Selenay's Ramblings

So on Twitter today, there was a meme going around where you posted a Tweet and then you posted a favourite book for every favourite that Tweet got.

Current tally is 14 books for me :-) It was a fun meme because I didn't have to commit to my FAVOURITE EVER BOOK. I could just throw out all the things I love. So I thought I'd collate all of them here and thus, you guys get to have a list of awesome books!

1) Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett - as much as I love Sam Vimes, it's the witches I really fell for and this is their best.
2) Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman - my favourite of his books. It's a brilliant (and horrific) view of London and people who slip into cracks
3) The Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce - the ultimate kickass warrior girl series.
4) The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan - amazing historical romance featuring a woman scientist. It's punch the air kind of fiction.
5) A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie - this is the Miss Marple book that gave me nightmares, but it's brilliant.
6) The Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling - I love Harry Potter so much, and this is my favourite in the series.
7) Doomsday Book by Connie Willis - It's tragic and haunting, but it's my favourite of the Oxford Time Travellers books.
8) Persuasion by Jane Austen. It's my favourite Austen and the letter Wentworth writes to Anne...I get weepy every time.
9) Warriors Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold - I find it hard to pick one Vorkosigan book, but this is the one that first hooked me.
10) The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin - planet-wide disaster, magic, WOC author, inventive structure...this book is just brilliant.
11) Out on Good Behaviour by Dahlia Adler - hot, gorgeous f/f romance.
12) A Gentleman's Position by KJ Charles - historical m/m romance with a demi MC and Duke/servant romance dynamics that are never creepy!
13) Hurricane Watch by Melissa Good - the first Xena Uber I ever met, and the first I bought on publication. It's a warm hug in a book.
14) Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire - what happens after you come home from a portal fantasy? Beautifully written and it's got an ace MC!


But I had a few queued up that I didn't get to post, because I ran out of faves, but I know nobody minds MORE BOOKS, so here you go:

15) The Last-Herald Mage trilogy by Mercedes Lackey - forever my favourite Valdemar books, even though it makes me cry every time.
16) Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - it's the classic of the epic fantasy genre because it's so good and so archetypal.
17) A Wizard Abroad by Diane Duane - I love all the Young Wizards books, but this remains my favourite.
18) Newsflesh series by Mira Grant - I don't normally like zombie fiction, but I love these books.
19) Prudence by Gail Carriger - I know most people go for her earlier books, but these books are such fun and I love the characters


The only rule I made for myself was no repeat authors, which is why some of my favourites aren't here: I picked my top choice for a particular author. Really, you should probably assume that anything by any of the authors I've mentioned is worth checking out.

And, you know, I'm sure I can add to this list if anyone wants to comment and ask for EVEN MORE BOOKS.

As part of my cunning plan to post more regularly again, have some Wednesday reading!

What are you currently reading?

Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire. It's lighter than her other urban fantasy, but I'm having fun and light was what I needed.

I'm also working my way through an authorised history of MI6. Partially book research, partially personal interest. It's not as dry as I expected.

What did you recently finish?

A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab. Lived up to all the hype, I loved it. I'll definitely be grabbing the sequel next year.

What do you think you'll read next?

I've got a library book - Ironskin- that I need to get to, so that's definitely taking priority over the new books I bought recently. On the Kindle, I'll probably pick either the new book I couldn't resist buying this morning (queer protag, steampunk, sounded so great) or the YA lesbian romance I bought at the weekend. All titles are currently escaping me.

A day late again, but at least I'm doing it this week...

What are you currently reading?

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. Yes, I know, I'm the last person on the planet. So far, I'm enjoying it, although I'm not completely caught by it yet. Not 'meh' enough to put it down, but it's not quite managed to draw me in so far that I can't put it down. I suspect this might be as much to do with my current status - utterly fed up with being stuck indoors - as the book, though.

I also picked up The Proposal by Mary Balogh. I'm loving her Bedwyn Saga books and I've been trying not to eat all of them at once by interspersing them with other reads. This is one of her earlier books and it's showing - the writing isn't as skilled as I've grown used to, and the characters aren't as vivid. I don't hate it, though, and it hasn't hit any tropes that make me scream with frustration yet, so it's probably a finisher. We'll see.

