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The fives meme...
I said I'd do the list-five-things meme, and so far only two of you have bitten! What's up with the rest of you guys? :) They don't have to be all about books, either.
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fourthage says: "I want to know your five guiltiest reading pleasures."
1. Medical blogs, by professionals in the medical field. You can see how many I more-or-less follow here at my Bloglines blogroll.
2. Tim Gunn's blog. 'Nuff said. XD
3. Mercedes Lackey books. Not because I like them: those of you who've been reading me for a long time know that I hate her writing and stories. But because they are truly inspiring in that throw-it-against-the-wall way where you scream "I could do better than that!" Especially in her earlier ones, you can FEEEEL THE ADOLESCENT AAAAANGST dripping off the page, which I really responded to as a teenager, when I first encountered her work, and I can relive my teen years by reading her. Plus, if I'm sick with a bad cold or something, they're easy like white bread. I don't buy them, I only check them out of the library. :)
4. Fandom_wank, and the associated other wank communities. Yeah, I know, you guys could have figured that out without me telling you. I revel in my low tastes.
5. Futari Ecchi. It's a hentai-esque manga that's a barely-disguised operating manual for the worst of otaku in How To Do Sex, starring a hapless salaryman (who the translators endearingly nicknamed "Minuteman") and his equally haplessyet stacked wife, who met and married via an omiai (marriage arranged through formal meetings) and are just starting to learn about what this thing we call sex is. (I think the reader's usual response, when faced with Yet Another Stupid Thing that one of the couple assumes, is to scream "Don't you people ever get on the Internet?")
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rachelmanija says: "your five favorite fantasy and sf books, and why"
Hmmm. This one's hard to say, because my favorite books change constantly, for example five years ago I'd stick a Miles Vorkosigan book in the top five, I'm not so sure now. I'm going to try to pick five that have stood the test of time for me.
1. Barry Hughart Bridge of Birds. I love this one: taking fairy tales and legends and stirring them into a big pot of China as it lives in the imagination of the West, with a tricksy wise man in the form of Master Li and a strong but not so bright young laborer in the form of Number Ten Ox, and a huge dose of schmaltz sucht hat the ending is utterly, completley, shamelessly, over-the-top and yet fits perfectly. You can have my copy when you pry it from my cold, dead, hands and even then my ghost will come back and haunt you. The two sequels are good, but nowhere near as sublime.
2. Daniel Pinkwater, Alan Mendolsohn, the Boy from Mars. Nerdy, dorky Leonard Neeble moves from an old neighborhood into the suburbs and is automatically outcast. A strange boy named Alan Mendolsohn who claims to be from Mars transfers in one day and Leonard's life turns around. There are lost continents, psychic powers, comic books, five-alarm chili, enlightened motorcycle gangs, fleegix, and hidden codes. This was THE book I loved as a mibdle-schooler, because I rpetty much was Leonard Neeble, and I still love it now. It kinda falls down near the end, but it's still one of the most excellent books ever written, IMnot-so-HO. It's also got a trickster figure as a main, although not viewpoint, character, like Bridge of Birds - there's something about that archetype I like.
3. Tove Jansson, the Moomin books. I'm going to cheat a bit here and say the entire series instead of just one book, because I can't pick just one. The Moomin world is one sort of based in Finnish folklore, populated by many and wondrous creatures. Moomintroll lives with his parents in Moominvalley, with a sort of extended family of friends about them. He and his friends go on adventures, which is really a sort of trite way of describing it, beause that sounds silly, like one of those books that have been gutted by well-meaning adults of any sort of real suspense or danger where the worst thing that happens is that a puppy gets lost for about five minutes and is found at the bottom of the garden. There's real mystery and magic and power in this world, and Jansson is very good at leaving questions unanswered, which makes you want to know more. She also can write eerily unbalanced and frightening things - there's one book where the family goes and lives on this strange island for a while, and the sea is frightening, almost like a living thing, and there's a dark, brooding atmosphere over the whole thing that scared me silly as a kid but kept me reading it over and over and over.
And it was a comic strip for a while, and it's being published in English this fall! Wheeeee!
4. Pat O'Shea The Hounds of the Morrigan. Two Irish kids get tangled up with the Ireland of myth. By now you've probably figured out that I like books where legend and myth is braided into and out of reality, and this is a perfect example of that. It's been a while since I re-read it, so I can't really do it justice, because it's all a tangle of images in my head right now. This review has a fairly good description.
5. Hrrrrrm. This space is really going to have to be the one that serves to slot in whatever my current favorite book is. At times it's held Pratchett books (usually Reaper Man, Witches Abroad, or Monstrous Regiment), and Glen Cook's Black Company series, and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. It held Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books for a while. Diana Wynne Jones' Archer's Goon occupied this spot for a long time, too, as did Tanith Lee's Flat Earth series. Lord of the Rings was there as a kid, as was Dune. I don't think there's currently a book in this spot, because I've mostly been reading manga instead of SF/F for my fiction reading the past couple of years. I've tried to find something for it, but haven't fallen in love with anything new yet.
fourthage says: "I want to know your five guiltiest reading pleasures."1. Medical blogs, by professionals in the medical field. You can see how many I more-or-less follow here at my Bloglines blogroll.
