So a geek walks into a bookstore ...

[truepenny]

'cause melymbrosia asked.

I think that for the weird purposes of my brain, books don't exist until they, you know, exist. So no forthcoming books listed, just stuff that's already been printed.



NON-FICTION

J. Adair, The Pilgrim's Way: Shrines and Saints in Britain and Ireland

P. Aries, The Hour of Our Death

K. Ashley and P. Sheingorn, Interpreting Cultural Symbols: St. Anne in Late Medieval Society

P. Barber, Vampires, Burial and Death

Elizabeth Benedict, The Joy of Writing Sex

H. S. Bennett, English Books and Readers 1475-1557

Carol Bly, The Passion of Accurate Story

Robert Bogden, Freak Show

Stephen Booth, King Lear, Macbeth, Indefinition, and Tragedy

Bowditch, New American Practical Navigator

John Carter, ABC for Book Collectors

J. M. Clark The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

R. M. Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England and The Medieval Hospitals of England

J. C. Cruz, The Incorruptibles: A Study of the Incorruption of the Bodies of Various Catholic Saints and Beati

A. R. David and E. Tapp (editors), The Mummy's Tale: The Scientific and Medical Investigations of Natsef-Amun, Priest in the Temple at Karnak

D. H. Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints

R. C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England

William & Elizabeth Friedman, The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined

J. H. G. Gratton and C. Singer, Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine

Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet and Purgatory

D. J. Hall, English Medieval Pilgrimage

Dorothy Hartley, Lost Country Lives, The History of Private Lives

T. J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages

Herman, Trauma & Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

C. Hole, Saints in Folklore

J. Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire

David Langford, The Silence of the Langford

M. Mitchiner, Medieval Pilgrim and Secular Badges

Neese and Williams, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine

Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Making Book

Dorothy Parker (I want a collection of her reviews and criticism, although so far I haven't been able to find one.)

Pamela Petro, Travels in an Old Tongue

Carol Queen, Exhibitionism for the Shy

S. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England

M. Ragon, The Space of Death: A Study of Funerary Architecture, Decoration, and Urbanism

Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars

Michael Seidman, From Printout to Published: A Guide to the Publishing Process

Sex in America: The First Time

The Smithsonian Institute. Objects of Ethnography: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Displays

Michelle Stacey, The Fasting Girl

J. Sumption, Pilgrimage

J. H. M. Taylor (ed.), Dias Ille: Death in the Middle Ages

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic

A. Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages

K. Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Post-socialist Change

B. Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind

Lyall Watson, Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil

Kenny Werner, Effortless Mastery

FICTION, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, ETC.

Sharon Baker, Quarrelling, They Met the Dragon, Journey to Membliar, and Burning Tears of Sassurum

John Barnes, One for the Morning Glory

Nina Bawden, The Witch's Daughter

Bruce Bethke, Headcrash

Ernest Bramah's Kai-Lung books

Judy Budnitz, Flying Leap

Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford and Earthly Powers

John Dickson Carr, It Walks by Night, Castle Skull, The Lost Gallows, the Mad Hatter Mystery, The Eight of Swords, The Problem of the Green Capsule (A.P.A. The Black Spectacles), The Case of the Constant Suicide, Till Death Do Us Part, The Sleeping Sphinx, The Dead Man's Knock, In Spite of Thunder, Panic in Box C, Dr. Fell, Detective, and Other Stories

Sarah Caudwell, The Shortest Way to Hades, The Sibyl in Her Grave, Thus was Adonis Murdered

C. J. Cherryh, Cyteen

Edmund Crispin, The Moving Toyshop, Buried for Pleasure, Frequent Hearses, The Glimpses of the Moon

Les Daniels, The Black Castle

Avram Davidson, Adventures in Unhistory

Pamela Dean's Secret Country books

Peter Dickinson, Annerton Pit

Candas Jane Dorsey, A Paradigm of Earth

Mark Doty, Heaven's Coast

Helen Dunmore, Burning Bright

Jean Ross Ewing, Illusion

Nicholas Fisk, A Rag, A Bone, and A Hank of Hair

John M. Ford, an embarrassingly large number of books (I have The Dragon Waiting and The Last Hot Time; I've read Growing Up Weightless but my copy seems to have mysteriously dematerialized)

