Chris.

The Complete Guide to Editing Your Ficiton, Random House Word Menu, and English Grammar for Dummies.

F -- Tad Williams, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. A trilogy comprising The Dragonbone Chair, The Stone of Farewell, and To Green Angel Tower. I think it's the best post-Tolkien fantasy out there, and best of all: it's finished!

Don't forget to read literature: Graham Greene, Brighton Rock -- just started it, and it's very good so far.

As far as reference books, the one book I've been turning to a lot lately is John Gardner's The Art of Fiction. I'd also recommend his On Becomming a Novelist. The Writer's Digest Character Naming Sourcebook is also very helpful.

PS -- Don't forget to check out my Hugo and Nebula Award Winners post. (I'll update it for easy access.) I put it up there precisely to answer your question.

Besides OSC’s two that have already been mentioned, I also got a lot of good out of Nancy Kress’s Beginnings, Middles, and Ends.

Fiction:

For reference: On Writing (Stephen King) and The Describer's Dictionary (David Grambs). The latter in paricular is great if you're wrestling with "detail block."

Ditto for Eddings - the Belgariad was excellent, Polgara the Sorceress fascinating, and anything beyond that just plain tiring.

Chris

Also, I would recommend anything by Kage Baker. Her series of novels and short stories, based on an entity she calls the Company, centers on time travel and immortality. I don't have the time or inclination to reread many books, but I've read all of her novels more than once. The novels, in order, are In the Garden of Iden, Sky Coyote, Mendoza in Hollywood, and The Graveyard Game. I'm blanking on the title of the most recent book, a series of loosely related short stories, right now, as I've only read it once. I guess that means that it's time to find it in the library and read it again. Anyway, she writes with passion and humor. I especially like the ongoing film festival in Mendoza in Hollywood; you'll have to read it to find out what I'm talking about.

Edit: to correct tortured grammar. And again, because I managed to torture it even more in the correction. Oh, well. I guess I'm having a bad grammar day.

[This message has been edited by littlemissattitude (edited May 15, 2003).]

It has names from all over the world, and it's written for writers.

I'll dig into the piles asap and post the information here.

• Anglo-Saxon
• Arabic
• Armenian
• Arthurian Legend Names
• Basque
• Celtic
• Czechoslovakian
• Danish
• Dutch
• Egyptian
• English
• Finnish
• French
• Gaelic
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Hungarian
• Indian
• Irish
• Italian
• Latin
• Native American
• Norse
• Persian
• Polish
• Russian
• Scandinavian
• Scottish
• Slavic
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Teutonic
• Ukranian
• Welsh
• Other

I found it at a used book dealer here in Dallas and paid $8.00 for it. On the back, it lists for $18.99. I just checked Amazon.com, and they sell it for a measly $69.99! (I guess Kathleen and I are talking about the same book.) I also searched writersdigest.com, but they don't seem be selling it. If I were you, I'd search the used bookstores in your town before flopping seventy bucks down. You might also want to search abebooks.com.

It's a gold mind, I'll tell you that. Good luck finding it.

That was all I still had bookmarked. Do a search and you'll come up with more.

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SF -- Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers. Just finished it--excellent!

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Still, if you guys say the book it just that good, I'll have to try it, then, won't I?

Chris

PS--Ergoface, thanks for the link. I bookmarked it.

edited to add:
PPS--I also recently watched the Bourne Identity, and I couldn't help but notice the many differences between the movie and the book. In the documentary, the director (I think) said that they were updating the movie for a newer audience, since the book was written so long ago (1976, if memory serves.) Maybe that's what they were doing for Starship Troopers?

PEOPLE'S NAMES, A Cross-Cultural Reference Guide to the Proper Use of Over 40,000 Personal and Familial Names in Over 100 Cultures, by Holly Ingraham, published by McFarland & Company, 1997, ISBN 0-7864-0187-7.

Not only does she list names and their meanings, she tells how people are named in each culture and all sorts of other relevant things about naming.

