Posted April 21, 2015 by in General / 22 Comments
This Top Ten Tuesday prompt is just evil — to list my top ten favourite authors of all time. How can I do that!? Well, let’s have a go.
- Jo Walton. Needless to say.
- Ursula Le Guin. I might not read and reread her work as much now as I did, but she certainly had a hand in forming my brain.
- N.K. Jemisin. She’s relatively new to my shelves, but nonetheless awesome.
- Guy Gavriel Kay. Only one or two of his books have failed to make me cry. He writes powerful relationships between complex people so well.
- Robin McKinley. I don’t know why Chalice of all her books lives in my mind so strongly, but that and Sunshine are going to be favourites for a long time to come.
- Patricia McKillip. Also relatively new to my shelves, but she writes a kind of enchantment I can’t get enough of.
- Jacqueline Carey. She can make Sauron sympathetic. How can you not be in awe?
- Mary Stewart. My comfort reading of choice. <3
- Dorothy L. Sayers. A love shared with my mum and which saved me from severe panic after my cholecystectomy!
- Scott Lynch. I’ve loved everything he’s put out so far. (Even if I haven’t finished Republic of Thieves.)
Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted April 14, 2015 by in General / 16 Comments
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is “Top Ten Inspiring Quotes from Books”. Which is a little bit hard, because I don’t really keep track of quotes. But there are some that stick with me — maybe not inspiring, so much, but defining.
- “Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.” (I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith.)
- “If you marry a man like that and live his life, then I agree. You may not really want to hurt people, but you will.”
“That is hateful. Hateful! To say it that way. That I haven’t any choice, that I have to hurt people, that it doesn’t even matter what I want.”
“Of course it matters, what you want.”
“It doesn’t. That’s the whole point.”
“It does. And that’s the whole point. You choose. You choose whether or not to make choices.”
(The Eye of the Heron, Ursula Le Guin.)
- Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk’s flight
On the empty sky.
(A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin.)
- “For Drake is no longer in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you.” (Silver on the Tree, Susan Cooper.)
- “The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne’s are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.” (The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell.)
- “Lord, if I thought you were listening, I’d pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive. That it should be not like a palace with marble walls and polished floors, and guards standing at the door, but like a tree with its roots deep in the soil, that shelters every kind of bird and beast and gives blossom in the spring and shade in the hot sun and fruit in the season, and in time gives up its good sound wood for the carpenter; but that sheds many thousands of seeds so that new trees can grow in its place. Does the tree say to the sparrow, ‘Get out, you don’t belong here?’ Does the tree say to the hungry man, ‘This fruit is not for you?’ Does the tree test the loyalty of the beasts before it allows them into the shade?” (The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman.)
- “the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” (On the Road, Jack Kerouac.)
- “It doesn’t matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.” (Among Others, Jo Walton.)
- “Scars are not injuries, Tanner Sack. A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole.” (The Scar, China Miéville.)
- “That’s how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you’d have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.” (Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente.)
That was… surprisingly hard to choose. On the Road makes it only because of something else I once read that quoted that line; I’m afraid I don’t like the book itself.
Tags: books, China Miéville, Dodie Smith, Jo Walton, Mary Doria Russell, Susan Cooper, Top Ten Tuesday, Ursula Le Guin
Posted April 7, 2015 by in General / 21 Comments
This week’s theme from The Broke and the Bookish is top ten characters you want to check in on after the story is done. This is an awesome one — there are so many characters I wonder about!
- Anyone from The Goblin Emperor (Katherine Addison). Don’t make me choose (obviously I’d choose Maia and his wife if I had to). I know she’s not going to write a sequel (as such), so I feel free to wonder about aaaaall of the characters. And I love them all, and even those who aren’t nice… I want to know how things end up.
- Faramir from The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien). Total literary crush, ’nuff said. Plus, he’s with Eowyn, so you get a twofer there.
- Treebeard from The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s Middle-earth becomes our Europe, after all. What happens to the Ents? Where are they hiding?
