![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(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.
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.
no subject
Currently, I'm reading the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. It's set before the American and French Revolutions, involving Isaac Newton and others of that age. It's very, very good, long (each book is around 900 pages), and aside from Stephenson's wordy tendencies, amazing. The first one is called Quicksilver. I have a crush on his Isaac Newton.
Phillipa Gregory writes relly good female focused book centred around the Tudor Period. I haven't read her latest yet, and she manages to make every book different despite their overlapping time periods. The 'first' one is called The Other Boleyn Girl (since it was the first published and sort of the first in sequence), though all of the books can be read out of sequence. Her latest one, The Boleyn Inheritance, has been getting very good reviews and I'm planning on starting it once I've a decent wordcount on my essay done. ¬_¬
Um. Let's see. *peers at shelves*
George R. R. Martin writes fucking awesome political fantasy. It's really, really good historical, realistic fantasy (the land and warring families are based on the War of the Roses, actually). The nearest is gets to magical fantasy is a subplot involving dragons, but the characters take over - they're ambiguous, nasty, and out for themselves. *_* The first one is called A Game of Thrones.
Non-fiction-wise, I just bought Anotnia Fraser's book on Marie Anotinette and Persian Fire by Tom Holland. There's also a book on Helen of Troy and one on the Spartans in general I've been eyeing in Eason's.
Yeah, I think that's enough for now. :D
no subject
Have also read the Baroque Cycle - or rather, half of it. I loveloveLOVED the first one (omg Isaac ♥♥♥), but Stephenson lost me somewhere around the half-way mark in the second one, since he would insist on introducing all these other characters that I just goshdarn didn't care about. MORE DANIEL, I SAY.
I shall amble up to Chapters on Friday, methinks, and have a look for A Game Of Thrones; they have it in Hodges Figgis, but not on sale, so if I can get it second-hand, all the better.