Trying to get lost in a good book
Feb. 11th, 2009 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jadesfireIn the past 24 hours, I have offered comfort to friends in the form of an LOL cat and a picture of a cow. This possibly says something about my flist, and possibly says something about me. Possibly both.
While I think of it, and before I get to the point of this post (yes, I have one :P), Morocco postcards are starting to arrive in various locations around the world. The observant among you will have noticed that many of them have British stamps on them. Sadly, although I could afford to buy 30 postcards in Marrakech, I couldn't afford the high postage costs to get them where they needed to go, so many of them came from the UK. Every single one was written in Morocco though, so it's only the stamps you've been cheated of. Sorry about that, but needs must.
Anyway, the point of this post was to pick your brains, since I seem to have used all mine up. My evidence for this is that while I remembered to plug my MP3 player in to charge overnight, because the battery is on its last legs and needs daily charging, I forgot to put said battery into the player. I swear, if I had a brain, I'd be dangerous.
Anyanyway, I currently have a £25 Blackwell's voucher burning a hole in my wallet, and don't have a clue what to buy with it. Most books I want, I can get from my local library for a maximum of 80p reservation fee, plus the fines when I don't finish them and forget to take them back. I'm much less well read in classic literature than I am in classical literature, mostly because Jane Austen and I don't get on, and I don't have the stamina for Dickens. So tell me, dear friendslist, what should I buy with my shiny shiny gift card? I'm looking for books that I'll read over and over again, that I won't mind still having on my bookshelf in ten years time. My tastes tend to the adventure end of the spectrum, with comic leanings nice but not compulsory. Having tried various 'high fantasy' classics, I don't think they're for me, and I quite enjoy sci-fi and fantasy that's more of a sideways look at life than Epic Quest.
Any thoughts? Anything that you cannot believe I haven't read? Because I probably haven't. Anything that's going to set me off on the kind of love affair I had with Amelia Peabody until the cast of the books got too big and the stories got sacrificed to it? I'm a completist, so long series are definitely my kind of thing, as well as fat novels that I can get lost in completely.
Thank you!
ETA Suggestions so far (because apparently my flist doesn't think I need food, sleep or work):
ETA2: OH GOOD GRIEF, PEOPLE, I GET IT! Enough with the Dresden Files already ;) Who am I to argue? *adds to shopping cart*
- The Dresden Files "Storm Front" [which have just been fourthed so yes, okay, I think I'm getting these!]
- The Cat Who... books
- Good Omens (which I think we own...)
- Water for Elephants
- The Interpretation of Murder
- Discworld novels (recommended to me, now I'm recommending them to everyone else!)
- Nation (wait for paperback)
- Felix Castor novels by Mike Carey "The Devil You Know"
- Tad Williams' 'Otherland series'
- Ian Irvine's 'The View From The Mirror' series
- Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels
- The Owl Service, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner
- Mercedes Lackey
- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman [a longstanding favourite]
- Sebastian and Belladonna by Anne Bishop
- Court of the Midnight King by Freda Warrington
- "The Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper
- The Matthew Scudder novels by Lawrence Block
- Mary Stewart's Merlin novels: The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment and The Wicked Day
- Earthsea Quartet
- The Dark is Rising
- The Chronicles of Prydain
- Sharon Shinn's 'Angels'
- Diane Duanne
- Diana Wynne Jones
- Patricia McKillip
While I think of it, and before I get to the point of this post (yes, I have one :P), Morocco postcards are starting to arrive in various locations around the world. The observant among you will have noticed that many of them have British stamps on them. Sadly, although I could afford to buy 30 postcards in Marrakech, I couldn't afford the high postage costs to get them where they needed to go, so many of them came from the UK. Every single one was written in Morocco though, so it's only the stamps you've been cheated of. Sorry about that, but needs must.
Anyway, the point of this post was to pick your brains, since I seem to have used all mine up. My evidence for this is that while I remembered to plug my MP3 player in to charge overnight, because the battery is on its last legs and needs daily charging, I forgot to put said battery into the player. I swear, if I had a brain, I'd be dangerous.
Anyanyway, I currently have a £25 Blackwell's voucher burning a hole in my wallet, and don't have a clue what to buy with it. Most books I want, I can get from my local library for a maximum of 80p reservation fee, plus the fines when I don't finish them and forget to take them back. I'm much less well read in classic literature than I am in classical literature, mostly because Jane Austen and I don't get on, and I don't have the stamina for Dickens. So tell me, dear friendslist, what should I buy with my shiny shiny gift card? I'm looking for books that I'll read over and over again, that I won't mind still having on my bookshelf in ten years time. My tastes tend to the adventure end of the spectrum, with comic leanings nice but not compulsory. Having tried various 'high fantasy' classics, I don't think they're for me, and I quite enjoy sci-fi and fantasy that's more of a sideways look at life than Epic Quest.