It'll really come in handy.

Authors I love:
OSC of course (Ender series)
Eddings- I agree Anything
Terry Pratchett- for potato chip type mind candy
Anne McCaffrey- Dragon Riders of Pern especially the Harper hall portion. Crystal Singer series (a bit romance story but the technical and music sections are brilliant.)
Piers Anthony- Incarnations of Immortality
Gene Wolf- anything
Mickey Zuker Reichert- Renshai Series
Heinlein- Anything really, Job, Glory Road, Starship Troopers, Red Planet etc are great reads.
Robert Jordan- Read ONLY to his fourth book. Do not go past four. He'll just infuriate you the way he abandons characters and plots.
Terry Brooks- Anything
Stephen R. Donaldson- Anything
Marion Zimmer Bradley- Anything
CS Lewis- Anything

I could probably add tons more authors that I have read.

As for reference.. I'm taking everyone elses advice on that.

A caveat for George RR Martin- Many many people loved him. Especially the game company that I have worked with for years and that I did the strategy guide for (Wolfpack studios title Shadowbane). I however did not like it. I could not click with any of the characters and the female characters (which I usually identify with being female) made me angry. It was not an enjoyable series and I stopped mid way through the third book out of frustration.

Oh.. remembered another great author- Mary Stewart. She did a great series on Authorian legend and it starts with (I believe) the book "the crystal cave" about Merlin aka Taliesin as a young boy. Also her stand alone book the Ivy Tree will have you guessing the life of a young woman and whether she is or isn't who she says or people claim.

Enough babbling from me.

I SO agree. I finally gave up after book six, I think. I also found that Jordan had an increasing need to have his female characters spanked by other female characters, and it really started to annoy me, beyond being able to let it go as part of a larger, wonderful story. I intend to read the last book, if he ever has the gumption to finish this series.

I LOVE Mary Stewart. One of my favorite non Merlin novels was TOUCH NOT THE CAT. I have read just about all of her novels. Actually, my favorite of the Merlin-Arthur novels was THE WICKED DAY, which was about Mordred.

If you like the Arthur legend, email me off list. I have a bit of an obsession, and I can lead you to other good stuff, much of which is in the young adult fiction sections.

Have you noticed all the Arthurian stuff in Jordan?

I haven't read Touch Not the Cat. Loved the Ivy Tree though. Very good book. Unfortunately I loaned it out and never got it back.

The Wicked day was great. Loved the first book too just because of meeting Merlin as a child. Very very good. I'll email you for sure. I'm a book addict as it is.

But here's the real question... Do you like Gwenivere? I just can't like her or Lancelot. All my sympathies are always for Arthur.

Yep, Jordan definetly has that Arthurian touch. I'm soooo glad I didn't read after five which I choked down. I can tell you what happened to him though. His wife started editing his work. There is no way I'd let my husband edit.. he loves everything. LOL

However, I have to completely disagree with the idea that his work is cumbersome, unoriginal, or amateurish. His work is highly descriptive. His world is rich and very well thought out. His characters have depth that I have rarely seen anywhere else. I feel like I know them. I don't understand how you think he's an amateur. His writing style is very easy to follow and, in some cases, beautiful.

Have you read Tad Williams' fantasy triology I mentioned in my very first post on this thread? It's very good, and it is what inspired George R. R. Martin to begin writing his fantasy triology (which I have yet to read).

I'm not sure Williams is as good was Jordan WAS! Unfortunately, Jordan stumbled along the way, somewhere between Book 4 and Book 5. Too bad.

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OK, I'll grant you that Robert Jordan's series needed to have ended by now

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He has taken a wide variety of other ideas from cultural atributes to fantasy elements to political intrigues and put them together in such a way that he has truly created a new world

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However, I have to completely disagree with the idea that his work is cumbersome, unoriginal, or amateurish. His work is highly descriptive. His world is rich and very well thought out. His characters have depth that I have rarely seen anywhere else. I feel like I know them. I don't understand how you think he's an amateur. His writing style is very easy to follow and, in some cases, beautiful.

