strina | Entries tagged with books

Ok! So yes, Amazon is The Enemy but! Kindle Unlimited is one area where they seem to give a benefit to readers without simultaneously fucking over authors and so it has become a staple of my reading life. As in, I get most of my books from there.

A subscription is $9.99/month and there are lots of "3 months for $4.99" or "6 months for $30" deals available, as well as free trials that seem to reset about once a year. A subscription allows you to "check out" up to 10 books at a time, and you can return/check out books as many times as you like. Some of the books also come with free audiobook copies. All books are available for download to transfer via USB and yes, that means what you think it means. Syncing to Amazon deletes all books not currently checked out.

Most authors get paid based on the percentage of their book(s) you've read, as determined by Amazon sync. Some authors have purportedly gotten different contracts whereby they get payed by the straight download instead but they seem a statistically insignificant minority. Massage files as seems fair before syncing.

Kindle Unlimited is, primarily, selfpub trash. Don't get me wrong, I love me some indulgent trash romance or filthy trash porn! But there is probably a reason these authors went KU instead of a traditional publisher that would give them, like, ANY marketing support, so, uh, set expectations accordingly.

Oh! Relevant point I forgot! To be KU-available, a book MUST be KU-exclusive. So that cuts out a whole bunch of your midlisters as well as your big names - though some names/publishers have cut deals to release on KU without that pesky exclusivity.

Anyway! KU is fantastic for porn, m/m romance, reverse harem novels, novella serials, nontraditional doorstopper fantasy...if it will Never Be Licensed for Television, it has a place on KU.

Amazon's search is only getting more garbage as time passes, so some on finding the good stuff on your own:
1) a good way to narrow things down is to find an author you like and check out the "people also liked these authors" sidebar on their profile
2) you can look at the rankings of a specific book, pick the most niche list, and scan that for ku titles; a book might be #987 in romance but #10 in 30-minute LGBT reads or whatever, and the latter is MUCH easier to browse
3) start at the kindle unlimited catalog and narrow the categories down until you're ready to start browsing

The key benefit, though, is trying some fucking garbage that you'd never risk if you were straight up paying for it. It's free! The author gets paid something even if you DNF two chapters in and, crucially, they are paid via Amazon's dollars, not yours. You're just paying for the weird access card. Make the most of it!

I have read thirteen books by Erin R Flynn and I don't even particularly like her! I would never pay for her overdramatic cliches! But with KU, all I'm wasting is my time, so yeah, tell me more about how hard it is being a Very Special Magic Princess with six boyfriends.

You will try so many more authors you've never heard of, genres you've never touched. It's amazing. Highly recommended.

The next iteration of Dewey's 24 hour readathon is April 6!

I love the readathon? It's a day of reading, what's not to love, and there is a whole Thing about snacks that speaks to me deeply. I just read a thing that might explain the Snack Culture, actually!

Apparently sometimes when your body is full of energy but no purpose it's because your body craves stimulation of some kind, so you should change to a different pattern of activity, different surroundings, or eat something to get yourself on an even keel again. (This is very very paraphrased.)

Because for most people reading is a very "staying still in one place" activity, our bodies are probably desperate for stimulation and so, Snack Culture. You may think I'm exaggerating but it's literally one of the intro questions. I have been saving snacks for MONTHS; I have special imported Japanese KitKats and coffee ice cream and gingerbread truffles. There will be a veggie tray and fruit and chicken and cheese. I have limited edition Welch's nonalcoholic Strawberry Daiquiri to drink! I want to nom it all now, honestly.

I also have...274 books in my readathon Kindle Collection. I obviously can't read all of those in 24 hours, and I equally obviously am not done adding to that collection, are you crazy, there're two more weeks!

NUMBER ONE READATHON TIP: However many books you think you need, at least double it, because anything you don't like, you must abandon quickly and with prejudice. You'll need all your willpower for the staying awake bits, none to spare for slogging though a dull or irritating read.

You'll also want to throw a wide net, genre-wise, but that's less important. I've got romance, heists, nonfiction, parody, urban fantasy, space marines, superheroes, high fantasy, boarding school shenanigans... I've got m/m, f/f, f/m, and reverse harem. I am prepared for pretty much any mood that might strike me, basically.

Anyway, come sign up! I will be doing the actual Day Of stuff on Litsy, because I have, through trial and error, found that to be the least intrusive/distracting of the available methods.

Am now poking suspiciously at tumblr.

I did just post a bunch of photos of the gorgeous redbuds in my dad's front yard. If you have never seen a blooming redbud tree, you should definitely take a look! People talk up cherry trees a lot, but to me, nothing beats a redbud.

