Here you'll find the rantings of a blogging fool and sometimes writer. My more personal posts, including progress reports on my various writing projects, are Friends Only. General posts on writing are Public. Please see my user profile for my other LJs and my friending policy, and browse through the sidebar for nifty goodies and useful info.

---oOo---
Writing only leads to more writing. (Colette)

---oOo---

Visitors from 1/30/05:

---

Saw this on birdsedge and thought it would be fun to do and it'll give me a post here. I cross posted to my book blog, so if you read both, sorry for the repetition.

"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."

In no particular order, and in longer than 15 minutes because I couldn't remember titles and drew a blank on one author's name and had to Google it: 

1. Watership Down by Richard Adams
2. The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
3. Cat trilogy by Joan Vinge (Psion, Catspaw, Dreamfall -- I think of them as one long book)
4. Spares by Michael Marshall Smith (the first of his I read and it spurred me to read everything by him)
5. The Shape of Snakes by Minette Walters (the first of hers I read and I've devoured every other book she's written that I can get my hands on)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
7. Shardik by Richard Adams
8. The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns
9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
10. A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller
11. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
12. Nancy Drew, The Dana Girls, and Trixie Belden books. Some of them are among my all-time favorite books, especially The Clue in the Crumbling Wall and The Ghost of Blackwood Hall (Nancy Drew) and The Secret at the Hermitage (Dana Girls).
13. Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (assigned in school, my fave of Hardy's books)
14. Midnight Nation by J. Michael Straczynski (A comic book maxi-series, it came out in trade as a graphic novel, so I'm counting this awesome work.)
15. Under the Skin by Michel Faber

There are so many more, but this is a nice, eclectic mix. I keep thinking there are 3 or 4 others that should come before these, but their titles are just beyond my reach for the moment, so this list will suffice. Good books all.

I usually do these on my book meme, but since I can always use posts here and this is a writing journal, so there's a connection, here goes. Found on kim_richards. Plus, I've asked some of these questions on my book blog as part of my monthly meme, Booked by 3.

1. One book that changed your life:
No one book. Learning to read changed my life by exposing me to a wide range of ideas, realms, viewpoints.

2. One book that you've read more than once:
I don't have time to read all the books I want once, so I don't reread any.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island:
Probably something along the lines of a non-fiction work titled something like: How to Survive on a Desert Island.

4. One book that made you laugh:
Lots of humor books, cartoon collections. Can't think of any titles offhand.

5. One book that made you cry:
Lots. I bawled my eyes out at the end of Elizabeth Kata's A Patch of Blue. Also Richard Adams's Shardik.

6. One book that you wish had been written:
I'm not sure what this means. If it's not written yet, then I don't know it. The only thing I can think of in answer is the books I have yet to write because they're the only unwritten ones I know.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Beats me. All books deserve to be written, even the junk, for how would we learn to discern quality? At least, for ourselves.

8. One book you're currently reading:
Minette Walters's The Dark Room is the only one I'm currently reading.

9. One book you've been meaning to read:
Any of the hundreds sitting in my apartment, awaiting their turn.

I gave in and ranted about it here. Here's a taste:

I am pissed at him and Nan Talese, his publisher. I'm ticked off royally that he first tried to sell his ms as a work of fiction and was told by Talese that it would do better as a memoir. That memoirs and non-fiction sell better. Which really bugs me. It bugs me that Talese didn't think she could sell his book as a novel to the reading public. That she didn't trust in it that much. It bugs me that people might not have given it a second or even a first glance as a novel, yet snatched it up as a memoir, and now are falling over themselves to get their hands on it after its fallacies have been exposed.

Yup, another list. Someone's always doing a list. There are also lists on the site for top SF TV, movies, and more. You can even vote in surveys. I put an asterisk next to the ones I've read.

