Wolves of Willoughby Chase -- Joan Aiken
Persian Boy, Fire from Heaven -- Mary Renault
Wings from the Wind (Poetry Collection)
Dark is Rising Series-- Susan Cooper
Once and Future King TH White
Collected Works of Thurber
Hornblower Series
Les Miserables-- Victor Hugo
Moby Dick-- Herman Meliville
Poems of Kipling
My goodness, they are all fiction. That is kind of a surprise, I read a lot of non-fiction too. But the ones that settled in my heart, the ones that I hugged to my chest, the ones I never wanted to end, those seem to be the ones that were that were 'stories.' Funny about that...
Comments
/picky
I'm with you all the way on Kipling though.
Really, I am so scatterbrained today. Thank you for pointing that out. I will fix it.
Ditto for The Dark is Rising, which did genuinely touch me - it was my first brush with (good) epic fantasy written directly for kids that wasn't written by Tolkien, and it still resonates with me today in a lot of ways.
I've never quite gotten around to reading Mary Renault, but I've heard nothing but praise for her from all sides. And, given that Alexander/Hephaistion is, like, my one one historical ship, I probably ought to get around to that...
(Sorry I've been such a terrible correspondent/reviewer lately! I promise I've been reading, and loving, everything you write, but RL has come down on me like a ton of books [or, rather, like a ton of textbooks] lately, so I hope to be able to get back to responding as I ought sometime soon.)
The Dark is Rising I am going to read again any day now. I have been meaning for a while now to load my Kindle with all of them.
Thank you for speaking up about my writing. I have been slowing down lately, not that I don't have ideas, but they are not all as I would like them to be. I got pretty stuck and discouraged with Marlowe this month. Think I've got it figured now.
I bet you would love Mary Renault. Her writing is spare but deep. Let me know what you think when you try it. Alexander/Hephastion was my first slash ship of course.
Winter is the perfect time to re-read The Dark Is Rising! I remember reading either The Dark is Rising or Silver on the Tree at a family luau in June and feeling terribly cheated by the atmosphere. XD
Re: your writing, I tend to have two states when it comes to reviewing: stalker-y silence, and embarrassing gushing. I've been erring more towards the former these days, but I really ought to be letting you know how much I enjoy reading your fic on a more regular basis - Horatio/Archie is the OTP of my heart, and I love the way you write them so much, especially when they're still with Captain Pellew (and, almost as comfortingly, a competent ship's surgeon close to hand). You've got this lovely, luminous, lyrical style (ain't alliteration awesome?) that sometimes has me literally making little squeaky noises and flailing because it's SO BEAUTIFUL without being the least little bit sappy or trite, and you manage to convey all my favorite things about them so flippin' well - the camaraderie where they genuinely respect each other as officers and seamen and are BFFs as well as lovers, the "holy crap, how am I so lucky???" sense of adoration and slight awe, while still not neglecting the darker bits.
TL;DR: You write good; please keep writing so I can keep reading (and hopefully get better about reviewing).