Member: nnicole
CollectionsEbooks (25), Your library (862), Audiobooks (109), Bédéthèque (194), Cookbooks (72), D&D (14), Wishlist (1), Currently reading (2), To read (2), All collections (1,273)
Reviews10 reviews
Tagsgraphic novel (198), fantasy (163), français (134), illustrated (122), heroine (115), audiobook (106), funny (102), classics (94), full cast (90), science fiction (86) — see all tags
Cloudstag cloud, author cloud, tag mirror
Recommendations4 recommendations
Groups30-something LibraryThingers, All Things Discworldian - The Guild of Pratchett Fans, Atheism and humanism, Awful Lit., Californians Who LT, Doctor Who, En français, Favorite Bookstores, Feminist SF, I Survived the Great Vowel Shift —show all groups, Livejournalers, Los Angeles Loves Librarything, Making Light Denizens, Professor Bernice Summerfield Has A Posse, Rare, Old or Offbeat, Science!, The 'verse
Favorite authorsDouglas Adams, Dave Barry, Peter S. Beagle, Lois McMaster Bujold, Angela Carter, Ted Chiang, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles de Lint, Peter Medawar, Garth Nix, John Scalzi, Connie Willis (Shared favorites)
Favorite bookstoresCliff's Books, Continental Comics, Skylight Books, Sweet Briar Books, Vroman's Bookstore
Favorite librariesLos Angeles Public Library - Granada Hills Branch, Los Gatos Public Library
Other favoritesLos Angeles Times Festival of Books
About meMild-mannered engineer by day... mild-mannered engineer by night... freelance superheroine on alternate prime-numbered Tuesdays.
Hobbies include dancing (English Country, Morris (Cotswold), and Irish low-style and ceilidh), blinding people with science (I have a Master's degree... in science!), playing the bones, making coffee, drinking coffee, and--when time permits--pretending to work.
Lives in a happy house with cat and mortgage.
About my libraryAbout the tags:
* I use "history" for books ABOUT history, and "historical" for books that are themselves of historical interest (generally but not always published before 1900). A book may be both: Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain", for example.
* Omnibuses (omnibii?) or short story collections get awards tags (e.g. "hugo winners") if at least one story contained therein received the award (in this example, a Hugo (in any category)). One book gets a maximum of one award tag for the same award, regardless of how many stories received the award. Example: Connie Willis' "Winds of Marble Arch" gets ONE "hugo winners" tag and ONE "nebula winners" tag, though it reprints several Hugo and/or Nebula winning stories. I've made NO attempt to attach the award tag to the story that won it--all you can tell from a short story collection tagged "hugo winners" and "nebula winners" is that at least one story--possibly but not necessarily the same story--won each award.
* Short stories vs. essays vs. anthologies vs. omnibuses: There's a fair amount of overlap. I tend to use "essays" for collections of short nonfiction, "short stories" for collections of short narrative fiction, and "anthologies" for collections of everything else (e.g. poems, scripts...) Omnibuses are usually collections of material previously published separately.
* Illustrated vs. graphic novel: in what I call a "graphic novel", story and pictures are laid out in the familiar comics sequential format (lots of boxes). "Illustrated" works may be richly/lavishly/beautifully decorated/illustrated, but don't have the same sequential feel as comic books. Sometimes I use "illustrated" to indicate that I'm especially fond of the pictures in my copy of the work: e.g. my copy of "The Land of Little Rain", which is illustrated with Ansel Adams photos.
*Use of the "heroine" tag can be a little vague and/or spotty. The sort of books I use it for are books that, if they'd been written fifty or maybe even fifteen years ago, would have had male protagonists as a matter of course: a pulpy space opera starring an adventuring archaeologist, for instance, or a young sorcerer's coming-of-age quest, or the story of the last and most powerful member of a long line of inventors/mad scientists carving a trail of mayhem through Europe. Strong, nuanced, smart, flawed, well-rounded central characters, the heroes of their own stories, who happen to be female. "Heroine" stories are almost always at least *implicitly* feminist, but I reserve the "feminist" tag for works that *focus* on feminism, gender relations, etc.