- Caspian from Prince Caspian/Voyage of the Dawn Treader (C.S. Lewis). All of the books could’ve been about Caspian and Lucy having adventures and I’d have been happy.
- The Marquis de Carabas from Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman). He’s so awesome, and we know so little about him. Need to knooooowwww.
- Vetch from A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula Le Guin). He was so faithful to Ged, and yet we don’t really know what happened to him.
- Esca from The Eagle of the Ninth (Rosemary Sutcliff). We get a little bit of an idea what’s going to happen, but I want to know eveeerything.
- Mori from Among Others (Jo Walton). I know a certain amount of this is autobiographical, and I know Jo a little. But I want to know about Mori, where she goes, what she does. It could be anything.
- Peter Carmichael from the Small Change trilogy (Jo Walton). We don’t end the trilogy with him in a good place. At all. I want to see him heal. Or not. I want to see what happens to him and to society.
- Con from Sunshine (Robin McKinley). I love the vampire lore in this book, love the awkward alliance/bond that forms between Con and Sunshine. Give me moooore.
I wonder how weird my choices are compared to everyone else’s… Drop by and let me know!
Tags: books, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jo Walton, Robin McKinley, Rosemary Sutcliff, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted March 31, 2015 by in General / 16 Comments
This week’s prompt for Top Ten Tuesday is “books recently added to your TBR”. That’s an easy one for me, because I keep veeeery careful records… I won’t just add the ones I’ve got most recently, or it’d basically echo my last couple of Stacking the Shelves posts. So here’s a selection of what I’ve got/borrowed in the last couple of months.
- Touch, Claire North. I might’ve been disappointed in The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, but I have been a fan of North’s work since she first published as Catherine Webb.
- A Darkling Sea, James L. Cambias. I think this was mentioned by a friend in a book group. It made it to my wishlist, anyway, and from there onto my bought list!
- Impulse, Dave Bara. Picked up on, ha, impulse. Looks like fun space opera type stuff.
- Angela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales. For book club!
- Mortal Heart, Robin LaFevers. I’ve just read Grave Mercy. I already had Dark Triumph on my list, but now I’ve gotta get my hands on Mortal Heart…
- Blackout, Connie Willis. I’m actually pretty ambivalent about Willis’ work, but I told myself I’d give it another go!
- Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson. Had never quite connected this book with the Ms Marvel writer! When I realised, well, the choice was obvious.
- Knight’s Shadow, Sebastien de Castell. I’m still only partway through the first book, since I got distracted. Oops. But this is waiting for me.
- The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro. I have to get around to this soon. I hear it’s got Gawain in it!
- The Mirror World of Melody Black, Gavin Extence. Having loved The Universe Versus Alex Woods, and knowing this is about mental illness in many ways, I couldn’t help but pick this one up as soon as I could.
Tahdah! What’s everyone else been getting hold of?
Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted March 24, 2015 by in General / 16 Comments
This week’s theme from The Broke and the Bookish is top ten books from your childhood you’d like to revisit. Now, I’m a bit odd in that I jumped from very basic books right up to adult books in a pretty short space of time. So there are some adult books mixed in here which I nonetheless read as a pre-teen.
- Magician, Raymond E. Feist. Man, it took me forever to get through this doorstop, but I loved it. And promptly reread it when the extended edition, with more material and tiny font, came out.
- The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien. Okay, I frequently revisit this one, but there’s nothing quite like the thrill of encountering Smaug by the light coming through a crack in your curtains after your parents have threatened to take away the book if you don’t go to sleep now.
- The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett. Maybe it’d just be a disappointment, but there’s still a sort of breathless romanticism about the idea of the shut away garden. And it’s set in Yorkshire, which I know well, and occasionally miss.
- The Positronic Man, Isaac Asimov. My most epic library fine ever was accrued on this one. The library wouldn’t let me take it out, because it was an adult book, so Mum took it out for me. And then had a lot of trouble getting it back from me. I didn’t have my own copy until I was dating my current partner and she tracked down a copy — all I’d been able to find was the book of short stories which contained the original.
