telophase | Money money money ... vacation ... books

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Money money money ... vacation ... books

Phew. Counted up the money I brought in from AFest, separated out the PBR stuff and the money I owe people and the money they owe me, and with the hotel/parking/food costs, I just about broke even.

Which doesn't seem very good, until you realize that the reason I'm not going to YaoiCon this year is that a group of my friends and I are going on a week-long cruise in the Gulf of Mexico at the end of October. The person I'm rooming with* has slapped both of our costs onto his credit card, and the majority of the money I owe people is what I owe him for that. So I've paid for the vacation. Wheee! And the money the A-Kon art show brought in can go for kitcshy souvenirs and whatnot.

I would sip margaritas on the deck in celebration except that I get horribly, horribly seasick, so have got a prescription for the anti-motion sickness patch and I suspect drinking booze with it would not be a good thing.

Weather willing, we're stopping at Montego Bay, the Grand Caymans, and Cozumel. I've got some sort of swamp or park tour scheduled for Montego Bay**, I'm going to COURT DEEEEEEATH! by swimming with stingrays*** and then do some sort of tour with friends at the Grand Caymans, and then I'm going with friends to clamber over Mayan ruins at the Cozumel stop.

And I'm going to catch up on my reading, since Net access is like $1/minute, so I won't be tempted to check email every five minutes. Although I may post at least one message to LJ, just to taunt you guys.

Recommend me good vacation books! I hate chick lit and most regular literary novels. Mysteries are good, as is SF and fantasy. I've got Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and plan on hauling it around - I can use it to beat up stingrays if I can't get past page 100 or so, where I've got to so far. Thicker books are good, because thin books and YA books I tend to finish really fast and so I'd have to bring a lot of them. Books that I won't get so attached to that I'd want to keep are good: if I can donate them to the ship's library afterward and not have to pack them, yay.

* Take that as you will.

** Lazing on the beach doesn't sound fun to me, I don't swim very well, and I really want to go photograph stuff.

*** No, I'm not worried. :)

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*falls all over you* ROBIN HOBB'S ASSASSIN'S APPRENTICE

done now.

I loved Jonathan Strange, by the way. I am going to recommend some similar books of a type that I have enjoyed on vacations: ones which you need to settle into, but which are great once you get into them.

Dorothy Dunnett, The Lymond Chronicles. You may hate Lymond and the first book takes forever to get going, but these books saved my sanity during my horrible Japan vacation.

C. J. Cherryh, Cyteen. Angst! Clones! Angsty clones! Angsty gay just-a-guy/angsty created guy slash! Sexy bodyguards!

Freedom and Necessity, by Steven Brust and Emma Bull. Angst, duels, politics, and one of my very favorite romantic couples.

Dan Simmons, Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion. The second book doesn't really explain much, but at least it doesn't end on a cliffhanger. But mostly I love the first book, in which a set of travellers play canterbury Tales-- in spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace.

William Dalrymple, City of Djinns. Extremely fun and informative nonfiction, about how Dalrymple moves to New Delhi and begins to explore the history of the city.

Sarah Waters. Three novels about Victorian lesbians. These are all terrifically good reads. Affinity involves spiritualism of the sort many prominent Victorians got suckered into believing, and is spooky and my favorite; Fingersmith involves intricate plots and is a wild ride, although it gets implausible toward the end; Tipping the Velvet is a picaresque about a young woman's sentimental education from the oyster bar to the theatre to being a kept woman to... well, that would be telling.

Have you read Dick Francis? He's one of my favorite mystery writers. If not, I can make specific recommendations.

Likewise, have you read Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise books?

I love that! Though she may hate the hero, and be very annoyed at the third book.

Read them already! XD

I suspect I'll have read a lot of what people recommend, but there's no way I can list out all the books I've alreayd read here, so we'll all jsut ahve to deal. XD

Have you tried Sea Bands for motion sickness? Sure, they aren't attractive, but I swear that they work even for sufferers of severe motion sickness, like my mom. For her, they work even better than the patch, which gives her some Terrible Side Effects.