What did you recently finish?

Lock In by John Scalzi was my most recently finished book. Thoroughly compelling plot and ideas that lingered, which is why I enjoy his work so much. Before that, it was Maplecroft by Cherie Priest, which isn't really my thing (too Lovecraftian) but the writing was great and for the fans of that kind of horror, it's probably perfect.

What do you think you'll read next?

I have no idea! I'll probably shake Mount TBR and see what falls out and catches my fancy.

So, way back on December 10th, I was supposed to talk about historical romance for netgirl_y2k, but in the rush to finish Yuletide and so forth, it got...postponed. NOT FORGOTTEN. It's just that this is a trickier one for me to write, and my brain crumbled away and died whenever I tried.

I am currently feeling utterly awful due a bad cold, but ideas have had time to percolate so hopefully this will be coherent.

For the December talking meme, netgirl_y2k asked me to talk about what I like about historical romances and give some recs.

( Cut for length )

A day late again, but at least I'm doing it this week...

What are you currently reading?

Still working on And Then He Kissed Her and Longbourne because I seem to have no time lately for reading, but I'm enjoying them both and should finish them very soon.

What did you recently finish?

Nothing new since last week. Woe :-( There need to be more hours in my day.

What do you think you'll read next?

Symbiont by Mira Grant and Waistcoats and Weaponry by Gail Carriger arrived yesterday, so it will be one of those. And quite possibly my next e-read will be another historical romance. I've got a Tessa Dare sitting there, who I have never read but comes highly recommended by Courtney Milan. I work on the theory that if I love Milan's historicals, I'll probably love the ones she recommends, too :-)

What are you currently reading?

Indexing by Seanan McGuire, because she's my author crush and twisting fairy tales makes me happy. I've also just started The Yard by Alex Grecian. The cover intrigued me and I love a good Victorian murder mystery. Hopefully this will be a *good* Victorian murder mystery :-)

Also, a short story by Holly Black that I've temporarily forgotten the title off. My bad.

What did you recently finish?

The Suffragette Scandal by Courtney Milan. It took a few chapters to catch me--which is unusual for a Milan story--and then I fell head over heels for it and finished the rest in a day.

What do you think you'll read next?

I've got The Library Diaries sitting on my library stack, for more NaNo novel researching. I've got a few options sitting on my Kindle, but I'll have to see what I'm in the mood for after I finish Indexing.

The last couple of weeks have been highly entertaining. I gave a friend a copy of Mira Grant's Feed for her birthday, which started an uncontrollable addiction so she bought herself the other two books for and consumed all three over the last month.

Every couple of days I've been getting beautiful and hilarious messages over Twitter from her and I've been chortling madly and not spoiling her because the reactions to each new twist have been so great. I mean, who doesn't enjoy seeing some guess wildly wrong about upcoming events, knowing what will happen next?

It must be fun to be Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire and see people going crazy over each book in turn, knowing what's coming up next and giggling to herself at how wrong people are in their predictions. And hearing the howls of outrage over certain twists :-D

I get a small taste of it every now and again when someone finds Courting for Dummies and comments on each part as they read it but Seanan takes "the author is evil" to levels I can't match. Heh.

I <3 Seanan McGuire and everything she writes and participates in. Her Twitter is a thing of joy and I can 'hear' her saying everything on it after listening to Squeecast regularly for the last year.

(My two favourite podcasts: Squeecast and /report).

The night she got a terrible copy editor and was live-Tweeting the insanity (STET - character remains female as stated on page one) was HILARIOUS. She's one of my major author crushes :-D

Oh, Monday, you only took an hour to defeat me completely. How do you do this to me?

In more cheerful news...

During yesterday's weekly Skype with my parents, Dad told me he'd finished reading Warrior's Apprentice (I gave it to him for his birthday last year in hopes he'd enjoy something I love) and please could I tell him what to read next and what the best order to read in is and by the way HE FREAKING LOVES LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME ABOUT HER BEFORE.

Ahem.

