What to Read While Waiting

[Tsakaki]

O.o oh, wow...I really didn't expect this to get so many responses! I've tried starting threads like this before on other sites with no hits, then again, they were general community sites, and not full of people who love books.

Sorry I haven't been back since, life got hectic.

I appreciate all of the suggestions (though I haven't been through them all yet...that was a lot of posts.)

Hmm, I'm not a fan of VC Andrews, and I've heard of the Flowers in the Attic series before, I'm sure it's good, but from what I've heard, it's really not my thing.

Kathy Li: a lot of those sound great, I'll definitely have to check them out. Especially the older ones, I love older fantasy.
I know the Feline set of YW books seems logical, but I'm really not a big fan of animals as lead characters.

Wow, I don't think I can manage to reply to everyone, but I appreciate it greatly! And everyone else feel free to ask for recommendations too.

[Lazy Leopard]

Pern and, you know... Star Wars

...and, to be honest, a good chunk of other fantasy and SF. Eragon is chock full of pastiche from other stories. About the only other book I've read that borrowed so much from so many other stories is Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, and it doesn't pretend to be anything other than a parody.

...and talking of Terry Pratchett, as well as his Discworld stories (at least some of which have been mentioned above) there's also Diggers, Truckers and Wings which are a good laugh, and Nation, which is... different...

[Kathy Li]

Oh, yes. McCaffrey and the Pern books. If you like those, there are at least three other series I know of that you may want to try.

Louise Marley: The Nevya Trilogy. Sing the Light, Sing the Warmth, and Receive the Gift, with the followup YA novel, Singer in the Snow. Oh-so-totally Harper Hall derived. The Cantors and Cantrixes of Nevya focus their psi ability through music to bring light and warmth to a world locked in winter. And boyoboy does Marley know her music, having been a professional concert and opera singer.

Sharon Shinn: Archangel. It's Dragonflight with angels instead of dragons. Seriously. The sequel books in the Samaria series aren't quite up to the same level, but are entertaining nonetheless.

Naomi Novik: The Temeraire series. A mix of Napoleonic naval fiction and dragons, most people are calling it O'Brian crossed with McCaffrey. I'm actually a little disappointed in how the dragons are often written more as aircraft than as beasts, (and there are some "Chinese" bits that just made me spit), but overall, one helluva fun series.

Hmmmm. Old Fantasy. Well, here's a few I love:

J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (obviously). This one you know.

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy: Titus Groan is the first one. If you can make it through the first 100 pages, you're in. But this one isn't for everyone. Exceedingly weird and gothic and long-winded, this was a contemporary book to LotR, it gives you a wider view of what was out there at the time.

Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany. The King of Elfland's Daughter. From the generation before Tolkien. You could also include authors like James Branch Cabell ("Cabell's far and away my favourite forgotten American writer "--Neil Gaiman), Hope Mirrlees, Ernest Bramah (whom Dorothy L. Sayers loved enough to have Harriet quote some to Peter when they first meet, at which he instantly proclaims "And if you can quote Kai Lung, we should certainly get on together."), George Macdonald, and (DD's fave) E.R. Eddison in this list. Basically, just perusing the list of books from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series are likely to get you some good ones. Ballantine had published LotR; ended up with a runaway hit on their hands, and Lin Carter was then asked to find some more similar stuff. And he did.

Thorne Smith. Topper, Night Life of the Gods, and Stray Lamb are my faves. Usually about some kind of supernatural being taking some poor trapped stuffy little soul out and getting him boozed up and---whoops. Maybe more R-rated than I should be recommending here.

Peter S. Beagle. The Last Unicorn. I couldn't imagine being a fantasy fan without having read Peter S. Beagle, but that might just be me.

T.H. White's Once and Future King, again, you know this one.

I like reading old books. I'm with William Hazlitt on this one. "If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three hundred years ago...."

chocolate101--you forgot the most important reason folks here would be interested in Wizards, Inc.--it's got DD's short story, "Theobroma" in it.