sholio | The things one finds...

oh my god, this commercial is so, so, SO wrong on pretty much every level that I cannot stop laughing at it (at least partly in horrified amazement that it's an actual commercial and not an SNL parody commercial). The shaved cat! THE TULIPS.

You know what I need, I think? A new series of books to be hooked on. It was so lovely to sink into the new Dresden Files book, but it was all over so quickly and now I have to wait for the next one. *chews nails* My reading has been falling off lately -- I'll start books and then abandon them -- and I think a lot of it is because what I really want right now is to fall in love with some characters and spend a lot of quality time with them. Most of what I've been reading lately have been stand-alone genre and literary-type books, but I'm finding them harder to get into. Since I'm not really following any TV shows avidly at the moment, I think that I need to find me some good, escapist brain candy to satisfy my mental sweet tooth.

Recommendations? I'd prefer books with SF or fantasy elements, but I'm open to anything else, too, if you know of something that's good. If you've been reading my journal for any length of time, you probably know what I go for: ensemble casts with relationships more complicated than just "boy meets girl, love at first sight", strong friendships, quality world-building. I like to be surprised and to have a story take me places I'm not expecting. I like genre-mixing (steampunk SF, mystery fantasy). I'm very character-focused; I like to follow the same characters over years and watch them grow and change. I am an absolute sucker for ambiguous and flawed heroes, ambiguous and likable villains, and enemies forced to work together for the common good. I like explosions, and as much as I adore solid world-building, I get bored with infodumps and florid writing very quickly.

A few of the series that are the sort of thing I'm looking for right now:

- Death Gate (Weiss & Hickman)
- Dark Tower (King)
- Discworld
- Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin books
- Coldfire (C.S. Friedman)
- Tobias Buckell's Xenowealth books

I've tried both Lynn Flewelling and Janny Wurts and just couldn't get into either one (sorry,

xparrot!). I also haven't tried George RR Martin because I'm scared XD, though I have the first Song of Ice and Fire book sitting in my to-read pile in case I manage to get over the fact that everyone keeps telling me these books will rip my heart into a million shreds and dance on the pieces.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I asked for recommendations last summer or this fall or sometime LOL, anyway, one of the best recs for me was Robin Hobb's Assassin series. Six books total, but she wrote the first trilogy and then wrote the Live Ships' series, then returned for another trilogy with the Fool and Fitz. I loved the first three slightly more than the last three but that's not to say the last three were bad it was just that she was wrapping up the characters in a way to put that world/characters to a natural end. And that fact alone was enough to make me sad! One of the best written series ever in my opinion.

Oh and George RR Martin's series -- excellent. But, they aren't easy to get into at first. The format is one which switches perspectives, and frequently, so you get into one character and get into a rhythm, than pop, off to a different character for a while, and so on it goes. He rotates them in and out and it can be brutal in places. Bad thing is that the series is not done and there's such a gap between books now that I wonder how I'll ever remember what has happened. :(

It took me awhile to get used to that format. There were plenty of times, though, that I'd jump ahead to the next chapter for that particular character and then go back and read the others.

Thanks! Someone above recommended them too, and I've read (and enjoyed) the Liveship Traders (ahaha, I just typed "Livership Traders", um, NO), and I also enjoyed the books that she wrote under the pen name Megan Lindholm, but I haven't read the Assassin books. I'll look for them!

If you liked the Liveship Traders, then you may not be as put off as I was by the Assassin Protaganist's ongoing impression of Luke Skywalker wanting to go to Tashi Station.

My bigger problem with Hobb is her anti-fanfic stance, which goes beyond simply saying "Please don't write fic based on my work" to "Fanfiction is evil and fanfic writers are thieves." She'd have to be a much better writer than I think she is for me to give her my money after calling me a thief.

Yeah, the fanfic thing is actually one of the big reasons why I quit reading her books, because I'd really enjoyed Liveship Traders (and I'd liked her earlier books under a different pen name, which I read in my teens) but I was so turned off by her anti-fanfic diatribes that I didn't bother looking for anything else she'd written (because the world is full of authors who don't piss me off). This was several years ago, though, and it seems that the animosity has faded, because I don't feel particularly bothered by the idea of reading her books anymore.

She is definitely a library-only author for me, however.

The things one finds...

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