I am going to attempt Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon on Saturday! So I am stockpiling books. The problem with that is not reading the books nownowNOW. I've got a pile of Heidi Cullinan and Terry Pratchett and Wen Spencer and Jennifer Crusie to start me off, but we shall see what my craving's for on the day.

I will be posting updates on that - and apparently some minichallenges? - on Consume All the Things, which is also where I'm sequestering the stuff I'm doing for the 500 episodes and 100 movies memes.

New Anne Bishop! Really liked it (not as good as the first, better than the second), and I freaking loved Hope. Actually trying not to think about it too much, because it's another year before the next book. I 100% had a private midnight release party, though, where I set an alarm for a quarter to midnight so I could hunt it down ASAP and read it immediately. Ugh, I just love this worldbuilding so fucking much.

I housesat for my dad last week, which afforded me the opportunity to play Saints Row IV. I bought the game of the century or whatever edition for like $8 in January only to realize, after two days of downloading, that hey, this game is not compatible with XP. That game is fucking awesome, except for the number of missions that require me to drive cars or motorcycles. Tanks and aircraft I can totally handle, but the "steer with A & D" mechanic is BULLSHIT. I failed Matt's loyalty mission upwards of eight times before I started clawing at my own face and had to stop, because I COULD NOT keep close enough to Nyteblade. Playing as the bisexual Latina President of the United States is seriously the best, though. And I would play the main Asha quest again just for the dialogue. ♥

I also got to spend the week hanging out with my cat and y'all, I keep forgetting how goddamn weird he is. Like, don't get me wrong, I couldn't have ended up with a cat better suited to me if I had designed him, but seriously. Giant fucking weirdo. He does this thing? Where he steals my elastic hairbands, but only if they're used and smell like my hair. And then he will carry them around and play with them and place them in the center of his food and/or water bowls. On the other hand, he is the chillest cuddler of a cat I've ever had. Most cats, you move more than twice and they are out, they can find a better place to sleep. With Fred, I can move me, I can move him, I can lean the chair back, whatever. He will legitimately lay on me for 6 hours or more. I say 6 hours because that is pretty much the longest I can have a cat on me and not fall asleep, but I have spent 12 hours in the recliner and woken up to find him in the same spot, so.

Just surfacing from a deep dive into Hobbit fandom. Or into Bilbo/Thorin, really. I kind of have a fandom hangover? From a poor dismount?

It's like you acquired a fuckton of delicious chocolate and then after you ate a bunch and it was amazing and you went for more, you found out that actually, you had eaten all the chocolate and all the enticing stuff you were staring at was in reality CAROB.

In other words, that feeling of "why does this story have so many fucking kudos when it is blatantly a poor imitation of the awesome story I read earlier" times a bunch of stories in a row = bitterness and ennui. And stalking keelywolfe and scarletjedi for updates.

Can't wait for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Friday! Also excited for: Battle Creek (first ep free on Vudu), Community (March 17!), and CSI: Cyber, because I have a weirdly deep affection for James Van Der Beek? It's not even mostly Dawson's Creek related (I was definitely a Pacey girl); he just seems so willing to laugh at himself and it's really fucking charming.

I've been watching various episodes of QI and the Big Fat Quiz on youtube and being jealous of British game shows. American game shows do not get to tell that many dirty jokes. Noel Fielding requesting "a blowie from the puppet" to participate remains the best.

Currently looking through old ebook recs for authors I need to check for new books. Mary Calmes has something that looks awesome, but after her last few, I'm trying not to get too excited. Spotted an interesting looking Robin Roseau scifi on Amazon and am torn between "space trade and culture clashes are two of my favorites! ROWNT FOREVER" and lingering "it's a TRAP" feelings from the Madison Wolves series (FUCK that series, SO hard).

Fingers crossed for something good, because I am like...three disappointments away from a long cranky wallow in "shit I have read before that I know won't hurt me".

And profic, even.

I have fallen kind of madly in love with Shelly Laurenston's Pride series, y'all. THE WORLDBUILDING IS SO GOOD FOR ME. I poked at her Magnus Pack series, which predates and is loosely connected, but I had to tap out of that. The Pride series, though? I will be exchanging actual dollars for book 9 at the end of the month.

It would have been super easy for me to write them off as more terrible werewolf romance novels and that would have been a very sad mistake. Are they the best things I've ever read? No. But even the short story where a dude kidnaps a girl and they fall in love isn't rapey! He respects and adores her and she makes all the moves and it is great. That's, like, the unicorn of romance novels.

