Um, isn't The Once and Future King by TH White?

/picky

You're welcome :-)

And it's Mary Renault for the Alexander books, not Mary Stewart - though her Airs above the Ground is one of my favourites.

I'm with you all the way on Kipling though.

I nearly went for Thurber! I love all the "The Night the bed fell on my father" type stories.

*nods* I love the cartoon of the couple in bed, that goes something like "OK. You heard a seal bark."

Yes! That lovely, innocent looking animal.

Lots of books there I have always meant to read, but have never quite got round to. I must rectify that :) I nearly put The Dark Is Rising on my list. I was enthralled by that series as a kid. I read it again a few years ago and was entranced by it all over again. Particularly The Dark Is Rising itself. That is one powerful book. Particularly at this time of year.

OMG, you're literally the only other person I know who's read The Wolves of Willoughby Chase! I was OBSESSED with that book like you would not believe as a kid - I don't know whether it touched me, per se, but it was chock-full of stuff that nine-year-old me loved (and 23-year-old me might even be induced to admit loving), and I must have read it dozens of times.

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.)

Unfortunately Wolves was the only Joan Aiken I could get my hands on - I only found it by chance in a secondhand bookstore, and it didn't have a list of her other books, so I went about 10 years thinking that it was the only thing she had written. I've only learned better in the last few years, so now both Joan Aiken and Mary Renault are firmly on my to-read list!

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).