*Alternate worlds vs. alternate history vs. fantasy vs. historical fantasy
** "Alternate worlds" stories are set on worlds recognizably LIKE ours (e.g. continents/countries/major cities correspond to our world), but with one or more key differences in the fabric of the world. Usually the story will have travel between alternates. Examples: Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy, or Kim Stanley Robinson's "Three Californias" (alternate worlds WITHOUT travel between them).
** "Alternate history" stories are set on THIS world, where a known historical event or events turned out differently. Example: Jo Walton's "Small Change" trilogy (Farthing / Ha'penny / Half a Crown).
** "Fantasy" stories are set in worlds that were never intended to correspond to our world (e.g. high fantasy).
** Worlds best described as "our world, except with magic" are usually tagged "urban fantasy". Actual city not required.
** Worlds best described as "urban fantasy, except in the past" are tagged "historical fantasy".
** "Steampunk" gets its own tag, because it's that cool.
*Science fiction vs. fantasy
Are the same, per Clarke's Magic-Technology Equivalency Theorem. Still, most works have a "feel" of one or the other, and are tagged accordingly.
*Fantasy vs. urban fantasy vs dark fantasy
"Fantasy" is a catchall tag. When it appears alone, it generally means high fantasy: Tolkienesque sword'n'sorcery tales like the ones lampooned in "The Tough Guide To Fantasyland". I use "urban fantasy" for works that are set basically in our world, except with magic. "Dark fantasy" is a little trickier. I use it as a sort of horror/fantasy hybrid: for works that, while they may superficially treat with subjects traditionally associated with children (e.g. folk tales), use them to pursue themes that are not really appropriate (or, to be fair, intended for) children. Margo Lanagan's "Tender Morsels" is an excellent example of what I mean by "dark fantasy".
Homepagehttp://ellipticcurve.livejournal.com
Also onBoardGameGeek, BookMooch, eBay, Last.fm, LiveJournal, Wikipedia
Real nameNicole the Wonder Nerd
LocationLos Angleles, CA
Account typepublic, lifetime
URLs
http://www.librarything.com/profile/nnicole (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/nnicole (library)
Member sinceApr 7, 2006
Currently readingThe Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Kraken by China Miéville
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by: Ralph Waldo Emerson
If I could put my woods in song
And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.
In my plot no tulips blow,--
Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;
And rank the savage maples grow
From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.
My garden is a forest ledge
Which older forests bound;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound.
Here once the Deluge ploughed,
Laid the terraces, one by one;
Ebbing later whence it flowed,
They bleach and dry in the sun.
The sowers made haste to depart,--
The wind and the birds which sowed it;
Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
Planted these, and tempests flowed it.
Waters that wash my garden-side
Play not in Nature's lawful web,
They heed not moon or solar tide,--
Five years elapse from flood to ebb.
Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,
And every god,--none did refuse;
And be sure at last came Love,
And after Love, the Muse.
Keen ears can catch a syllable,
As if one spake to another,
In the hemlocks tall, untamable,
And what the whispering grasses smother.
Æolian harps in the pine
Ring with the song of the Fates;
Infant Bacchus in the vine,--
Far distant yet his chorus waits.
Canst thou copy in verse one chime
Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,
Write in a book the morning's prime,
Or match with words that tender sky?
Wonderful verse of the gods,
Of one import, of varied tone;
They chant the bliss of their abodes
To man imprisoned in his own.
Ever the words of the gods resound;
But the porches of man's ear
Seldom in this low life's round
Are unsealed, that he may hear.
Wandering voices in the air
And murmurs in the wold
Speak what I cannot declare,
Yet cannot all withhold.
When the shadow fell on the lake,
The whirlwind in ripples wrote
Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
And omens above thought.
But the meanings cleave to the lake,
Cannot be carried in book or urn;
Go thy ways now, come later back,
On waves and hedges still they burn.
These the fates of men forecast,
Of better men than live to-day;
If who can read them comes at last
He will spell in the sculpture,'Stay.'
posted by theoldman at 8:17 am (EST) on Jan 20, 2010
posted by Baviv at 8:21 pm (EST) on Oct 19, 2008
posted by leennnadine at 11:45 pm (EST) on May 23, 2008