What have you been reading lately? This can include websites, articles, rp stories, or good old-fashioned books. What are you into? What was good? What was awful?

I have been on a Terry Pratchett kick. I just burned through I Will Wear Midnight, which is the fourth in what is supposed to be a "young adult" series, and Snuff, which is another tale of Anhk-Morpork and its intrepid head of the City Watch Sir Samuel Vimes. Both are excellent, because Pratchett is a genius. Also, he is rapidly deteriorating in the last stages of Alzheimers and won't be writing any more. Sad, but that means you have time to catch up on his books! They are sort of fantasy in the way that Jim Butcher is Fantasy. It's a twisted world, with a lot of similarly twisted humor. You'll like it.

I have also started reading the Honor Harrington books by Weber. I am really not much into space Navy stuff, but I like BSG and telepathic cats, so I thought I'd give it a try. Harry (my friend, GM and the owner of my local game shop) recommended it because he wants me to cosplay as Honor Harrington at conventions.

Ah, a fellow lover of books! Me likey! I'm actually reading three different books right now (yeah, at the same time...damn my short attention span). I'm a fan of George R.R. Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series and am currently on 'A Dance With Dragons', the latest book in the series. The man takes about five to seven years to put out a book, so I have to wait until oh, maybe 2018 before the next book in the series. Damn turtle.

I'm also reading, because I'm a huge nerd, Zecharia Sitchin's 'The 12th Planet'. I adore watching Ancient Aliens, specially that Greek guy with the crazy 'fro who gets all excited about the possibilities of aliens among us, and they mention him and his novels in the series. I figured, why not? It's interesting to say the least, especially if you like that sort of thing....and I do!

Last but not least, 'The Memoirs of Cleopatra' by Margaret George. Cleo is my idol. That chick is given such a bad rap, but the truth was, she was a freakin genius who used men to gain power, for herself and for Egypt. Hell yeah! A very misunderstood bitch.

I have to wait until June before the next MaryJanice Davidson book in the 'Undead' series comes out. Yeah it's kinda lame. If you have no idea what I'm talking about....Google it. I'm a sucker for vampire comedies and Queen Betsy makes me giggle. No, not really. I don't giggle. Ever. But I laugh. A lot.

The Martin series has been recommended to me more than once. I am much more inclined to read it than the Game of Thrones stuff. I watched the first episode and was utterly appalled! In one breath I get incest, rape, and child murder? Why is this good?

But I digress.

Sitchin has also been recommended, by the same gentleman who recommended Harrington. I love stuff like Supernatural and such, so he thought it would be a good fit. Seems as though he is right.

The other two I haven't heard of, but I've been living under a rock, literary wise, for a long time now. Basically lost touch with popular reading after I quit working at BAM. I also do cheap paranormal romance/comedy things, but I tend to stick to Laurell K. Hamilton and Kim Harrison. They're the only ones I've found so far that didn't make me gag straight off. Not something I can say for most paranormal authors.

But back to Martin, I really love authors who really take time on their work. I mean, yes, it's horribly frustrating to wait for the next book in a series you are really into, but if he did it faster it wouldn't be as good, and then it would be way more disappointing. At least that's how I look at it. One of my favorite authors took 2-3 years between books too. And then he DIED before finishing the series, which is already so totally epic, and they're having to finish it for him based on his notes. I am already really judgey about him not finishing the damned thing, and that makes me predisposed to hating whatever they publish posthumously. I can guarantee I'm going to read it and go "I be HE could have written it better. Lousy author. Why'd he have to go and die before I was done?"

That whole rant is about Robert Jordan. Sorry. Still bitter apparently.

LOL....I yell and bitch about my favorite authors all the time, so no worries! I am a huge fan of Laurell K. Hamilton as well (have all her books!!!), and yeah, I'll admit I like P.C. Cast too.

As far as George Martin's books and the whole Game of Thrones series...yeah, it's harsh and hard to swallow sometimes. The first show alone, as you said, was rough to sit through, but his writing is totally amazing! I need to try Kim Harrison since everyone tells me how great her books are!

