Open Thread: Oracle Hotline

[mithen]

List three books you've read more than three times.

I like this question a lot because it's basically not what do you admire (I have a lot of writers I admire greatly but wouldn't want to read their work over and over particularly) but what do you enjoy, what gets you excited.

Off the top of my head: The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison, The Silmarillion by Tolkien, and The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. The first two especially because they're dense and lush and it took at least three readings to even figure out what's going on, the last because it's my favorite take on the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot triangle ever AND it always makes me cry in the best of ways. What comes to the top of your mind? Guilty pleasures very much welcome!

As for writing--not bad this week! Lots of plotting, a fair amount of progress. Probably didn't get a whole lot done objectively, but considering my time pressures I'm pleased I got as much as I did done.

Comments

[prince0froses]

Hm. Well, as a kid, I read all of my books more than three times - that was just how I read. I cannot imagine reading a book and truly enjoying it without utterly devouring it. Books I read with this frequency include Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, the LOTR books, Dracula, the Princess Bride, and countless others.

In the last few years though, it's defaulted to fanfiction, and I have two examples that spring immediately to mind - 36 Views of Mt. Fuji written by, well, you. Also, this series by ms_katonic (http://archiveofourown.org/series/27309) - it's novel length Skyrim fiction and takes the plot in remarkable directions. The characterization in that one is also spot-on. Of course, you have to care about Skyrim, and not mind a plot that focuses on murderous psychotic assassin characters. I've reread both of those so many times in the last few years I can quote from them.

As for writing myself - I have smut in the works. This is always a good thing.

[mithen]

Oddly enough, I could never enjoy the book version of Princess Bride! Maybe I was too young/unsophisticated when I tackled it, but I found the contrast between the narrator's cynical voice and the rest of the story too jarring to bear. I suspect that dissonance is part of the point of the book, though!

[me_ya_ri]

Hmmm, that's a tough one. I love rereading things (to the point that I sometimes avoid reading anything new) but I've been working to make myself read new stuff lately.

But... I'll go with Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price, Sorcery and Cecelia by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, and To Sail Beyond The Sunset by Robert Heinlein. I like A Brother's Price because it's a fascinating matriarchal world with complex worldbuilding that has a great romance and awesome action. I like Sorcery and Cecelia because it's just the most fun and written epistolary style. And To Sail Beyond The Sunset forever stretched my mind as a teen about what love, romance and life could be like outside of the narrow boundaries of my small town childhood.

Those are the three that leap to mind but right behind them is Zelazney's Amber Chronicals and Narnia and pretty much anything Loisa May Alcott and oh, goodness... lots of others. Zillions of really good books that I love and reread all the time. :)

Pretty good week for me, too. I haven't finished editing the story I was working on--I keep getting distracted by other short stories. FInished one of those and I've just started another. I should be done with the novel soon. I've only got three chapters left to edit, maybe 3-5000 words to add. I'll honestly be glad to get it done at this point. Not doing that again!

Good luck on your writing next week! :)

[mithen]

To Sail Beyond The Sunset forever stretched my mind as a teen about what love, romance and life could be like outside of the narrow boundaries of my small town childhood.

Oh, we always remember those books so very fondly, don't we? For me it was Marion Zimmer Bradley's books--although I was just reminded this week about her horrific personal life and thus why I can never enjoy her books fully again, they were a window to a totally different way of looking at the world. Heinlein provided that too. My small town library was incredibly important to me growing up...