Karen Joy Fowler, Sister Noon

Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning

Paul Fussell, The Boy Scout Handbook, Thank God for the Atom Bomb

Alan Garner, Red Shift

Molly Gloss, Outside the Gates

Christopher Golden, Strangewood

Goscinny & Uderzo's Asterix books (all of which I have read, but none of which I own *weeps*)

Hiromi Goto, The Kappa Child

Barbara Hambly, Wet Grave

Herge's Tintin books (see Goscinny & Uderzo above)

Georgette Heyer, The Black Moth, Black Sheep ('cause I have these little completist twitches sometimes)

M. R. James, A Pleasing Terror (complete M. R. James, put out by Ash-Tree Press. WANT.)

Kij Johnson, The Fox Woman

Diana Wynne Jones, Wilkins' Tooth (publ. in USA as Witch's Business), The Skiver's Guide, Changeover, Puss in boots, Wild Robert, Yes, Dear

Gwyneth Jones, White Queen

Gerald Kersh, Men Without Bones

Laura Kinsale, My Sweet Folly

Russell Kirk, The Princess of All Lands

Nigel Kneale, Tomato Caine

Ronald A. Knox, The Footsteps at the Lock

William Kotzwinkle, Dr. Rat

Jane Langton, The Diamond in the Window

Emma Lathen, Come to Dust, Murder against the Grain, When in Greece, (as R. B. Dominic) Murder Sunny Side Up, Murder in High Places, There Is No Justice (A.P.A. Murder Out of Court), Unexpected Developments (A.P.A. A Flaw in the System), Epitaph for a Lobbyist, Murder out of Commission, The Attending Physician

Martha C. Lawrence, Murder in Scorpio, The Cold Heart of Capricorn, Aquarius Descending, Pisces Rising

Ursula K. Le Guin, Tales of Earthsea, The Other Wind

Fritz Leiber, Our Lady of Darkness

David Lodge, Trading Places

John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee mysteries

Ross Macdonald, The Way Some People Die, The Ivory Grin, Find a Victim, The Barbarous Coast, The Doomsters, The Instant Enemy, The Blue Hammer, The Name is Archer

Margaret Mahy, the books I don't have (i.e., everything except The Changeover, The Catalogue of the Universe, Memory)

William Mayne, Cuddy, Low Tide

Dave McKean, Cages

Naomi Mitchison, To the Chapel Perilous

Alan Moore, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell, Promethea

Christopher Morley, Where the Blue Begins

Roger Norman, Albion's Dream

Anthony Price book which papersky recommended to me in Minneapolis and the title of which I foolishly forgot to note down

Ellery Queen, The Spanish Cape Mystery, Halfway House, The Dragon's Teeth, The Finishing Stroke, The Fourth Side of the Triangle, A Study in Terror, The House of Brass

Paul Russell, Sea of Tranquility

Geoff Ryman, Lust

Sarah Schulman, People in Trouble

Bob Shaw, Night Walk

Sean Stewart, The Night Watch

Rex Stout, The League of Frightened Men, The Rubber Band, The Red Box, Too Many Cooks, Over My Dead Body, Where There's a Will, Black Orchids, Not Quite Dead Enough, And Be a Villain, The Second Confession, Trouble in Triplicate, In the Best Families, Three Doors to Death, Curtains for Three, Murder by the Book, Triple Jeopardy, Prisoner's Base, Three Men Out, Might As Well Be Dead, Three for the Chair, And Four to Go, Plot It Yourself, Three at Wolfe's Door, The Final Deduction, Homicide Trinity, The Mother Hunt, A Right to Die, Trio for Blunt Instruments, The Doorbell Rang, The Father Hunt, Death of a Dude

Theodore Sturgeon, Caviar, The Dreaming Jewels, Some of Your Blood

Somtow Sucharitkul, Starship, Haiku

Michael Swanwick, Stations of the Tide, The Iron Dragon's Daughter, Bones of the Earth

