Random books from ryn_books's library

Little, Big by John Crowley

The Priests of Ferris by Maurice Gee

Engaging the Enemy by Elizabeth Moon

Johnny Mnemonic by Terry Bisson

The Hidden Family by Charles Stross

M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman

Rise of a Merchant Prince by Raymond E. Feist

Members with ryn_books's books

Member connections

Friends: fuchsiaberry, jen_lynch, lizzie, rebecca.richardson, stompy

Interesting libraries: 1001Fantasy, Aquila, AsYouKnow_Bob, DerBuecherwurm, haidee, MostDisturbingBooks, reading_fox, ringman, ryn_reads, sleary

LibraryThing authors: Sharon Lee (rolanni), Geoffrey Miles (geoffmiles), Shanna Swendson (shannaswendson), David Weinberger (dweinberger), Janny Wurts (JannyWurts)

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ryn_books's reviews

Reviews of ryn_books's books, not including ryn_books's

Member: ryn_books

Library1,002 books — see library

Reviews7 reviews — see reviews

Cloudstag cloud, author cloud

Tagsfiction (910), paperback (792), series (551), fantasy (360), fictional universe (294), 20th century (228), magic (214), England (210), crime (208) — see all tags

Groups1001 Fantasy Roadies, Agatha Christie, Australian LibraryThingers, Board for Extreme Thing Advances, Books in Books, Cats, books, life is good., Combiners!, Cover Art, Covers, Desert Island Books — show all groups

Favorite authorsJane Austen, Steven Brust, Lois McMaster Bujold, Agatha Christie, Neil Gaiman, Kerry Greenwood, Barry Hughart, Guy Gavriel Kay, Katharine Kerr, Sharon Lee, Ngaio Marsh, Armistead Maupin, L.M. Montgomery, Elizabeth Moon, Terry Pratchett, Spider Robinson, Connie Willis, Roger Zelazny (Shared favorites)

Favorite bookstoresGrub Street Bookshop, Minotaur, Reader's Feast Bookstore

About my library Weighted with fantasy & science fiction, with an interest in most other genres as well. I like books for all moods.

I especially like stories that attempt to examine how our human mindset reacts/adapts to society and change. I've found a lot of science fiction and fantasy addresses those questions; some superbly written and others not. Then there's the sunday avo chill-out books, children's, classics, and mysteries.. even the odd airport timewaster is here..

RE: The desert island tag... if you were stranded on a desert island, what books do YOU want to read & re-read?

Cover art is an interest. I'll often choose a 2nd-hand edition over brand new if the older one matches other books in my set. I'll also choose a UK edition over a cheaper US one if I like the visual style more.

I've got many Agatha Christie 2nd-hand paperbacks because I love how illustrative art has changed each decade to convey the SAME story to new readers ... My favourites are the 1950's for sheer liveliness of image vs. the same story illustrated 20 years later in the swirly 70's. [80's reprints were a new low in ugliness and are funny for their sheer awfulness]. She's the only author I've come across who's been reprinted every decade per book. That's a huge canvas to view illustrative and advertising changes in society.
Feel welcome to search my library to see all my Agatha Christie , Pan Covers , or the HarperCollins series from over a decade ago retro 30s tribute covers to see the differences.

Profile Image copyright to Paul Shone

Membership LibraryThing Early Reviewers

Real nameRyn

LocationMelbourne, Australia

Account typepublic, lifetime

Connection NewsConnection News

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/ryn_books (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ryn_books (library)

Member sinceJan 12, 2006

Comments from other LibraryThing-ers

(Leave a comment.)

Hey hon! Thanks for the welcome 2 the community & the (no-doubt) sound advice. Will def take on board. I'll also prob start ripping off some of yr tags as soon as I get my s%&* 2gether. :) I think it's pretty funny that the only book we actually have in common, so far, is LOTR! I'm sure more will appear... I'm really looking forward 2 getting stuck into this. :)

posted by fuchsiaberry at 4:32 am (EST) on Mar 28, 2008

Great, glad you enjoyed it!

Cheers!

posted by staffordcastle at 11:56 am (EST) on Nov 7, 2007

Hi,

I copied your two haiku from the Pirate Haiku blog comments to the Wiki.

