Jul. 28th, 2004

Book recs?

Jul. 28th, 2004 04:18 pm
telophase: (Default)
OK, I figure there's a wide enough variety of people who read my journal one way or another that I might get some interesting responses to this.

I'm vaguely working on a comic project that's set in a neo-Victorian/Edwardian wonky world -- 'vageuly' meaning I've got the three characters that showe dup when I was doodling that I've linked to earlier in this journal, and a few vague ideas for setting knocking about my brain, but nothing has really jelled yet.

So -- I"m looking for recommendations for books, comics, art, movies, and whatnot that you think fits the parameter of "Victorian/Edwardian weird," either period or modern, I don't care. I wish I could be more specific, but I can't really pin down what it is I'm talking about - even 'Victorian' and 'Edwardian' don't do more than describe a vague flavor. The book The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases - which I gleefully recommend to all of you - is a perfect example. As is the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics - [livejournal.com profile] ebony14, I may be asking to borrow yours. :) Maybe H. Rider Haggard, too, since I haven't read any of him - I'm looking in part for the sort of world where you'd get retired British colonels sitting around the fireside telling tall tales about their hair-raising exploits with savages and cannibals in the depths of Africa, and where'd you'd get languid Bohemians lounging around in opium dens and drinking absinthe in Parisian bars and cafes.

There's probably some elements of steampunk in the world taking shape in my head, too, so steampunk would work, in the Castle Falkenstein mode. I also just spent a happy half hour downloading pictures of the Japanese Visual Kei band Malice Mizer, because the Elegant Gothic Lolita look is a part of it, and I'm going to raid my mother's bookshelves for Georgette Heyer and P.G. Wodehouse when I'm home this week because the rather-ceremonial world of the British upper class is central to bits of it -- and parts of this thing extend up into the 1920s and 30s in the Bohemian set.

So, I know that's rather vague and broad, but I'm looking for vague and broad because I'm planning on stuffing my head full of these bits and pieces over the next few weeks to see what pops out, because I've got these three characters and a sort of late-19th-century city with a very large city of the dead nearby, and there's no real framework yet on which to hang them.

Ah. Thunder. I should get off the computer now; the wiring in this complex tends to be wonky during storms.

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