Books III: Return of the Book

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It's been a while since I've done one of these! And it's nothing like complete, but whatever.


Currently Reading:

Soul Music by Terry Pratchett


To-Read Pile:

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett
Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett
Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
The one quivo recommended to me with the title I can't remember by It's Sitting In A Bag In My Room


Just-Read Pile:

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett
Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones
Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones


There is maybe a theme here.

Notes: I really, *really* enjoyed Small Gods - I dig Pterry's thinky thoughts on Belief. I really, *really* disliked Year of the Griffin (why, DWJ?) - it was... disjointed and painfully heteronormative (did you really have to pair up everyone at the end, DWJ? Woe?).

And hey, anyone have any articles/guides on the SF&F genre for someone new to it? A 'So You Want To Read SciFi And Fantasy' type deal, maybe.

Comments

[zanzando]

The non-English perspective, I can haz it.
This will be in no particular order, and there will be books, authors and websites. Some of these will be hard to get (or occasionally nonexistent in English). I'm going to mention them anyway, because they might still be translated, or there might be others who speak the language in question.

- Bernard Werber - a French author. His most famous work is Empire of the Ants (Les Fourmis), but my favourite is L'Empire des Anges.
- Os Dias da Peste by Fábio Fernandes, a Brazilian author.
- The Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards (blog), they always have great recs.
- The SFWA European Hall of Fame (anthology)
- Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler (zine)
- The Apex Book of World SF, edited by Lavie Tidhar, an Israeli writer whose work you should also check out. In relation to that, The World SF News Blog.
- The Witcher series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. It's a bit "blockbuster fantasy", but the ironic humour is cool (So is the video game, but you know ...).
- Uh, Jules Verne, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas*obviously*.
- Anything Pierre Bordage has ever written, pretty much.
- TesseractsQ, an anthology of French Canadian authors
- a couple of the Japanese light novels - Kino's Journey especially comes to mind
- The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach (German) ((Carpets of HUMAN HAIR btw))
- Wolfgang Hohlbein (German) - God, this dude was my favourite author growing up. He's ridiculously prolific, and only the manga adaptation of his fantastic Magic Moon trilogy has made it to the US. I'd rec Märchenmond (Magic Moon), Krieg der Engel (with the inept guardian angel, LOL, ILU [Spoiler]), Unterland, Die Chronik der Unsterblichen, Die Templerin and its follow-ups (yes, a female templar, who is in love with a Tuareg warrior and saves the Christian king's life and is totally badass, re-read now plzkthanx (said king has leprosy and is also totally badass!)), ...
- Walter Moers (German), who does have English translations! *recs City of Dreaming Books like whoa* He's famous for his incredibly intricate wordplays and word-mysteries, so I don't know how well that translates.
- Pierre Grimbert (French)
- Henri Loevenbruck (French), the Gallica series especially. (Ha, translations available in several languages - but no English.)
- Jean-Louis Fetjaine (French)
- Pierre Pével (French) - one of his books has just been translated into English (The Cardinal's Blades), and I've seen it described as "The Three Musketeers meets The Dirty Dozen with added dragons". Which is pretty accurate.
- On that note, the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, a French prize for "fantastic" literature, is a great source for books to read.
- Licia Troisi (Italian)
- W. J. Maryson (Dutch)
- Margit Sandemo (Norwegian Swedish)
- Stanislaw Lem (Polish, also: Duh. It's Stanislaw Lem.)
- Dmitry Glukhovsky (Russian), more specifically his novel Metro 2033. The sequel (surprisingly, Metro 2034) is available online - in Russian.
- Sergey Lukyanenko (Russian), the Night Watch tetralogy.
- Micha Pansi (Swiss), a female fantasy author who also plays guitar in a heavy metal band. Just thought I'd add that little tidbit.
- Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Spanish)
- Liliana Bodoc (Argentinian)
- Mária Szepes (Hungarian) - The Red Lion
- Michael Ende (German) - Neverending Story, Momo (!!! READ IT !!!)

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[zanzando]

:D