I'll definitely have to read Sutcliff now. My reading list grows ever longer, alas. I also loved the Dark is Rising books, although a recent reread left me a little less enchanted than when I read them as a kid. I think I just got tired of all the high magic.

I've been seeing another Arthurian trilogy in the stores lately, which I thought was by Sutcliff, but now I think I'm wrong about that. One is something like Queen of the Summer Country, possibly. (Ah, and Amazon informs me that I'm thinking of Rosalind Miles.) Are they any good?

That new King Arthur movie looks... um... Keira Knightly in blue woad is pretty cool, but... um... yeah, I was underwhelmed by the previews. Maybe if they dropped all that "This is a totally historically accurate retelling of the really true story of the really real King Arthur" bullshit I'd feel less conflicted.

As to the Wizards: I think A Wizard Alone might be the worst of the six books I've read, but I thought it was still very good. It's a YA fantasy, they tend to conveniently interlock.

Wow, Amazon tells me there's a seventh one out. Dang.

Wow. Speaking of Harry Potter. Hope I'm not last in the class, here, but...

Avada Kedavra sounds VERY similar to Abracadabra, doesn't it?

Weird...and maybe creepy.

I never thought of that Nova... mostly I just identified the "kedavra" with cadavre... wow, that jk rowling is genius!- two references in one!- maybe one the kiddies would understand and one her more "mature" audience would appreciate (I put mature in quotes, 'cause personally... who'm I kidding?!)

For the Harry Potter books, I am still clinging to the idea that when (in OotP) Aunt Petunia refers to "... that horrible boy" when she admits she knows about Azkaban, that she's not talking about James, but Snape.

You may have a point, Jilli, but why would Snape tell Lily about them where Petunia could overhear, when in OOtP, it seemed like Lily didn't like him either so it's not like she'd invite him home for a visit ... although that would add a very interesting plot twist, plus contribute to my theory of them running off together

Petunia would overhear because she always followed/spied on her sister. I'm also clinging to the hope that Lily and Snape had a secret, doomed romance, and when she got involved with James, Snape went off and joined the Death Eaters in a fit of babygoth drama.

t /sappy

That settles it, I want Jilli to write the next books, rather than JK Rowling.

Right and that would further Petunia's romance with Snape, because of the revenge factor, and maybe she secretly had a crush on Snape too (them both being somewhat of misfits), but he and Lily got together so she either pretended to hate him or did and thus refers to him as "that horrible boy" or whatever

The YA book with cloned girls named Anna was called, I believe, Anna to the Infinite Power by Mildred Ames, and socked me hard in the 5th grade. See Amazon:

Good god, I'd entirely forgotten this book! Now I want to read it again.

There was a lot of talk in SF circles starting about 12 years or so ago about the "disappearance of the mid-list" and about how it was increasingly harder for even established writers like Spider Robinson to get books published.

Almost all of his stuff was out of print for awhile...back when I started reading him adn couldn't find any of it. And of course, once I'd managed to amass a collection after years of haunting used bookstores, THEN they reprinted all of it. (And I agree with those who think he went downhill)