Donna Tartt, The Little Friend

Lucy Taylor, The Safety of Unknown Cities

Paul Theroux, The Black House

Cecelia Tishy, Jealous Heart, Cryin' Game, Fall to Pieces

Thomas Tryon, The Other

Jill Tweedie, Letters from a Fainthearted Feminist

Jack Vance (and, um, recommendations for where to start would be gratefully received)

Virgil, the Loeb with Aeneid 6-12 (I adore the Loebs, but I also despise and revile them for their habit of chopping up longer words between two books, because, you know, those little teeny red books, they ain't cheap)

Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kingdoms of Elfin, Mr. Fortune's Maggot

Colin Watson's Flaxborough books

Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, Sorcery and Cecelia

John Wyndham, The Chrysalids

Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October

POETRY
(This is just going to be a list of authors, because for many of them I haven't hunted out specific titles; some of these are poets I already own books by, and some of them aren't.)

William Carpenter
Fred Chappell
Babette Deutsch
William Dickey
Patricia Dobler
Susan Donnelly
Rita Dove
Alan Dugan
Stephen Dunn
Jane Flanders
Robert Frost
Alice Fulton
George Garrett
Sandra Gilbert
Elton Glaser
Patricia Hampl
Michael S. Harper
William Hathaway
Linda Hogan
Jonathan Holden
David Ignatow
X. J. Kennedy
David Kirby
Ronald Koertge
Jeanne Larsen
Sydney Lea
Adam LeFevre
Larry Levis
Philip Larkin
Philip Lopate
Susan Ludvigson
Charles Martin
Dan Masterton
Walter McDonald
Sandra McPherson
Peter Meinke
Lisel Mueller
Sharon Olds
Alicia Ostriker
Robert Pinsky
Stanley Plumly
Wyatt Prunty
Pattiann Rogers
Gibbons Ruark
Vern Rutsala
Harvey Shapiro
Richard Shelton
Peggy Shumaker
Cathy Song
Elizabeth Spires
Maura Stanton
David St. John
James Tate
Leslie Ullman
Constance Urdang
Michael Van Walleghen
David Wagoner
David Wojahn
Robert Wrigley
Paul Zimmer

Comments

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I will see if I can find the Seidman, although I think I may have disposed of it already. The nonfiction is fairly self-explanatory, and full of goodies I may appropriate for my list. Thank you! This is fun. Everyone should do it.

For the fiction, if you did borrowing, I would be happy to lend you things. I don't think I've got extras of any of the above, although I'll check. I've only just given away *A Dead Man in Deptford* ("just" as in "the box is packed up but unaddressed"); I'd say it's a pity except that the Marlowe fan who is going to be surprised by it will be made happy, I hope.

Tell me about the pleasures of Nina Bawden, Edmund Crispin, Les Daniels, Mark Doty, Gerald Kersh, Russell Kirk, Emma Lathen, Martha Lawrence, Roger Norman, Cecelia Tishy, and Jill Tweedy.

I suspect Papersky recommended starting Anthony Price with Tomorrow's Ghost, and if she didn't, I do.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I can tell you about Edmund Crispin, Mark Doty, and Emma Lathen already. The others are all things I found recommended, um, er, somewhere? Actually, I know Jill Tweedie came up when I was combing the archives at Ansible (http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/SF-Archives/Ansible/).

Mark Doty is a poet. Heaven's Coast is his autobiography, about the year his partner died of AIDS. heres_luck can go into details, 'cause she has it. I have three volumes of his poetry, of which the one I love best is My Alexandria. He writes about loss and grief and strength and bravery (h.l., you wanna chime in here?). He's amazing.

