 Hello everybody! E here. Welcome back to another video. Today we're doing something that we haven't done before. I was preparing for the Lord of the rereads that we're going to be doing in August. We're going to be reading, starting the Hobbit on August 1st, and then we're going to go straight through the Lord of the Rings trilogy back to back to back to back. So we're going to do the Hobbit, Fellowship of the Ring, two towers, and then the Return of the King, all in rapid system, well not rapid, we're going to take our time with it, but all together, as soon as we finish one, we're going to start another. I'm also starting the Shining, my fourth reread of the Shining, and my third reread of Doctor Sleep, but this is the first time I'm going to be going back to back, starting the Shining on August 1st too. So if you want to join that, just comment down in the doobly-doo. Anyways, so I was looking through the Hobbit, and I was also looking through the movies and whatnot, and I saw an unexpected journey, as mentioned several times, and for some odd reason it clicked in my head, an unexpected collection. So I wanted to try, I collect a lot of books and series that people might be surprised about. There's a little bit more to me than what's on the surface, and I thought it'd be interesting to go through some of my inspirations and talk about why I collect these things, and the reason why I collect them, even though I'm not maybe a fan of them. So I have the original six DAW paperback copies of the Elric Saga by Michael Morkock. So there's Elric of Melonabone, or however the hell you pronounce it. It's not the original publication, but we're going to get to that in a second. So there's that one. That's the first one. And then we have the Sailor on the Seas of Fate. These covers are by Michael Whelan. Whelan? Okay, I don't know how to pronounce it. They are fantastic covers. Then The Weird of the White Wolf, which is my favorite of the series. It's very much more a bizarro novel. It kind of goes all over the place, if I remember correctly. I think that's the one. And then we have The Vanishing Tower, which is really hard to see up close. It's so dark. The cover's so dark. It's some kind of fish person. I don't remember anything. No, it's more like an insect. I don't remember anything about that one. That's The Vanishing Tower. Then The Bane of the Black Sword. This one's nice. I really like this cover. It's the, I think it's the Skelebro in the background. And then we have Stormbringer, which is the final of the first six books. He did reboot the series. I do not have those because I don't really have any connection to them, but I do have. I think it's book eight or nine, and that is this one in hardcover, which is The Fortress of the Pearl. I have not read this. I have actually no interest in it, which is something we're going to get to here in a minute. I did read the first six books when I was younger, and I've only reread up until the third book, and then I just stopped reading. But on top of that, we have, I'm trying to make sure I get this right. There are certain ones of these that are, I'll read it back, let's see here. So, if you don't know, Michael Morkock released this series through Lancer first, and they were heavily, heavily edited books. In fact, I think they crammed certain books together, and so into one book each. I think it's multiple books, but, and he was very unhappy with it, but this is the Lancer version, and it's called The Dreaming City. It's an Elric novel, and then The Sleeping Sorceress. These are both Elric novels, which is funny because in here, Elric looks almost, he might be African American, or maybe Arab, he looks that way, and he doesn't even have white hair in this one. It's green hair on the cover, so that's interesting. But anyway, I also have, and this is solely because I probably will never read these, these are from Lancer also, but the whole reason I have them, I'm gonna get to that in a second. I just wanna show off the rest of these. So this is, let's see here, The Masters of the Pit. That cover is amazing. If you guys want me to do a close-up video of these covers, just let me know. I have no problem doing them. I love looking at these covers. This one is The Lord of Spiders. I think these are Epic Fantasy on Mars, kind of sci-fi fantasy. I'm not sure. I'm probably completely wrong. I'm just going by what it looks like on the cover. And then The City of Beasts, which is an absolutely amazing cover. I love that. It's gnarly as hell, man. It's got Old Dude on some kind of weird demon-faced dog creature. Well, almost human-faced, but it's got horns and whatnot. Anyway, so why do I collect books that I probably will never read again, have no real interest in? When I was younger, I told a story about my grandmother and her pushing me to read, to continue my education, through reading, that kind of thing. But I also had an aunt, and it was my uncle, well, my mother's brother's wife. So she wasn't blood. I had an aunt who, any time I went over to her house, she would have a fantasy novel, yay big. She'd have two or three sitting on her coffee table or whatever, and she was reading all of them at the same time. And I couldn't fathom at the time, I don't know, I was maybe eight, nine years old, I couldn't fathom anybody reading more than one book at a time. And she taught me how to do it. So I will always be grateful for her. But one of the things that, I was never a huge fantasy buff, I liked fantasy cartoons, like, well, like He-Man and things like that. And I liked the Lord of the Rings movie, the old animated movies, I still love them to this day. I will still watch them from time to time. But she couldn't find anything, she tried the Wheel of Time with me, there was a couple other ones that she tried, I can't remember. She even tried video games like Final Fantasy on the Nintendo, all that stuff, the original Nintendo. I guess I'm dating myself. This is back in the 80s, of course, but she tried several different things, and the only books that stuck were the Elric books. So after a hurricane, if you guys have watched my collector's video about Stephen King, how we lost our entire, my mother's entire first edition collection in a hurricane in 95 in Hurricane Opal. We lost, I lost my Michael Morkock collection back in 95 also. Then about, I want to say about four years ago, roughly I think is about four years ago, I came across an eBay listing with the original six DAW books. I ended up getting all these for under $60 that I was shipping and everything. Then my buddy, Evan's Light, who did the collections, put together the collections, Bad Apples and Dead Roses and Doorbells, Dust, that stuff, he found these for me, the Lancer editions. He's like, hey, you got me interest in these, and I ended up getting them off him. Then the Fortress of the Pearl, I ended up finding a thrift shop for $0.25, so that was lucky. I collect a lot of stuff just for nostalgia, and the reasoning for that is I lost everything I had for almost, I lost 95% of my stuff in 95 to Hurricane Opal, and then I lost the other 5% of the stuff that I had from my childhood. The only thing that survived was my copy of the Green Mile that I bought at Lucky's Grocery Store every single month when we were out in California. But Hurricane Ivan in 2006, I can't remember when it was, but I think maybe 2005, I'm probably completely wrong about those dates, but Hurricane Igor. I always get those too confused, I can't remember, I'm pretty sure it was Ivan, might have been Igor. I don't know, let me know down there in the doobly-doo. But yeah, so I fully expect the comments section to have a joke after joke about Moorcock, about the name Moorcock, so please don't let me down. But yeah, so this was an unexpected collection. If you want to see more stuff like this, because I got loads of stuff that I collect that maybe you guys would never even suspect, unless I've talked about it before. I don't know. But until next time, I have been Ian, you have been Ian, this has been another collection video. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye.