Still on the Quest

Being caught up by old fanfics, in AUs that are unlikely to ever be written about again.
Finding a new series of books without a fandom yet -- and waiting for the next book to come out.

And having no one to squee with...

In the first instance I've found myself rereading AJ Hall's series Lust over Pendle. Which is AU Harry Potter, only it isn't, because it's really about Draco Malfoy and Neville Longbottom being completely in love with each other after the war is over. It was clearly started before the books were finished being written, so wildly AU, but they have the most fun with Narcissa I've ever seen. And Draco. And I say that not being a fan of Draco Malfoy at all. If you go reading, start with "Lust over Pendle", wander over to "Dissipation and Despair" and then go on to "The Perilous Point". And there are some other stories too, but those three are the ones that I'm reading. Again. Mind you, AJ Hall is one of the most amazing writers I've ever encountered. Her Sherlock stories are great, and her AUs fill me with longing for more, and I love her OCs. (And they aren't all slash, if anyone's curious -- try "The Affair of the Asphyxiated Acafan" for a session of delight.)

The second instance is a series of books called "Rivers of London". At least, the first book is called that in the UK. For some reason they decided to change the name in the US to "Midnight Riot". Wonderful stuff, with a POC main character who is a police constable just finishing his first two probationary years and about to start really shaping his career when he interviews a witness to a murder who just happens to be a ghost. I've read the first three books twice now, and if I were rich I would have been on a plane to England already hunting for the fourth one...

*sigh*

Read anything good lately?

In the mood to buy a book?

Then here's a good place to go. You'll not only get yourself something to read, but you'll also be helping a fellow lj-er whose life has been turned upside down.

(And gosh, look at those titles! I wish I still had that open cart with unlimited funds. I'd be buying like nobody's business!)

I've got a chance to order some civil war books -- anything to do with the period, YA and juvie. Any favorites I should know about?

Does anyone out there know anything about Jewish holidays? I have to pick books from a list and all I know is that I've already got a gazillion Hanukkah books...

ETA... I've got a midnight deadline on this. *bangs head on desk*

ETA I think I've got it, thanks to everyone who helped or offered to!

*topples into bed*

Santa Claus is a Woman

*still giggling*

Has anyone read "Blessed Unrest" out there? I just got the review from Powell's and it sounds like a book I need to acquire.

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?isbn=9780670038527

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14681

A very old travellers advice book, which I think is going to become one of my favorite references for fantasy travel into wild country, despite its archaic attitudes. Well, maybe because of them. I keep reading and reading and trying to get my eyebrows down from out of my hair as I goggle at the next outrageous example of ethnocentrism or sexism.

But it does make me want to play Castle Falkenstein again...

Now this article raises an interesting question for me. If I were asked to make a list of the top ten books I'd ask straight away my top ten or the world's? Do I choose the books which have influenced my thinking the most or the ones which I reread with the most delight? Do you want "literature" or just pleasure reading. The website for the book under review doesn't help. Although it does give me a list of titles I mean to read, and incentive to go out and buy the book for the summaries.

And even if I came up with ten titles, putting them in order would be... well, difficult.

If I were to ask the question, I'd say, name ten books which you think will still be of interest to readers in fifty years...

Here are mine. Mind you, I'm restricting myself to books I've actually read!

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Even though I like Tom Sawyer better, myself.)
The Lord of the Rings (Because I can't imagine it going out of style!)
The Canterbury Tales (Because they make the middle ages real!)
The Sherlock Holmes stories. (Because a good mystery is always worth reading.)
Shakespeare. (As if I have to explain that one!)
Les Miserables (Utterly absorbing, actually, once you take the time to start reading it.)
Homer (Both the Iliad and the Odyssey. It's hard to argue with that many centuries of storytelling goodness. I'd add in the Aeneid by Virgil, but I must shamefacedly admit that I haven't read it. Although the new translation by Robert Fagles has gotten the kind of reviews that tempt even a lazy soul like me.)
The Secret Garden and A Little Princess (Ah, my love of children's books overcomes me.)
The People of the Deer or Never Cry Wolf (Farley Mowat taught me to love the arctic tundra.)
A Christmas Carol (Never mind that it was meant for a bit of holiday fluff, if you ask me it's the best, tightest writing Dickens ever did.)

Mind you, that's a very different list than it would be if I'd asked myself which books I wished would still be of interest to readers in fifty years. Guadalcanal Diary anyone?

Edited to add ( Okay, great literature aside, here are twenty-one (or so) books which (if I owned them all) you would have to pry out of my cold dead fingers because I live in the certainty that it would be a stone bitch to replace most of them. Books I love to reread, or which have left me shattered or amazed and unable to forget them. )

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is back in print!

I gotta get me one of these!

*does the dance*