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What are you Reading Now?

Tom

Tom

Istari
What a coincidence! Right now I'm rereading Castle in the Air, the sequel to Howl's Moving Castle. @TheCrystallineEntity, have you read The Tough Guide to Fantasyland? It's absolutely hilarious, and one of my favorite Diana Wynne Jones books.
 
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Geo

Geo

Lore Master
Tom said:
What a coincidence! Right now I'm rereading Castle in the Air...
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Which I started yesterday... so really a coincidence

Tom said:
Have you read The Tough Guide to Fantasyland? It's absolutely hilarious, and one of my favorite Diana Wynne Jones books.
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I'm not TheCrystallineEntity but The Tough Guide to Fantasyland was the first book I read from Wynne Jones and I absolutely love it. That one and Good Omens are my to-go books when I need a mood pick up.
 
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Mythopoet

Mythopoet

Dark Lord
Finished my umpteenth reread of Dune. It's such a magnificent book.

Began reading through all the Zothique stories by Clark Ashton Smith. I have a volume of all of his stories, but I've never read through all of it. I mostly skipped around and came across some good stories and some rather mediocre ones. This time I looked up which stories are part of one of the consistent settings he created and decided to read that way. Right now I'm going through all of the Zothique stories. To be honest it's some dark, rather disturbing stuff. I think I can safely say Zothique is one of the fantasy settings I would least like to visit.

I also read Smith's story City of the Singing Flame and I really liked it. It had more "wonder", less "horror".
 
DragonOfTheAerie

DragonOfTheAerie

Istari
And now I'm reading Heir of Fire (the third book.) The second book was far better than the first, but still, this series is far more mediocre than I was made to believe.

Whatever. I like it. I'm only six books behind on my goodreads challenge, too.
 
Incanus

Incanus

Shadow Lord
Mythopoet said:
Finished my umpteenth reread of Dune. It's such a magnificent book.

Began reading through all the Zothique stories by Clark Ashton Smith. I have a volume of all of his stories, but I've never read through all of it. I mostly skipped around and came across some good stories and some rather mediocre ones. This time I looked up which stories are part of one of the consistent settings he created and decided to read that way. Right now I'm going through all of the Zothique stories. To be honest it's some dark, rather disturbing stuff. I think I can safely say Zothique is one of the fantasy settings I would least like to visit.

I also read Smith's story City of the Singing Flame and I really liked it. It had more "wonder", less "horror".
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Oh, yeah. CAS is now one of my all-time favs. The Zothique stories are indeed dark and disturbing--and wonderful! After reading The Dark Eidolon for a second time recently, I deem it the greatest fantasy short story of all time. There's absolutely nothing like it anywhere. Singing Flame is excellent, of course. The stuff to avoid are the run-of-the-mill sci-fi adventure stories--they don't hold up all that well.
 
Mythopoet

Mythopoet

Dark Lord
Incanus said:
Oh, yeah. CAS is now one of my all-time favs. The Zothique stories are indeed dark and disturbing--and wonderful! After reading The Dark Eidolon for a second time recently, I deem it the greatest fantasy short story of all time. There's absolutely nothing like it anywhere. Singing Flame is excellent, of course. The stuff to avoid are the run-of-the-mill sci-fi adventure stories--they don't hold up all that well.
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I didn't like The Dark Eidolon that much. The Empire of the Necromancers is probably my favorite so far. (They're listed in alphabetical order so I still have a bunch to read.) After I finish Zothique I'll probably read all the Hyperborea stories.
 
skip.knox

skip.knox

Staff
Moderator
Just finished The Arm of the Sphinx by Josiah Bancroft. Second volume in a series. First is Senlin Ascends.

This is one of the best and more original fantasy novels I've read in a very long time.
 
TheCrystallineEntity

TheCrystallineEntity

Dark Lord
I am reading The Infernal Devices again. Why oh why can't I stay away from these books?! I will admit, they are a guilty pleasure, and I mock them frequently [maybe because I was raised on Dickens and Shakespeare and the like?]
 
Mythopoet

Mythopoet

Dark Lord
I finished reading Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction dealing with the time around the French Revolution. Sabatini has a reputation for writing his historical fiction as accurate to the history as possible and I really learned a lot from it. I feel like I understand the factors leading up to the Revolution much better than I ever did while learning about it at school. The story also has a long section dealing with the Commedia dell'Arte, the Italian-born improvisational theater with the masked character types like Harlequin and Pantaloon. Those characters I had heard of before, but this book taught me about the character type "Scaramouche" and much else that was very interesting.
 
Yzjdriel

Yzjdriel

Acolyte
I just reread Games Wizards Play for the twelfth time and I'm not even mad at myself. This series has just always been able to make me laugh.

Diane Duane's Young Wizards series begins with So You Want to Be a Wizard.
 
Aurora

Aurora

Journeyman
Welp, totally didn't realize that Sacrificed is Y.A. Got six chapters in and chucked it. Do not like YA at all. Back to Faerie it is.
 
N

Noxius

Apprentice
"A Dawn of Dragonfire" by Daniel Arenson. I wanted to read more books with dragons in them because I want to use them myself and wanted to get accustomed with differents way of seeing and using them.
I've only read the first 100 pages, but til now, I would say it's not good, but not too bad either, just not what I want to read. I will read through it anyway.
 
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