Read them already. (Although I don't actually remember much about them, come to think of it, so it's possible I could pick up used copies and re-read...)

Oh, and I am also courting Death by Stingray in Grand Cayman. :)

I can't remember if I've recommended this to you before, so on the off chance you've missed it so far: C.J. Cherryh's Cyteen. Nice, thick, SF, has some mystery, nature-versus-nurture personality and identity issues, clones, interesting characters, with (entirely non-explicit but alluded-to and understood) boytouching relationships.

I have not tried them. I am also skeptical. :) But I've got enough of the patch to try out beforehand, and plan on seeing if it can combat my video-game-induced motion sickness, and I can test out the bands as well that way.

All nine of them?

Cool! :D We shall all Court Death by Stingray together!

I have to remember to pick up a waterproof disposable camera, but I susect they'll be selling them on the ship and wherever we go to see them.

DO EEEEET
and then you can come to our illegal fitzfic community and postie art. not that I only love you for your art. I love you for many different reasons. one of them is your cat. the other one is your art. babbling now.

I'm about halfway trhough the first Lymond book and, yes, hating it so far. :)

Cyteen: Read it.

Freedm and Necessity: got about halfway through it when it was published, may ahve to re-try it.

Simmons: read them.

Dalyrimple, Waters: havent' read, sounds interesting

Have not read Francis or O'Donnell, either. Recommend away. :)

at 200% markup, natch.

That's actually the only Cherryh book I've been able to get all the way through *and* understand what the hell's going on. XD

Peter O'Donnell: These are pulp adventures about kickass action hero Modesty Blaise and her best buddy, Cockney knife-thrower Willie Garvin. She fights exotic villains like evil Siamese twins.

They're all worth reading, but avoid Cobra Trap: it was written as the final book. The first is Modesty Blaise, but the order doesn't really matter. I particularly like The Impossible Virgin, which I think is the one where she fights a gorilla and performs emergency abdominal surgery.

Dick Francis was a jockey, and most of his books involve extremely realistic backstage-at-the-races scenes. Many of them also involve extremely realistic... other stuff. He writes about physical pain better than anyone else I've read, presumably because he broke every bone in his body at some point or another. His wife Mary Francis (uncredited, by her choice) did a lot of the research for the books and he felt that she was a co-writer in some sense. His female characters don't tend to kick ass in a literal manner, but tend to be strong-willed and unstereotyped.

His earliest and last books are not as strong as his middle period. All of them tend to be very exciting, and also emotionally intense. My favorites:

Hot Money: A family mystery with a large and fascinating cast of characters. An eccentric millionaire with five ex-wives and lots of adult children suspects that a member of his family murdered his latest wife.

Proof: A grieving widower and liquor store owner gets involved in a mystery involving the liquor business.

Odds Against: Some dated elements but probably my favorite. A jockey who's disabled after a fall begins working half-heartedly as a PI; after he gets shot, he begins to take an interest in life while tracking down the man who shot him. Really intense.

Flying Finish. More of a straight thriller than some of his, the whole last third is one long bite-your-nails suspense sequence.

Other good books by Dick Francis, just not my absolute favorites: Blood Sport, Banker, Break In, The Edge, Bonecrack, For Kicks, Risk, Bolt. I would avoid the ones set outside of England, or anything written in the 90s.

My mom was fine on the cruise we went on with the patch. Ginger pills are also effective, according to an episode of Mythbusters on the subject that I watched a few days ago. >>;

As for books... Guy Gavriel Kay writes historical fantasy; in particular, I'd recommend his book The Lions of Al-Rassan. And ANYTHING by Peter S. Beagle. If you've never read The Last Unicorn, you must. If you have, try some of his lesser-known novels like Tamsin (totally wonderful!) and The Innkeeper's Song. He also recently came out with a short story collection that I'm greatly enjoying.