* Frank Herbert - Dune
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game
* George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-Four
* Isaac Asimov - Foundation
Robert A Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
Douglas Adams - Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
* William Gibson - Neuromancer
* Ursula K Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness
Larry Niven - Ringworld
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
Robert A Heinlein - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
* Joe Haldeman - The Forever War
Dan Simmons - Hyperion
Frederik Pohl - Gateway
* Arthur C Clarke - Childhood's End
Robert A Heinlein - Starship Troopers
* Ray Bradbury - The Martian Chronicles
* Aldous Huxley - Brave New World
Orson Scott Card - Ender's Shadow
* Ursula K Le Guin - The Dispossessed
* Walter M Miller - A Canticle for Leibowitz
* Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man
* Arthur C Clarke - Rendezvous With Rama
Philip K Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
* Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon
H G Wells - The Time Machine
* Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination
Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light
Isaac Asimov - I, Robot
Philip K Dick - The Man in the High Castle
H G Wells - The War of the Worlds
Harlan Ellison [ed] - [A] Dangerous Visions
* Niven & Pournelle - The Mote in God's Eye
John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar
* David Brin - Startide Rising
Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
* Arthur C Clarke - 2001: A Space Odyssey
Gene Wolfe - The Shadow of the Torturer
Anthony Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
Theodore Sturgeon - More Than Human
Orson Scott Card - Speaker for the Dead
Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep
Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse Five
* Kim Stanley Robinson - Red Mars
Connie Willis - Doomsday Book
Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife
* Isaac Asimov - The Gods Themselves
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Clifford Simak - Way Station
Isaac Asimov - The Caves of Steel
Jules Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age
* John Wyndham - The Day of the Triffids
* Gregory Benford - Timescape
David Brin - The Uplift War
Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
Philip José Farmer - To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Madeleine L'Engle - A Wrinkle In Time
Philip K Dick - Ubik
Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
* Tim Powers - The Anubis Gates
Robert A Heinlein - Time Enough For Love
C J Cherryh - Downbelow Station
Ben Bova [ed] - [A] The Best of the Nebulas
* Greg Bear - Blood Music
Edgar Rice Burroughs - A Princess of Mars
Pohl & Kornbluth - The Space Merchants
George R Stewart - Earth Abides
Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside
* Lois McMaster Bujold - Barrayar
Gardner Dozois [ed] - [A] The Year's Best Science Fiction
Philip K Dick - The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch
Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale
Hal Clement - Mission of Gravity
* Jules Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth
Clifford Simak - City
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan
* Arthur C Clarke - The Fountains of Paradise
James Blish - A Case of Conscience
* Arthur C Clarke - The City and the Stars
Niven & Pournelle - Lucifer's Hammer
Isaac Asimov (et al) [eds] - [A] Hugo Winners/New Hugo Winners
Ursula K Le Guin - The Lathe of Heaven
* Robert A Heinlein - The Door Into Summer
Iain M Banks - Player Of Games
Joan D Vinge - The Snow Queen
Robert Silverberg [ed] - [A] Science Fiction Hall of Fame 1
Roger Zelazny - This Immortal
E E 'Doc' Smith - Grey Lensman
Poul Anderson - Tau Zero
* David Brin - The Postman
James Blish - Earthman, Come Home
Brian Aldiss - Helliconia Spring
Robert A Heinlein - Double Star
Gibson & Sterling - The Difference Engine
Robert A Heinlein - The Puppet Masters
Robert A Heinlein - The Past Through Tomorrow
Arkady & Boris Strugatsky - Roadside Picnic
Frederik Pohl - Man Plus

By my count, that's 30, not even a third. I do have another 20 or so on my shelves, waiting for me to find the time to read them. And in my defense, I've read a lot of other SF over the years. So, how many have you read?

I posted a mini-rant about Warner's new Baby Boomer imprint on Occasional Blog.

My thoughts about "Batman Returns" can be found here on Cyber Chocolate. (Yes, I finally got to see it.)

My review of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America is here on Shelly's Book Shelf.

So on lunch hour, I went to the Barnes and Noble across the street (I work within walking distance of 3 B&Ns!) No more hectic than the usual Saturday at lunchtime. There was a big HP display just inside the entrance, though.

I suppose it's a good thing there are still books that can make people go nuts trying to get their hands on them, and actually read them. Anything that gets people reading is a good thing, especially from the publishing, writing, and library perspectives. And all of us who write should be so lucky to have so many people eagerly awaiting our next book.

I'm not a HP fan, not having read them, but I sure snatched up with much glee my copy a couple of weeks ago of the pb of last year's John Rain hardcover, Rain Storm by Barry Eisler, whose latest Rain book, Killing Rain is now out in hardcover and getting great reviews. So I do understand. Really.