It's too early to say Scholar
... but I can safely consider myself an official Arthurian aficionado* with my seventh Arthurian book this year, King Arthur: Tales of the Round Table by Andrew Lang. You may have heard of him (Lang, not Arthur though of course you know of him too) through his well known collection of fairy tales and folklore entitled Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Tales.** As the self-explanatory title indicates, 'King Arthur' covers stories about the adventures of the members of the Round Table (i.e. Arthur's knights). I've got two more stories to read before I'm finished and those are the ones I'm looking forward to the least: "Lancelot and Guevevere" and "The End of It All". I've never liked Lancelot due to his adultery with the queen, which ended up being the downfall of Camelot so I've shied away from him in literature. Or more appropriately, traditional Arthurian literature on the whole. I really can't stand this glorification of 'the goodliest knight in the world' who in general (though I'll admit grudgingly perhaps not so undeserved) has an ego the size of Camelot. This is my first encounter with traditional Arthurian tales and unfortunately I doubt it'll be my last. I suppose a true Arthurian fanatic can't not read the Malory, Pyle and Tennyson along with others*** though I can say I've read White's The Once and Future King. (It's actually one of the earliest ones I've read - 10th grade, picked for a project.) Lang's will probably be my last on the topic for this year. There are way too many books about King Arthur and I think I've reached my saturation point for now. I have several books in my small collection that I haven't read yet (granted half of them were bought this year) and I'll wait till next year to dabble some more.
~~links are in blue. Titles that are not links are italicized which means they'll appear blue also except, well, in italics~~
~~~ *Proud owner of 14 books on Arthurian legend :D
**As seen in this sample of titles: "The Blue Fairy Book" all the way to "The Lilac Fairy Book". Yes, I realize the technical range between blue and lilac is not that large but there are a total of 12 books in the series including crimson (and red though aren't they the same thing?) and violet, yellow, etc. What interests me most is the 'Brown' book - can you imagine a fairy tale book called "Brown"?
***Hell, even Steinbeck seems to have jumped the bandwagon with his The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
~~links are in blue. Titles that are not links are italicized which means they'll appear blue also except, well, in italics~~
~~~ *Proud owner of 14 books on Arthurian legend :D
**As seen in this sample of titles: "The Blue Fairy Book" all the way to "The Lilac Fairy Book". Yes, I realize the technical range between blue and lilac is not that large but there are a total of 12 books in the series including crimson (and red though aren't they the same thing?) and violet, yellow, etc. What interests me most is the 'Brown' book - can you imagine a fairy tale book called "Brown"?
***Hell, even Steinbeck seems to have jumped the bandwagon with his The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights