About

Hello, and welcome to The Salvatore Odyssey. I am sure many of you are saying to yourself " John, why dedicate a whole blog to reading books written by R.A. Salvatore, that's not even 100 books?!" Well all you standard setters, this blog isn't designed for me to show my reading prowess (which I assure you would rank somewhere between slow learner and amateur) or to create a self made monument to myself and display my strong literary expertise (I didn't even finish high school, not even 9th grade). I am afraid the only real purpose to this blog is to fuel my need for adventure (and an excuse to convince my wife why I need to buy each book I read, " But honey, it's for the blog!").

It kind of sucks that I have no credentials to share with you. I have seen many a book blogs, and nine times out of ten the person writing on that blog has some kind of degree in reading, writing or underwater basket weaving. And where do we learn this information? On the about page of course. Yet here you are, on the about page here, only to find that I have poor grammar and couldn't tell a synonym from an antonym (is the synonym the protagonist and the antonym the antagonist?). And don't get me started on spelling (do you know how many red underlined words I have to right click when I write on here!?!). My only credentials are that I have a laptop, an internet connection and sometime to do this.

I created this blog because I love to read, yet even more then reading I love prophesying disasters in my life that wont likely happen. You know, the same stuff we all stress about "I am going to lose my job." or "My wife is going to leave me for some other rich/ buff/ smart/ metro sexual  guy." If I am not prophesying the destruction of John then I pour all my thoughts and energy into fixing imaginary problems. (and spare the psycho analysis, I am fully aware of how crazy I am). Not a great way to spend my free time in my opinion. So to encourage a reading habit, I created this blog as a means of accountability. I cant blog about reading books if I don't read them. Which brings us to the next why.

Why R.A. Salvatore? I have read a few of his books, and no other author has pulled me into a story quite like Mr. Salvatore. The pages really do come to life for me. Mind you my list of books read is remarkably small, but I know what I like. I love fantasy. I love sword fights, dragons, magic, elves and all that other stuff. I hear Mr. Salvatore is a Master of his craft, I wouldn't be able to judge this myself, but I am gullible and from what I have read I have yet to find anything that would lead me to believe otherwise.

Another equally important part of this blog I fell you need to understand is the title. The first part is self exploratory, Salvatore is the author of the books which I am reading, and I plan on reading all his works (I would like to grow this to other authors once completed, but my hopes aren't very high. Commitment issues.) Odyssey on the other hand, requires a little explanation. When you look up the word odyssey on dictionary.com you find two definitions:

Odyssey Definitions

1. an epic poem attributed to Homer, describing Odysseus's adventures in his ten-year attempt to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

2. a long series of wanderings or adventures, especially when filled with notable experiences, hardships, etc.

Definition one obviously does not tie in to what I am doing in this blog, so we can scratch that one off. Definition number two however, is what inspired me to title this blog. The wanderings or adventures will be experienced from the reading the books, becoming absorbed in the story and savoring all it has to offer. The notable experiences and hardships will come from the process of actually reading consistently and not letting life get in the way of the goal I have set out before myself. (consistency is not a strong characteristic of mine). 

 With all that in mind, I hope you enjoy what I am doing here. This blog has taken me about two years to actually start, the basic framework was laid out but only recently have I found the way in which I was going be going about the process. Also, I am new to blogging and any constructive criticism will be warmly welcome. Thanks for stopping by.