THERE ARE MULTIPLE BOOKS ABOUT BADASS FEMALE EX-MARINES. The scariest person in this whole generation of characters? Dee Ann Smith. Second place I can't decide, but the people in the running are three ladies and one guy.

Also, it's not just wolves, it's all kinds of shifters! THE HEROINE IN BOOK 9 IS A HONEY BADGER SHIFTER. SHE WILL RIP OFF YOUR FACE, SHE DON'T GIVE A FUCK. I LOVE HER. My favorite hero is Bo Novikov, whose dad was a polar bear and mom was a lion. His fiancee (herself a wolfdog, which is a famously unstable mix in-verse) insists on calling him a bearcat. There are jackals and grizzlies and tigers and African wild dogs and I am really hoping for a hyena hero(ine), because even as extremely minor characters those are some creepy motherfuckers.

There are main characters of color! And not just a couple - it's about half and half, at least on the ladies' side. YMMV on that, though, because species is treated as a much bigger issue than race. Personally, I kind of loved that we were halfway through Jess's book before I realized she was black, because it made sense. She and Smitty had known each other since they were kids. Of course he wouldn't think stuff about "that gorgeous black woman", he was just thinking "hot damn, Jessie Ann grew up nice". Blayne was targeted for a hate crime because she was a wolf/wild dog mix, not because she was black. (Blayne and the wild dogs are the best, btw.)

Anyway, the first book (actually two short stories) - not great. Book two, Jess and Smitty - pretty good, but it gets kind of weird for me at the end. Book three, Sissy Mae and Mitch - I love every redneck bit of it. Sissy has a fucked up relationship with her mother that's actually really well explained and the book itself is just really funny. It's the first book in the series I read and I find it a pretty good starting point.

So! I realized that a couple posts ago I referenced the Christmas of Inappropriate Books and then never explained.

I come from a family of booknerds, at least on my father's side, and my mother did everything in her power to foster that. She read to me in the womb. I teethed on books. I got books instead of toys when we went places. I am the only person I know who got targeted "how to read out loud correctly" lessons from my father (second grade! super useful, though).

Anyway, Christmas, fourth grade. My dad a) doesn't re-read books, and b) no longer regards scifi/fantasy as legit genres for adults. I supermegaheart scifi/fantasy and have begun sneaking into the adult section of the public library because I'm running out of YA sf/f not entirely focused on dudes.

After all the other presents are opened, my dad and uncle drag in ten or twelve large plastic totes and tell me they are all BOOKS FOR ME from when my dad was a kid/teenager. I leap upon them like they are everything I never knew I wanted, BECAUSE THEY ARE, and am lost in a new book haze for a good chunk of time. While I'm distracted, the adults are also looking through the books, because nostalgia, IDK. To this day, I have no idea which book my dad was looking at, but it apparently reminded him pretty hard that 70s scifi, not so appropriate for eight year olds, even ones reading at a high school level. SUDDENLY, THE BOOKS WERE MOSTLY TAKEN AWAY.

Thus began my six-year campaign of sneaking MY NEW BOOKS out of the garage and back. Because you do not give a booknerd books and then tell she can have all of them only when she's some nebulous "older". Podkayne of Mars and Friday and Spaceling were TOTALLY WORTH the subterfuge. Stranger in a Strange Land and John Varley's Titan...MAYBE I HAVE SOME REGRETS.

So I've spent pretty much a decade trying to find a particular book from my childhood and not only had no one else I talked to read it, most of them told me I had probably imagined reading it.

Probably because, lacking title or author, I could only call it Tiny Unicorn Dies Alone.

BUT IT IS REAL AND I HAVE FUCKING FOUND IT IN AN OLD STORAGE BIN.

Admittedly, when Morgan FALLS DOWN THE WATERFALL before BEING LEFT FOR DEAD BY HIS MOTHER/EVERYONE HE KNOWS and spending the night EXPLICITLY AWAITING HIS COLD SAD LONELY DEATH, he is still a baby horse, but still, do you see why that made an impression?

I HAVE PICS. SOON EVERYONE SHALL SEE.

I desperately want an electronic version of Sirens and Other Demon Lovers just so I can shove it at y'all and shout READ IT. The Eye of the Storm is the fucking best, you guys, I LOVE IT SO MUCH AND IT IS FULL OF POLY AND ISSUES OF IDENTITY AND THE FAMILIES YOU CHOOSE AND BASICALLY: RELEVANT TO YOUR INTERESTS.