Harrisons books really have a lot of humor in them. She is the feisty witchy equivalent to Jim Butchers Dresden. Both cover a lot of mixed paranormal ground, but the main character is a very strong and sarcastic magic user. In fact, there's a mage wandering around Aleris that fits right in there.

But yes, her books are a lot of fun. They don't run as serious or as blatantly porno as Hamilton, but then, so few people can do that and get away with it.

My trouble with the Game of Thrones thing is that the show was the kind of thing that makes me physically ill, and it was only television. I get MUCH deeper into books, and they usually have a lot more detail than can get stuffed into a tv series. That being said, if the show was that bad I don't think the Dolby 3D version is gonna be better. Know what I mean?

The husband brought me home books from the convention. One of them seems to be the story of fallen angels. The other, based on the first two pages, is going to read like Clockwork Orange. Not sure I'm going to get through that one...

The Malazan Books of the Fallen series by "Stephen Erikson" is a must read if you enjoy fantasy. He describes magic so wonderfully, and the scale of the story starts off enormous and just gets bigger and bigger. To spare you any spoilers, all I can say is he's an EPIC writer. He uses so many characters, the storyline never focuses on just one person (in fact I think he has a cast of at least 30 primary characters). Each character is unique. My favorite characters of his are Iskaral Pust and Kruppe - they are his 'blubbering geniuses', and they talk like crazy:

Quote:

"Sad truth," Kruppe said, his audience of none sighing in agreement, "that a tendency towards verbal excess can so defeat the precision of meaning. That intent can be so well disguised in majestic plethora of nuance, of rhythm both serious and mocking, of this penchant for self-referential slyness, that the unwitting simply skip on past, imagining their time to be so precious, imagining themselves above all manner of conviction, save that of their own witty perfection." Sigh and sigh again.

This quote in fact epitomizes Kruppe. Awesome character.




Another good pair of books, less fantasy based, is "Sir Nigel and the White Company" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He's the same guy who made up Sherlock Holmes - turns out he was a big history buff before his fame from Sherlock Holmes, and these books are awesome.

"The Circle Trilogy", containing the books "Black", "Red", and "White", by Ted Dekker, is another good recommendation. The main plot is that whenever the main character falls asleep, he wakes up in a distant future. Then when he falls asleep in this future, he awakens again in the present. However, this is a far cry from a science fiction book. In fact it has the feeling of a fantasy plot. It has some interesting religious undertones that even I appreciated, and I'm not too religious.


One of my all time favorite books is in fact quite bizarre. It's called "Fierce Invalid Home From Hot Climates" by Tom Robbins. The plot is essentially this crazy character who ends up getting cursed by an evil shaman when he's visiting Panama. The shaman said if his feet touched the ground again, he would die then and there. Then another man came in, and the shaman cursed him, saying if he took one more hit from a cigarette he'd die. The main character convinced this second man to take a hit from the cigarette, where he promptly died. For the rest of the story, our hero is confined in a wheelchair, even though his legs are perfectly fine. The writing in this book is witty. It reminds me a little of the character in "To Kill A Mockingbird".

Enjoy

I'm currently -almost- finished with the first book of 'A Song of Ice and Fire' by G.R.R.M.! So far I've enjoyed it and the tv series, despite all of the 'riske' stuff. I've also been in Mercedes Lackey and Anne McCaffrey for as long as I've known of the authors. I discovered them back in high school and have loved the Pern and Valdermar books. I also enjoyed Piers Anthony's 'Xanth' novels. Those made me chuckle.

If you want try something, go to www.goodreads.com and you can rate the books you've read or are reading and maybe even find others of interest. And on FB, there's an app called 'visual bookshelf' and you can list your books.

Every time I look at your avatar I feel a seizure coming on! <3

Haha! Sorry? Maybe I'll find another one soon. *shines it up all pretty*