Thomas Yan writes: >Gaertk at aol.com writes: >> Be patient, Brust is worth the wait. [...] >-snip- >How many books do you all read anyway? I guess I average about one >book per week, including rereading books. In 1999, I read about 80 >books, but that was unusually high for me. I vary a lot. Sometimes, I read books in a day; sometimes, it takes as much as a week. The couple of books (Agent of Vega and Mother of Demons) I read recently on my palm took about 2-3 days each, I think, but that was with a convention somewhere in there, and a full weekend. >> Here's some other fantasy authors I enjoy: Tolkien, >> Pratchett, Robin Hobb (aka Megan Lindholm), Jo Walton, >Heh, I liked the "a vanished Lindholm" throwaway line in Pamela Dean's JG&R. Missed that, I think. I like most of these, though I haven't read Jo Walton's fiction yet, and am not nearly as enthralled with Hobb's work as early Lindholm (and need to re-read _Wizard of the Pigeons_). >Some additional fantasy authors I enjoy (not necessarily similar to >Brust): P C Hodgell, Laurell K Hamilton, Diana Gabaldon, Patrice >Kindl, Tove Jansson, Robin McKinley, Philip Pullman, Norton Juster, >Jules Feiffer, Susan Cooper, Pamela Dean, Zenna Henderson, Patricia >McKillip, Sheri S Tepper, Orson Scott Card. Hodgell, McKinley [though I'm very behind on her stuff, and am somewhat more interested in rereading The Blue Sword, et al., than reading the new fairy tale stuff like Beauty, even if the new stuff does look cool], Cooper, and PCD are on my lists too, and Tepper, Card and Pullman get honorable mentions [I've gotten a bit tired of Card, over the years; I think he's a bit too self-similar]; also present are Patricia C. Wrede, Emma Bull, Lloyd Alexander (who is still writing, and even still writing good stuff), Dianne Wynne Jones, Peter Beagle, Bujold (her science fiction, of course..but also _Curse of Challion_, Lord Dunsany (hey, if he comes out with anything new, I'll buy it. :), Neil Gaiman [read Stardust. Just read it -- ideally, the illustrated version], Guy Gavriel Kay (who has been getting better recently), Ellen Kushner (who is coming out with Something New soon; the proofs are already out), Tim Powers, Nancy Springer (another writer who has been maturing recently), Carol Stevermer (even if she' still learning to end books), and Gene Wolfe. Hmm. I've got a pretty long "short list". >I liked _Dhalgren_ by Samuel Delany a lot, but I liked the joke Arthur >Hlavaty relayed in response to Jo Walton's Scintilla fanzine: > Answer: Absolute zero, the center of the Sun, and the end of Dhalgren. > Question: Name three things man will never reach. > -- from http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk/reviews/scintilla/scint1a.htm <grin> Even if I enjoyed reading Dhalgren a lot (and finished it despite my copy falling apart as I read it). I actually found Ulyssess [Joyce, of course] much harder...in fact, that was the book that taught me to slow down when reading books, occasionally; before reading it, I was pretty solidly book-a-day; after spending -5 months- reading it, I got a lot more tolerant of re-reading and taking a bit more time on a book. -- Joshua Kronengold (mneme at io.com) "I've been teaching |\ _,,,--,,_ ,) --^--him...to live, to breath, to walk, to sample the /,`.-'`' -, ;-;;' /\\joy on each road, and the sorrow at each turning. |,4- ) )-,_ ) /\ /-\\\I'm sorry if I kept him out too late"--Vlad Taltos '---''(_/--' (_/-'