- The Eagle of the Ninth, Rosemary Sutcliff. Another book I read to bits. I think I went through three editions, and even the fancier edition I won as a prize from school quickly got a battering. I loved the Britain underneath the Roman occupation that Sutcliff brought to life — accurate or not, I was happy to believe in it all. And there’s some really, really powerful stuff here.
- Animorphs, K.A. Applegate. I never did stick it out and get to the end of these. I loved the concept, though, the way you could let yourself believe that it could be real (or is that begin to fear that it is real?). Maybe I should just look on Wikipedia for how it all panned out…
- Clockwork, Philip Pullman. This one creeped me the heck out. I never actually owned a copy, which is weird, but I loved reading it. Sometimes I’d whisper the words, because somehow it worked really well as a whispered story.
- Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn. I remember being enraptured by these books. I should read them again and see if they stand up to my remembered fondness. I suspect they were quite appropriative culturally, though…
- Just about anything by David Eddings. I really have a craving to reread his stuff. Just one trilogy/series will do; there’s so many similarities between them that after that it’d drive me nuts. But I did adore Sparhawk.
- The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula Le Guin. Or all the Earthsea books, really. God, they were an enchantment for me!
That’s ten already? Yeesh! But I have so many more I could mention…
Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted March 17, 2015 by in General / 6 Comments
The Top Ten Tuesday prompt for this week is all about your spring TBR. Since I don’t really plan ahead much (I get too obsessed) and I’m writing this post two weeks before it goes live (I like to be organised), this is a somewhat random selection, and I might have got round to them by the time this goes live…
- Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses. I should get round to this soon, since the publishers were kind enough to grant me access on Netgalley, and I actually have yet to read anything by Maas. Everyone’s so enthusiastic… I’ll get there soon!
- Karen Maitland, The Raven’s Head. Also an ARC, though I’ve read just about everything Maitland’s written so far. I’m hoping this one breaks the mould a bit, though.
- Emma Healey, Elizabeth is Missing. The idea of this really intrigues me. It should be waiting for me at the library as I write, so I should be reading it soon. I might find it a bit upsetting, though; apparently the portrayal of dementia and mental illness is very good.
- Joe Abercrombie, Half a King. It’s about time, that’s all I can say.
- Guy Gavriel Kay, The Lions of Al-Rassan. The next in my project of rereading all Kay’s books in publication order. (The idea is to watch his writing improve/change with experience, though oddly enough his earliest novels are probably my favourites.)
- Sam Kean, The Tale of the Duelling Neurosurgeons. I’ve been recommended this, neurology is fascinating, I might want to become a neurologist, and the library has it. What more could I wish for?
- Melissa Grey, The Girl at Midnight. Just got approved for this on Netgalley after a long wait, and it was in a previous Top Ten Tuesday as a book I was particularly looking forward to. Ergo, I have no excuse.
- Carrie Vaughn, After the Golden Age. This is a reread I’ve been meaning to get round to for a long time. I think there’s another book now, too!
- Gail Carriger, Changeless. I don’t want to end up waiting ages and ages to read this and forgetting everything about the first. Too bad I’m so easily di
- Susanna Kearsley, Named of the Dragon. Arthurian connection, you say? Set in Wales, you say? I’m there.
And probably all of these are going to appear again on my summer TBR, knowing me…
Tags: books, Carrie Vaughn, Guy Gavriel Kay, Karen Maitland, Susanna Kearsley, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted March 10, 2015 by in General / 11 Comments
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday theme is “ten books for readers who like _____”. I’m gonna go with epic fantasy, since I do love a good epic fantasy and it can be difficult to find ones that are to your taste. I’m going to assume that Tolkien’s work is a given, in this category…
- Poul Anderson. He did a lot of sci-fi stuff, but also some fantasies. I love The Broken Sword (I posted my old review as one of my Flashback Friday posts here) and Three Hearts and Three Lions. This is fantasy that isn’t directly affected by Tolkien, so it doesn’t have all the same aesthetics — but The Broken Sword in particular draws on some of the same sources, and has some of the same interests. The poetry, for example, in The Broken Sword — there’s definitely comparisons there with the way Tolkien used verse.
