sophistry | (no subject)

Also! I am toying with the idea of trying to read my height in books this year, since my total amount of leisure-reading last year was utterly appalling. I've made a good start - I'm not far off finishing my second book of the year. But my problem is this: I have a horrid tendency to buy books based on an eye-catching cover/title, a neat-sounding blurb, and a cursory scan of a random page or two to ascertain a reasonable command of prose and the English language on the behalf of the author.

Which books, inevitably, turn out to be bad - a contributing factor to my abysmal record in finishing books in the past year.

So, friendslist:

REC ME BOOKS.

I do like a good historical setting; I've just finished Imperium, by Robert Harris, which was rather good, and I'm currently reading The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, which is set before and during the American Revolution. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell OWNED ME IN THE BEST WAY, as did Temeraire and anything O'Brien. I wantses The Lies of Locke Lamora, but every time I have the cash on me, the bookshops are just out. I dig Pratchett and Gaiman, and love like oxygen fantasies in which characters and plot take precedence over Great Big Epic Fantasy Worlds (without, of course, ignoring the latter completely). I tend to like my futuristic settings in my tv shows as opposed to my books, but I'm willing to let someone try to sell me on one, if it's awesome enough. Likewise, I'm perfectly willing to be sold on novels not of the sci-fi/fantasy genre (cf, the first two I mentioned), though I draw the line at chick-lit. Mostly, what I want out of a book is a ripping good yarn. Books of miscellany and academicness are also good - there's a history of swordfighting I'm eyeing at the moment, and wondering whether I can find a cheap copy of Hero With A Thousand Faces.

So in conclusion: I'll give anything a try, once.

REC ME BOOKS.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm currently about halfway through Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, and am rather desperately in love. Seven books of sprawling historical goodness, starting in sixteenth century Scotland and moving around much of Europe and North Africa. Accurate, great writing, good characters, and a protagonist I alternately love/want to roll my eyes at/smack. It's a little hard to get your hands on in the shops, as I know from painful experience, though I've seen various volumes of it in Hodges Figgis. I managed to complete my collection at http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/ -- cheaper than Amazon, though the same selection, quick, and free shipping.

If you've not read Dorothy L Sayers' Wimsey books, I would definitely poke you towards them. Lord Peter is probably both the predecessor of Lymond in literary terms, and, in my own wee head, his descendant. The eventual Harriet/Peter relationship is one of my favourites in all literature, and there's the same great erudition you get out of reading the Lymond Chronicles. All available in either Waterstones or Hodges Figgis.

What else... oh, I've not long finished reading 'The Sparrow' by Mary Doria Russell. Hard to find in the shops, but available online. Great set up, anthropological stuff that made me wriggle in glee, characterisation that's mostly good (though it does show a little that this is a first novel), and, well, it's Jesuits in Space. That's a good hook, right? *g*