I decided not to point out that I've been trying to pimp her to him for the last few years :-D And then I gave him advice on where to go next and we had a mutual geek out about the awesomeness of Miles Vorkosigan. He's decided that as this was such a solid rec from me, he's going to start his copy of Scalzi's Redshirts next and I think he was downloading Old Man's War as we hung up. Dad, sometimes you need to trust me when I tell you to read stuff.

Internally I was screaming "ANOTHER CONVERT WOO!" because everyone should read Bujold and love her :-D This must be why I'm on the Bujold panel next month...

In celebration, I decided to let myself start Captain Vorpatril's Alliance even though I don't have a long weekend to settle in with it. So far, thirty pages in, my major reaction is "Oh, Ivan, NO".

My mantra for Miles books tends to be "Miles Vorkosigan what did you do" with "Oh, Ivan, NO" for any chapters where Ivan appears. So I think this book is going to really work for me despite the lack of Miles :-D

Thinking about this, I'm starting to understand why I've turned into a Hawkeye fangirl. When I'm reading Hawkeye (and any Avengers books where Clint appears, to be fair) I tend to vacillate between "Oh, Clint, NO" and "Clint Barton what did you do". Apparently Clint combined all my favourite Miles and Ivan traits into one big, adorable, totally lethal dork.

If anyone thinks my day at work is mostly me thinking "I could be at home reading, I hate you all, why can't I be at home reading?", you'd be right.

Someone *cough*sugoll*cough* indicated that there might be some interest in hearing about my attempt to read all the Civil War books. So here you go.

I've learned about the broad outline of the Civil War event that Marvel did so it's not too difficult for me to read whatever I can get from the library in any order. Part of me doesn't want to read it (because ow) and another part of me needs to read it because it's such a big part of the back-story in a lot of Marvel lines. So I'm grabbing everything from the library, girding my loins and plunging in.

Currently I'm reading a massive book that seems to combine the trades issues as Civil War: X-Men Universe, Civil War: Wolverine and Civil War: X-Men so I'll talk about those later. I've also got another huge book that collects all the different Avengers issues to read when I'm done with that.

The first thing to arrive from the library, though, was this little number:

Civil War: Young Avengers and Runaways
I hadn't read anything about any of these characters before so the little precis on each one and their history at the beginning was very useful! I'd heard people discussing Teddy and Billy so I knew a little about them. I've also been reading the new Hawkeye series so I'd met Kate Bishop.

The book is mostly working on the outskirts of the main Civil War storyline, showing just how ugly it got when it extended to the younger superheroes. It didn't pull many punches and the villain of the piece wasn't just evil, he was downright creepy.

It didn't seem to be a book that was crucial to the main Civil War storyline but I did finish it itching to read more Young Avengers books.

Oh look, a post that is not about fanfic or the Avengers. I'm going to try, anyway :-D

I made the mistake of finding the YA section at my local library on Friday. Let's move quickly past the bit where it's been there for two years and I hadn't spotted it before, OK? Because the point is that I picked up Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins and ate it over the weekend.

The whole time I was telling myself that it wasn't actually that good, the plot was recycled, it shouldn't be this compelling...

...and it sucked me in anyway. So, you know, looking for something light and silly and utterly without merit yet completely addictive? That's the book for you. I may possibly be putting the other books in the series on hold...

I also found Knight and Squire in the graphic novel section. Woo! And the newest Unwritten trade was in. Tonight, I think, will be a big comic night because I've got lots of catching up to do.

I'm also part way through The House on Durrow Street, which started a bit slowly but is already pulling me in. My little YA grab at the library resulted in two other books on my coffee table (Jinx by Meg Cabot and Plain Kate by an author that I've forgotten) that I should probably read before I get any hold books.

My weekend was very quiet and we were being really stubborn about the heating (it seems the Canadian thing to do) until Sunday, when Mum caved and I went with her. In our defence, the cats had been mithering about the cold for two days and they shut up as soon as the house warmed up.

...that is not a good defence. We're ruled by the little fuzz butts.

This Saturday, Mum and I are planning a trip to the city to visit the French patisserie. I may also accidentally fall into the comic shop, which is very close to the patisserie :-D This excursion has been inspired by The Great British Bakeoff, specifically the St Honore building. Mum and I need fancy French cake and coffee stat.