My first meme, ooh!

[cactuswatcher]

Ganked from shadowkat67

Hope s'kat won't mind if I abbreviate a bit!

Of books you've read in the past ten years name five in each category that have stuck with you. You can list series as one book.
A Sci-fi /Fantasy - I love sci-fi, but now that I've started writing it, I really don't want to accidentally steal someone else's ideas so I haven't read any in a long while. The last recent piece of any quality I tried to read was Grass, but couldn't get through it. Fantasy has become so cookie-cutter I don't much care for it any more.

B Mystery - The Cadfael Series by Ellis Peters/Edith Pargeter is about the only one that's stuck with me. She really spent a good deal of time studying the era and it shows. The troubled times and the way she portrats the sensibilities of the times are fascinating.

C General - I love Alison Weir's histories, Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Six Wvies of Henry VIII, The Wars of the Roses
It's more of a reference than something to read, but Mike Ashley's The Mammoth Book of Brittish King's and Queens, which has come out in a number of different forms in the past few years.
It's been more than 10 years since I first read it, but my all-time favorite history Leonard Mosley's On Borrowed Time: about how peace was frittered away in the last few months before WWII.

D Comic Books - I've never enjoyed reading serious comic books, even when I was a kid.

E What are you favorite Sci-fi/Fantasy series
1 Bufffy
2 Babylon 5 (first four seasons)
3 Star Trek: Next Gen
4 Xena
5 Angel

F Write your own question:
Do you wirte seriously? If so what?
I wanted to write serious science fiction, but I've found it much more fun to wirte sci-fi adventure/sci-fi mystery.

Comments

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Wow, I haven't even see this one yet! More fun.

Grass. Interesting that you found that one cookie-cutter--I probably don't read very much fantasy, but didn't recall others very much in this vein. Maybe there are lots, though. Not especially in that book, but in some others, Tepper is kind of a woman's writer, definitely a "message" writer (also environmental), but it was my son who got me into reading her. I really liked Gate to Women's Country and Beauty, but am not loving The Family Tree quite so much.

I know what you mean about not reading in the area you're writing in. I'm currently doing a mystery and have had to strictly avoid any writers that use anything vaguely related to my setting, characters, plots. But don't you think everything you've ever read vaguely influences you a little? I say this because I was reading a non-mystery book and suddenly realized from seeing a character in it that I really needed to make a sort of similar character in my book much more ambiguous, though I don't think anyone would see a similarity in the two finished products (except hopefully that neither is totally predictable).

Oops

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean Grass was cookie cutter. After the scene when a girl gets sexually aroused from riding a "horse." I just couldn't back into the story. Too much information. ;o)

I'm sure what I've read has influenced me. But, I'm not worried about borrowing from classic sci-fi, or Tolstoy. Just more recent stuff that blends together so well in your head you can't remember if it was yours or someone else's.

Re: Oops

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I can understand the squickness of that! Like I said, maybe a woman's writer...But actually, it turns out that the feeling she has is something else entirely (of course).