I'dn't (it's a contraction of a contraction... I had not ) read the REALLY classical books in while, so I'd forgotten how... hard it was.
I'd read the Memoirs and ... of Sherlock Holmes... Fine. Not really, if you don't count quitting on the second page as reading it...
It had about ten words per page that were absolutely probably in another language. I could almost guarantee it. But then, when you look it up... that's different.
Anyway, this book, the first impression I got was... it's long. Well, most old-classical books are long. Thick. Cover to Cover fully in an almost different language. The only reason I'd gotten it from the Library was because of the countless number of books that had small mentionings of the characters from this book (or legend, whatever you may call it). Lancelot, King Arthur, Merlin (in the book I read it's spelled Merlyn), Morgan Le Fay, and you also probably know these as familiar.
At first I thought it was just an idea, a book, that was so famous that it was known around the world, made into movies, dramas, worked its way into other books, how Harry Potter does. But no. I'm pretty sure King Arthur is like a Legend or something of that sort. In Wikipedia, I'd read that it was, quote, "...a legendary British leader who, according to Medieval histories and..." [for full article go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur ]. Yes, he was a fictional part of true history.
I'd like to read another book that's not so... old-classical. I have made up terms, you would see, the REScale, and literary genius, and you know... old-classical is one of them. There are classical books, like Where the Red Fern Grows by ... I forget... sorry... (one of my favorites, it's such a sad book ), and probably A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert N. Peck, and... You know, understandable classicals. Those I call just Classical. But then, there's stories such as this very one, The Once and Future King, Sherlock Holmes and..., Around the World in Eighty Days, (I quit that one after many attempts to decipher the writing), and those,,, are... old-classical. Not just classical, old-classical. Meaning, they were probably written a long time ago, so there's the type of writing that keeps the book from being... enjoyable. That's partly why I don't really like classical books. Because we only know of the famous ones, and they're all old-classical books.
And, King Arthur didn't just become King Arthur. That's what I will be talking about. You know, I figured, this book is so long, it would take me at least five blog entries to actually write what I felt about this book. And the usual. But then, I barely understood the last book (or part, you would call it) of the book, and that's why I quit reading it. Save it for some other day in my life, when I'm able to understand it, at least.
I'm writing a blog entry on his childhood, the first part.
At first, I was wondering who in the world Wart was and who Kay was, and why I was reading about them when the whole point of getting this book was to read about King Arthur. Then it said Wart, named from his original name, partly because his name rhymed with it. I, then, easily assumed that it was the name Arthur being mentioned, and Art rhymed with Wart, so I knew I had the right book. At first, it was boring, full of alien words, confusing, and I didn't even know what it was talking about (the first sentence confused me for a while). I constantly turned on my iPod for my Dictionary.com app to find definitions. But soon, everything was okay, and I was even able to read to myself, not read aloud. That was when, about, when Wart meets Merlin for the first time. Merlin added some spice to the story. It made it un-boring (I think that's why I stopped reading in the end; Merlin was captured by Nimue). He and Archimedes, Merlin's talking owl.
I liked Merlin's lessons best. It was fun, just reading about it. The ant thing (it was funny, "insane ant on square...", the badger, as the last, and many others. Yes, the swans, I think, or the birds, or the ducks, somewhere around that sort, that one was my favorite. It told Wart how silly war was. Not silly, but how... bad. Never fight amongst your own kind. But yet, look at current events...
I was so angry when Kay lied to Sir Ector that he was the one who got the sword. I knew, at once, before, when it was being mentioned, when King Pellinore, was slowly talking about the sword. I knew it was Wart who would get it, seeming he was the main character AND the title was The Sword in the Stone.
Great book. Sort of. If you could understand it. I would recommend it if you could read Sherlock Holmes or the hard sort. old classical.