15 Book Meme

[jacey]

From fairmer 

I've just been helping with the luncheon club down at the village hall - so the chance to sit for fifteen minutes and think books is great for both brain and feet.

MEME
"This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes."

Mine are:

Andre Norton: Witch World or Year of the Unicorn
John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids or The Chrysalids
Ursula LeGuin: A Wizard of Earthsea
CS Lewis: The Horse and His Boy
Peter O'Donnell: Modesty Blaise
Wilbur Smith: Eagle in the Sky
Karen Traviss: Hard Contact
Diana Wynne Jones: Dogsbody
K M Peyton: Pennington's Seventeenth Summer
Lois McMaster Bujold: Curse of Chalion
Robert Cham Gilman: Navigator of Rhada
Elyne Mitchell: The Silver Brumby
Monica Edwards: No Going Back
Patricia Briggs: Moon Called
Terry Pratchett: Night Watch

These are not in any particular order and I've probably missed some out. Many are books that I read as a child or a teen, particularly Monica Edwards and Elyne Mitchell because I was mad on pony books for years and these two writers represent very different but well written examples of the genre. John Wyndham was my introduction to science fiction - aged 12 - and I really couldn't decide between Day of the Triffids - which I read first - or The Chrysalids - which remains my favourite Wyndham. C.S. Lewis was my transition phase from pony books to fantasy and Andre Norton's Witch World cemented my love of the genre as did Earthsea (the first three, at least). Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise is such a fantastic self-sufficient female character, but it was Willie Garvin I fell in love with. Wilbur Smith's on the list for his visceral writing of the gruesome - and for making me cry. Karen Traviss because I think she's one of the best new writers of the last decade and I'm deeply impressed with the way she took what should have been a potboiler - a franchise book to support a Star-Wars spinoff game - and turned it into an intelligent, accessible adventure with a three-dimensional cast of intriguing individual characters (not easy when they're mostly clones of the same man, so all look and sound alike). The Rhada books tapped into my fascination with telepathy awakened by The Chrysalids and remain in my mind because only the first two books were ever published in the UK and the third in the promised trilogy never appeared. I managed to get it many years later in the USA - and then discovered that it was a trilogy of four! Ho-hum. Anyone got a spare copy of Star Kahn of Rhada? (I'm a completist.) K.M. Peyton should probably have been on there for the Flambards trilogy, but Pennington is such a delightful unruly character, and the first teen to get his girlfriend pregnant in the early days of books published for YA. Lois McMaster Bujold could have been on the list for any number of her books, but Chalion is my favourite and, of course, I'm completely in love with Cazaril. I'm only lately come to to Particia Briggs whose characters are so beautifully complex. Mercy Thompson and her stormy relationship with alpha werewolf, Adam Hauptman, rocks! Patricia Briggs won by a nose, but only because Bujold - who is my current favourite writer was on there already. Last but not least, I had to include a Terry Pratchett and of all the characters Vimes is my favourite and Night Watch is puely and simply Vimes' book. A slightly more serious Terry, beautifully paced.

Comments

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

Cool meme. I have to do it. Can't use Modesty Blaise, tho, unless the comics count because while I have all the books, I haven't actually read them yet.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I don't know what I'd think about Modesty Blaise if I read them now for the first time. I read them as a teen in the 1960s and loved them. I bever read the comic strip so the books were all there was as far as I was concerned.

I've never been a great comic or comic-strip reader. I did have Superman comics in my youth - but I think because my Dad bought them (I was his excuse, really).

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

I'm still reading and loving the Modesty Blaise comics. They've been releasing them in trade pb collections. Comics were a passion when I was a kid and still are. Both my parents liked them.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why I never got on with comics. I used to like them in my teens, but now I don't seem to have the patience for them. I bough the Firefly comic compilation, but I can't bring myself to read it. I must try again.

Ditto the Joss Whedon Buffy season 8 comics. I read one and was so frustrated with how little the story moved forward in one comic book (especially as getting hold of the next one seems almost impossible in the UK without placing special orders).

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should wait for the compilations. There are a few out for the Buffy comics and they'll probably read better that way. And the Angel continuation from the series was awesome. I didn't like it at first, but when they finished the story arc, which took more issues than I would've liked, it all worked and was very cool.

The Firefly comic was fun. They're doing a Farscape comic now, continuing from the series. I haven't read them yet.

And there are plenty of excellent graphic novels out there, some original and others compilations of comics.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Oh, bugger! I'm going to have to learn to read comics if I want to keep up with Farscape etc.

But yes, waiting for the compilations seems like sense. How do I fiond out about them, though?

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

There are comic book blogs and news sites. Some of the sites I follow:
The Blog at Newsrama: http://blog.newsarama.com/
The Beat (Publishers Weekly): http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/
Comic Book Resources: http://www.comicbookresources.com/ They have blogs and news.

[hairmonger.livejournal.com]

Pennington's Seventeenth Summer/Last Term (US title) is particularly memorable to me because of the effect it had on my piano playing. I was in college, taking piano lessons with a teacher who had a very dramatic teaching style. Dr. Sinclair had been trying for some time to get me to "play from the shoulder." He described what he wanted and I tried without success. The night before one lesson I read the part in Pennington where he meets his girlfriend's parents and is asked to play the piano, and plays the girl and her mother out of the room. I started my lesson and Dr. Sinclair jumped out of his chair and shouted "You've finally got it! What did you DO this week?" and I told him I didn't know, but the next week I brought the book and got him to read the passage.

Mary Anne in Kentucky