Also The Faerie Cony-Catcher and The House of Nine Doors are pretty great, but mostly, KELLEY ESKRIDGE, I HEART YOU.

1) PC Hodgell's latest novel threw in an accidental lesbian marriage and it is great in every possible way, plus I have decided that the Kencyr and the Kendar both are just batshit crazy from trauma (mostly Knorth-related) and also that try as I might to take it seriously, I mostly find the religious bitterness kind of hilarious. They are monotheists who hate their god more than anything. There is for real a City of a Thousand Gods on this world and they have been there and they have seen "gods" and decided, to a one, that bitches ain't shit. Jame killed one for the lulz and then brought him back, 'cause she could. Like, usually when people get disaffected with their religion, they find a new one, or decide there is no god, or that they did something to deserve this catastrophe. The Kencyrath are just like, NO, WE KNOW HE'S REAL, HE JUST FUCKING ABANDONED US LIKE HE SUDDENLY REMEMBERED HIS SECOND FAMILY IN JERSEY. WE FUCKING HATE HIM. To the point where a bunch of them hate Shanir, because they're too close to god and god is a ruiner. They seriously have genocidal madmen they don't hate this much (and genocidal madmen that they do - Kencyr are destructive sons of bitches).

2) I drove 50 miles to Whole Foods Sunday night to get some of this amazing alfredo sauce and they were out and I was looking at the website today and that sauce is made in Anadarko, aka, where my dad works, and is sold AT A GROCERY STORE HERE IN TOWN. ARE YOU KIDDING.

PS, it is Scaffetta's Alfredo Sauce and you can apparently also get it at Whole Foods in Louisiana and Texas. IF YOU CAN, YOU SHOULD TRY IT. I DON'T EVEN LIKE MOST ALFREDO SAUCE, BUT THIS STUFF IS FUCKING DELICIOUS.

I WAS CLEANING AND I FOUND DARA JOY'S RITUAL OF PROOF, AKA, THE ONE WITH THE MAN-HYMEN. I CAN NEVER GET RID OF IT, BUT I WILL NEVER READ IT AGAIN. IT WILL SIMPLY LURK ON THE BOOKCASE IN MY CLOSET, WAITING. WAITING FOR ONE OF MY POOR FRIENDS TO INDICATE EVEN VAGUELY THAT SHE COULD BE FORCED TO READ THIS THING.

IT'S LIKE THE HORRIBLE CANDY YOU WANT TO FOIST ONTO EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

EXCEPT THIS CANDY HAS MAN-HYMENS, AND VAGINAL SECRETIONS APPARENTLY CONTAIN SOME KIND OF ACID FOR THE REMOVAL THEREOF.

FOR FUCKING REAL, YOU GUYS. FOR REAL. THEY SOLD THIS AT, LIKE, WAL-MART.

For my thirteen-ish cousin Michael, specifically. He actually likes fantasy (his favorite author is Rick Riordan)! I am so excited, y'all, the rest of the family is all Dean Koontz and Stephen King. I very much wish to encourage this, so I want to give him ebooks for Christmas, but I am kind of having trouble thinking of good YA with male protagonists. Like, I've got Only You Can Save Mankind and The Demon's Lexicon and the Owlknight trilogy, but I am blanking. That branch of the family is also more religious/conservative, so I hestitate to rec things like Good Omens.

HELP, PLEASE?

See, this series is weird for me because I read God Stalk at 12 and then found Dark of the Moon at the library, once, then never again and of course it was too out-of-print for me to hunt down for my own. Basically, I have loved Jame for more than a decade and yet I'm reading Bound in Blood for the first time today. I LOVE IT.

Like, I dig Jame and Tori and Kindrie and their whole fucked-up destiny/family/romance THING, and I dig the plot and the worldbuilding and the whole ball of crazy that is the Kencyrath (I have THOUGHTS, you guys), but the thing that might make me happiest? Is how CASUAL the queer content can be in these books. Like, this is not a Single Token Gay situation. There's sister-kinhood, and the true love of Brenwyr and Aerulan that extends even into the afterlife, and Kindrie's (THUS FAR) unrequited love for Tori, and the false Lord Randir is gay, and today I read about Jame meeting a woman and her seemingly-genderqueer husband (called Da by their kids so I'm going with "genderqueer" instead of "drag king") and getting teased about a threesome. All accepted both culturally and by individuals, except for a single creepy-ass villainess, and even that appeared to be more blackmail than actual homophobia, since Adiraina shut her down at least in part by pointing out that that would prevent anyone ever sharing a similar relationship with Rawneth. IT MAKES ME HAPPY. ALSO, THE MERI-KIT PRACTICE POLY AND ARE GENERALLY GREAT, IT'S JUST CHINGETAI THAT'S A JACKASS.

