She's seriously ill, damn it. She had a major heart attack that left her with very limited heart function, and she's not a good candidate for a transplant because of obesity. Grr.
Oh! I didn't know! That makes me very sad.
Now you can luxuriate in a nice jail cell, but if your hand touches metal, I swear by my pretty flowered bonnet, I will end you.
Mal ,'Our Mrs. Reynolds'
We're Literary 2: To Read Makes Our Speaking English Good
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Tam - Jul 07, 2004 3:48:21 pm PDT #4735 of 10002
"...Singing their heads off, protected by the holy ghosts, flying in from the ocean, driving with their eyes closed." - Patty Griffin "Florida"
Polter-Cow - Jul 07, 2004 5:39:47 pm PDT #4736 of 10002
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
Anyone read Perdido Street Station and The Scar by China Mieville? I was just highly recommended them. (Well, the first vehemently, and the second she's just starting since it's the sequel.) Apparently it's genre-busting, and one of the genres it busts is steampunk, which I didn't even know existed (cyberpunk except...not...cyber).
JoeCrow - Jul 07, 2004 5:54:12 pm PDT #4737 of 10002
"what's left when you take biology and sociology out of the picture?" "An autistic hermaphodite." -Allyson
I've read Perdido Street Station. Quite good. Kinda like what Big Fat Fantasy would be like if the seminal fantasy text was Gormenghast instead of Lord of the Rings. Inventively baroque is probably the best way to put it.
Polter-Cow - Jul 07, 2004 5:58:40 pm PDT #4738 of 10002
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
Kinda like what Big Fat Fantasy would be like if the seminal fantasy text was Gormenghast
Yeah, the Amazon blurb mentioned that too. I haven't read it.
Micole - Jul 07, 2004 6:00:20 pm PDT #4739 of 10002
I've been working on a song about the difference between analogy and metaphor.
Steampunk is ... huh, easy to point to, hard to describe. SF, fantasy, or alternate history where technology is more accelerated than it was in history; there's some cyberpunk cross-over, but they're not necessarily related. Contradicting that, one of the most famous steampunk work is The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, cyberpunk's most famous writer and most dedicated propagandist respectively, which is set in a 19th-century Britain undergoing an accelerated Industrial Revolution because Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace were able to come up with workable computers and computer languages. It's got many historical personages and characters from period novels wandering through.
Other significant works of steampunk are K.W. Jeter's Infernal Devices, most of Tim Powers' early work (esp. The Anubis Gates), some of James Blaylock's early work, and possibly Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter, depending on how flexible you are in your definitions.
I hadn't heard Mieville's books put in quite that subgenre, but I can see the similiarities. Well, from what I've heard -- I've only read his first novel, King Rat, which is pretty much a straightforward urban horror/fantasy, if an unusually gritty one.
Maysa - Jul 07, 2004 6:00:48 pm PDT #4740 of 10002
I like Danny the Champion of the World best of all of Dahl, I think, because it is the gentlest of his stories.
I always hope that if I ever have kids, I'll be like Danny's dad.
Has anyone here read any BALzac? (Sorry, I can't think his name without hearing The Music Man in my head.) I have an urge to read some of his stuff, but I have no idea which books are considered his best, or what the best translations are.
Polter-Cow - Jul 07, 2004 6:04:34 pm PDT #4741 of 10002
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!
Has anyone here read any BALzac?
Didn't he write that...one...thing?
*Googles*
Uh, okay, I don't know what he wrote that's famous either, even though his name sounds familiar.
Consuela - Jul 07, 2004 6:16:08 pm PDT #4742 of 10002
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix
Has anyone here read any BALzac?
Balzac wrote dozens of novels. I've read Zola, which was good. Lots of family and social conflict. Poor father whose daughters married well think he embarrasses them, so when he comes to visit they hide him away and make him come in through the back door, that sort of thing.
Hil R. - Jul 07, 2004 7:27:22 pm PDT #4743 of 10002
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
The Great Brain books screwed me up, because they were the first place I saw the word "gentiles," so I thought non-Mormon was the general meaning. Oops.
That element of those books totally confused me. Even though my best friend was Mormon, I'd never heard it used in that sense before.
My favorite Roald Dahl was Matilda. This probably surprises exactly nobody. As for Judy Blume's kids books, I loved both Sally J. Friedman and Sheila.
I was actually just talking with a friend today about about A Little Princess. She loves the movie (the new one, not the Shirley Temple one) but hadn't known it had been a book. I liked Secret Garden better than Little Princess -- more magical elements, and the creepiness of the moors was just cool, and I could relate a lot more to Mary than to Sara. Sara always seemed just a little bit too goody-goody to me.
§ ita § - Jul 07, 2004 7:29:46 pm PDT #4744 of 10002
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.
I used to repeatedly borrow the LP of Secret Garden from the Swiss Cottage library.
I have no idea why I preferred hearing over reading that book more than any other.