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His world building suffers from serious defects, from geology to economics to politics to tactics. It really does feel like a patchwork of pseudo-medieval cultural referances cobbled together to give his characters a playground. And in far too many of his books the main action doesn't advance a significant amount. His characterization tends to come primarily out of what the character looks like (especially women, who fit into two catagories; bustier than everyone else, or not so much busty as well endowed ).

Being a woman myself I couldn't stand the women. I could not relate to any of them and he jumps from character to character in each different chapter. If you like a character and get into them...suddenly you find yourself without them for 3-5 chapters or even the rest of the book.

Others say they love him because he's not afraid to kill off people. Well, there is such a thing as going overboard to prove it.

I stopped midway through the third book. I haven't touched it for at least half a year. I'll finish it someday just to have it done with, but it is grueling for me.

As for Jordan, he started well. I enjoyed it thoroughly then.... ugh.

As to opinion on who is and isn't good... Well I often list both the heavier reading and the light reading. Take Eddings for instance. I thoroughly enjoy his work because it is of the lighter variety and I can get swept away in it.

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His world building suffers from serious defects, from geology to economics to politics to tactics. It really does feel like a patchwork of pseudo-medieval cultural referances cobbled together to give his characters a playground.

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In Jorden's world, there is a pronounced tendancy for rivers to run along the crest of a ridgeline all the way to the sea. I suppose that he does use the "Breaking" to explain other bizzare features of his world, but...I just can't look at his map without giggling...which means that every time I have to refer to the map to understand the spatial relations (which is thankfully a good deal less necessary now that all the important characters can Travel), my immersion in the story comes to a crashing halt.

The economics and politics of his stories just...they make the world a little less real, a bit more of a farce. Every time I get a description of this or that lavish setting or archane political manuever I go riight. You have to keep in mind that I've found all of Elizabeth Moon's work pretty unrealistic too, particularly her ideas about weapons, tactics, and so forth (Moon, a veteran of the USMC, is often praised for the realism of her military portrayals).

Part of the problem is what you mention (though Tolkien actually did give a wealth of detailed information about the economics, geology, and politics of Middle Earth). Jorden gives too many details that practically scream, "It's just a book, none of this is real." Moon also shows off too often that she learned modern tactics--and not much of deep strategy or how to think like a commander (I'm being hard on Moon, she actually does okay much of the time).

I just wanted to say, it's JordAn. And I think you're absolutely right.

First, Tolkien is to fantasy literature what Twain is to American literatre. You can't talk intelligently about fantasy literature if you haven't read Tolkien. And whether people like it or not, ALL fantasy literature depends on Tolkien. He is the reference point. Jordan purposly began his Wheel of Time Series with a Tolkienesque feel. Tad Williams wrote his massive fantasy trilogy becasue he thought he could say something that Tolkien didn't. George R.R. Martin began his fantasy series becasue he read Tad Williams and thought he could do something similiar. Even Hickman and Weis studied Tolkien scholars before they began the Dragonlance series. Fantasy writers will always be influenced by Tolkein, and the fact that you want to do something different just shows how influenced you are by him.

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And whether people like it or not, ALL fantasy literature depends on Tolkien. He is the reference point. Jordan purposly began his Wheel of Time Series with a Tolkienesque feel. Tad Williams wrote his massive fantasy trilogy becasue he thought he could say something that Tolkien didn't. George R.R. Martin began his fantasy series becasue he read Tad Williams and thought he could do something similiar. Even Hickman and Weis studied Tolkien scholars before they began the Dragonlance series.

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I think saying "ALL" is a bit to extreme. There’s a good history of spoken and written fantasy that extends well prior to Tolkien. Where is folklore? And what about some other fantasy works, like Alice in Wonderland which was written in 1865, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s "Young Goodman Brown," and Poe’s short stories (1800’s). Tolkien’s work didn’t start to appear until 1937.