- David Eddings. No, okay, I know all his series are basically the same stories and characters recycled, so I’d only recommend reading one. But for brain candy, I do like a bit of Eddings. Personally, I would go with The Diamond Throne et al. I think Sparhawk was my introduction to Eddings, and I still have affection for those books.
- Jacqueline Carey. Specifically Banewreaker and Godslayer for a flipped around version of The Lord of the Rings, something that goes into a lot of shades of grey and finds that few people are irredeemable, and that there’s more than one side to any story. If you like court politics more, then Kushiel’s Dart is more likely to be your speed. (And she’s even written some urban fantasy more recently, too.)
- N.K. Jemisin. I liked her more recent duology, but it was the Inheritance Trilogy that really hooked me. Court politics, gods and men. And women. Interesting mythology, various different perspectives, and it’s not a multi-volume epic. Each book doesn’t stand completely alone, but one level of the plot is certainly accessible without reading the other books. Lots of interesting narrative voices, too.
- Raymond E. Feist. This is a case of a multi-volume epic. I’ve never read them all, but I do love his Riftwar Saga. It’s something I want to come back to. I fell for so many of the characters and ideas, and this is a case where there is a ferocious amount of world-building. You’re never gonna go off the edge of Feist’s maps and find the writer’s forgotten to account for the world outside his tightly controlled setting.
- Robin Hobb. So many characters to love and to hate. I’m not at all sure what I think of the Soldier Son trilogy — there were some persistent themes in them that I just didn’t like — but the Farseer books are great. Assassins, quests, dragons, magic, animals, politics… It has a little bit of so many things that I love, with a convincing narrative voice too.
- Steven Erikson. Willful Child was really disappointing to me, but I loved Gardens of the Moon, and I can’t wait to dig into the rest of the books. And this is another of those wide worlds with lots to dig your teeth into.
- Tad Williams. The Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books are awesome. I started reading them and thought it all fairly typical — you know, kitchen boy is probably going to turn out to be a hero, etc, etc. I was probably reminded of David Eddings, actually. But there’s a lot of world building, a lot of other characters to love, and I found it all so compelling that I read all four massive volumes in less than a week.
- Scott Lynch. I hardly need to say this, do I? The Lies of Locke Lamora is great; the world the books take place in is rich and full of wonder (things the characters wonder at, and things that the readers wonder at while the characters take them for granted). “High” fantasy? Maybe not; we’re not dealing in princes and kings, nor even kitchen boys who turn out to be knights, just a bunch of orphans from the streets who turn out to be real good at scamming people. But there’s epic background.
- Guy Gavriel Kay. Particularly the Fionavar Tapestry books, which seem like a synthesis of so much else from the genre. There’s hints of Stephen Donaldson, Tolkien, Anderson, so on. These were his first books, but he was already very powerful with the details of character and relationship. Tigana is also highly recommended, and stands completely alone, with all the politics and magic you could wish for.
I thought I’d find this week’s hard, but actually, I quite enjoyed doing this. Let me know what you think — and let me know what you’ve posted about!
Tags: books, David Eddings, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jacqueline Carey, N.K. Jemisin, Poul Anderson, Raymond E. Feist, Robin Hobb, Scott Lynch, Steven Erikson, Tad Williams, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted March 3, 2015 by in General / 10 Comments
This week’s prompt for Top Ten Tuesday is “Top Ten Books You Would Classify As ALL TIME FAVORITE BOOKS from the past 3 years”. Which is a cruel one, I think, because argh, there are so many, and how can I remember when I read them all? But here’s a rough guess. These are, of course, books I’ve read in the last three years, not books published in the last three years, because I say so.
- The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison. C’mon, you called it.
- Among Others, Jo Walton. This might be a bit out of the range now, but I’ve reread it in the last three years!
- Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge. I might shut up about this, someday.
- Behind the Shock Machine, Gina Perry. So much research went into this, and it’s a fascinating view on a very famous experiment.
