OK, fine...pancakes.

Amanda McKittrick Ros, offering posthumous hope to badfic writers everywhere:

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Nick Page, author of In Search of the World's Worst Writers, rated Ros the worst of the worst. He says that "For Amanda, eyes are 'piercing orbs', legs are 'bony supports', people do not blush, they are 'touched by the hot hand of bewilderment.'"

Aldous Huxley wrote that "In Mrs. Ros we see, as we see in the Elizabethan novelists, the result of the discovery of art by an unsophisticated mind and of its first conscious attempt to produce the artistic. It is remarkable how late in the history of every literature simplicity is invented.... This is how she tells us that Delina earned money by doing needlework:

She tried hard to keep herself a stranger to her poor old father's slight income by the use of the finest production of steel, whose blunt edge eyed the reely covering with marked greed, and offered its sharp dart to faultless fabrics of flaxen fineness.

Her novel Delina Delaney begins:

Have you ever visited that portion of Erin's plot that offers its sympathetic soil for the minute survey and scrutinous examination of those in political power, whose decision has wisely been the means before now of converting the stern and prejudiced, and reaching the hand of slight aid to share its strength in augmenting its agricultural richness?

Page comments: "I first read this sentence nearly three years ago. Since then, I have read it once a week in an increasingly desperate search for meaning. But I still don't understand it."

The Oxford literary group the Inklings, which included such luminaries as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, held competitions to see who could read Ros' work for the longest length of time while keeping a straight face.

A poet as well as a novelist, Ros wrote Poems of Puncture and Fumes of Formation. The latter contains "Visiting Westminster Abbey," which opens:

Holy Moses! Have a look!
Flesh decayed in every nook!
Some rare bits of brain lie here,
Mortal loads of beef and beer,
Some of whom are turned to dust,
Every one bids lost to lust;
Royal flesh so tinged with 'blue'
Undergoes the same as you.

As of 2004, none of her works are in print. Her books are rare and first editions command prices of $300 to $800 in the used-book market. Belfast Central Library holds an archive of her papers, and the Queen's University of Belfast has some volumes by Ros in the stacks.

It's perfectly reasonable to spend the hour-and-a-bit before I need to get ready to go out to Goth Night adding more books to my LibraryThing, right?

Here is a piece on Tolkien and The Children of Hurin from The Times.

So, question: would I like the Miles Vorkosigan books?

I know, broad question. I'm nuts over good writing, regardless of genre. I just tend to read straight fiction rather than SF/fantasy. (Although, as I think about it, a lot of what I've read in the past year or so could be considered fantasy, or at least the bastard second-cousin to it: Harry Potter, Libba Bray's books, Sarah Monette's books.)

Anyway, what say you all? Should I give the Vorkosigan books a shot?

I don't like 'em, and expected to, as they were highly recommended to me by another online group I used to participate in, Dorothy Sayers fans. The group was always raving about Heyer and Vorkosigan, and I tried both and loved the Heyer and didn't like V.

I have a very limited interest in sci-fi/fantasy, though. I think the Space Wars thing put me off. I mean, my modern sff reading begins and ends at Connie Willis, and now Temeraire. I don't seem to do space.

Connie Willis

I've only read Inside Job, which is a novella, but still really enjoyable.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I'd suggest starting with Shards of Honor and Barrayar , which are also found together in Cordelia's Honor. They're really a prequel to the Miles stories, but they stand alone, so you can get a sense if you like the writing and the universe. You'll also never look at the word "shopping" the same way again.

Bujold and Willis are my current favorite authors, although I read a pretty wide range of stuff. For Connie Willis, I always recommend Bellwether , which is really more magical realism. It's very funny, particularly if you've worked in a dysfunctional office.

(edited because I apparently haven't had enough coffee to do italics)

So, question: would I like the Miles Vorkosigan books?

Yes, because they are awesome. :)

In all seriousness, I don't know if they'd be exactly your thing. They're very much character-driven books, but the first several do contain an awful lot of military SF stuff, even if it's (much) more about the politics than about the tech. The later books are more romance-y. And the characters are SO GREAT.

Here's the thing...the first few are good. After that, they get REALLY good. So if you read them in order and aren't hooked right away, you'll never get to the really amazing stuff in the middle/end of the series. (The exception being the most recent one, which was kind of incoherent.) On the other hand, if you start in the middle of the series with the REALLY REALLY GREAT ones, you'll be missing all the character backstory that makes them so good. So it's hard for me to recommend the series to someone who I think might be on the fence about them because I don't want you to be meh on Cetaganda and miss out on Memory.

PS, also read Bellwether, as per Ginger above. It is great. You will be laughing at duct tape and angels the rest of your life.

Also to be reading Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, which are also great.

You will be laughing at duct tape and angels the rest of your life.

And fairies, Barbie, team-building and Robert Browning.