Also, if you've never read Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo, do so. (I keep thinking people surely have read it, and then they go "wut" at me, so I have to pop it in rec lists just in case other people didn't have to read it in high school like I did.)

Tipping the Velvet was made into a highly-enjoyable miniseries (available on Netflix)

(Apparently, 90% of what I've read recently's been either bad or inappropriate for vacations...)

Essence and Alchemy, by Mandy Aftel, is a kind of lightweight history of perfume/guide to common ingredients/general-smells-stuff book. It's got some kind of froofy language in places, but nowhere near as much so as the BPAL site.

Alien Taste, by Wen Spencer, is bad in ways that are extremely hilarious. It's about a private eye who was raised by wolves, and has special wolf powers, and is hot. An investigation into a bizarre murder inadvertently sends him off onto an oddly pleasant, noncommittal quest to find himself - it turns out he's in spaaaace. (minor spoiler there)

Fire Logic, by Laurie Marks, on the other hand, is very good, and it talks a lot about the nature of war and stuff, so it ought to be really dark and heavy - but the characters are very sane and have a sense of humor, so it doesn't feel that way. It's medieval-type-fantasy whose plot can be unfairly summarized as "lesbians save the world." There's also a sequel, Earth Logic.

Also I strongly recommend Goblin Moon and The Queen's Necklace by Teresa Edgerton (vaguely 17th-century fantasy), and The Raven Ring (medieval-type fantasy) and Mairelon the Magician (Regency fantasy) by Patricia C. Wrede, which are my stock Goofing Off books.

I'd recommend anything by Melanie Rawn, but especially the Exiles books (Ruins of Ambrai, The Mageborn Traitor) and The Golden Key. They're good and thick, fantasy genre, and have a lot of reread value.

Although I enjoy two of Cherryh's other series with the crazy political whowhatwherenow and slow pace things going on (the Chanur and atevi stuff), I completely understand. ;) Cyteen is the only one of hers I ever recommend to folks.

Oh, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell takes for damn ever to pick up but by the very end (last 100-200 pages, maybe? I lent out mine as an airplane book and can't check) it's actually rolling along at normal-book speed. The joy I felt at that was sort of akin to the amazed pleasure the first people to ride in Model T cars might have experienced when realizing humans could go a whole 35 miles per hour and not die.

Which is not at all to say I didn't enjoy the book. I did, and I liked both people I lent it to afterward as an airplane book. ;)

I'm assuming you've read all the Lois McMaster Bujold you could possibly want, so...

How about C.S. Friedman's This Alien Shore? Reasonably thick far-future SF book with angst, fear, running away on spaceships and space stations, and fun with a teenage lab experiment (see note: angst and fear).

Also, Melissa Scott's older stuff is some of my favorite for just feeling different than the other SF I grew up on (Heinlein, Andre Norton), possibly because it has prominently gay characters and good worldbuilding detail.

Dreamships: lesbian pilot dealing with social issues! artificial intelligence rights versus immigrant laborer rights, with prettypretty gay-redheaded-boy supporting character that hates talking!

Five-Twelfths of Heaven: another pilot! angst! pirates! oppressive patriarchy! far future! spacefaring! ...WTF, alchemy?

(Seriously, that last one is delicious. There are space pirates... and HOMUNCULI.)

hrm, i dunno. but i am reading house of leaves and 100 years of solitude. at once. haha yeah.

hilariously enough, *points up* with a ruins of ambrai bookmark i've had for like, well of 10 years or something absurd.

I recommend pretty much ANYTHING by Murakami--a lot of his stuff is really interesting and cool in that he presents the surreal so *normally*. He has one story where a guy has a giant frog come to him and tell him he needs the guy's help to save Tokyo, and it seems so...not unusual that a giant frog would come to a guy and ask him to save Tokyo from destruction via giant worm.

