Weekly Entertainment

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

Since everyone THREADED LIKE MADMEN yesterday, I'm gonna make this simple.

Book recs: things you've read lately, old favorites, things you can't believe aren't represented in the game, whatever you'd like. Tell me what to reeeeeead.

Comments

[endsthegame]

Oh, I am the worst ever at even reading books. *cough* So all I have is HI THIS GUY'S CANON which everyone already knows.

And comics.

I am of the opinion all should read Cable & Deadpool. And Garth Ennis era Hellblazer. Just putting that out there.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

I liked the Ender's Game books. Then read the Alvin Maker series.

...also, I saw Martian Successor Nadesico which, uh, is certainly interesting if you've read Ender's Game.

As a side note, the first RP I ever played in had a Val and a Peter but no Ender and so I had to go back and reread the book to go '...huh.'

.......and Hellblazer is LOVE. *hearts Conjob everso*

[endsthegame]

I was never a big fan of the Ender's Game sequels, to be honest, but the original book played a significant role in my childhood (and I think that's probably half the reason I wound up apping Cable in the first place, so apping Ender was kind of like coming full-circle).

And, oh, the Wiggin children. I am looking forward to PW like whoa.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

It was one of the very first scifi books I liked. Usually, I stick to fantasy and horror, but I sort of found it while I was needing a book to read and stuck to.

PW?

[endsthegame]

FH's one and only Parents' Weekend.

I had an online friend who took my lack of English book reading seriously and wound up sending me one book he felt I should read every year. Ender's Game was the first, and I loved it like pie.

[first-guardian.livejournal.com]

I've been reading Rosemary Sutcliff again lately. She was my favourite author as a kid and now I've been slowly buying them off of amazon (they released a bunch again after they went out of print for ages). I guess her writing style is old fashioned now, but I still adore it. She manages to just pull you back in time and make everything feel so real.

I reread Frontier Wolf a few weeks back. It was my favourite book and then I started wondering how a character from Ancient Rome would survive in Fandom. *eyes brain*

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

Hey, I've been considering someone from the Codex Alera which is... pretty much a pup from pseudoAncient Rome. Or something.

And old fashioned is cool. ...I have an extended love affair with the Allan Quartermaine books and they're pretty dern old. I love the old coot, and while I have read League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I do vaguely want to kick Mr. Moore in the shins for doing what he did to Allan. Never read Sutcliff. Any recommendations?

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

Heeee PIIIIIE.

[joan-notjane.livejournal.com]

I always recommend Kelley Armstrong's 'Women of the Otherworld' series - where Savannah, Eve & Sean are from. It's an amazing series with lots of strong female characters.

I also recently started on the Rogue Angel series, where Annja is from.

Um... my To Be Read pile is RIDICULOUSLY huge. I'm also really into Jodi Picoult lately. Her books are more serious reads - they deal with really current topics but are so well-crafted.

[unddann]

Christopher Moore, dude. And not just Lamb. (*waves to Biff*) Travis (Practical Demonkeeping) and Tommy (Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck -- the latter of which is NOT Moore's best work) and Tuck (The Island of the Sequined Love Nun) and Theo (Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove) and holy crap, why did almost all his early protagonists have names starting with T? Someone should totally bring in a Sam Hunter from Coyote Blue. Just 'cause the meta would amuse the hell out of me. . . . Fun fact, Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Moore is the only book that ever prompted me to write fan mail to the author.

Anything by Esther Freisner. Seriously, anything.

Douglas Adams is a no-brainer. Elizabeth Peters to get someone non-sci-fi-fantasy-humor on the table. She's romantic-murder-mystery-humor. Robert Rankin, to go back to the absurdist fantasy folks, especially his Brentford Trilogy (all five of them, but he stole that shtick from Adams).

To get more "literary", Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and others). Who I have a new and abiding love for since I read the first part of his non-fiction work Maps and Legends and discovered that he loves genre fiction and especially the archetype of the trickster as much as I do. Tom Robbins I loved for awhile, but then started to get tired of his overly enigmatic metaphors and realized he was just in love with his own far too wordy voice. Of course, it's also possible that Fierce Invalids at Home from Hot Climates just isn't his best work -- I really ought to reread Villa Incognito and Jitterbug Perfume, since those are the ones I fell for him on.

I could probably go on. Scratch that, I could definitely go on, but I have babbled enough.

[first-guardian.livejournal.com]

This is where I hide and be completely clueless as I have never really heard of those books. Well, I heard of 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen', but only by title. *hides*

I would strongely recommend Frontier Wolf, but I think the books people would say to start with is her trilogy starting with The Eagle of the Ninth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eagle_of_the_Ninth), The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers. I liked 'Sun Horse, Moon Horse', The Mark of the Horse Lord, Dawn Wind...

She wrote about 50 books so I could keep going for a while. Most are rather vague in my head, but I'm trying to reread them.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

I love Moore. The vampire books are some of my favorites, though Fluke and Lamb are awesome. ...I have a weakness for anything with Emperor Norton in it.

Robert Rankin! *squeees*

Esther Freisner is a lot of fun and I thought for the longest time I was the only person who really enjoyed her stuff.

Never tried Chabon. Will have to do that sometime.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

H. Rider Haggard. They're really worth a shot. For being from 1885, they're actually pretty forward thinking. And I love Allan himself just for being so damn pragmatic. He's perfectly happy, as a main character, to step BACK and go "...you know, my friend who's like seven feet tall and built like a Viking PROBABLY BETTER for going off to fight; I'll just stick back here and sharpshoot like I'm good at, thanks".

