Trying to get lost in a good book

[jadesfire]

In 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!

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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

Comments

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

I'll umpteenth The Dresden Files.

For one of fiction's oldest adventure stories, "The Last of the Mohicans" by James Fenimore Cooper, which is set during the French and Indian War. Once you get used to how it's written, it's really quite gripping.

If you like gritty detective fiction, Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder series is the best. My favorite is "Eight Million Ways to Die," in which Matt is struggling to solve a series of murders and get his alcoholism under control. Some of the others in the series are way too violent, but it all feels realistic in that one, which is set during New York City's fiscal crisis of 30-some years ago.

Lawrence Block also writes an amusing caper-type detective series about a book dealer who moonlights as a burglar. All the titles begin with "The Burglar Who."

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

Oh, I never would have thought of 'The Last of the Mohicans'. Style doesn't bother me if the story is good. The book I'm reading at the moment is 1st person present and written in a sort of dialect, but I'm loving it.

I used to be on Lawrence Block's newsletter! I've read all the Burglar books (like Amelia Peabody, they get a bit repetitive after a while) - I think The Burglar In The Library is my favourite - but haven't really attempted the Matthew Scudder series. Will give it a look, thanks :D