it feels like years since it's been here
Jun. 29th, 2006 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labellementeuseI went to the library this morning; I am particularly excited about this because I have a week and a half that I can pretty much devote to catching up on my reading, so I got a whole stack of new stuff and only one re-read and I am very much looking forward to sitting down and just reading them. I used to do this a lot and since I've been at university I've lost the habit of reading in favour of spending every waking moment on the internet, which is a lot of fun but I miss books.
Naomi Novik, Temeraire; it's been rec'd left and right so I figured why not? I read this one today, and it was great. Exactly what I look for in a fantasy novel; it wasn't earth-shattering, but very readable, fantastic plot and the conceit is pretty great: Napoleonic Europe with dragons.
Emma Neale, Relative Strangers, Little Moon. I am a big Emma Neale fan; I enjoyed her ealier novels Double Take and Night Swimming and I also have a couple of volumes of her poetry. With the exception of Night Swimming, all her novels seem to be preoccupied with family dynamics, particularly inter-sibling dynamics; there are four of us in my family so I love a good exploration of that. Haven't started these two yet.
Ray Bradbury, From the Dust Returned. Okay, confession: I adore Bradbury's short stories but I've never read a novel by him. No, not even Fahrenheit 451, which is actually what I was looking for on the shelves. It wasn't there, so I picked this up instead.
2004's Best Fantasy and Horror 2004, ed Ellen Datlow. I'm hoping to pick up some good new authors from this; also my reading in the literary fantasy short story arena has been sadly curtailed of late. I read the Alice Hoffman story, The Witch of Truro, and enjoyed it (not surprisingly, because I like Hoffman and I've read a lot of her recently, so it was pretty much what I expected.) Mostly, though, I liked this: "The old men looked to see if she was wearing red shoes, always the sign of a witch." I own two pairs of red shoes, so that made me happy.
Gene Wolfe, Innocents Abroad short story collection. I've never read any Gene Wolfe and it was on one of the display shelves. I read the first story and it was good, and appropriately creepy, but it didn't really move me, I think because I didn't care for the narrator (although I did enjoy the journal format.) This is a problem I have with a lot of modern stuff: if I don't like or empathise with the main character, I just don't care for the story and it doesn't really have any impact. And so much modern stuff is all about how we're terrible people and the main character is this deeply flawed, deeply unlikeable person. I don't mean antiheroes. Anyway, I find it very unattractive. However, I will read the rest of the book before judging its contents.
Nick Sagan, Idlewild. I liked his father's nonfiction; I read the blurb for this one in a bookstore some time ago and was interested, but not interested enough to buy it (I was broke at the time, though, so that's not necessarily a reflection on the content.) However, on the back of this one Neil Gaiman says nice stuff and someone compares him to Stephenson and Gibson, so.
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. I was browsing their collection of TPBs and graphic novels and doing my usual first-page trick (if the first page is visually pleasing and have a good script, I'll read it; if not, not. I also do this with books, but I'm more flexible because books usually have better blurbs.) I think someone may have mentioned it on girl-wonder.org, but I can't remember for sure; anyway, I got it home and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_larla said it was good, so.
Mike Carey (writer), Marcelo Frusin, Doug Alexander Gregory (artists), Hellblazer: Staring at the Wall. It was there, I felt like it. Actually, looking at it now, I realise it's written by the same guy who wrote the Black Flowers trade, which I read last time I visited and enjoyed well enough, so. Anyway, I like me some Constantine.
Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War. I have no idea why it's taken me so long to read this: I loved Abarat a lot.
Diane Duane, Wizards at War. This is my re-read, obviously; it was on the shelf and I felt like it.
Thing I forgot: Hexwood, by Diana Wynne Jones, which I have been craving since I had a talk tobad_mushroom about our favourite DWJs (we had a consensus on The Homeward Bounders, Fire & Hemlock, Howl's Moving Castle & Hexwood; I also like The Lives of Christopher Chant, she also likes A Tale of Time City and Deep Secret, which I have not yet read, and which I was also planning on picking up. Dammit.)
Interesting things (well, to me) about Upper Riccarton library:
-it is modern and shiny and has natural light and a comfortable noise level (slightly above the normal library level, of which I personally approve)
-it shelves all its comics either under the YA section or in non-fiction. Now, I can kind of deal with Alan Moore and Sandman and so forth in non-fiction, but there's something a little incongruous about seeing Gotham Central there (although I love Half a Life more than The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, like, a lot.)