Okay, and I also enjoy that boys keep hitting on Jame and she's mostly "whatever, stop being a douchebag" about it, and then girls hit on her and she gets flustered. I JUST WANT JAME/TORI WITH A SIDE OF JAME/LADIES AND POSSIBLY OF TORI/KINDRIE. Like, I can't quite parse if consort-contracts are exclusive outside of things like sister-kinhood and mistresses, or if the Highborn practice poly as well, because if the latter, than Tori should totally contract for Lyra as well, I HEART HER, and she would be totally willing to share with and to love Jame.

WILL BE BACK WHEN COHERENCE RETURNS BUT, A QUICK LIST OF AWESOME THINGS TO BE FOUND IN THE CHRONICLES OF THE KENCYRATH:

BLOODPLAY

TWIN/SIBLING INCEST

FEMSLASH RST AND SLASH UST (SO FAR)

DREAMWALKING

MIND CONTROL

SUPERPOWERED OUTCASTS

PHILOSOPHY ABOUT HONOR AND RELIGION

RELIGIOUS ~EXPERIMENTS~

THIEVES' GUILD SHENANIGANS

SERIAL KILLERS

GIRLS STABBING PEOPLE IN THE FUCKING FACE AND RESCUING EVERYBODY

THE HEROINE'S SECRET SHAME IS NOT RAPE *OR* A BABY

HORRIBLE CATACLYSMS

TORTURE AND H/C

WEREWOLVES AND ZOMBIES AND SHAPESHIFTERS

THE CLASSIC "IT LOOKS LIKE A HORSE BUT REALLY IT'S A SUPERSMART PSYCHIC HORSIE-BEAST THAT WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER"

THE CLASSIC "IT LOOKS LIKE A HORSE BUT ALL IT REALLY WANTS IS TO FUCKING KILL AND EAT YOU, YOU TWO-LEGGED ABOMINATION"

EXOTIC DANCING FOR GREAT JUSTICE

"I AM NO MAN!"

UNCLE ATTEMPTED BAD-TOUCH (UNDEAD BOGEYMAN EDITION) LOSES HIS FUCKING HAND

SECRET SOCIETY OF WOMEN KNITTING IN CODE

~SOULBONDS~...THAT FUCK YOU OVER

SHE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED

ASSASSINS

BERSERKERS

BERSERKERS WHO ARE ACTUALLY FAKING IT FOR THE LULZ

So I'm reading a Devil Wears Prada fic set in a Merry Gentry/Anita Blake fusion 'verse and I have to keep stopping to grit my teeth because THAT WORLDBUILDING IS INCORRECT. It's not even the hand-wavey collision-of-three-worlds stuff, it's stuff like using "fey" and "sidhe" interchangeably, which, no. Like, I am ALL KINDS of excited to read descended-from-sex-deities Andy, but IDK how I feel about reading fic where I'm more familiar with canon than the author. IT IS NOT A SITUATION I HAVE ENCOUNTERED MUCH. But I'm going to be really weirded out if my personal canon-versus-fanon stumbling block is a LKH fandom.

Just saying.

I am reading SO MUCH MORE non-fanfic than usual since I got my e-reader! And man, I would have read the Elemental Logic series way sooner if only someone had mentioned how queer that 'verse is, so here is the heads-up I wish I had gotten: the Shaftali live in poly households and nobody gives a damn about your lover's gender, and the main cast have formed a household and are raising a kid, and there's f/f and m/m and m/f, and it is GREAT. I mean, these books are full of TERRIBLE THINGS happening to basically everybody, but at least there is also hope and good cooking and TRUE LOVE.

I am actually going to attempt it this year, which means I get to nom things!

Current (hopefully final - I can't take more brackets) nominations are:

The Inside (tv): Rebecca Locke! I just love her a lot, you guys. She is badass and competent and totally, totally crazy. Also, y'know, Rachel Nichols; I heart her (P2 just lost out to Kick Ass in the brackets).

Kick Ass (movie): Hit Girl is amazing (she totally thinks Batman is a pussy) and I'm pretty sure Mindy Macready/Sam Puckett is the best crossover OTP I have ever had.

Lorna Freeman - Borderlands novels: I NEED IT. I NEED IT SO MUCH. IF I COULD ONLY PICK ONE, IT WOULD BE THIS. LIKE, OBVS I AM VERY IN FAVOR OF RABBIT GETTING *ALL* THE BOYS, BUT AT THIS POINT, I AM TOTALLY OKAY WITH GEN RABBIT AND WILN SORCEROUS SHENANIGANS. JUST GIVE ME FIC!

