and was published in 1958. I'm afraid that any further advertising is just going to be a turn-off, so with that, I'll keep my hopes up that this post influences someone to go out and look for it, check it out from the library, or purchase it from Amazon or your local bookstore, and devour the thing.