Welcome to our newest series. In “Friday Favorites,” our team will share a handful of favorite items. These can range from clothes to beauty products to recipes to books and anything in between.
Some of my most vivid memories of childhood are related to books. We lived overseas in the Middle East growing up and in one of the big malls, there was this little secondhand bookshop called The House Of Prose. We adored that shop. You can still find books in our family house that hold their stamp on the front page.
After meeting my husband and discovering our mutual love of the fantasy genre, it was somewhat predictable that a book hoarding habit was born. In fact, just last week he turned to me and said, “I think it may be time to think about culling some books. There is no more space left on our bookshelves.” To which I promptly replied, “….OR, we could just buy a new bookshelf.” To which he immediately agreed.
That’s teamwork.
There is nothing more peaceful than curling up with a book. It’s so indulgent, so for me, I’m not interested in fiction that is based on real life. Being a parent means I don’t have copious amounts of spare time to sit around reading a book. When I do sit down, I want to be completely consumed and taken into a different world.
Fantasy is perfect for this! These are generally series of books; the longer the series the better. Here are my favourite fantasy books to get lost in.
Robin Hobb, Multiple Series
The Farseer Trilogy, The Liveship Traders Trilogy, The Tawny Man Trilogy, The Rain Wild Chronicles, and Fitz and The Fool Trilogy are all amazing!
Robin Hobb creates the most incredible world. All four trilogies are written about the same world. If you are invested, read them in the order placed above as they are all interlinked. Every trilogy will have you gripped. My particular favourites were The Liveship Traders and The Rain Wild Chronicles.
Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time Series
A fourteen volume series is enough to scare most people off pretty quickly, but Robert Jordan’s delicate evolution of characters will have you rooting for and pitting against characters from the get-go. All of them are so wonderfully thought out and complex. It’s worth digging into!
Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
This is a stand-alone book, which if you’ve guessed I don’t normally read. For it to even be included in this list is saying something. The world Erin creates is something you will get entirely enchanted and bewitched by. The ending was so beautiful; I cried and reread it a number of times. In fact, I know that when I read it again, there will have been so much I missed the first time around.
Katherine Arden, Winternight Trilogy
These three books took me by complete surprise as they were like nothing I’d read before. Based on Russian folklore, this trilogy was so beguiling that I fell in headfirst. Her writing is beautiful, and with the folklore so deliciously evocative, you won’t be able to put down any of these books.
Brandon Sanderson, Multiple Series
Brandon Sanderson has an uncanny way of creating one fantasy world after another in each series of his books. Most of these series are unrelated, but each world he creates is as consuming as his next. The MistBorn Trilogy, The Stormlight Archive, and his newest science fiction series Starsight & Skyward are just a few to get you started. His newest series was a breath of fresh air to his normal fantasy genre.