His story with the most element of fantasy in it is "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World," but my favorite by him is "Kafka by the Shore," which is a modern version of the story of Oedipus, plus an old man who talks to cats and has the cats answer him. It's a pretty hefty size, and pretty interesting. There are two translations; I tend to like the British guy's translations better, but it's good no matter what.

And if you haven't read it, "Kushiel's Dart" by Jacqueline Carey, because yes.

And Battle Royale by Koushun Takami, because how can you go wrong with junior high schoolers killing each other?

*** *sniffle* The Crocodile Hunter...

Have you been on a cruise before? I know when we went last yr for our first time, I couldn't believe how you didn't know you were moving on the water. There was one time you could feel it move slightly but thats cause the water was a bit choppy in that area. And sometimes you could feel them docking too.

Cozumel was so beautiful, I wish we had more time to check it out but since it was only a day thing, it was rushrushrush. We swam with the dolphins and that was so awesome and they were so adorable.

If things go okay for us financially (even though its already paid for), we're going on a cruise next June. Cozumel, Jamaica, and Cayman Island. I can't wait to see what Jamaica is like.

Shibumi by Trevanian (Pure entertaining novel, not a literature masterpiece, mind you, but very entertaining. Action book about an assassin).
Like Homasse said, it seems that Mukarami is great. I haven't read anything from him, but I have heard raving comments about it.

Have you read any of Jane Haddam's mysteries? They are nice and thick, and I can't put them down. Her detective lives in an Armenian neighborhood with lots of quirky characters, but in recent years she's included less of that part of the story and focused more on good puzzle mysteries with very well developed characters.

I also really liked Wishful Sinful by Tracy Dunham, and I notice she has a new book out.

Brigid (MangaBlog)

Have you read the Amelia Peabody books by Elizabeth Peters? They are some of my favorite vacation reads. My favorite is the Last Camel Died At Noon. Decent length and quite funny.

Did you like the ones you did read?

I'm not sure where you get them, but may I suggest ginger pills for the seasickness? If it works on the easily-nauseated Mythbuster Adam Savage, surely it can work for you.

That is, of course, assuming you can trust what you see on TV. ;P

I already have the patch. Honestly. I'm probably not going to drop more money on things that anecdotally work (I saw the Mythbusters, too) when I've got drugs that will work. I get so. damn. sick. that it *will* ruin my vacation if it doesn't work. It's like the vertigo stage in being drunk where the world is whirling and you think that lying down will help and it doesn't, and then you think that sitting up will help and it doesn't, and all you want to do is hurl, and you can't think straight, and there is. no. relief. for. seven. days. at. sea.

It's not worth the risk at all.

If you get really sick, apparently being tied down helps. Seriously. (And apparently riding a camel puts you in the frequency range for getting the most sick.)

Of course, that wouldn't really work very well for a prolonged period of time.

Have you read Donald Westlake?

Really liked Cyteen, but have a hard time getting through most Cherryh books. Loved the first two Hyperion books, liked the third, never finished the fourth.

Nope. :) It may be perfectly still and I may not need the meds, but having them with me will be a major relief.

I'd love to spend more time at each of the stops, but oh well.

The fourth was horrible. If you had managed to make it to the end, you would have been punished with one of the stupidest endings since Spider Robinson had a character who was tied up with a broken ankle and about to be executed meditate, achieve enlightenment, become one with the universe and every uplifted person in it, and use their skills to break her bonds and beat up the bad guy.

Nope. :)

Then I escaped a gruesome fate, it sounds like. And escaped another one, too, since I don't believe I've read that Spider Robinson book. Or if I have, I've blocked it from my memory.

Best known for the Dortmunder comic caper novels, shelved in mystery. Try _What's the Worst that Could Happen?_ (which was never a movie) or pretty much anything but _The Road to Ruin_.

Fabulously entertaining, great craftmanship, fun capers, motley characters.

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