I hope you don't mind.

posted by SilentInAWay at 3:19 pm (EST) on Oct 2, 2007

You asked about the Agatha Christie book "The Venus Factor." Nope, this is the same Agatha Christie of mystery fame. I believe this is the only SF she wrote; truthfully, it didn't do much for me, but I kept it in our library as an item of curiosity. Otoh, I have very high standards for SF, so if you're not *too* picky, you may enjoy it.

posted by jp_burton at 5:38 pm (EST) on Sep 1, 2007

I think you'll enjoy Paksenarrion - it's a fabulous series - a very good writer, a very well-worked out world.

Cheers!

posted by staffordcastle at 11:35 pm (EST) on Jul 31, 2007

I hope you enjoy the Tiptree biography. (Sorry I clicked on connection news and found myself being nosy abotu what people have added recently)

posted by Aquila at 5:57 am (EST) on Jul 20, 2007

Thanks for your recommendation. I've browsed a bit yesterday and also marked my Maupin's (Tales of the city) as desert island. I love, love this series. I came to Berkeley/SF around the same time and have always held great affinity for Maryann. Now regarding other locales, I can recommend the Sano Ishiro series by Laura Joh Rowland set in feudal Japan of the 1600's. They are fascinating because they give a glimpse into a very closed-off society with rigid code of behavior and customs. There are deviations of this in the main character, which is the author and her sensibilities showing through, but that is ok. Another one of my favorites is the 'No.1 Ladies detective agency" which is all set in Botswana and as the author, Alexander McCall Smith lived in those parts for many years, he really conveys the place very well from the viewpoint of the main character and sleuth, Mma. Ramotswe. It is a lovely series and I highly recommend it. McCall Smith also wrote another series which he fashioned after he met Maupin and so it has the same concept, disparate bunch of people throw together in a boarding house in Scotland. His use of language is so lovely, I really like everything this writer has written. Sometimes, there are shades of a subdued Wodehouse.

posted by DerBuecherwurm at 9:28 am (EST) on Jul 13, 2007

Thanks, love to have someone visit my library. I enjoy the Kerry Greenwood series. I got them from my friend in Sydney, she's Lman, if you'd like to check out her library, too. I was initially drawn to them by their beautiful covers and I must say that the cover's promise is kept. The books are fun and I like the breezy nature and fun locale and time period. Actually I have the Corinna Capman ones, too, but haven't read them yet. Many of book covers, especially in the romance genre in the US are IMHO absolutely revolting even though a good book may be hiding beneath its cover. (this is my soapbox!)
I was just taking a look around in your library and first thing I saw was the "desert island" tag. I like that very much. Mind if I steal it? My great challenge is that I would really like to get into different genres and leave some of the old behind, so finding people with 'matching' libraries is actually not that interesting to me. I would almost like to find opposites. This is why your library is very interesting to me.

posted by DerBuecherwurm at 10:38 am (EST) on Jul 12, 2007

Oh, how lovely about the Merry books! I am glad you found them, enjoy the read! I do wish she'd written the rest of Merry's school career.

posted by Aquila at 6:13 pm (EST) on May 10, 2007

At my place you wrote about Bujold: She's such a good author in that each book can be read standalone or out of order without me feeling like I've hugely missed out.

Well, yeah, but...see the thread I started in the Book Talk group entitled "Anticipation of Tragedy" about reading out of order.

The other stories in Irresistible Forces didn't appeal much to me, except for the one about a collaboration between two mages (male and female, of course...the title of the compilation refers to the magic of love) to defeat the Spanish Armada through the use of storms.

posted by Linkmeister at 1:47 pm (EST) on May 3, 2007

By the way, Winterfair Gifts tells the story of Miles's wedding (with intrigue, naturally). It's a novella published in Irresistible Forces, a short-story anthology. I haven't been able to discern whether it's in print anywhere else. I think it's available as an e-Book, but that's not satisfactory for me as a collector.

posted by Linkmeister at 5:15 pm (EST) on May 2, 2007

You left a comment a while ago, I just checked, and you're right, the author who wrote the preface to the B&N Draqcula was credited instead of Bram Stoker...

posted by edc135 at 2:31 am (EST) on Apr 28, 2007

Thanks for giving me the feedback about covers. I've just started using Librarything and am going to join the lifetime one as we have thousands of books! You were very kind.
Best regards
Lee

posted by mysticreader at 6:34 am (EST) on Apr 20, 2007

I appreciate all the work that you and all of the 'combiners' are doing. The work there seems to have drastically accelerated in the past couple weeks, and I know I'M not doing much of it.

re: the Thomsen anthologies

They're reprint anthologies, so

1) I already have most(all?) of the contents, and thus was under no urgency to pick them up when they were new on the bookstore shelves; and
2) Each one contains work by Orson Scott Card, and he’s hateful enough that I don’t give him money if I can avoid it.

