Books

[Wilf]

Originally posted by kli6:
... But I'd also say that Dark Lord of Derkholm also holds up beautifully, satire aside. There's a plot, there are characters and you care about both the people and what happens to them. And Year of the Griffin certainly isn't quite as jokey as Dark Lord of Derkholm. It is, also, of course, the perfect book to hand to folks who lament that we won't be following Harry Potter to university.

I've said this before, but... Year of the Griffin! Love it! Most read book I have! Go and read it! Using too many exclmation marks!

Ahem... back to the orginal reason for my post. I've recently discovered and finsihed reading Jasper fforde's Thursday Next series. I was gien the first one (The Eyre Affair) (try saying that ten times quickly) as a present, and ended up buying the next three... if you are nto familiar with them, they are mix of fantasy/sci-fi/thriller/crime... if you like PTerry, you'll probably like these.

In other book news, arriving home from uni with all the books I have bought over the academic year has resulted in me running out of shelf space... again. When I get a place of my own, I will need 20' of shelving just to house what I currently own. A trip to Ikea may be required

[AlidaART]

Thursday Next! That's what I meant to look for last time I was at the bookstore! Damn.

Huh. I think my most-read book is Franny Billingsley's The Folk Keeper. Atmospheric, powerful, interesting, lyrical, and yet it never loses the charm of a first read. Short and sweet and, along with Patricia McKillip's The Changeling Sea, pretty much The Perfect Book, in my humble opinion.

[bluesalamanders]

Hmm, books.

My parents have decided to go through all of their old books and get rid of a lot of them. They have a bunch of old scifi (and maybe a few other things) that I'm going to claim for myself. I'm not sure they even know what all books they have anymore.

This will definitely call for more bookshelves.

Anna~

[meteorite]

Sean, William Gibson is one of the "founding fathers" of the cyberpunk genre. Some of his stuff is a little dated, but enjoyable nonetheless. Another cyberpunk writer that has his ups and downs is Neal Stephenson (please to note the quote ). Lately he's been into historical fantasy, but his first well-known cyberpunk novel (and, IMHO, his best so far) is Snow Crash.

Wilf, have you seen The Big Over Easy? It's set in the same world as the Thursday Next books. I gave it to my father-in-law, and he enjoyed it immensely. Hard-boiled detective novel, which is a hoot, considering the victim is Humpty-Dumpty.

[Kathy Li]

Since I know we've got a couple of Discworld fans here, I thought I might mention that Amazon is now listing Wintersmith (US, UK) the third Tiffany Aching book. Sept. 28 for the UK, Oct. 1 for the US.

The US blurb reads:

At 9, Tiffany Aching defeated the cruel Queen of Fairyland.

At 11, she battled an ancient body-stealing evil.

At 13, Tiffany faces a new challenge: a boy. And boys can be a bit of a problem when you're thirteen…

But the Wintersmith isn't exactly a boy. He is Winter itself—snow, gales, icicles—all of it. When he has a crush on Tiffany, he may make her roses out of ice, but his nature is blizzards and avalanches. And he wants Tiffany to stay in his gleaming, frozen world. Forever.

Tiffany will need all her cunning to make it to Spring. She'll also need her friends, from junior witches to the legendary Granny Weatherwax. They—

Crivens! Tiffany will need the Wee Free Men too! She'll have the help of the bravest, toughest, smelliest pictsies ever to be banished from Fairyland—whether she wants it or not.

It's going to be a cold, cold season, because if Tiffany doesn't survive until Spring—

—Spring won't come.

I'm definitely looking forward to this.

[Kathy Li]

Goddamnit. We've lost Mike Ford (aka John M. Ford). (sigh). Making Light is ground zero for discussion of same. (sigh). I'm going to miss him. Minneapolis conventions won't be the same without him.

So, in his memory, I will now recommend two of his books: the recent Tor collection Heat of Fusion and his Star Trek novel, How Much For Just the Planet.

The Heat of Fusion contains a lot of his poems. Mike could write blank verse the way most people breathe. And he'd build up something, either based on Shakespeare, or popular songs, or classical literature, and come up with something wholly startling and beautiful. Sometimes convulsingingly funny as well. You have to be pretty well read to "get" some of his pieces, but that shouldn't be a problem for this board.

He wrote two Star Trek novels, and is infamous for both of them making the "don't do this again" rules for Star Trek novels. It's because Mike was a genius, and did things nobody else would ever think of doing. The Final Reflection was a Klingon-POV trek novel, written before ST:TNG began airing.