- The Universe Versus Alex Woods, Gavin Extence. Lots of issues that fascinate me, wrapped up in an emotional book.
- The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford. Man, this took so much digging through layers of stuff. I loved it.
- Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened, Allie Brosh. Because <3.
- The Grand Sophy, Georgette Heyer. Heyer is awesome, okay.
- The Carpet Makers, Andreas Eschbach. I remember this blowing my mind!
- The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern. Gorgeous. <3
Tahdah! Now I daren’t look at other people’s lists, you’ll make me want stuff…
Tags: books, Erin Morgenstern, Frances Hardinge, Gavin Extence, Georgette Heyer, Jo Walton, Top Ten Tuesday
Posted February 24, 2015 by in General / 10 Comments
This week’s topic from The Broke and the Bookish is a great one: top ten heroines. Let’s see…
- Yeine, from The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin. Seriously, seriously kickass lady who navigates politics, would prefer a fair fight, and becomes a goddess. Why not?
- Tenar, from The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin. That was always my favourite book of the bunch. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but Tenar is strong in a way that has nothing to do with physical strength.
- Mori, from Among Others by Jo Walton. Because she’s quite a lot like me, only she really can see fairies and she has a streak of pragmatism I could really use.
- Harriet Vane, from the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers. Bit of a change of pace from the first three, being a different genre. But she’s a woman in a man’s world, pursuing both writing and academia, a strong woman who knows her own mind and sticks to her principles. But at the same time, she’s not perfect: she snarls at Peter, she’s unfair, etc, etc.
- Phèdre nó Delaunay de Montrève, from Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey. If there’s anything that can hold her back, I don’t know what it is. She’s gorgeous, she’s a spy, she manipulates politics and gets involved in all kinds of stuff on behalf of her country.
- Katherine Talbert, from The Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner. Even if she doesn’t want to learn to fight at first.
- Ki, from Harpy’s Flight by Megan Lindholm. Practical, determined, fierce, and good to her animals, to her friends.
- Caitrin, from Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier. She doesn’t seem like she’s going to be a strong person at first, yet she learns to face her fears — without it ever seeming too easy.
- Mirasol, from Chalice by Robin McKinley. She’s thrown in at the deep end, with very little gratefulness or support from those around her, and she pushes through it to do whatever she has to do.
- Csethiro Celedin, from The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. She basically says that if anyone hurts Maia she’ll duel them and gut them. Like!
I’m gonna have to look at loads of posts on this one, because stories with good heroines are definitely of interest to me!
Tags: books, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ellen Kushner, Jacqueline Carey, Jo Walton, Juliet Marillier, N.K. Jemisin, Robin Hobb, Robin McKinley, Top Ten Tuesday, Ursula Le Guin
Posted February 17, 2015 by in General / 12 Comments
This week’s theme from The Broke and the Bookish is “top ten book related problems I have”. This is, ahaha, not at all difficult for me.
- I had to modify my ereader to fit more books on it. No really, I even made a post to show other people how.
- I have over 1,000 books on Mt. TBR. I don’t actually dare count. And that doesn’t really include ARCs and library books.
- I don’t have enough shelves. See #2.
- Nobody ever knows what books to buy me because I might’ve got them already. Though now I have a wishlist, so there’s no excuse.
- I really like lists. This can sometimes get in the way of actually reading the books on said list.
- There are some books I daren’t share with my partner in case she hates them. This is rare, but she doesn’t, for example, share my love for Cherie Priest’s Bloodshot and Hellbent, and it makes me pout.
- My books are never in the right place. I travel a lot. You know I’m gonna want to read something as soon as I leave it somewhere for a few months.
- Why isn’t it out in ebook? I like instant gratification, and ebooks are the easiest way. What do you mean I can’t get most of Patricia McKillip’s books on Kobo?!
- Why isn’t it out yet? Impatient!
- I preordered it, I was really excited… and a year later, I haven’t got to it yet. Um. Oops.
What’re your problems, guys?
Tags: books, Top Ten Tuesday
