STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

brazilian · Dooney & Bourke

To all the readers...need help with class assignment

esquiress · Marc Jacobs

Here's one :

Historical Fiction, preferably historical romantic fiction. Because who doesn't love a good romance where the heroine gets to wear pretty ball gowns? wink Seriously though, I credit my great vocabulary with all the historical romances I gobbled up as a teenager. So that when the SAT's came around, I aced the verbal section mainly because of all the words I learned reading all those romances!

My favorite historical romance author is Judith McNaught. She does some contemporary too but her historicals are way better. I love Almost Heaven, Kingdom of Dreams, Whitney, My Love, and Until You.

HTH!

halleybird · Hermes

esquiress, since you like romantic historical fiction, have you read any of Diana Gabaldon's novels? Or Anya Seton?

I have 2 favorite genres:

-historical fiction, but mostly the non-romantic variety, unless they are heavily researched. I like books that have a lot of research to them but are fictionalized, because they are entertaining to read & I can learn something Margaret George's biographies (The Autobiography of Henry VIII, Cleopatra) and Erik Larson's The Devil In the White City are examples. I also like more lighthearted historical stuff like The Historian and The Dante Club for the same reason.

-Gothic and/or Romantic-era literature like the novels of the Brontes, Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, Mary Shelley, etc. I like the creepy, supernatural aspect, and they are all closely tied to psychology, which is cool.

esquiress · Marc Jacobs

halleybird wrote:

esquiress, since you like romantic historical fiction, have you read any of Diana Gabaldon's novels? Or Anya Seton?

No but now I want to!

Oh I also loved The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory but I wouldn't consider it a romance considering the poor girl got her head chopped off!

halleybird · Hermes

esquiress wrote:

halleybird wrote:

esquiress, since you like romantic historical fiction, have you read any of Diana Gabaldon's novels? Or Anya Seton?

No but now I want to!

Oh I also loved The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory but I wouldn't consider it a romance considering the poor girl got her head chopped off!

I read that too. You should get Gabaldon's Outlander. I don't like romances, but this one is sort of pseudo-historical & it's well-written. It's also a very fast read and quite funny. Anya Seton's Katherine is more erudite, but it's also a slower read. It's a heavily researched, true story about the commoner who married John of Gaunt in the fourteenth century (she was also Geoffrey Chaucer's sister-in-law).

Sorry brazilian! /hijack

brazilian · Dooney & Bourke

Thanks girls!! I will have to come back to get more suggestions from you. I *really* need to start reading again.

Bastet · Kate Spade

esquiress, I second what halleybird said, you have to read Outlander! You'll love it!

I really enjoy science fiction and fantasy. I like Richard Heinlein's name for sci-fi better, "speculative fiction." wink

It has less of a stigma attached to it. I like a lot of the "classic" sci-fi authors like Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert (the "Dune" novels), and Phillip K. Dick. I read some newer stuff too, Orson Scott Card, Richard Morgan.

For fantasy, I think George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series is fabulous. He creates a very detailed world filled with complicated characters who really drive the story. Also Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series, which takes place in an alternate Europe. For more "modern" stuff I like Neal Stephenson's Baroque cycle (not really fantasy, kind of an alternate history), Neil Gaiman, and Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch triology (a Russian take on the battle between light and darkness. Vampires, etc., there have been 2 movies from this series, but the books are completley different and I think, better).

If you like funny books, anything in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series is great. His books poke fun at the traditional fantasy genre and they're some of the funniest books I've ever read. The first one I read was Soul Music and it's still my favorite.