Any thoughts? Anything that you cannot believe I haven't read? Because I probably haven't. Anything that's going to set me off on the kind of love affair I had with Amelia Peabody until the cast of the books got too big and the stories got sacrificed to it? I'm a completist, so long series are definitely my kind of thing, as well as fat novels that I can get lost in completely.
Thank you!
ETA Suggestions so far (because apparently my flist doesn't think I need food, sleep or work):
ETA2: OH GOOD GRIEF, PEOPLE, I GET IT! Enough with the Dresden Files already ;) Who am I to argue? *adds to shopping cart*
- The Dresden Files "Storm Front" [which have just been fourthed so yes, okay, I think I'm getting these!]
- The Cat Who... books
- Good Omens (which I think we own...)
- Water for Elephants
- The Interpretation of Murder
- Discworld novels (recommended to me, now I'm recommending them to everyone else!)
- Nation (wait for paperback)
- Felix Castor novels by Mike Carey "The Devil You Know"
- Tad Williams' 'Otherland series'
- Ian Irvine's 'The View From The Mirror' series
- Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels
- The Owl Service, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner
- Mercedes Lackey
- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman [a longstanding favourite]
- Sebastian and Belladonna by Anne Bishop
- Court of the Midnight King by Freda Warrington
- "The Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper
- The Matthew Scudder novels by Lawrence Block
- Mary Stewart's Merlin novels: The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment and The Wicked Day
- Earthsea Quartet
- The Dark is Rising
- The Chronicles of Prydain
- Sharon Shinn's 'Angels'
- Diane Duanne
- Diana Wynne Jones
- Patricia McKillip
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-11 03:10 pm (UTC)Books! I was just talking about the Dresden Files with
Urban fantasy, up to 10 volumes now (#11 coming in April!), and they are marvels of world- and character building. ♥ Funny and action-packed, about a modern day wizard - Harry! - in Chicago. As the series progresses, Harry gets all sorts of wonderful friends and partners and acquaintances and family and pets of all stripes. He starts out as a lone wolf, which I'm often kind of meh about, but he does have an ally and friend in the female cop Murphy. And then he meets other people, or they show up from his past, and it's quite, quite sweet and lovely and always a fun ride!
The first one is called "Storm Front", and they are in order on the author's page. (He also does vignettes and side novellas about the characters, which are mostly just an excuse to write friendship-laden snippets of adorable, if you ask me. ♥)
So~. I probably have more stuff I can recommend, and you might have read these already, but - hopefully that's of some help? ♥
(PS - if you like James Marsters, several volumes of The Dresden Files have been read by him. To which I can just say yes please, and I wish I had copies of the audiobooks around, but I don't...)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-11 03:20 pm (UTC)Ooh, I hadn't thought of that. I've heard a lot about the Dresden Files but it never occurred to me to, you know. buy them ;) I'll put them on my list, thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-11 03:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-11 03:42 pm (UTC)Ooh, and I have something to add to your ever-growing list. I'm almost finished The Knife of Never Letting Go (http://www.amazon.com/Knife-Never-Letting-Go-Walking/dp/0763639311/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234366925&sr=8-1). Technically it's YA (which I know you often like) but... Well. While I *was* reading stuff like that at 14, it was probably a good job my mother didn't know about it ;) Anyway, the style takes a bit of getting used to, but the story's worth it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-11 03:51 pm (UTC)Other recommendations - Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, if you haven't read it (the first book is "His Majesty's Dragon"; they're about the Napoleonic wars .... with dragons!, and there are five books out). And I really enjoy Tobias Buckell's steampunk-scifi books; they're more stand-alones in the same universe than a series, but they do build on each other and re-use characters from previous books; the first one is Crystal Rain.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-11 03:55 pm (UTC)Steampunk is the kind of thing I've meant to really try for a while. *adds to list*
This is perfect! I usually have this guilt-thing about only buying 'classics' when I enjoy these kinds of books so much more. For this voucher, I'm determined to put the guilt aside! Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-11 03:59 pm (UTC)Something that may tickle you - I discovered the Dresden Files through the flist in the first place! Thank you
Oh and I go my postcard, thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-11 04:02 pm (UTC)I don't read much while I'm trying to write - I read a lot over Christmas, but am just picking up things in dribs and drabs at the moment. It'd be nice to have something to get stuck into thought :) Thanks!
and yay!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-11 04:03 pm (UTC)If you liked those, then you might also like to try Mike Carey's Felix Castor novels (Starting with The Devil You Know), which are about a freelance PI/exorcist in a London where ghosts, demons and the magical are very real. I've only read one, myself, but I think there are three volumes out so far. I pretty much bought it because I loved Mike Carey's Lucifer comics (also to be recommended, possibly), but the similarities between this and the Dresden Files is pretty striking. In a good way.
XWA
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-11 04:09 pm (UTC)