BOOKS!

[lettered]

Everybody's doing that book meme thing. I did it in my head but am lazy. Anyway instead I decided to do some reading lists. Oooh! And you can too! Since I already know the answers to all mine. You could try to make every answer to each question different. That'd be fun.

1. A favorite book!
2. A book that affected you in your YA years.
3. A favorite fantasy novel.
4. A favorite sci fi novel.
5. An awesome book (possibly a favorite) you think not many people around you have heard of/read.
6. A book you own more than one copy of.
7. An author whose every single book you own/will buy.
8. The worst book you've ever read.
9. A book you dislike that lots of other people you know like.
10. The most difficult book you've ever read.
11. Tell me what kind of books your mom reads/read.

12. What have you read so far this year?

13. What are you reading now?

14. What are you reading next? (list! list! You know you want to)



MY ANSWERS
1. A favorite book! Beauty, by Robin McKinley
2. A book that affected you in your YA years. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
3. A favorite fantasy novel. Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gaveril Kay
4. A favorite sci fi novel. Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K LeGuin
5. An awesome book you think not many people around you have heard of/read. They Loved To Laugh, by Kathyrn Worth
6. A book you own more than one copy of. Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
7. An author whose every single book you own/will buy. mistful. Trufax, guys. When I fall I fall hard.
8. The worst book you've ever read. Dunno, but Twilight by Stephenie Meyer is amazing, people.
9. A book you dislike that lots of other people you know like. The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown
10. The most difficult book you've ever read. Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
11. Tell me what kind of books your mom reads/read. Bodice rippers! She likes those ones called things like, Devil's Bride and The Count's Daughter. There should be a book with a woman scantily clad and fainting into the arms of the Count on front, and inside he should say things like "ONE heaving bosom, AH AH AH", "THREE confines of his pants, AH AH AH", "TWO crystal gazes AHAHAH".

12. What have you read so far this year? OOOH.
italicized means unfinished!

Against The Day, Thomas Pynchon (1)
The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman (2)
The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman (3)
The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman (4)
Dog's Body, Diana Wynne Jones (5)
Fire and Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones (6)
White As Snow, Tanith Lee (7)
Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell (8)
Twilight, Stephenie Meyer (9)
North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell (10)
Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler (11)
Physics of the Impossible, Michio Kaku (12)
Warrior's Apprentice, Lois McMaster Bujold (13)
New Moon, Stephenie Meyer (14)
The Drowned Maiden's Hair, Laura Amy Schiltz (15)
Spin, Robert Charles Wilson (16)
Of Human Bondage, Somerset Maugham (17)
American Gods, Neil Gaiman (18)
Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer (19)
Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer (20)

13. What are you reading now? Shadow Of the Torturer, Gene Wolf (21)

14. What are you reading next?

Claw of the Conciliator, Gene Wolfe (22)
The Vor Game, Lois McMaster Bujold (23)
The Summing Up, Somerset Maugham (24)
Ceteganda, Lois McMaster Bujold (25)
Days of Disco (26)
Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones (27)
Ysabel, Guy Gaveril Kay (28)
Moby Dick, Hermann Melville (29)
Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog, Ysabeau S. Wilce (30)
A Monstrous Regiment of Women, Laurie R. King (31)
Georgette Heyer
Dorothy L. Sayers
Hexwood, Diana Wynne Jones (pending my_daroga's opinion) (27)
The Corrections, Johnathan Franzen (28)
Locksley, Nicholas Chase (29)
Mystery At The Opera House (30)
The Worthing Chronicle, Orson Scott Card (31)
Night Magic, Charlotte Vale Allen (32)
Empire of the Stars, Arthur I Miller (34)
The Great War for Civilization, Robert Fisk (35)
Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas R Hofstader (36)
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrill, Susanna Clark (37)
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy (40)
Horation Hornblower, C.S. Forester (41, 42, 43)
The Hours, Michael Cunningham (44)
Dune: House Atreides, Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson (45)
She, H. Rider Haggard (46)
Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens (47)
Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess (48)
Brave New World, Huxley (49)
Like Water For Chocolate (in Spanish!), Laura Esquivel (50)

Comments

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Jane Eyre will always be the book that means the most to me, even if I've since found books that are "better".

I'm reading Warrior's Apprentice because mistful made it sound so cool. Reading it actually feels sort of like reading Maya's!Draco as a dwarf in space; they are amazingly similar characters. I also picked up Diana Wynne Jones partly because Maya said she was cool and my housemate says she's awesome. I highly recommend you start with Dog's Body. And then don't read the last H/D fic I wrote for hd_inspired and didn't post about here because I was too unhappy with it (it's a take off of Dog's Body). Though for you, you're going to fall head over heels in love with Fire and Hemlock.

Laurie King was a rec from the same housemate. The first one in the series is fun, and I think you'll quite like the main character and King's rendition of Holmes. I don't dote on the plot, but then I don't like mysteries.

I'd never heard of Bujold before, which I think goes to show I hang around...er, different people, with the exception of my housemates. My whole family quite liked the Da Vinci Code.

I'm trying to make my way through the Russians because I love Dostoevsky. If you've never touched the Russians, you should go read Dostoevsky's The Idiot. (You should also watch the movie Onegin if you haven't, because Ralph Fiennes wears a corset, but I haven't gotten around to Pushkin yet.) Crime and Punishment is good, but no one is lovable and the plot isn't to be spoken of. I'm sure The Brothers Karamazov is all very fine because it's Dostoevsky's ideas which are so interesting, but it really plods. The Underground Man is nice for a short read, and maybe you should try it because if you hate it you'll hate everything else, but The Idiot has one of my favorite characters in literature ever.

[stultiloquentia.livejournal.com]

That is the most useful rundown of the Russians anyone's ever provided. My heartfelt thanks. I'll go grab _The Idiot_ from the library. (One of the major disadvantages of having grown up and left the nest is having to walk more than 30 feet to find any given classic of Western literature (and a lot of other unbelievably weird crap besides).)

I will add your other recs to my list. My Bujold is a hoot. (I started with _A Civil Campaign_, mostly because it was there.)

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Well, Dostoevsky anyway. I took a class on him, but of course they don't tell you this stuff. It's all "ooh C&P" this and "ahh TBK" that.

Now you do your recs list. Hop to it, woman. This isn't just a house of fun for all!