Monday morning and other nasties
Well, it is Monday, after all. You have to expect nasty.
My nasty started yesterday of course. Or even the night before that. Saturday night we had duck for dinner as you may recall. And I had Gravy* and Gorgeous Golden Crackly Skin.
And Sunday morning I was 12.37 pounds heavier than I’d been the day before and could barely ( Read more... )
The very first Bradbury story I ever read. Still gives me chills to read it (as with most of his works.) Book favoritism is changeable, depends a lot on my mood, sunspots, what have you--but when I am asked who my favorite author is, the answer that always pops out is Bradbury. So the moment you said "I keep thinking about that Ray Bradbury story" I knew precisely which one you meant and instantly thought "YES! Exactly!" before my eye even hit your next word.
And of course there are all these books clustered hopefully around the bed like hellhounds
And THAT sort of imagery is why McKinley is right up there on my favored author list, too. :) Yes. Yes, my books do that too.
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And THAT sort of imagery is why McKinley is right up there on my favored author list, too. :)
************* Thank you! You *do* know I'm not going to sulk if you like another author, don't you? :)
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He wouldn't be for me--there's too much of his stuff that is too far over the Way Fey line.
I do know what you mean. But there's something about the way he handles language that just drills right into my core. Some books/authors make me tear up because the story itself is sad or poignant; but Bradbury is one of the few who can make me choke up just with how he turns a phrase. Peter S. Beagle is another. You remember I said somewhere back in the comments that I don't often get books signed, and I have to like the book a lot... I found Mr. Beagle unexpectedly at the San Diego ComicCon this past summer, and I came as close as I have ever gotten to a fangirl moment. I don't squee; I just became totally, stupidly speechless. :)
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OK, seriously, that made me laugh so loud I startled the cat. :)
LAST UNICORN was positively one of the shaping forces of my preteenhood--specifically for his style. FINE AND PRIVATE too.
I don't think I read it until I was in late high school--but then, oh. Oh, wow. "Anything that can die is beautiful--more beautiful than a unicorn, which lives forever and is the most beautiful creature in the world." That one sentence (which I may well have misquoted slightly) makes me bite my lip each time I read it. A Fine and Private Place came into my hands much later, and in some ways it was even more sharply moving--hard to read, almost. I don't often re-read that one.
There aren't too many writers I do that with: Tolkien and Kipling. And Beagle. (And Dickinson. Occasionally *he* notices too. :))And Chandler? :) That's pretty funny--imagining Peter saying, hmm, you got a bit of me on this page, dear... But yes, it's a rare author who grabs me like they do, not just with the intricacy of their plots or ( ... )
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Workin' on it! See, when I went to the shelf (floor section) where I've got all that stuff, I found my copy of The Black Mask Boys, and remembering your exhortation on Chandler I decided to pull it out and re-read the Chandler story in that collection, and I got all sidetracked. (And yes I do see why you love his writing. And yet...I still wanted to punch Marlowe square in the junk, for almost the entire story. I'm sorry.)
The funniest was when he once literally did this, and for a line *I* knew I'd poached. :)
Ha! busted. :)
Way to willie-y for me although I know what you mean. . . .I think I would have guessed you were not particularly a Lovecraft fan. He has grown on me, I used to not be able to read him at all and then after getting into his more fantasy-based stuff I kind of worked sideways around into his more horror-ish short stories. But I still can't force myself to read his longer works--even the Call of Cthulhu. It's somehow ( ... )
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Damn. That IS good.
Yes well however many times I tell myself IT DOESN'T FREAKING WORK I'm not going to forgive him The Rats in the Walls any time soon.
Point taken. I think one of the first ones I read was The Fungi From Yuggoth, and I had pulled it off a bookshelf in a friend's house where I was spending the night... strange house + scary story = bad combo. I didn't go back to it for years. (the story, or for that matter the house.)
Some of his longer stuff is so portentous it ends up just making me laugh though.
One of the editions of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game had a 3 page, 2 column tiny-type list of Lovecraftian adjectives which you could randomly use to describe things in your game. "Let's see.... the monster is....hmm... rugose...cyclopean...and indescribable." It's hard to take him too seriously after a while.
Okay, that's really interesting because that's so NOT me. I read WESTING GAME as a grown up and it made me nuts.Well, we ( ... )
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Rugose? :) Amorphous? Antediluvian? Sanguinary? Pseudopodial? Luminescent?
I'm going to be laughing among the rose bushes a lot more this summer. Pity my neighbours. :)
I'd pity them more if your roses had other Lovecraftian adjectives attached, as above. "Gah! The new McKinley hybrid is Iridescently Malevolent!" *arg blargle chomp*
Again, remember, this is **just me**. I am not offering it as literary criticism.
Of course--just as it's just me as well! :) But even if you were offering it as lit crit, I wouldn't be particularly bothered--doesn't make me like Raskin's books less, or question my mental faculties just yet. There's plenty of other things to make me do that.
when I was growing up fantasy-as-we-know-it-Jim didn't freaking EXIST yet.
Though Star Trek came out in your teen years, no? :) Damn it Jim--I'm a doctor, not a fantasy author!
I read fairy tales and James Branch Cabell because that's what there WAS. I read Tolkien BEFORE he was Tolkien. :) But ( ... )
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That too.
* ROFL! sorry, this completely destroyed me!
Oh goody! (I had this vision of your neighbors glancing out the window, very stereotypically British... "I say, my dear, there seems to be a flesh-eating plant coming up the walk." "You don't say, Basil?" "Mmm, yes. It's just eaten the dachsund." and it just went on from there...)
And it was an UTTERLY NEW THING and like NOTHING ELSE and everyone who loved it was AUTOMATICALLY A GEEK
My parents were a young married couple at the time, and my father who had sworn he would never, EVER buy a TV set.... bought one. Just to watch Star Trek. I was doomed, even before birth, to be a nerd.
My problem is how do you identify the ones who will send you the books and how do you identify the ones who will lose your check?Well, in the case of Alibris, much like Ebay it has a buyer rating system. If someone sends me something which isn't as advertised (or doesn't send it at all) I can give them a low rating; when I buy, I can avoid the sellers who others have dinged for ( ... )
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GET OUT! Really??? Oh, that's priceless. I think I picked dachshunds because they seem like easy rosebush prey. :)
And why hasn't either of us mentioned Little Shop of Horrors yet?
"FEED ME, ROBIN! FEED ME SO THAT I MAY BECOME EVEN MORE LOATHSOMELY BULBOUS!" (Really, HPL had a lot of adjectives...)
Whereas I had to INVENT it, entirely without help. Oh, well, barring my first boyfriend in 8th grade.
Yeah, by the early 1980's there were nerd support groups in middle schools everywhere. :) I think they called it "chess club." But still, the boyfriend, that's a start.
On the topic of fantasy-as-we-know-it-Jim, did you encounter Lord Dunsany during your formative period? I am way late to the game on his stuff, but he's on my to-read list.
THE FAN DANCER'S HORSE??!??? Okay, read that one (and the first) for the title alone. Now I've read Terrified Typist but I can't remember a thing about it. That's okay. :)Oh yes--I think I like ( ... )
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************ Yes. And William Morris. And Charles Williams. And some of the classic horror writers--Bram Stoker, obviously, and MR James in particular.
I am way late to the game on his stuff, but he's on my to-read list.
***************YOU HAVEN'T READ DUNSANY YET???? Good gods, woman, put EVERYTHING down and read him NOW.
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