Edmund Crispin and Emma Lathen are both mystery writers. He's English, they (two women) are American. Crispin writes extremely self-conscious literary mysteries; his detective is Gervase Fen, a Puck-like don. The early ones are a little twee; I find the later ones strange and effective. Also enjoyable short stories. Emma Lathen's detective is a banker, John Putnam Thatcher, vice-president of the Sloan Guaranty Trust, third-largest bank in the world. The Lathen team know their stuff (one was an economist and the other a lawyer? polisci expert? something like that) and the books are very economical, full of fascinating details about banking, and frequently extremely funny. Lathen always gets described as a social satirist, but I think that's pitching it too strongly. The general air is one of infinite tolerance for the foibles of humanity. They're light reading, but very enjoyable. All out of print, of course, but used bookstores usually have a fair selection. It doesn't matter what order you read them in (although the last three or four show a distinct dropsical tendency); there is no narrative from book to book.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Most likely I did, but it might have been Soldier No More depending what the context was. Actually I think Truepenny would like all of them, though there are better and worse places to start.

Rysmiel's presently reading them all in publishing order, and has got to but not yet read Other Paths to Glory.

[heresluck]

Like truepenny, I originally discovered Doty through My Alexandria, and I agree that it's his best poetry collection so far (although the others are certainly worth reading). I posted "Fog" a while back.

He's written two memoirs. Heaven's Coast is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read, and now I want to post excerpts from it. Firebird is disappointing in comparison. It's still reasonably good, I guess, but it's about Doty's childhood, and it tends to fall into very typical coming-out-story patterns in a way that irritated me a good deal as I read it. Also, the language isn't as gorgeous; it's a more typical memoir, whereas Heaven's Coast is an extended meditation on grief as much as a memoir of particular events.

It's especially fascinating to read HC after MA, because many of the poems in MA are about the same events later narrated in HC -- there are even some of the same turns of phrase -- but the whole thing has quite a different feel.

[heresluck]

People In Trouble is, for my money, a piece of crap, which is why I don't own it -- it's one of the few books from college I sold back when the course (Queer American Lit) was over. Schulman's quite a character, herself, but her novels are... well, mostly crap, although Empathy at least has the value of being interesting in a distinctly weird way.

And you're welcome, of course, to borrow the Doty and the Russell.

Also? I'm rather jealous that your list of poets is so much more developed than mine. Though, in my defense, I do have a list of interesting one-offs to follow up on, prizewinners to check out, etc, that simply hasn't made it onto the computer file.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. Someone else who doesn't get Sarah Schulman.

You *can* start anywhere with Price and go anywhere next (with the possible exception of A Prospect of Vengeance, which out to be read after The Old Vengeful and Here Be Monsters for best effect). The prose isn't amazing, but the structure of the series is amazingly innovative. The structure of the later individual novels is pretty damn good, too. I'd start with the ones in the middle of Price's publishing career, because the ones from the first half are so much weaker--decent thrillers, I guess, but you'd have to like thrillers. Other Paths to Glory is where he starts to get interesting, I think.

Outside the Gates is well worth seeking out, as is all of Molly Gloss. I snatched it up from a free books pile after having heard of it only through Dancing at the Edge of the World, and everything Le Guin says about it is absolutely right.

I have seconds for lots of the books on your list (even the ones I didn't suggest ;), but since they're already there, I'll try to refrain.

What makes Strangewood attractive? I have to admit I've always thought of Christopher Golden as a hack.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I have this terrible weakness for novels in which a children's fantasy turns out to be (a.) about a real world, (b.) an allegory for the real world (generally including clues to help solve a decades-old mystery), or (c.) in some other way true. I've never yet read a book that did it well, although Dorothy Gilman's The Tightrope Walker wasn't a bad gothic potboiler, but I keep seeking them out. Because I am a glutton for punishment and because somewhere, somehow, there must be a novel that does it right.

Peter Straub's The Hellfire Club, btw, disappointed me terribly (especially coming off The Throat), because it's The Tightrope Walker grafted into a serial killer story, to the profound detriment of the more interesting half and of the novel as a whole. It was maddening.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Have you read the Secret Country books?

And, shameless self promotion, it's possible you might be interested in my short story with a related theme "Relentlessly Mundane" which is online at Strange Horizons.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I have not read the Secret Country books, nor indeed ever laid eyes on them, a condition which I hope to remedy here soon. That's why they're on the list. (Also, I need to find another copy of Tam Lin; mine, like my copy of Growing Up Weightless has mysteriously dematerialized. V. upsetting.)