But the masterpiece you really need to read is How Much For Just the Planet?, because it combines some pretty spectacular things like Gilbert & Sullivan, silent comedy, old movies, musical theatre, and Star Trek, but also because DD herself gets a supporting role in the fun (her character is "Princess DeeDee"; her husband Peter Morwood shows up as "Peter Blackwood"). And if you squint hard, and can do anagrams, you'll find Neil Gaiman in there, as well. (Also Pamela Dean, but she's not anagrammed. She's just tartar sauce splattered).

If you decide you'd like to read more John M. Ford after this, I have to say that he never wrote the same thing twice. If you like Heinlein juveniles, try Growing Up Weightless which is about kids on a lunar colony. If you like high fantasy and vampires and alternate history, then The Dragon Waiting will be your cup of tea. If you enjoy the espionage books of Anthony Price, then you'll want to find Scholars of Night. If you want to see what cyberpunk was like a decade before William Gibson, try Web of Angels. It's all good reading.

Against Entropy

[Dragon Writer]

wow...good poem...What the heck do you mean you LOST him though? How do you loose someone...oh well...anyways, like i said, nice poem, and altogether very fitting for this site...

[Kathy Li]

YR, we're not sure exactly how we lost him, as he had so many health problems and never expected to live past 40 (he made it to 49), but he died sometime Sunday night/Monday morning.

And yeah, his poetry is amazing. I link to "Troy the Movie", and "110 Stories", and "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station. Mike wrote blank verse the way most people breathe.

DD has put up an introduction she wrote for his GoH appearance at Boskone on Out of Ambit.

And Neil Gaiman has put up his introduction to the GoH book (From the End of the Twentieth Century) for the same Boskone.

[Dragon Writer]

alright, alright... i hadn't even heard of the guy, really, so excuse me for not knowing...besides, when pm brought it up in chat afterwards, no one else knew what you meant either...

[calliope]

But my favorite-ever historical adventure writer is Rafael Sabatini (Scaramouche, Captain Blood, The Black Swan, The Sea Hawk): great history, great storytelling, rousing characters. Lots of fun. (kli6)

He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Not to mention one of the best opening lines ever, huh? I loved that. My pet history subject is the French revolution, so I'd suggest any of the lit from/about that era.

Fantasy? I just saw Neil Gaiman on the page somewhere (no, Sandman is not where my name's from ) and I love Stardust. I remember meteorite suggesting The Eyre Affair

[mouse]

Dunno what youre talking about but I do like books by Dean Koonts, he wrote fear nothing and sieze the night and false memory, and I absolutely love those books.

~~~mousewashere~~~
"im other news, i got hit with a flying cow....What? STOP LAUGHING!"

[Kathy Li]

Originally posted by calliope:
He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
Not to mention one of the best opening lines ever, huh?

Yup. Soooo frustrating about how the translator for Perez-Reverte's The Dumas Club just retranslated the line from Spanish and bungled the quotation. (sigh). Not to mention half a dozen other things... (muffled sound of annoyance).

I loved that. My pet history subject is the French revolution, so I'd suggest any of the lit from/about that era.

Well, there's a sequel to Scaramouche you may want to try and hunt up. It's called Scaramouche the King-Maker.

Fantasy? I just saw Neil Gaiman on the page somewhere (no, Sandman is not where my name's from ) and I love Stardust.

The movie looks like it is going to rock. Hard.

[kk]

Anyone read Narnia??!!

[meteorite]

From the other side of the English Channel...

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth!" Dr. Maturin, H.M.S Surprise

If you're feeling in the mood for some chewy naval fiction set in the Napoleonic Era, I suggest...
Patrick O'Brien
Dudley Pope
Alexander Kent
Dewey Lambkin
and of course the father of them all, Forester.

...set staysails and topsails...

[Angel_Star]

KK, Kate, m'dear, please try to not do one-liners. We try to make every post full of content so as to not waste DD's money.

We had to read To Kill a Mockingbird for English. I actually thought that it was pretty good. Then again, I'm one of the few people at my school who usually enjoys the summer reading books.

I need to have The Pearl read in a couple weeks. It's really short, but I haven't even started yet, and I have another book to read for Bible and a book I'm reading for the fun of it. I'm re-reading WoT...er...Wheel of Time. I think I've already said that, but it's been a while. I've been put on hold until I find the time I need to finish the...fourth one...I think that's the one I'm on.

I read the Narnia books in...fourth grade? I think we read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in class that year. Then I got hooked...and read through the entire series. I don't remember them much, beyond what I saw in the movie.