The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
All the talk about Appendix N on this board makes me feel right at home. One of the first things I did when I went off to college was to start to read the books listed in Appendix N.
Book Fucking Talk
- Thread starter bryce0lynch
- Start date
DangerousPuhson
Should be playing D&D instead
Anybody got any good non-fiction, non-Appendix N books to recommend?
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
The Pruning Book by Lee Reich
Uncommon Fruit for Every Garden by Lee Reich
Roots Demystified by Robert Kourik
Beoric
8, 8, I forget what is for
The Forgotten Crafts by John Seymour. For fleshing out your villages.
The End of Policing, Alex Vitale
Eyyyy how far did you get?
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
Not as far as I thought I did. The library didn't have Pratt, A. Merritt, and several of the other 60's-70's authors that were on the list, and I didn't know about interlibrary loan until later, when I was preoccupied with other authors. Let's see, I was able to find Lieber, Howard, Lovecraft, Derleth, Moorcock, Poul Anderson. de Camp and Carter were easy to find due to their work on Conan. For Saberhagen I was only able to find his Sci Fi, which was quite enjoyable. I was only able to find one book by Jack Vance, and that was at a used bookstore.
Since I couldn't find many of the authors, I focused on those I could, especially Lovecraft and the other Cthulhu Mythos authors. Even the Philosopher's Stone by Colin Wilson. Ugh. There were interesting ideas in that book, but it wasn't really a horror book and it was a very long slog to read. It would've qualified for one of Hercules' impossible tasks.
I should probably go back and try to find the ones I missed. Nah. I don't read for pleasure anymore. And who the hell is A. Merritt? Just having a first initial wasn't very helpful when I used the library's primitive computer system to find these books.
DangerousPuhson
Should be playing D&D instead
When I was in my teens, I read through the whole of Leo Frankowski's Cross-Time Engineer/Conrad Stargard series. The experience has always served well to inform the tone, style, and technological plausibilities of many a gnome commune, proto-punk enclave, or sagely mechano-type over the years. Essentially I look at it as an alternative view of what rapid technological advancement under medieval conditions could like like if some groups had wondrous, near-magical powers (in the sort of "sufficiently advanced technology, comma, indistinguishable from" way). I recommend it in spite of its shortcomings in some places ... as example, the MarySue-ism of Conrad, the series main character, is eyerolling in places. But refreshingly you almost end up reveling in it the more you get invested in the series - Conrad can do no wrong, and practically gets treated like a god at some points, but you derive some pleasure from watching it unfold as it does, a bit like the Flashman series if anyone's read those.
Derleth I haven't read, and I'm not generally a fan of pastiches, especially of inimitable authors like Lovecraft or Howard but all those others are pretty good. Moorcock doesn't age as well as I thought, with early Moorcock having pretty bad prose. I loved Harold Shea and am suprised the series doens't get mentioned more as one of the foundational works for early DnD, definetely the other major inspirational source; spell components, rule of sympathy, travel into imaginary worlds etc. etc. I got pretty far into Saberhagen's Berserker series but he gets kind of long-winded in the later parts.
A.Merritt is the king of pulp fantasy and I can recommend him. Most of his stories involve men of action going on expeditions into lost civilisations and confronting ancient, almost lovecraftian evils. There's time travel, assyrians, witchcraft, super-technology, wild, stirring stuff.
gandalf_scion
*eyeroll*
To broaden your perspective, I recommend Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. It's told from a woman's perspective and is quit good at illustrating witty alternatives to combat.
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
Shh! Prince is a member of MRA, he won't appreciate this.
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
August Derleth's Cthulhu mythos stories were terrible. He did do a lot of writing outside of the the Cthulhu mythos though. I have to give him props for keeping Lovecraft's work from obscurity. Arkham House is within an hour of where I live too.
I should look into the Harold Shea series. I think there was another author I had trouble finding that you seemed to have trouble finding too. Someone who had a Kull series or something? I'll have to look at Appendix N again when I have the chance.
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
My bad. The Kyrik or Kothar series by Gardner Fox, I think.
I used to think MRA's were all about hating women until I went into their clubhouse and had a talk with them. Turns out they only cared about child custody and burden of proof in domestic abuse cases or something. What a bunch of gaylords. Never spoke to them again.
I hear Novik is alright but my shelves are already polluted with Sandersons, Lawrences and Rothfusses. I am getting jaded by modern fantasy. I sold a complete set of Rowena Corey Danielses. The only post-2010 fantasy author I will heartily endorse is R.Scott Bakker and I have some cautious hope for Guy Gavriel Kay.
The Heretic is poking fun at me but his instincts r.e. my tastes are correct. I prefer male authors, though I will recommend Ursula Le Guin and Tanith Lee as highly readable, talented writers with no caveats. C.L.Moore and Leigh Brackett are still on my reading list. I must also shamefully admit I have read 3 of Jaqueline Carey's doorstopper fantasy/erotica novels to my girlfriend and consider them reasonably entertaining. If you deconstruct it to its underlying message its about a woman that has to be slutty to save the world and if only we would love as thou wilt and abandon our prejudices the world would be a better place but as a female protagonist Phédre No Delauney is well written because she gets out of situations by using her wits, charms and empathy instead of sword-fighting as well as 120 kg fighting men because equality. Its a little heavy on the soap-opera drama and the emotional introspection and the verbiage gets repetitive but its not half bad. The setting is nice too, pseudo-historical, low-magic, mystery etc. etc. Carey is intelligent, more scholarly then most female authors and writes good female characters, and my K-wired brain can accept the paradoxically egalitarian monarchy of Terre D'Ange as being the result of them being sired by exiled angels.
I read one Gardner Fox and sold the fuck out of it. It reads like someone doing a terrible Conan (or in this case John Carter) impression. Brrrr.
The Heretic
Should be playing D&D instead
My bad. You're not MRA, you're NRA, Nuns' Rights Activist.
Nah.
Ah, so just like Lin Carter's Thongor series. Blech.
Two orcs
Officially better than you, according to PoN
The Sabres of Paradise is a rough biography of Shamyl and the Russian conquest of Dagestan. It is basically Dune in real life, several larger than life characters have deadly clashes and capers. Daring cavalry raids, warrior-mystics, and cameos by like half the Russian 19th century authors.
squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
I never replied to this, drawing a complete blank, but looking at my nightstand last night I saw...
QED by Richard Feynman --- really enjoying this one on Quantum Electrodynamics for the layman. Surely Your Joking Mr. Feynman is another classic of/about him. What a character!
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis --- complied from his WWII radio talks while London was being bombed. Was given to me over 25 years ago by a Ukrainian ex-pat just after the Iron Curtain travel restrictions were lifted. Finally read it this past year. Brilliant.
I'm pro Crushing Puss and Playing Sports.
Not ole Guy, too? Were all those cover blurbs a lie? He seemed semi-literate, an accomplishment in post-2010 fantasy.
Gardner Fox, Lin Carter, a good reminder that Gygax took shits too.