Book meme, days 2-4
Day 02 - A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about.
This is difficult; generally I just pimp Claire into things I want to talk about. :D I could say I wished more people talked about the Marlows (and I do wish they were more available so the radius within which I could recommend them effectively was larger), but that might just produce more natterers about porridge at trennels. I also wouldn't mind if more people were talking about The Deed of Paksenarrion so I knew whether I need to reread it before starting the new one, and whether I will be cursing fate and waiting for the sequel when I finish it (I do NOT have the patience for trilogies any more), but I don't think that's the same thing. Probably Jo Walton's Tir Tanagiri/alternate Arthur series, because I really like it, I think it does really interesting things with Arthuriana and fantasy tropes in general, and I want people to talk to about it.
Day 03 - The best book you've read in the last 12 months.
I'm going to cheat a bit here, because although the last 12 months has some strong contenders (especially this, which I just finished), this, and basically everything I've read by Barbara Kingsolver, nothing really stood out when I looked back over my Goodreads. (Except that I read a LOT of fluff. Oops?) So my best book of the last 14 months is Ursula LeGuin's Lavinia, which performs the astonishing feat of being about the Aeneid and not pissing me off. My review at the time:
This isn't the Aeneid XII fixit of my heart (mine involves Aeneas being a jerkface *coughsofarsocanoncough* and Lavinia running off with Turnus), but it's very good. I only got 6 pages before an O RLY moment, but it was a small one [digression about cats redacted], and she understands Roman religion. It's a very believable picture of what Italian religion might have been before the Greeks got their anthropomorphic hands on it. I also loved the bit where Virgil quotes Lucretius at her. It's strongly intertextual and I could tell I was getting less out of the bits that correlate to books of the Aeneid I haven't studied, but I think it can be enjoyed by anyone who knows the basic story.
Day 04 - Your favorite book or series ever.
You want me to pick one? Marlows and The Cricket Term. Miles Vorkosigan and A Civil Campaign. Martha Quest and The Four-Gated City. Protector of the Small and Squire. Lord Peter and Gaudy Night. If I could get down to one favourite author, I could probably pick one book, but... good luck with that, self.
Also, am I the only one who has 'favourite authors' and 'favourite books' as separate and not entirely overlapping categories? I mean, Diana Wynne Jones is definitely one of my favourite authors, but none of her books, even though I love most of them, makes my short-list of favourite books. I ask because the meme wants my favourite book twice (thanks, meme) but doesn't even mention authors.
Day one, with the complete list.
Also posted at Dreamwidth.