Ooh, I didn't know you had a story up at Strange Horizons (possibly due to not paying quite enough attention at some critical moment?). I shall perambulate thitherwards and check it out.

[vass]

I think I'd start having trouble breathing if I lost my copy of Tam Lin, so you have my sympathies. I'm waiting for the Secret Country books to come back into print too - I found the first one second hand, but I don't think I'll be that lucky again.

I think you'd also like Christopher Logue, if you haven't already tried him and hated him. He's a poet, and he did free verse adaptations of some books of the Iliad, particularly the death of Patroclus. He also wrote an ABC, which is unfortunately out of print (I think his Homer, by spectatular good taste of his publishers, is still in print) but which started with A for Aeschylus:

Aeschylus died, the Oracle said,
A tortoise landed on his head.
However, just before he died,
He wrote a play whose message read:
My city's leaders lied.
How very sensible of us,
The beneficiaries of Greece
And lesser sons of Aeschylus,
To doubt the facts of his decease
But let our leaders lie in peace.
Contemporary estimates
Rank truthful oracles as rare,
But not so rare
As aerial invertebrates.

Good luck on your want-list, and good hunting.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

This is why I was terribly tempted by that Lisa Goldstein subways/Egyptian mythology book, although I refrained from reading it. There's Jonathan Carroll's Land of Laughs--a subject recommendation, not a content one; I hated it so much I have wiped most of it out of my memory. William Browning Spencer's Zod Wallop is fun, though not as good as Resume with Monsters (which doesn't fit your subject requirements but does have hapless worker drones worshipping the Eldritch Gods via Xerox machines).

I don't have the Seidman, as it turns out, but I do have an extra copy of Michael Swanwick's Griffin's Egg, if you should need one.

The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque is on my mental "Wait for the paperback" list, especially since I own two other Jeffrey Ford books I haven't read yet, and his short fiction hasn't thrilled me.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I'm still thinking about this. We seem to have many of the same weaknesses.

I just started A.S. Byatt's A Whistling Woman, which opens with a children's quest fantasy during winter, which made me think of Greer Gilman's Moonwise and Neil Gaiman's Sandman: Game of You, both of which are about adults re-encountering the land of their childhood fantasies.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth Benedict, The Joy of Writing Sex

Hee! Great title. I think I looked at this in the bookstore once. It can't remember much about it.

I could lend some of your list: CYTEEN, SISTER NOON, WHITE QUEEN, MY SWEET FOLLY, THE NIGHT WATCH, all 3 of those Sturgeons, and the Swanwicks except for BONES. MY Nero Wolfe is complete except for 3-4 of the "threesome" collection. I have (I think) a complete set of the Travis McGee books, but they are packed away with James Bond and would take some digging out.

I do own A NIGHT IN THE LONESOME OCTOBER but it's one of the few I don't lend out, so it's mean of me to tempt you, isnt' it?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It is exceedingly kind of you to offer, but I generally don't borrow books from people (except heres_luck who lives upstairs and will probably not kill me--or at least not very much--if something happens to one of her books). My household is very hard on books, and it's not something to which I feel comfortable exposing the books of innocent bystanders.

But thank you!

[pdcawley.livejournal.com]

I might be able to be persuaded to part with my copy of Headcrash. I'll try and remember to pack it for our American Odyssey up the East Coast and across to Portland OR.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Criminy, people! I'm starting to feel like Blanche Dubois! (Kindness of strangers.)

Truly, do not put yourself out on my account. As with any good grail-knight, I love the searching as much as the finding. And I don't think I want the Bethke badly enough to warrant the effort.

[pdcawley.livejournal.com]

It's not really putting myself out tbh. If our itinerary ends up matching somewhere near you then it's no skin of my nose to take a short detour. Headcrash is a fun story, but I don't really rate it enough to want to keep it, and I doubt it's valuable enough in paperback to be worth selling on eBay or something.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the offer very much, but, no, thank you.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Whyever do you want Lodge's Trading Places?

