Wonderful book. White's characters are so alive it makes me want to cry. ( )

This is an incredibly good book. I am writing this review while the impression is still vivid, or should I say, while i'm still in awe. 20 minutes have not yet passed since I closed it. So beware, chances are that this review might turn out complete rubbish.

The book is about questions, I think. Those so-called big philosophic questions you start to ask yourself while you are a kid - though you would not have called them philosophic back then. Naturally, while you are small you do not worry too much about what it is all about: You will surely find the answers as you grow up. And then you get older, and you don't. And the questions multiply and become more and more important, as you are struggling to make the right decisions. How much it would help you to find an answer, even if it were but for one of them! Still, the more you learn and watch and listen, everything only gets more complex, continuously.

So you find that living a life is playing a game without knowing the rules. And you try to just be friends with the idea that you won't ever find any real answer, or discover any "pure" truth, and that answers may not even be relevant. Maybe you can live, without knowing exactly what's the idea of it. All the while assuming that you are not among the lucky ones who can content thenselves with the somewhat mysterous equation that "life is its own meaning".

Ah, the book. Yes. It is about might, and society, and war and love, and youth and age, about doing the right thing, candles in the wind, passing-on-the-parcel and what-not, and about any human emotion you could think of. Just like every other good book, actually. Except that this one is better. The Once And Future King is impressively well written, as absorbing as it gets and very often very funny. By the way, this is where J.K.Rowling drew some of her inspiration from. A book I would -carefully- compare it to is: Robert M. Pirsig's Motorcycle Diaries.

I should finally mention that The Once And Future King is, as the title hints to, nothing else than story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Anyway! ( )

The Once and Future King by T.H. White (1996) ( )

This saga of Arthur was beautiful. A fine melding of fantasy/adventure and light philosophy with a keen insight of human nature. I read this during my early college years and recall purchasing it as a gift for a friend as it made such an impression. The most memorable parts for me were the chapters (from The sword in the Stone) in which Merlin instills into Arthur the value of education. ( )

Starts off questionable, a few times I felt like quitting. I'm glad I didnt because by the last book it ascends into the realm of greatness. ( )