P C Hodgell - Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Jame/Bane was my kinky OTP before I knew what kink or OTPs were. Violence! Bloodplay! Incest! IT COULD BE RELEVANT TO YOUR INTERESTS. Also, there's amnesia and apocalypses and philosophy and thieves and assassins and fealty and magic and it's all about a totally badass lady who's more comfortable fucking you up than talking about "feelings" (she fucks around with the existence of a god just to see if she can! I LOVE HER).

Painkiller Jane: The show is kind of terrible, but it has the bones of an awesome universe and then there is JANE. Jane is like Claire Petrelli, Max Guevara, and Sara Pezzini had a baby and she is AWESOME.

Wen Spencer - Ukiah Oregon series: Ukiah! But also Atticus! Atticus/Ru! Canonical OTP! And you know what's also canon? ALIEN SEX DRUGS MADE THEM DO IT. ROUGHLY. Oh yeah, and also, THEY FIGHT CRIME.

Man, I need to check for clean electronic copies of these books. EXPECT THEM TO APPEAR ON THE BOOK FILTER SHORTLY. They may not be pretty versions, but THEY WILL BE THERE.

Friending memes kind of make me sad, because I very, very rarely feel like I can participate in them? Like, I was all YAY FEMALE CHARACTER FRIENDING MEME and then I went but I talk about male characters a lot more than I talk about female characters, even though I love female characters and frequently rec fic about them. Or the friending memes about a single fandom, where I have to check myself because I will probably only be actively in that fandom a few weeks/months. Basically, I get excited about making friends and then feel like I would be making them under false pretences.

I apparently want an I LOVE A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING, DO NOT CONSTRAIN ME WITH FANDOMS OR GENRES friending meme.

And also I want someone to write Faye Smallwood/Festina Ramos, because it is CANON and AMAZING and FESTINA SAVES THE UNIVERSE AND NEEDS MORE KISSES FROM GORGEOUS BI/POLY WOMEN WHO WANT TO MARRY HER. ( TL;DR on the scifi genre. )

It feels like I've been reading a lot of profic lately. Well, for definitions of "lately". I keep meaning to do a book-post (reading reactions, rather than the SF/F Is Awesome, Here Is Why post I'm actually poking at) and then forgetting about it.

Let's see, Kristen Cashore's Graceling and Fire; Anvil's The Trouble with Humans and The Trouble with Aliens; Carter's Heist Society; the latest Sookie Stackhouse book; Koch's Touched By an Alien; Cabot's Avalon High; Carriger's Soulless: Book One of the Parasol Protectorate; aaand the bonus rant of What Laurell K. Hamilton I Still Read And Why/How.

Other bonus rants: Stop Getting Your Vampire in Everything, Ew; There's Just One Guy Doing All These Covers, Isn't There; The Twihards Are Turning Me Into One of THOSE SF Fans And It Hurts My Soul; More Ladies Being Platonically Awesome, Please; and Parking Rules for Flying Cars, aka, Shit I Learned From SF That I Can't Wait to Apply to RL.

Pick any of the above and I will give you at least 50 words on the subject.

Apparently I'll be doing a Buffy xovers minilist? IDK, it turns out I think Dean Winchester/Connor Angel is AMAZING, and SHOCKINGLY, comparing stories recced to stories read makes the mass of Buffy xovers I just sorted look much tinier, so I think I'm gonna go through my tracked stories and even that shit out a bit (don't worry, I will totes spare you the hilarrible stuff I read because certain pairings are like crack to me).

Also, White Collar list. Also, prompt list. Also, big bangs and telepathy and a million other things. Now that the comm has actual traffic and stuff, I want to post bunches and bunches.

I've been listening to three songs on repeat for basically a week. Steel Train's cover of Space Oddity + I Hate Kate's cover of Major Tom, and I got One Night in Bangkok a few day ago and still giggle every time he gets to the bit about "I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine".

I am torn between three White Collar icons. They are ALL of that OT3 bondage pic, you know the one. Decisions are haaard.

