Books

[Jacob ~ Asphorune or Alomonni]

List of random books (and series) that I like/love or have had an affect on me.

Artemis Fowl
Harry Potter
Lost Years of Merlin
Communist Manifesto
The Prince
Divinia Commedia (Divine Comedy)
Deltora Quest
The BIBLE!!!!
Sun Bin's (&/or rather/aswell Tzu's)Art of War
24 Strategies
Oliver Twist
A Collection of Grimm's Complete Fairy-tales
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
The Water Wheel
The Giver
Wheel of Time (OMG, ROBERT JORDAN, WHY DID YOU DIE?!!?!?!? )
Plato's Republic
The Odyssey
Little Red Book ( a great laugh)
Collection of Confuscian Teachings
Troll Fell
The Supernaturalists
Young Wizards (obviously <3 )
Magician series (Yay for Pug the uber magician!)
Abarat (CLIVE BARKER, I LOVE YOUR ART! )
Bartimaeous Trilogy
Island of Doctor Moreau
The Hobbit
Dragon Rider
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Obsidian Chronicles (KICK ASS SERIES)
yeah. It's past midnight and I'm too tired to think of the rest so... that's all. o.o

[eowyngirl]

I loooove Diana Wynne Jones!! I hate that they're compared to Harry Potter, because I'm a huge HP fan and would like to be able to enjoy books without being forced to compare them to Harry Potter. *sigh* Ah well. Marketing.

Oh, and Garrett, I registered in the book group under the name eowyngirl.

[Emi]

Oh, thanks Garrett for, um, making it for us!

And I found out the author... It's Frewin Jones. I couldn't remember the name because it was so different. Any way, Dorotheia is right. I love that book. I want to start reading other stories... but I don't know where to start!

[AlidaART]

Heh, not sure what the seven brothers books are, but I'm pretty certain Diana Wynne Jones didn't write them. Um, her most famous series is probably the Chrestomanci books. They're usually marketed as "if your kid loved Harry Potter, they'll love Diana Wynne Jones!" and do concern young wizards living in a castle (though they predate HP by about twenty years). She also wrote Howl's Moving Castle, which was made into a movie by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki about two years ago.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Speaking of Pyramids, has anyone else read David Macaulay's books? I got an autographed copy of Pyramid back when it came out, and later on stood in line for The Way Things Work. He didn't just sign the books: he sketched a wooly mammoth for everyone! :-)

He gave a talk at the TED conference a while back: it's pretty neat. http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/215

(And going a bit off-topic, check out this other TED "talk", where a young pianist improvises her performance on the fly.)

[vashmata]

Dianna Wynne Jones, Dianna Wynne Jones... She did the seven brothers books, right? I finished the first one.
Well, I finished Pyramids, and the only books by Terry Pratchett that I can read (because the others wouldn't make sense if I just read them now) aren't directly available to me, so I guess I'll finish reading my "Bathroom Reader".

[dorotheia]

Naw....Don't confuse me! The Faerie Path books are Frewin Jones (newer books, I think). With the wispy, pastel-colored faery on the covers. Right? Haven't read those yet (though obviously I recognize them...)
I really think this post is too small, but I just couldn't let a misnomer go by.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Diana Wynne Jones, by any chance?

When you say "that blog thing", do you mean ywnetbookclub? That's a program called phpBB. It's open-source, so anyone can download it for free and modify it, if necessary, but I just did ordinary configuration for it. (And my webhost did a lot of it for me, with their one-click (yeah right) install.)

[Emi]

Garrett, I signed under Emi. Um, so did you make up that blog thing? That's pretty cool.

I've just finished the Faerie Path books. Can't remember the author... last name's Jones?? But it's really good. I need to start finding least expensive books.

[Dragon Writer]

*has joined under the name Dragon Writer* I need to enter a book club. Even if it IS only on line...(now to find one in my own state)

Kli: um...welcome?

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Hey, does anyone want to start a book club, where we all read the same book and then discuss it?

I just opened up another board at http://blog.donnael.com/ywnetbookclub/ so we don't waste Diane's bandwidth talking about _other_ authors. :-)

[Kathy Li]

Rick--to me "small" is a con where if you're sitting watching a panel, and you raise your hand to ask a question, you get called on by your first name (e.g., Fourth Street Fantasy Fair; Fiddler's Green). But your criteria works pretty well for me, too. I remember being surprised as hell the first year that I actually missed seeing someone I expected to at Comic-Con. These days, though, you have to bring the cellphone and make appointments with very specific meeting locales ("Ok. Under the giant inflatable Pikachu at 2:15.")

YR: I have a Tamora Pierce that's been sitting on my shelf for way too long. Thanks for reminding me I need to get around to it.

I just started the second "Toby Bishop" (aka Louise Marley) winged-horse novel. But I'm also still working my way through those Pendergast books (I'm on the last one, Wheel of Darkness--it's different from the others because it's set on board a cruise ship, so it's more of a locked house mystery.

I also read my first Agatha Christie: Murder With Mirrors. I never much liked her before because I tend to read mysteries for character development, and she doesn't do that. But dang, she's good at putting the puzzle together in plain sight under your nose.

[Dragon Writer]

*has started reading Tamora pierce*
Trickster's choice, is wonderful...&*can't wait to dive into tricker's queen* I'd ask if anyone else has read them, but i know a bunch of people had, making that kind of a stupid question...

[Lazy Leopard]

I figure a small Con is one at which you can reasonably expect to say at least "Hi" to everyone there. A medium-sized one is one where, by the end of the con you can probably recognise everyone without having to read their badges. Large is anything bigger than that.

[Kathy Li]

Woot! Thanks for the heads up on Night Watch! I had no idea that was going on, and I loved the adaptations Robin Brooks did of Mort and Small Gods. Much better than the previous radio adaptations of Discworld books.

Have fun at the Discworld gathering--they've always sounded like a hoot. Your comment about 700 members, though, makes me giggle. But then, my home con is the San Diego Comic-Con and last year, we topped 125,000. So, my values of what constitutes a "big" con are skewed far beyond the norm. When I went to Worldcon in Anaheim, it felt so uncrowded. That'll tell you how far off the beam I am...