Currently reading
The Fall of Babel
Josiah BancroftFourth in a series and its conclusion. This is a really interesting setting with fun characters and writing that's kind of snarky and terribly witty. It seems like every chapter in every book of this series leads with a lore entry from in-universe that's so profound to me that I have to read it a couple of times just to appreciate it. I want to finish this. I just need to sit my ass down and do it.
Favored books, series, authors
Melissa Caruso
Notable series: Rooks & Ruin and Swords & FireRead this author if you like fantasy settings with high stakes and situations that go from bad to "how can this possbily get worse for the characters" to "oh no it got way worse." Reading her stories sometimes feels like running a short distance when you're out of shape (which I am). I have to take breaks because everything's too exciting! Your milage may vary on that, though. Power to you if you can eat exciting books whole.
T. Kingfisher
AKA Ursula VernonUrsula's The Saint of Steel series is all that I crave in life. Also check out Swordheart and Clockwork Boys. There's brooding men to just the right amount and a lack of communication between romance leads in such a way as to not be annoying but still be agonizing slow burn. The smut is very nice, as well - usually emotionally cathartic in some way, as the best smut is.
She also writes retellings of fairy tales and legends that are actually really compelling coming from her hand. She ALSO writes stories for young people. A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking was a wonderful read even as an adult. She ALSO ALSO writes horror stories, which I have heard are very good, but I have not read them because I am a big baby with intrusive thoughts that I don't want to get worse.
Vivan Shaw
Notable series: Dr. Greta HelsingThe Helsing trilogy is one of the most charming experiences I've ever had with books. I love Greta and her spooky friends. I love her attitude toward everything. And her friends' attitudes. And their care for each other. It's just a really, really good time.
Books that changed me
Here are some books that affected or even defined my writing style or the way I regard some things.
The Wheel of Time series
A precious series to me. Due to its girth it was the first grand reading journey I ever set out on, beginning when my school held a Scholastic Book Fair and I plucked it from the shelf. I read onward until I reached the entry that was most current then, and then I waited patiently year after year for Robert Jordan to produce the latest update. I remember holding those huge tomes pried open in my tiny hands (they are still tiny).
I didn't actively check up on the series - as far as I was concerned, there really wasn't a way to do that with the internet the way it was at that time. I was cut off from knowing when the next book would come out except when I visited my local bookstore with my parents, where suddenly there would be either a poster advertising it or the books themselves put out on display, to my delight. At one point I was completely unaware that Robert Jordan had passed away. I learned years later, I think just before Brandon Sanderson took over and finished the series. I was so sad and distrustful that I didn't pick up his entries until much later. But they were good, so I'm grateful to him.
The Wheel of Time completely defined how I think about fantasy settings and things like magic and positions of magical authority. "Weaving" being the spellcasting was fascinating to me and I could picture it clearly and it was so, so cool. I still incorporate imagery like that into my own writing. I loved reading about the 4D chess the characters were playing with their own motivations. The scheming evildoers, the people trying to do the right thing, Rand falling apart at the seams with each passing entry - would he make it to the end? So many compelling characters, so many romances, so much that happens.
I have no aspirations to write an original work that large, but if I did, I would not be able to avoid taking hints from this series on what to do, for good or ill. I'm not a fanatic about it, but it's definitely in my blood. Like my darling microplastics.
No, I have not watched the TV series. Yet? I don't know. I'm scared to!
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Specifically the version that can be found online, for free, right here. I read this translation in high school and fell in love with it. The chapter where Quasimodo and the bells and the church are elaborated upon is some of the strongest writing I have ever read to this day.
It is certain that the mind becomes atrophied in a defective body. Quasimodo was barely conscious of a soul cast in his own image, moving blindly within him. The impressions of objects underwent a considerable refraction before reaching his mind. His brain was a peculiar medium; the ideas which passed through it issued forth completely distorted. The reflection which resulted from this refraction was, necessarily, divergent and perverted.
Hence a thousand optical illusions, a thousand aberrations of judgment, a thousand deviations, in which his thought strayed, now mad, now idiotic.
The first effect of this fatal organization was to trouble the glance which he cast upon things. He received hardly any immediate perception of them. The external world seemed much farther away to him than it does to us.
The second effect of his misfortune was to render him malicious.
He was malicious, in fact, because he was savage; he was savage because he was ugly. There was logic in his nature, as there is in ours.
His strength, so extraordinarily developed, was a cause of still greater malevolence: "Malus puer robustus," says Hobbes.
This justice must, however be rendered to him. Malevolence was not, perhaps, innate in him. From his very first steps among men, he had felt himself, later on he had seen himself, spewed out, blasted, rejected. Human words were, for him, always a raillery or a malediction. As he grew up, he had found nothing but hatred around him. He had caught the general malevolence. He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded.
From page 149. "He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded." Damn. Fuck. That's the good shit.
Hugo's prose and imagery inspired my way of writing immensely. Which isn't to say I write like him - I don't think I do - but it allowed me, by example, to examine the ways in which I think about the images and feelings I'm trying to convey. I truly believe that the spark it gave me when I read it then has carried forward into the now, where I am pretty damn prolific at writing what I like. The most important thing is that I'm enjoying myself and not having a hard time, I think.