Bookworming

[katster]

So zibblsnrt has got me started on Harry Turtledove's books again. In specific, his althist series in which the Confederates won the Civil War, and WWI happens. Damn him. Althistory is crack to history majors, and he knew this, and he still encouraged me to read them...even though I've got research and obligations...

Anyway, yes, Turtledove is up there among my favourite authors. So that's my question to the LJ world tonight. Who's your favourite authors and what's your favourite books?

And hmmm...need a bookworm icon, I do...

Comments

[valliegirl.livejournal.com]

I've heard of those books. I need to check that out.

Gee, how many electrons will this thing hold?

[lirazel.livejournal.com]

Well, the paterfamilias of my personal literary Pantheon has to be J.R.R. Tolkien. C.S. Lewis said that reading George MacDonald had "baptized" his imagination, and Tolkien performed that service for me.

On the distaff side we have someone whom Tolkien ardently disliked though they agree on many things, Dorothy L. Sayers. The Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane books are wonderful, but even more wonderful are her theological writings (The Mind of the Maker is particularly grand, all about how creative work is a God-indwelt thing) and her translations of Dante.

C.S. Lewis is someone I read frequently, though he's more useful to me as a pointer to other writers (we might think of him as a Ganymede, not quite a God himself, but with access), in this cast to Richard Hooker, theologian of the time of QE1 and author of the amazing Church Polity. If you think theology is dull, he's your cure.

Returning to the ladies, who better to turn to in times of stress and disgust with bad prose than Jane Austen? Her finished novels are well-nigh perfect, and her juvenilia is some of the funniest stuff in the English language.

The dark side of Miss Austen--who seemed, by nature, to turn to the sunlight--might be seen in Charlotte Bronte. Of a more melodramatic and somber turn of mind, her characters and her themes are just as wonderful. I have read Jane Eyre in nearly every passing phase of life since I was 10 years old, and only now am I beginning to feel that I have learned all that it has to teach--which means it's probably time to read it again.

Dick Francis is a guilty pleasure--a man who my mother would never have let in the house, but loads of fun, and with a depth of heart to his nearly-identical heros that I find compelling. He's hung up his pen at the age of 92, having taken up writing when his career as a leading jocky (including riding horses owned by the Queen Mother) came to an end, and his stories all feature horses. He leads a group of writers, mostly British, who might also be called servitors at the royal court, save for one...

Michael Innes, whose real name was James Innes Michael Stuart, was another Oxford don. His mysteries are marvels of elegant construction (he's a master of the double negative) and captivating people, often bordering on the surreal. And in his other fiction, he applied the same skills to less frivolous convolutions of human life, including issues of gender and sexuality. In his trilogy, A Staircase in Surrey he includes a moving portrait of--you guessed it--J.R.R. Tolkien, as a grand old man, now slightly doddering, persecuted by the fans of his epic (called "The Ring and the Book", hee) and living in an attic full of old coins and rusty swords...

But this is getting too long, and I haven't even touched on Angela Thirkell or S.J. Perelman yet!

[tangaroa.livejournal.com]

I was a fan of Mercedes Lackey as a teenager, but haven't read anything of hers lately.

[fb.livejournal.com]

Favorite author still is and probably always will be Frank Herbert, he wrote books on almost every subject imaginable that can still blow your mind the fourth or fifth time you read them. I've been reading compulsively and pretty much constantly since about the third grade and the Dune series are the only books I've read that have no comparison; the closest you can come is maybe Lord of the Rings just because of the similar depth of imagination involved.

But if you're looking for something new, try The Chanur Saga by CJ Cherryh. Very well written hard sci-fi, story driven mostly by political intrigue and written entirely from an alien perspective.

Favorite books and authors

[joshbrown.livejournal.com]

Right now, my favorite book is the three part Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon. It's the story, set in a swords and sorcery world, of a girl who runs away from home to join a mercenary group, but soon discovers that the gods have other plans for her...
And if we are discussing great books, have you read Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams? Amazing non-fiction book, and it shows us what we are really doing to the other inhabitants of this big blue marble in the sky.

Favorite books and authors

[joshbrown.livejournal.com]

Right now, my two favorite books are:
Fiction - The Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon - this is a trilogy, set in a swords and sorcery world. A girl runs away from home to join in a mercenary troupe (Moon was in the marines, so she knows what basic training is like) but soon finds out that the gods have other plans for her.
Non-Fiction - Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams - Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine travelled all over the world, just to find animals that are becoming extinct. Not that they were looking for new animals, merely going places to point out that this animal in this place is becoming extinct. The book describes their journeys, and other than being hilariously funny as Adams can be, shows us what we are really doing to the other inhabitants of this big blue marble in the sky.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Another one in the fold!

The Great War/American Empire/Return Engagement series is awesome. We're up to the third trilogy, and I want him to write faster!

Along with Turtledove, my favorite author is probably David Weber. I'm an Honorverse slut, I admit it.

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

Here, a few favorites:

The Foriegner, Invader, Inheritor, Precursor, Defender, and Explorer novels by C.J. Cherryh, which I've enjoyed far more than anything else she's written.

I can't pick a favorite Roger Zelazny novel. But some good ones include Eye of Cat, Roadmarks, Jack of Shadows, and Lord of Light.

In the vein of Lord of Light, too, there's Dan Simmons' Ilium. The Hyperion books are also terrific.

If you want something lighter, I have to recommend anything by Simon R. Green, especially the Deathstalker space opera and Blue Moon Rising.

Anything by Alfred Bester. My favorite is The Stars My Destination.

And for nonfiction, The Spanish Civil War by Hugh Thomas.

[aris-tgd.livejournal.com]

I can't believe I forgot to close that tag.

[dwhagar.livejournal.com]

Stephen R. Donaldson - The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (both trilogies and hopefully the last chronicles though I haven't read them yet).
Laurelle K. Hamilton - Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series
J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter (especially 4 and 5)

[malakim.livejournal.com]

I refuse to pick a favorite, as my favorite book is the kind with words and/or pictures in them.

I did recently read Gunpowder Empires by Turtledove, which I found interesting.

As you have read a great deal by him, it seems, do you know if he is a rabid anti-fur person (like fur coats, etc.)?