I'm sure you have a good reason, but it has to be in every English Lit section of every university library in the world, surely? Even at what it does best, Possession makes it look like confetti.

I think Lodge is the most over-rated writer in the world. I cannot understand how people can take Lodge seriously and utterly dismiss Sumer Locke Elliott and Rumer Godden and Dodie Smith.

The other day I saw that Lodge's slight amusing offering Thinks has been translated into French as Pensees. Gack.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Whyever do you want Lodge's Trading Places?

Um, 'cause I've never read it?

I read one of his other books--the sequel or something--and not much liked it, and then everyone was raving about Lodge, and I thought maybe I'd missed something important due to being still in high school and not yet attuned to the delicate nuances of academic satire. But judging by your response, maybe not.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You know how there's a certain kind of SF reader who dismisses modern non-genre lit as books written by English professors about English professors considering committing adultery? Well I think these people were all forced to read Lodge and it had a terrible scarring effect on their psyches such that they haven't dared pick up anything without a spaceship or a dragon since.

I think I've read all of Lodge, up to a few years ago, in a vain attempt to understand his standing in academic circles. I'd say the best one is Nice Work but they are all of them little slight things that would blow over at an eyeblink.

The sequel to Changing Places is Small World which is so unimpressive you couldn't use it to press a primrose.

[marith.livejournal.com]

> Bowditch, New American Practical Navigator

*blink* It's still being printed? Cool! Not that I'd understand word one, but a juvenile biography of Nathaniel Bowditch was one of my favorite books as a kid.

_The Iron Dragon's Daughter_ is deeply flawed but fascinating. And _Stations of the Tide_ stars the Continental Op, though I can't remember if Swanwick said so or he's merely recognizeable.

>Jane Langton, The Diamond in the Window

*brief moment of nostalgic gooping* Man, I loved that book. Alas, the sequels are mostly unimpressive, with the notable exception of _The Fledgling_.

[alecto23.livejournal.com]

Jack Vance (and, um, recommendations for where to start would be gratefully received)

I first got hooked on Vance through his fantasy: Lyonesse (which comes in three parts although the second two books are called by their part name, not the series name; the first is somehow mysteriously always called by the series name though it has a perfectly good part name). I reread them last year and found lots of it disturbing. Put it this way, if you enjoyed dissecting the sexual politics of Narnia, there's plenty to dissect here.

The other ones I've read (for the first time) as an adult are The Dying Earth, The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga. I got them in a combined edition in the Fantasy Masterworks series called Tales of the Dying Earth, which concludes with Rhialto the Marvellous. By the time I finished Cugel's Saga, however, I needed a really big break. There's probably even less of the whole sympathetic female thing, but they are very very funny in many places. My partner and I still quote some of the more memorable lines at each other, and refer to Cugel irreverently as Kugelhopf the Clever.

Night Lamp was pretty good, space fantasy if you will. Again, some very very funny moments. Ports of Call seemed more like a series of vignettes about places and scenarios that coincidentally starred the same main character; it didn't do much for me.

I'd recommend starting with The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga. If those appeal, try the Lyonesse series.

And I don't know if you've read Steven Brust or not, but if you haven't, do. A lot of the other things on your list seem...complementary to a Steven Brust-shaped hole.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Vance advice.

I don't know about Steven Brust. I tried Jhereg and was entirely underwhelmed. Does he get better? Am I missing something?

[alecto23.livejournal.com]

Hmm, well, maybe not then. Jhereg worked for me, but I'm not sure it's the best place to begin. If you like Dumas, try The Phoenix Guards and its sequel, Five Hundred Years After. I find them both incredibly funny and I think they're good stories to boot. As far as the Vlad books go, I think they do improve. Jhereg was written (I think) more than 20 years ago and his writing has improved a lot since. Yendi, the next in order of publication date, is one of my favourites. Teckla, which comes after that, is not one of my favourites because it's so unbearably sad, but there's some beautiful writing in there. I find that Brust is best enjoyed between the lines - what his characters don't say and do, and why they don't say or do it. He's really good at creating an atmosphere. And I'm descending into babbling, so I'll stop.