-it shelves its genre fiction - SF, F & H - and its short stories in with the other fiction. I can't decide whether I love this or hate this. On the pro side, SF&F sections often reek of the ghetto, tainted by "Asimov, you are not good enough to sit next to Austen"; putting it all together is egalitarian. All Neil Gaiman's stuff is shelved together: this is such a plus for me, because every time I visit a new library I have to figure out where they keep American Gods, and where they keep Neverwhere. Similarly, a lot of the stuff I like tends to be stuff which people aren't sure whether to shelve in SF&F or in fiction; this is a handy way of working around that. Also, I like to read both fiction and SF&F&H, so this is cool for me. On the con side, for people likesixth_light, who read fiction basically never, I can imagine this being absolutely awful, and it does take some getting used to. Stuff that is normally really obvious, like the M's (McCaffrey) or the W's (Williams) suddenly aren't clearly marked by a large number of recogniseable covers This is more an indictment on the size of their SF&F&H collection, I suppose.
And on the topic of reading, f-list, I am looking for recs. Particularly, I am looking for three specific types of recs, although other sorts of recs are always appreciated. Firstly, urban fantasy; Charles de Lint and Alice Hoffman are recent favourites, I really, really like this. Secondly, metafandom fiction. This is a little more difficult to define, but I'm thinking specifically of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and the secondmost recent episode of Doctor Who, Love and Monsters, which both feature fans acting fannishly and portraying them in a non-negative way (I am specifically not looking for anything fanbashing.) Nonfiction in this area could also be good, actually. And thirdly: comics or graphic novel trades that might be readily available. Specific trades would be good.
Friendslist! I choose you!
Naomi Novik, Temeraire; it's been rec'd left and right so I figured why not? I read this one today, and it was great. Exactly what I look for in a fantasy novel; it wasn't earth-shattering, but very readable, fantastic plot and the conceit is pretty great: Napoleonic Europe with dragons.
Emma Neale, Relative Strangers, Little Moon. I am a big Emma Neale fan; I enjoyed her ealier novels Double Take and Night Swimming and I also have a couple of volumes of her poetry. With the exception of Night Swimming, all her novels seem to be preoccupied with family dynamics, particularly inter-sibling dynamics; there are four of us in my family so I love a good exploration of that. Haven't started these two yet.
Ray Bradbury, From the Dust Returned. Okay, confession: I adore Bradbury's short stories but I've never read a novel by him. No, not even Fahrenheit 451, which is actually what I was looking for on the shelves. It wasn't there, so I picked this up instead.
2004's Best Fantasy and Horror 2004, ed Ellen Datlow. I'm hoping to pick up some good new authors from this; also my reading in the literary fantasy short story arena has been sadly curtailed of late. I read the Alice Hoffman story, The Witch of Truro, and enjoyed it (not surprisingly, because I like Hoffman and I've read a lot of her recently, so it was pretty much what I expected.) Mostly, though, I liked this: "The old men looked to see if she was wearing red shoes, always the sign of a witch." I own two pairs of red shoes, so that made me happy.
Gene Wolfe, Innocents Abroad short story collection. I've never read any Gene Wolfe and it was on one of the display shelves. I read the first story and it was good, and appropriately creepy, but it didn't really move me, I think because I didn't care for the narrator (although I did enjoy the journal format.) This is a problem I have with a lot of modern stuff: if I don't like or empathise with the main character, I just don't care for the story and it doesn't really have any impact. And so much modern stuff is all about how we're terrible people and the main character is this deeply flawed, deeply unlikeable person. I don't mean antiheroes. Anyway, I find it very unattractive. However, I will read the rest of the book before judging its contents.
Nick Sagan, Idlewild. I liked his father's nonfiction; I read the blurb for this one in a bookstore some time ago and was interested, but not interested enough to buy it (I was broke at the time, though, so that's not necessarily a reflection on the content.) However, on the back of this one Neil Gaiman says nice stuff and someone compares him to Stephenson and Gibson, so.
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. I was browsing their collection of TPBs and graphic novels and doing my usual first-page trick (if the first page is visually pleasing and have a good script, I'll read it; if not, not. I also do this with books, but I'm more flexible because books usually have better blurbs.) I think someone may have mentioned it on girl-wonder.org, but I can't remember for sure; anyway, I got it home and
lady_larla said it was good, so.Mike Carey (writer), Marcelo Frusin, Doug Alexander Gregory (artists), Hellblazer: Staring at the Wall. It was there, I felt like it. Actually, looking at it now, I realise it's written by the same guy who wrote the Black Flowers trade, which I read last time I visited and enjoyed well enough, so. Anyway, I like me some Constantine.
Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War. I have no idea why it's taken me so long to read this: I loved Abarat a lot.
Diane Duane, Wizards at War. This is my re-read, obviously; it was on the shelf and I felt like it.
Thing I forgot: Hexwood, by Diana Wynne Jones, which I have been craving since I had a talk to
bad_mushroom about our favourite DWJs (we had a consensus on The Homeward Bounders, Fire & Hemlock, Howl's Moving Castle & Hexwood; I also like The Lives of Christopher Chant, she also likes A Tale of Time City and Deep Secret, which I have not yet read, and which I was also planning on picking up. Dammit.)Interesting things (well, to me) about Upper Riccarton library:
-it is modern and shiny and has natural light and a comfortable noise level (slightly above the normal library level, of which I personally approve)
-it shelves all its comics either under the YA section or in non-fiction. Now, I can kind of deal with Alan Moore and Sandman and so forth in non-fiction, but there's something a little incongruous about seeing Gotham Central there (although I love Half a Life more than The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, like, a lot.)
-it shelves its genre fiction - SF, F & H - and its short stories in with the other fiction. I can't decide whether I love this or hate this. On the pro side, SF&F sections often reek of the ghetto, tainted by "Asimov, you are not good enough to sit next to Austen"; putting it all together is egalitarian. All Neil Gaiman's stuff is shelved together: this is such a plus for me, because every time I visit a new library I have to figure out where they keep American Gods, and where they keep Neverwhere. Similarly, a lot of the stuff I like tends to be stuff which people aren't sure whether to shelve in SF&F or in fiction; this is a handy way of working around that. Also, I like to read both fiction and SF&F&H, so this is cool for me. On the con side, for people like
sixth_light, who read fiction basically never, I can imagine this being absolutely awful, and it does take some getting used to. Stuff that is normally really obvious, like the M's (McCaffrey) or the W's (Williams) suddenly aren't clearly marked by a large number of recogniseable covers This is more an indictment on the size of their SF&F&H collection, I suppose.And on the topic of reading, f-list, I am looking for recs. Particularly, I am looking for three specific types of recs, although other sorts of recs are always appreciated. Firstly, urban fantasy; Charles de Lint and Alice Hoffman are recent favourites, I really, really like this. Secondly, metafandom fiction. This is a little more difficult to define, but I'm thinking specifically of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and the secondmost recent episode of Doctor Who, Love and Monsters, which both feature fans acting fannishly and portraying them in a non-negative way (I am specifically not looking for anything fanbashing.) Nonfiction in this area could also be good, actually. And thirdly: comics or graphic novel trades that might be readily available. Specific trades would be good.
Friendslist! I choose you!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 09:02 am (UTC)What was wierd for me was that they just didn't have that much McCaffrey- whereas any place with a dedicated SF&F section tends to pad it out with standbys like McCaffrey and Jordan and so forth.
Ooh, thanks, I appreciate those. I've read a little Hellblazer and John is definitely cool, although I originally learned to love him in the pages of the Books of Magic trades, which I HIGHLY recommend, BTW.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 09:48 am (UTC)I should read it again, actually. :D
Yeah... where's this library again? I think it may be the one I saw the inside of. Bizarre, that one. But yeah... most places have Anne McCaffrey and Terry Brooks, and all the major series that I tend not to read.
Books of Magic... he's in the others, too? I've got the first one, because I owed it to Tim Hunter in an RPG, once. And it worked, with even that detour into the Dreaming.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 09:54 am (UTC)Perfect description of DWJ. Brain-breakingly wonderful.
Um, the Upper Riccarton library... on Main South Road somewhere?? 84,85,81 go past it, I think.
BOM- you may be right, he may only be in the first one. nevertheless, I loved him in that (although I ADORED tim, & still do.)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-03 03:53 pm (UTC)Not sure. I know there's another one that had a similar problem, then. :) Even the tiny library I used to visit had McCaffrey, though it didn't have a Sci-fi section. Did they have Pratchett, at least?
Aw. I was hoping the Trenchcoat Brigade (now I'm saying it, heh) would be in others. But I loved that one, and thought it worth the expensive prices. Tim is just awesome, and having John Constantine show him the ropes is just a complete bonus.