THE NEW LORNA FREEMAN CAME OUT AND I AM SO SAD YOU GUYS AREN'T READING THESE BOOKS. I NEED RABBIT TO BE HAVING SOME FILTHY GAY SEX WITH AN OLDER MAN. OR MEN. OR MANLIKE CREATURES, I AM NOT PICKY, AND HE'S GOT THOSE OPTIONS (THIS COULD TOTALLY BE THE FANDOM IN WHICH TO EXPLORE YOUR FURRY FANTASIES - JUST WRITE SOMETHING). Also, we just found out boys can totally marry each other in this world. Also, at this point, there is ONE male character you could slash Rabbit with who has NOT seen him naked. Also, in this book he got a weirdly devoted boytoy who he ACTUALLY CALLS a "vision of beauty" and often describes as "glowing", and also there's manhandling and shapeshifted cuddling. Okay, fine, textually speaking, he's het, but all of his actual relationships are with men (he's in the military/a member of the court of a bachelor king) and I can name six males off the top of my head that he could be legit slashed with (okay, so one of them is a walking, talking mountain cat, so what). Several of them have gotten into bitchfights over him! Like, y'all remember Gunn v. Angel over Wesley in Epiphany? GAYER THAN THAT. THE POINT IS, RABBIT IBN CHAUSE ESO FLAVAN THE COCKSLUT WOULD MAKE THE INTERNET 23% MORE FUN FOR ME.

Man, I almost made the whole month, too. *sad* But I hung out with my grandma and my favorite cousin, so that was nifty.

I've been re-reading a bunch of AI fic. I started John Ringo's Posleen Saga and I am pleasantly surprised. Like, I don't love them, but I no longer think my brother likes them because of brain damage (I only had to go OH JOHN RINGO NO once so far! although that once was very emphatic). And I stayed up 'til 8:30 this morning reading the second one, so. Relatedly, I have had two hours of sleep, but I accidentally caught some kind of second wind? So I'm not going to be able to sleep until I fall over.

ALSO! Everyone has more userpics now! Free users = 15, paid users = 100, and paid premium = 250. I...have no idea what I'm going to do with 250 icons, but "icon memes" is probably a good guess.

ETA: Book Three and the whores have finally appeared. So far my only OJRNs were the Auschwitz joke and, of course, the creepy racist/misogynist "joke" back in Book One.

I am kind of cranky about profic lately. Apparently I think people doing this for pay should be as good as people doing it for free on the internet? And then they aren't, and I get...cranky. Basically, I am reading a lot of beginnings and ends, and not a lot of middles, because that's where it all kind of falls apart.

I'm also thinking about the books that I desperately loved in the days before I found fanfiction, and wishing people would write more about those. Like, Cate Tiernan's Sweep series: I have never seen anyone so much as mention it and I was OBSESSED with those books. Morgan/Hunter, man, so amazing. And then that SEQUEL, with that ISLAND, oh my GOD, I cannot bear to think about it. Also, there should be Morgan/Willow crossover fic, because the grief and the crazy power and the terrible vengeance they will wreak if you hurt someone they love. They could be kindred spirits, okay? And hey, everybody's getting into the Vampire Diaries now, what about Night World? SOMEBODY WRITE ME ASH/MARY-LYNNETTE. OR KELLER/ILIANA/GALEN. OR BOTH. I NEED IT IN MY LIFE.

Or, oh, the Dark Visions trilogy, Kaitlyn/Gabriel, he would crawl on his belly through broken glass for her, EASY. Ugh, LJ Smith, how so amazing with the ridiculous love stories? Jez/Morgead! Maggie/Delos! Jenny/Julian! Bonnie/Damon! (Confession: I read Dark Reunion first, so I never shipped anything else. Okay, a little Elena/Bonnie, but mostly, Bonnie/Damon all the way!)

(Also, I 100% prefer the old Night World covers to the new generically "dark" ones.)

Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1. The Iron Dragon's Daughter (NOT FOR ANYTHING GOOD. JUST SEEING THE COVER FILLS ME WITH RAGE AND BETRAYAL.)
2. Great Uncle Dracula (The first chapter book I ever read by myself, in a single day. I was very excited! Also, the monster thing was very cool when I was seven.)
3. Tatterhood and Other Tales (I really cannot express how much this influenced me. I never had that "oh, girls can be heroes, too" epiphany because I grew up reading this and already knowing it.)
4. The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (80% of my favorite poetry is in this book. The Middle Eastern poetry is especially amazing, and I never would have read any of it without this book.)
5. Covenants (Favorite book! No, you don't understand: I spent most of my life unable to pick a favorite and then there was this, and I've bought five separate copies, and I just am completely infatuated with stubborn, powerful, in-denial Rabbit and the scary-ass men who love him (and can read his mind! also, he keeps ending up naked!). SUIDENNNN, ILU SO MUCH.)
6. Small Gods (Terry Pratchett + religion = A++)
7. Gaea Trilogy (Mostly memorable for the massive "dude, you are fucked up" reaction. But it was also my first experience with homosexuality in fiction.)
8. God Stalk (One of my formative sci-fi novels; I read it at about 12? Awesome mindfuck of a novel - the heroine has amnesia, so you're figuring out her identity with her, based on scattered recollections and the tangled hearsay of Kencyr mythology. Plus, dirty/kinky/wrong het-ship I love.)
9. Grasp the Stars (Remains the most successful "squishy" science fiction I've ever read; human society has undergone a drastic but believable evolution, the aliens are genuinely alien (and WE are genuinely alien to them, which is much less often the case), and the SHIPPING. There's for-real poly and I have an actual chart of who I would like to hook up and how. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.)
10. A Tremor in the Bitter Earth (The TIELMARAN CHRONICLES. I remain totally sad that they have no fandom. There is noncon soul-binding and UST all over the place and kickass ladies and stoic heroes and it is AMAZING.)
11. Enchanted (HURTS SO GOOD. Okay, so this is totally the purest example of my h/c beginnings: the heroine is known - in two countries! - as Ariane the Betrayed, forchrissakes.)
12. Eight Cousins (I had a whole "classics" phase and this is hands down my fave of the time; yes, over Little Women, Five Children and It, The Secret Garden, all those.)
13. Ritual of Proof (Mostly proof that certain romance tropes are totes creepy regardless of gender roles; also, will forever be remembered as "the one with the man-hymen".)
14. Winds of Fate (I way overidentified with Elspeth.)
15. My dad's college lit textbook - introduced me to Shakespeare and AE Housman and Robert Frost and I ADORED IT.

Current Music: Folk Arts Quartet - Waterlily/The Joy Of It

So I am reading some favorite-cliche stories (X goes back in time to save the ones they love!) and, confession: I ship Wesley/Illyria desperately. It was honestly the only storyline I gave a damn about in those final episodes, and the biggest reason I regretted the cancellation, because rumor had it they were actually going to go there. I cannot watch the "would you like me to lie to you now" scene without weeping, I ship it so hard. Her gaspy "my love, oh! my love" is so clearly an epiphany and it KILLS ME DEAD. Unf.

Joss Whedon is kind of an amazing bastard at getting me to fall in love with his characters' relationships.

( So, the various ships (of many fandoms) that I LOVE, in no particular order )

Somehow, Baen is EVEN COOLER than I thought. Those of you who remember my pimping post (and the whole Free Library awesomeness that prompted it) are probably baffled. Publishing house that cares more about readers than it does about squeezing every last cent of profit from those readers? How does it get "cooler"?

APPARENTLY, they felt they could be giving more. That's right: Baen Books (www.baen.com), a publisher of science fiction, will provide its books to fans who are blind, paralysed, or dyslexic, or are amputees, in electronic form free of charge, effective [11/14/2008].

Guys, I KIND OF HAVE HEARTS IN MY EYES RIGHT NOW. Seriously, I am not used to actual businesses being that nice. An individual, okay. A seasonal promo-type thing, okay. But as an actualfax corporate policy? Startling and unusual!

Apparently, if you read enough of a Certain Kind* of Xander-fic, you will get a great craving for men's adventure fiction?

I am now reading The Hunt For Red October**, and am planning to read Patriot Games next. Although I may go for PG now, as I am most interested in reading Jack vs. assassins and the wiki article was stupidly vague about what happened in which book...but PG is currently my best guess. If you've read Tom Clancy, confirmation/denial would be awesome.

*Almost anything on XanderZone, many Stargate crossovers, anything written by any of the authors on the th_presents yahoo group, especially Ten himself...

**Jack Ryan is the President of choice in many of the aforementiond fics; it is almost like research?

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Entries tagged with books

Kindle Unlimited for Beginners

24-Hr Read-a-thon

I Feel Like an Awkward Baby Deer

Mixed Bag!

It's a Het Rec This Time, Guys!

The Christmas of Inappropriate Books

I TOLD THEM IT WAS A REAL BOOK

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Internet, Come Share My Horror/Glee

I Need Book Recs

IT KEEPS GETTING MORE AWESOME

PC HODGELL, ILU, ILU SO MUCH

Inappropriate Rage Is Inappropriate

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Yuletide!

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Pick Your Poison!

...Sometimes You Just Feel Like Bulletpoints

No Posts for Two Days = I Lose

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Gacked from dancinbutterfly and nilchance

I Will Go Down With This Ship

I Didn't Think It Could Be, But...

DAMN YOU, XANDER-FIC!

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