(no subject)

(24) The 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived: How Characters of Fiction, Myth, Legends, Television, and Movies Have Shaped Our Society, Changed Our Behavior, and Set the Course of History by Allan Lazar, Dan Karlan, and Jeremy Salter talks about the hundred and one fictional people that the authors consider to have had the greatest influence on Western culture. I take serious issue with some of their choices—they say they excluded Jesus because he's a religious figure, but Apollo and Dionysus and Venus are in there, and in what world are gods not religious figures? And there is no way that the single most influential fictional figure in Western culture is the Marlboro Man—but there's enough humor that I can (almost) forgive them. Case in point, the entry on Oedipus ends with "Freud scares me. I want my mommy."



(25)The Virgin Queen's Daughter by Ella March Chase begins, obviously, with the premise that Elizabeth I had a child in secret, and describes first how the novel's protagonist, Nell, discovers this, then the consequences of that knowledge. It isn't clear, even at the end of the novel, whether Elizabeth herself is certain that Nell is her daughter. I didn't dislike the book, but I can't say I liked it either.



(26) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard—read. Now. Hysterically funny.

Ros: We could play at questions.

Guil: What good would that do?

Ros: Practice!

Guil: Statement! One–love.

Ros: Cheating!

Guil: How?

Ros: I hadn't started yet.

Guil: Statement. Two–love.

Ros: Are you counting that?

Guil: What?

Ros: Are you counting that?

Guil: Foul! No repetitions. Three–love. First game to...

Ros: I'm not going to play if you're going to be like that.

Guil: Whose serve?

Ros: Hah?

Guil: Foul! No grunts. Love–one.

Also:

Guil:I think I have it. A man talking sense to himself is no madder than a man talking nonsense not to himself.

Ros: Or just as mad.

Guil: Or just as mad.

Ros: And he does both.

Guil: So there you are.

Ros: Stark raving sane.

And:

Ros: Incidents! All we get is incidents! Dear God, is it too much to expect a little sustained action?!

Pirates attack.

(27) (28) (29) Kushiel's Scion, Kushiel's Justice, and Kushiel's Mercy by Jacqueline Carey have blurred together in my mind, I'm not sure I can pick out reasons to recommend any individually, but I wholeheartedly recommend the trilogy as a whole. These three books focus on Imriel, foster son of the protagonist of Carey's previous Kushiel trilogy. This second trilogy is very much an epic love story, in contrast to the first trilogy, which is more a pure epic. Still got all the bisexuality and sex and politics and fantasy religion and global tourism. Not so much the BDSM, Imriel has Issues carrying over from Kushiel's Avatar, but it's still very much present.



(30) (31) Joust and Alta by Mercedes Lackey are rereads. These, along with Sanctuary and Aerie, the rest of the quartet, describe the earliest history of Egypt as it would have been in a world with dragons and magic.



(32) Blood and Iron: A Novel of the Promethean Age by Elizabeth Bear is set in a world where the events of the ballad "Tam Lin" (among others) really occurred. Faerie is mostly unknown to modern-day mortal people, excepting the mages of the Prometheus Club, who have been arm-wrestling Faerie for a long time now and want to skip straight to destroying Faerie entirely. I highly recommend this book, though I can't find words for why.



(33) Harry, A History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon by Melissa Anelli is an insider viewpoint on the rise of Harry Potter fandom. The book isn't exactly coherently structured, but then neither is Harry Potter fandom. If you neither are a HP fan nor have an academic interest in fandom, don't waste your time; if you are either or both, you really want this book.



(34) (35) (36) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling, all rereads. I love these books to pieces. (I can provide photographic evidence on request.)



(37) The Grand Tour is the third in Jody Lynn Nye's Dreamland series, and the first to focus on visitors to Dreamland rather than full-time inhabitants. And some of the full-time inhabitants are not at all happy that the visitors have so much more power than they do. I'm much happier with this book than with School of Light, which is mostly because we're back to having the plot spring from the worldbuilding instead of the other way around, and it was the worldbuilding in Waking in Dreamland that made me fall in love with it in the first place.



(38?) A Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, which I love even more the second time around—am I allowed to count it for 50bookchallenge even though I counted it in January?