Here are the contents, so you can judge for yourself:

Novel Ideas SF: Ender’s Game (Card), Fire Watch (Willis), Air Raid (Varley), Lady in the Tower (McCaffrey), Postman (Brin), Blood Music (Bear), Beggars in Spain (Kress).

Novel Ideas Fantasy: St.Dragon & the George (Dickson), Unicorn Tapestry (Charnas), Hatrack River, Lost Boys (Card), Gargoyle’s Shadow (Kurtz), Jerlayne (Abbey), Gilgamesh in the Outback (Silverberg) , Midshipwizard (James Ward).

Hope that helps.

posted by AsYouKnow_Bob at 1:54 pm (EST) on Apr 11, 2007

Thanks for the strong female lead reccomendations, currently trawling through your library to pinch some books.

posted by hulkling at 11:40 am (EST) on Apr 10, 2007

I rarely read biographies but enjoyed this one so much I bought it for my shelves.
You bought it for your shelves or for yourself? ;-)
I agree with you. Claire Tomalin's Pepys is really a big book.

posted by Pepys at 12:29 pm (EST) on Apr 2, 2007

I found myself looking through your "LT-inspired" tag -- what a great idea! I wish I'd been doing that straight along. (And I've got a desert island tag, too.)

I enthusiastically recommend just about everything Connie Willis has written; you should add Doomsday Book to your list if you haven't already read it.

posted by ellen.w at 11:21 pm (EST) on Mar 8, 2007

Thank you so much for the lovely and very consoling comment you left for me. You are very kind and sympathetic. I really appreciate it.

posted by Doulton at 12:37 am (EST) on Mar 8, 2007

Oh, and you have some very nice tags. I like the accuracy of "animal as central character" and "Animal point of view". The most I've done is "animals" and "anthropomorphism". And i'd not solved the books for children vs books about children either. I may steal "child as main character". Ooh, you have a copy of Under the Mountain *scrolls back up and checks location* - ah Melbourne.

What's with the "ficton" tag? I'd been taking it for a typo, but I guess it isn't.

And wow to your comments. Lots of interesting information.

I've just finished the third of the Merry books, they've been reprinted by GGBP http://www.ggbp.co.uk/ expensive, but I'm sure there are Australian resellers because some of them advertise on the NZ auction sites. However maybe you prefer the originals?

The books of In My Father's Den is quite different in some ways to the movie. I won't say how, let you read it. It was the movie that got me to go and find a copy, and of course all our library ones were out!

Here's my desert island shelf:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?...

And I'll stop going on now.

posted by Aquila at 6:12 pm (EST) on Nov 9, 2006

"Where the Wild Things Are" is a classic. I was recently surprised that early on both Arnold Lobel and Mercer Mayer imitated so closely Maurice Sendak's style. (Athough, they both went on to develop their own individual style.) My favorite books are the disjunctive narratives of Ruth Krauss with Maurice Sendak illustrations, like Open House for Butterflies is charming. If I have lost you by now, don't fret.

I'm tending to list my more esoteric books, odd children's books from the 60's, resulting in my having few books in common with anyone!

I love sci fi. I haven't even begun to list those. Do I really need to catalog my library as it is so time consuming and we own lots of books? I've read almost all of Sheri Tepper. And... well, too many sci fi authors to go into here, feminists, classics, cyberpunk, space opera, etc.. I've never read Sharon Lee though. Would you recommend her? You might like Maureen McHugh, although she can be a bit cold, dark and depressed.

The book covers of sci-fi paperbacks from the 60's are divine.

posted by oangeLA at 3:36 pm (EST) on Aug 2, 2006

I really like Keri's stuff. I'm also biased, she's one of my friends. But if you like paranormal, she's good. And her new urban fantasy, full moon rising is great.

posted by bookgal71 at 7:36 am (EST) on Apr 21, 2006

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