Will have to look into Sutcliff. Sounds iiiinteresting.

Darn it, I had another series of things that are ooo--yes! The Enchanter Books. Which I use all the time to show up my stuffy Tolkienite friend. Loook, say I, it's fantasy from BEFORE Tolkien. Bwaahah.

...Yeah, I'm nuts. Sorry ^_^;

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

I saw the Rogue Angel series but kept putting it down.

Might have to try the Women of the Otherworld.

[raspberryturk]

I have issues with wandering attention, so more often than not, I end up starting a book, making it halfway through, and then putting it down again to collect dust.

But I have gotten through books in the past! Real ones, with words and everything, honest!

Christopher Golden's Of Saints and Shadows totally ate my brain. Because, really, dark, different twists on vampires are just full of shiny. But not sparkly. That's the wrong series entirely.

I'm a sucker for Richard Adams, too. Watership Down and The Plague Dogs, about cute, fuzzy animals though they may be, were both excellent reads. And I might have cried at the end of Plague Dogs. Shh.

Douglas Adams! Give me some Hitchhikers Guide any day of the week, and there's a book I'll breeze through with ease.

And manga. Because it is shiny. Granted, all I've been reading lately is Genju no Seiza. But it's pretty. So ner. *shakes fist*

[unddann]

Heh, I'm not a huge fan of vampires (understatement) so I think it's a pretty good compliment to Bloodsucking Fiends that I managed to actually read the whole thing.

Personally, I think Tommy's solution to vampires is the BEST THING EVER.

I honestly think his earlier work is stronger. I enjoyed Fluke, but not on the same level as Island of the Sequined Love Nun and Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. I still need to read Dirty Job (it's on my shelf, I've started it, I just keep not picking it up again).

If you ever want to see me go into "I took far too many literature and religious studies classes in college for my own good" mode, ask me what I really think of Lamb.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

I am no stranger to this.

I will pick something up, read halfway, and then OO SHINY something else. I have recently grabbed Monster Blood Tattoo as I'm finally done with Tomorrow's Magic (which, OMG, so good, I loved it and how much I want to hug Earl Bedwas must be measured in mega-whatevers). I also have a tendency to start one and then go "...lalala reread something old and familiar." Somehow, reading Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age books required that I go and read the entirity of the Elenium in the middle.

Christopher Golden? Really? ...I've only ever seen him do crappy novelizations. But I'm always willing to give people another shot and I love twists on vampires. *hugs Night Watch, etc to her chest*

Never read Adams.

...I know, I'm a heathen.

What's Genju no Seiza? *is all curious*

ETA: The Watership Down stuff, not Douglas! *HEARTS DOUGLAS ADAMS* *...pops in Key To Time arc now just because she feels the need to*

[unddann]

You know, I still haven't read Watership Down? I should get around to doing that. Of course, I'm the girl who was recommended to read The Phantom Tollbooth in third grade and didn't get around to it until she was 24. . . .

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

...you tempt me. I love lit geeking and I'm always up for religious discussion.

And I'll have to try the earlier stuff.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

You too?

[unddann]

You should most definitely try the earlier stuff. If nothing else, he had such brilliant titles. . . .

The short answer to what I think of Lamb is that the first two-thirds or so of the book are utterly brilliant and wonderful. And then he gets to the stuff covered in the gospels, and Joshua loses all sense of personality he had in the rest of the book as Moore starts backpedaling like mad to make sure he doesn't piss off any Christians.

[unddann]

Yep. I actually missed out on a lot of books by wanting to read the stuff my brother and sister -- three and six years older than me, respectively -- were reading. And both of them were advanced, so I skipped a whole lot of the typical childrens' novels completely.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

Siiiiigh.

Backpedaling. It makes me sad back when Chaucer did it and it makes me sad now. Then again, I've noticed that when someone doing something like that hits the part that's actually actively covered, they have problems. Maguire goes a little wonky when he hits the sections that actually involve Dorothy, like he doesn't know what the hell to do with her. Maybe it's not just the backpedaling (I don't doubt the backpedaling) but also just that when you have more canon to work off of, it can be harder to work in what you've done.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

I don't know what happened with me, since I'm the oldest other than my step brother, but yeah, there's a bunch of stuff I just skipped. I think cause I just ended up going in a WEIRD direction and pillaging my grandfather's old bookshelf full of stuff like *points up* The Allan Quartermaine books and the classic lit and stuff.

[raspberryturk]

You know, I was surprised to get through the first book of Golden's vampire trilogy to learn that I had actually enjoyed it? And then I bought the second? And the third? It's kind of a book that forced me to suspend any religious strings I was grasping to desperately, as he does pick at some things that could easily offend many Christian readers, but overall, it was worth me buying all three books in the trilogy. I haven't actually read the continuation on the series, though. It's one of those things that I want to say is well enough left alone. (Also, I would have great squee if someone apped Will Cody to FH someday. Because the world needs a vampiric Buffalo Bill. Ssh.)

Genju no Seiza is by the same person who did Petshop of Horrors, and it is pretty. Also, it's about a kid who grows up to find out that he's some sort of high priest to a country that's somewhat on the elusive side, and there are animal-god guardians, and issues. The kid has issues. But there is shiny!

... I am totally not the person to ask for plot synopsis. I have fail. So here, Wikipedia to the rescue!