I’ve never understood the claim that, once read, a book is bereft of value. I have seen this absurd belief posited on several occasions around the Web, and it continues to puzzle me. You mean to tell me that there’s no value in re-living the wondrous adventures of The Fellowship of the Ring? That it’s possible for someone to pick up every nuance and plot detail of the phonebook-sized A Song of Ice and Fire tomes the first time? That, once you’ve read Red Nails, you’ve sucked it dry of its magic, and you can safely close the cover on the tale of the wild, warring tribes of Xuchotl forever? For me, this one-book, one-read claim smacks of either arrogance (“I can assimilate any text with laser precision the first time, every time. Can’t you?” or ignorance (“Yes, yes, I already know the One Ring was destroyed. Now I’ve moved on to bigger and better stories like The Sword of Shannara“.

But lately I find myself slightly (very, very slightly) sympathetic to this view, for the sole reason that I’m in the process of building a towering pile of books that I’ve never read, big enough to obscure the old favorites behind it. Here’s a sample from my bookshelf:

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, J.R.R. Tolkien (When I bought this in hardcover back on May 2, I found myself smiling smugly at Amazon’s pedestrian delivery date of May 8. As it turns out, I could have waited for it to arrive in the mail.)

The Shadow of the Torturer, Gene Wolfe. I’ve heard so many good things about Wolfe over the years but have never gotten around to reading him. Now that I actually own one of his books, I still haven’t.

The Face in the Frost, John Bellairs. This is one of the few books from Appendix N of the Dungeon Master’s Guide that I’ve never gotten around to reading. Mr. Gygax would not approve.

The Life of Sir Aglovale de Galis, Clemence Housman. This obscure tale of a minor, rogue knight in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur came highly recommended. It was hard to find, but after an epic, holy grail-style quest I finally managed to track it down. So far it’s made a nice paperweight.

The Last Light of the Sun, Guy Gavriel Kay. Kay is an excellent writer, but that fact hasn’t brought me any closer to starting this highly-regarded novel.

Kothar and the Wizard Slayer, Gardner Fox. I have no idea about the quality of this one, but I was intrigued by its pulpy cover of a warrior and a pale, topless woman brandishing swords at an alien/demon-looking thing. The cover is still as far as I’ve gotten.

The Company they Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community. This non-fiction account of the Inklings came highly recommended on Jason Fisher’s blog Lingwe: Musings of a Fish. “[It] belongs on the bookshelves of all serious readers of Tolkien, Lewis, Williams, Barfield, and the rest of the Inklings,” Jason writes. I’m proud to say that it is on my bookshelf, Jason. . .and… did I mention that it’s on my bookshelf?

Flashing Swords 3 and Flashing Swords 5, edited by Lin Carter. I own and have enjoyed Flashing Swords 1, and was delighted to find these latter sword-and-sorcery anthologies from Carter’s acclaimed series on a dusty shelf in a used bookstore. Now they’re proudly sitting on my own bookshelf — sporting a fine layer of dust, of course.

Heroic Visions, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Despite an introduction that raised my ire, this looks like a very solid collection of swords and sorcery. Or so I’ve gathered from the jacket description.

So right there are 10 books I’d like to read, and I’m sure there are others I’m missing.

To get back to my original point, this list doesn’t count the books I’ve been itching to re-read: Don Herron’s essay from Kingdom of Fear has me eyeing my old Stephen King novels, the elder days of Middle Earth are calling in the form of The Silmarillion, and the spines of my Howard Del Reys look so damned attractive that I’m thinking of picking up my broadsword and taking another foray into the Hyborian Age.

Of course I know the bare facts of these stories (and pardon the spoilers): Captain Trips wipes out 99.4% of the world’s population, and the survivors are left to engage in a conflict of good vs. evil (The Stand), elves and orcs hack each other to death over shiny jewelry (The Silmarillion). But knowing the bare facts of a story versus absorbing a book’s contents and grasping an author’s subtlety and deeper themes are two very different matters. An equivalent comparison is claiming you know everything about a person after a two minute conversation on an elevator. Sure, you know what they look and sound like, but can you truly claim to understand their motivations, what makes them tick, and what makes them a unique individual? Heck, I re-read the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit every other year or so, and I still manage to find something new on every occasion (did you know that Bombur requested pork pie–and salad)?

The other factor is fear: What if the new book is dreadful? What if I’m halfway through The Face in the Frost, only to discover it sucks, and I realize that I could have been re-reading the brilliant Gates of Fire instead? (Note: I’m one of those types who very, very rarely will put down a book once I’ve started. So I have good reason to fear bad novels, since I’m typically in them for the long haul. My one exception to this rule is Forgotten Realms novels).

So the question remains: To read new, or to read old, familiar (but much loved) stories anew? I guess it all boils down to the fantasy fiction fan’s lament: So much to read, so little time. If you have a suggestion about where I should start on the list above, please drop me an e-mail. No new titles, please, at least until I can take a few stories off this tower to my left (pun intended).