linky links: books edition wk26

China Mieville has a list of Five Things Someone Else Should Do, and some of them are really flippin' sweet story ideas. Which is why the comments were so full of people all ready for an idea exchange.

Twitterlit posts the first lines of books and such to get people to read more. Awesome. Because twitter itself kind of makes people read less.

A discussion of books about cute girls who kill monsters, in the spirit of Buffy. i'm totally adding to this list as soon as I can get this one book finished.

This is how I want my author-info page to look as I rework my website (slowly. slow as a glacier in summer).

An annotated list of books that launched nre specfic genres: Some of them I knew-- I mean, try not knowing about Neuromancer-- and some of them are entirely new to me, so I'll be tracing them down in my slow and random way.

Summer Reading from io9. Way more sexy than required reading in school. Maybe people wouldn't hate reading so much if the books forced upon them were sometimes more like Kusheil's Dart and less like Things Fall Apart.

Internet tipjars as a way to make a living writing? I think it's an awesome idea... but also depends on the kindness of people you can manage to reach through your webpage / facebook / etc, and I suck at that. but it's the sort of thing that feeds into my personal view that we should all tip for everything we appreciate. Like the book you just read? Send a dollar to the author. Think someone has a nice, well-behaved kid? Give the mom a fiver. Like someone's car or haircut or whatever? hand them a little tip. Just a dollar or a few coins each time, and everyone will always have a little spending money and money will stay mobile, and that's what we need right now!

Here's a story idea: Perpetual childhood. This girl is 16 years old, but looks 16 months, has the bones of a 10 year old, and may or may not be mentally stunted. She hasn't grown. What must that be like?

One day, I will be honored in National SF / F Writer's Day.

Yay linky links!

in-reading notes: little, big

This is a gorgeous book. It flows and spreads and moves around like a river in my head... and half the time, I have no idea waht's going on. The most ordinary parts of the story are treated like extremely deep mysteries, and the really weird parts-- girls talking to fish and getting answers, mystical happenings that lead to dynasties-- are about as stright-forward as the story gets, but don't make any more sense for thier straightforwardness. I've been reading it in snippets between the chapters of other books. I want to sink into it, to read it until it's done, but after ten or so pages, I feel like I've grown old and senile reading it, like I can't make sense of it anymore, and I'm left with this really fun and nostagic and magical sweetness in my brain, but several chapters in, I still can't tell you what it's about.

I want to love it, but it's frustrating not being able to navigate it. I love it anyway. I just can't read it all at once. I'm hoping it'll make sense at the end, like the way anime does...

in-reading notes: a year of living biblically

This is all about following the rules the Bible lays down, and I knew that going in, but it's strange how many there are-- and it's strange how I feel about it. Sometimes I feel that same sense of bridling and strangling that I felt right before I decided to stop going to church (but that's probably a reaction to the subject matter, rather than the book), and sometimes I feel sharp little stabs of guilt-- usually as he talks about being nicer and taking care of people and giving of himself and his income... and sometimes I feel like I shouldn't have stopped being Christian, or that I should have done more research beforehand, but that's mostly in a regretfully-looking-back-way, and that weirds me out the most. I've never regretted my decision before, and I don't think I really regret it now, and it's a testament to the openness of his writing that he can get me to feel that way.

I like the way it's arranged, though, like a diary, but with more forethought and more information. I think I'll aim for something like that when I write up my chapters for A Year Of Eating Adventurously. Or A Year of Eating Seasonally. Or whatever I decide to call it.

Books I'm Giving to My Kids to Read

I was a big reader when I was a kid. In Sixth grade, we had an assignment to list all the books we'd read that year-- my list was 80 books long and three in process. Even now, I'll devour a book in a few days if I have the time, and I was always getting in trouble for reading at work.

The upshot of all this is that there are books I love so much, I want my kids to read them when they're young so they can be as important to them as they are to me. Here they are, in no particular order:

- Wise Child by Monica Furlong

- UnLunDun by China Mieveille

- The Hero and the Crown AND The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

- The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis

- Charlotte's Web

- Alice in Wonderland AND Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol

- Tottie

- A Hawk in Silver by Mary Gentle

- The Boy With the Bronze Axe

Slightly older reccommendations:

- DragonFlight by Anne McCaffrey

- Curse of the Kings by Victoria Holt

- Deerskin AND Spindle's End AND Sunshine by Robin McKinley

- Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman (and, really, anything by Gaiman)

- Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

- Godstalk by PC Hodgell

I'm sure there's more, but that's off the top of my head. For posterity.