2. Tim Gunn's blog. 'Nuff said. XD
3. Mercedes Lackey books. Not because I like them: those of you who've been reading me for a long time know that I hate her writing and stories. But because they are truly inspiring in that throw-it-against-the-wall way where you scream "I could do better than that!" Especially in her earlier ones, you can FEEEEL THE ADOLESCENT AAAAANGST dripping off the page, which I really responded to as a teenager, when I first encountered her work, and I can relive my teen years by reading her. Plus, if I'm sick with a bad cold or something, they're easy like white bread. I don't buy them, I only check them out of the library. :)
4. Fandom_wank, and the associated other wank communities. Yeah, I know, you guys could have figured that out without me telling you. I revel in my low tastes.
5. Futari Ecchi. It's a hentai-esque manga that's a barely-disguised operating manual for the worst of otaku in How To Do Sex, starring a hapless salaryman (who the translators endearingly nicknamed "Minuteman") and his equally hapless
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rachelmanija says: "your five favorite fantasy and sf books, and why"Hmmm. This one's hard to say, because my favorite books change constantly, for example five years ago I'd stick a Miles Vorkosigan book in the top five, I'm not so sure now. I'm going to try to pick five that have stood the test of time for me.
1. Barry Hughart Bridge of Birds. I love this one: taking fairy tales and legends and stirring them into a big pot of China as it lives in the imagination of the West, with a tricksy wise man in the form of Master Li and a strong but not so bright young laborer in the form of Number Ten Ox, and a huge dose of schmaltz sucht hat the ending is utterly, completley, shamelessly, over-the-top and yet fits perfectly. You can have my copy when you pry it from my cold, dead, hands and even then my ghost will come back and haunt you. The two sequels are good, but nowhere near as sublime.
2. Daniel Pinkwater, Alan Mendolsohn, the Boy from Mars. Nerdy, dorky Leonard Neeble moves from an old neighborhood into the suburbs and is automatically outcast. A strange boy named Alan Mendolsohn who claims to be from Mars transfers in one day and Leonard's life turns around. There are lost continents, psychic powers, comic books, five-alarm chili, enlightened motorcycle gangs, fleegix, and hidden codes. This was THE book I loved as a mibdle-schooler, because I rpetty much was Leonard Neeble, and I still love it now. It kinda falls down near the end, but it's still one of the most excellent books ever written, IMnot-so-HO. It's also got a trickster figure as a main, although not viewpoint, character, like Bridge of Birds - there's something about that archetype I like.
3. Tove Jansson, the Moomin books. I'm going to cheat a bit here and say the entire series instead of just one book, because I can't pick just one. The Moomin world is one sort of based in Finnish folklore, populated by many and wondrous creatures. Moomintroll lives with his parents in Moominvalley, with a sort of extended family of friends about them. He and his friends go on adventures, which is really a sort of trite way of describing it, beause that sounds silly, like one of those books that have been gutted by well-meaning adults of any sort of real suspense or danger where the worst thing that happens is that a puppy gets lost for about five minutes and is found at the bottom of the garden. There's real mystery and magic and power in this world, and Jansson is very good at leaving questions unanswered, which makes you want to know more. She also can write eerily unbalanced and frightening things - there's one book where the family goes and lives on this strange island for a while, and the sea is frightening, almost like a living thing, and there's a dark, brooding atmosphere over the whole thing that scared me silly as a kid but kept me reading it over and over and over.
And it was a comic strip for a while, and it's being published in English this fall! Wheeeee!
4. Pat O'Shea The Hounds of the Morrigan. Two Irish kids get tangled up with the Ireland of myth. By now you've probably figured out that I like books where legend and myth is braided into and out of reality, and this is a perfect example of that. It's been a while since I re-read it, so I can't really do it justice, because it's all a tangle of images in my head right now. This review has a fairly good description.
5. Hrrrrrm. This space is really going to have to be the one that serves to slot in whatever my current favorite book is. At times it's held Pratchett books (usually Reaper Man, Witches Abroad, or Monstrous Regiment), and Glen Cook's Black Company series, and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. It held Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books for a while. Diana Wynne Jones' Archer's Goon occupied this spot for a long time, too, as did Tanith Lee's Flat Earth series. Lord of the Rings was there as a kid, as was Dune. I don't think there's currently a book in this spot, because I've mostly been reading manga instead of SF/F for my fiction reading the past couple of years. I've tried to find something for it, but haven't fallen in love with anything new yet.
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Have you ever read Greg Bear's Infinity Concerto? For some reason it resonates with "Hounds" in my head, although they're rather different books.
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Oh, god. That sounds awfully familiar and I think I've been looking for this book with no idea of the title for a long, long time. Are there also a beautiful girl, and a beautiful young man who has a tendency to sing about boys with a bottom like a peach?
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The two sequels, if you want to look for them separately, are Eight Skilled Gentlemen and The Story of the Stone.
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Amusingly enough, I don't like coffee either.
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^___^
There was an anime too. I'd link you to videos but Oy Moomin Characters Ltd had them all yanked.
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Five things