Literary Love
Feb. 3rd, 2010 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteI've been doing a lot of reading lately, thanks to slow days at work, and so I've also been coming to a lot of realizations.
Today's realization is that, while there are a lot of books and authors that almost everybody is familiar with, there are also, sadly, a lot of extraordinarily good books and authors that, for some reason, almost nobody is familiar with.
Well, not sadly, so much, because that gives those of us familiar with their work a chance to rhapsodize about it, and those not familiar with it the chance to read it for the first time and fall in love.
But for example - most people that I know have at least heard of Tolkien, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And to a slightly lesser extent, most people have heard of Lois Bujold and the Vorkosigan Saga, George R. R. Martin and the Song of Ice and Fire series, Laurel K. Hamilton, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Terry Pratchett, Orson Scott Card - even if people haven't read their books, you know they exist. And odds are you've read at least *something* by most of them.
At the other end of the spectrum are the novels I pick up just on a whim - the cover art is pretty, the title is intriguing, or the first sentence on the first page just captures my imagination so thoroughly that I can't leave the bookstore without it. And when I finish reading them and start enthusing about them to my friends, I realize that I am one of the only people I know who has ever read it. And this is a tragedy and a shame.
"The Wild Roads," by Gabriel King, is one of these books. I admit I bought it because I'm a fan of the talking animals urban fantasy genre and have been since I first picked up "Watership Down," but I didn't expect it to knock me on my backside as thoroughly as it did. Talking animal fantasy is usually.... well, a light read at best. I mean, talking animals. How deep or dark can you get?
But this book, and its sequel, are amazing. Dark and gritty and fascinating, and the author has a gift for language, stringing out words like rich, thick caramel as they drip from the page onto your mind, and the level of realism is astonishing, and y'all need to read this now.
Also, you all need to read "Grunts," by Mary Gentle. Admittedly, a few more people have heard of this book, mostly because I push it into their hands while bouncing up and down and shouting 'oh my god read this now for real it rocks!' It's kind of the opposite of "The Wild Roads." While that book is rich and dark and slow and magical and immersive, "Grunts" is absurd and freaky and ridiculous and bizarre and disturbing and hilarious and full of quotes like "Pass me another elf, Sergeant, this one's split." And yet in the middle of all the wacky absurdity, there's an actual story, and a good one.
And the Borderlands series, edited by Terri Windling. It is a sad, sad thing that, among urban fantasy lovers, this series is not at the tippy-top of everyone's list. It started out as a shared-world anthology by some of the most amazing fantasy authors out there, and has just kept growing, both with short story collections and full-length novels, and it keeps being good.
"Bordertown" helped shape my definition of urban fantasy, and I have yet to find anything that lived up to the images and the worlds it created. The grit and the glitter, the hope and the pain, the escapism and the realism and the rock and roll and the depth of the connections between the characters - it's a world I could imagine living in, and am always happy to vanish back into. And there's not a single vampire or shoe-and-handbag fetishist in the whole place.
So. Those are my favorite books-that-more-people-should-have-heard-of. What are yours?
Today's realization is that, while there are a lot of books and authors that almost everybody is familiar with, there are also, sadly, a lot of extraordinarily good books and authors that, for some reason, almost nobody is familiar with.
Well, not sadly, so much, because that gives those of us familiar with their work a chance to rhapsodize about it, and those not familiar with it the chance to read it for the first time and fall in love.
But for example - most people that I know have at least heard of Tolkien, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And to a slightly lesser extent, most people have heard of Lois Bujold and the Vorkosigan Saga, George R. R. Martin and the Song of Ice and Fire series, Laurel K. Hamilton, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Terry Pratchett, Orson Scott Card - even if people haven't read their books, you know they exist. And odds are you've read at least *something* by most of them.
At the other end of the spectrum are the novels I pick up just on a whim - the cover art is pretty, the title is intriguing, or the first sentence on the first page just captures my imagination so thoroughly that I can't leave the bookstore without it. And when I finish reading them and start enthusing about them to my friends, I realize that I am one of the only people I know who has ever read it. And this is a tragedy and a shame.
"The Wild Roads," by Gabriel King, is one of these books. I admit I bought it because I'm a fan of the talking animals urban fantasy genre and have been since I first picked up "Watership Down," but I didn't expect it to knock me on my backside as thoroughly as it did. Talking animal fantasy is usually.... well, a light read at best. I mean, talking animals. How deep or dark can you get?
But this book, and its sequel, are amazing. Dark and gritty and fascinating, and the author has a gift for language, stringing out words like rich, thick caramel as they drip from the page onto your mind, and the level of realism is astonishing, and y'all need to read this now.
Also, you all need to read "Grunts," by Mary Gentle. Admittedly, a few more people have heard of this book, mostly because I push it into their hands while bouncing up and down and shouting 'oh my god read this now for real it rocks!' It's kind of the opposite of "The Wild Roads." While that book is rich and dark and slow and magical and immersive, "Grunts" is absurd and freaky and ridiculous and bizarre and disturbing and hilarious and full of quotes like "Pass me another elf, Sergeant, this one's split." And yet in the middle of all the wacky absurdity, there's an actual story, and a good one.
And the Borderlands series, edited by Terri Windling. It is a sad, sad thing that, among urban fantasy lovers, this series is not at the tippy-top of everyone's list. It started out as a shared-world anthology by some of the most amazing fantasy authors out there, and has just kept growing, both with short story collections and full-length novels, and it keeps being good.
"Bordertown" helped shape my definition of urban fantasy, and I have yet to find anything that lived up to the images and the worlds it created. The grit and the glitter, the hope and the pain, the escapism and the realism and the rock and roll and the depth of the connections between the characters - it's a world I could imagine living in, and am always happy to vanish back into. And there's not a single vampire or shoe-and-handbag fetishist in the whole place.
So. Those are my favorite books-that-more-people-should-have-heard-of. What are yours?
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Date: 2010-02-03 07:26 pm (UTC)