ForbiddenFiction's Forbidden Pleasures ;)
Apr. 20th, 2012 08:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bradygirl_12Hi, luvs! I thought I'd do a little pimping for ForbiddenFiction since I'm part of the authors' list now. Besides, I can honestly say I would anyway because I see some really cool stuff over there! ;)
Here is the link to the Story Catalog and here is the link to Coming Soon. I already see some novels or short stories that I find of interest.
That leads me to a few questions: what original fiction do you enjoy reading? What are your genres in general that you like and do you have any specific authors or titles that really speak to you?
And if you'd like to throw in any non-fiction titles or authors that appeal to you, have at it! :)
I have a wide variety of tastes but what comes to mind right away is historical fiction. I love Mary Renault's Ancient Greece novels, especially her The Persian Boy, told from the POV of Bagoas, the Persian former slave who serves Alexander the Great. Wonderful sense of time and place.
Same for Royston Lambert's Beloved And God: The Story Of Hadrian And Antinous.
I love mysteries and when I was a kid devoured Trixie Belden, Cherry Ames and Nancy Drew in addition to the classics like Little Women and The Five Little Peppers.
Fantasy was a favorite genre. I adored The Phantom Tollbooth and a quirky tale of a boy who starts growing wings and trying to learn to fly, Black And Blue Magic, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, for Pete's Squeaks! ;)
Fairytales are the Queen of the Hill for me! :) I had a big illustrated book of 'em that I loved to pieces. :)
The grandeur of Arthurian legend suits me. I loved Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists Of Avalon and also liked her (set in the '40s and '50s) gay novel, The Catch Trap about two gay circus aerialists. The younger of the two read Batman & Robin comics. ;)
Science fiction is always a winner, especially the greats like Asimov and Heinlein.
Slavefic and BDSM were always interests of mine. ;)
Forgot to add that the crime noir genre pleases me, too: Double Indemnity by James M. Cain is a fave. And a hard-boiled novel like Mildred Pierce (James M. Cain again) is very interesting even though it's not crime but darkness and betrayal and family dymanics that are creepy. I love Raymond Chandler's style, too. And of course, the Sherlock Holmes stories! :) I have read quite a few Agatha Christie mysteries, including her Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, too.
I love histories and biographies and am especially fond of works on Lincoln and the period of American history that circles around the Civil War. I can tell you what a Rodgers Group is and how there were more people capable of reading back then than today, proportionally speaking. :)
Give me a book on Ancient Egypt and I'm curled up with it for a week! :) Also some of my other faves are studies on Halloween, Niagara Falls and Victorian Sexuality, with some gay studies thrown in. ;)
ADDENDUM: And sometimes the historical IS personal: I have a collection of Korean War novels and histories because of my dad's service in that war. I've studied the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World Wars I and II, but Korea has particular resonance for me.
Here is the link to the Story Catalog and here is the link to Coming Soon. I already see some novels or short stories that I find of interest.
That leads me to a few questions: what original fiction do you enjoy reading? What are your genres in general that you like and do you have any specific authors or titles that really speak to you?
And if you'd like to throw in any non-fiction titles or authors that appeal to you, have at it! :)
I have a wide variety of tastes but what comes to mind right away is historical fiction. I love Mary Renault's Ancient Greece novels, especially her The Persian Boy, told from the POV of Bagoas, the Persian former slave who serves Alexander the Great. Wonderful sense of time and place.
Same for Royston Lambert's Beloved And God: The Story Of Hadrian And Antinous.
I love mysteries and when I was a kid devoured Trixie Belden, Cherry Ames and Nancy Drew in addition to the classics like Little Women and The Five Little Peppers.
Fantasy was a favorite genre. I adored The Phantom Tollbooth and a quirky tale of a boy who starts growing wings and trying to learn to fly, Black And Blue Magic, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, for Pete's Squeaks! ;)
Fairytales are the Queen of the Hill for me! :) I had a big illustrated book of 'em that I loved to pieces. :)
The grandeur of Arthurian legend suits me. I loved Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists Of Avalon and also liked her (set in the '40s and '50s) gay novel, The Catch Trap about two gay circus aerialists. The younger of the two read Batman & Robin comics. ;)
Science fiction is always a winner, especially the greats like Asimov and Heinlein.
Slavefic and BDSM were always interests of mine. ;)
Forgot to add that the crime noir genre pleases me, too: Double Indemnity by James M. Cain is a fave. And a hard-boiled novel like Mildred Pierce (James M. Cain again) is very interesting even though it's not crime but darkness and betrayal and family dymanics that are creepy. I love Raymond Chandler's style, too. And of course, the Sherlock Holmes stories! :) I have read quite a few Agatha Christie mysteries, including her Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, too.
I love histories and biographies and am especially fond of works on Lincoln and the period of American history that circles around the Civil War. I can tell you what a Rodgers Group is and how there were more people capable of reading back then than today, proportionally speaking. :)
Give me a book on Ancient Egypt and I'm curled up with it for a week! :) Also some of my other faves are studies on Halloween, Niagara Falls and Victorian Sexuality, with some gay studies thrown in. ;)
ADDENDUM: And sometimes the historical IS personal: I have a collection of Korean War novels and histories because of my dad's service in that war. I've studied the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World Wars I and II, but Korea has particular resonance for me.
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Date: 2012-04-21 02:34 am (UTC)Well, I've just never been able to get into really dark, kinky stuff. I need hearts-and-flowers romance, even if there's some passionate and steamy stuff going on.
My #1 genre is mystery fiction, from cozies to hardboiled private eyes and historicals. I discovered Sherlock Holmes when I was ten and never looked back! Currently, favorite authors in the genre are Robert Crais, with his P.I. novels featuring Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. A series by Charles Todd set in England just after the first World War, featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge. Two series by Rhys Bowen; one features Molly Murphy, just over from Ireland at the turn of the last century, and other is about the escapades of Lady Georgiana in 1930s London. Then assorted cozies, most of them with a paranormal touch. I will also devour just about anything by Elizabeth Peters. The Preston-Child series of thrillers featuring Special Agent Pendergast is a particular favorite.
After that, #2 would probably be romance, heavy on the Regency, although I've enjoyed ones set in almost every era including contemporaries. Romantic suspense is my favorite subgenre, and I've enjoyed a few paranormals and time travel romances. (Oddly enough, I can't stand Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, though.)
Then it's fantasy and SF, and 'literary fiction,' and whatever else catches my eye. I'm not much on LotR-type fantasy (although I do adore Guy Gavriel's Fionavar Trilogy which is very much in that style). Some favorites are Good Omens by Gaiman & Pratchett, The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett, Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series, and Mercedes Lackey's fairy tale retellings, Reserved for the Cat & The Serpent's Shadow, or His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik. Arthurian stuff, too, The Mists of Avalon, and The Forever King are two favorites there.
Magic, mystery, (yes-romance :grin:), all set against a favorite historical background will do it for me more than Orcs and Hobbits! I got one for my birthday, The Troupe by Robert Jackson Bennett, set during the days of vaudeville, that I'm eager to get to!
I don't read as much SF as I used to, but I liked everyone from Ray Bradbury to Marion Zimmer Bradley, Heinlein and Asimov, Clarke, Leigh Bracket and Andre Norton. A more modern favorite used to be Alan Dean Foster.
My favorite book from last year was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. Another 'literary' favorite is Lost Horizon.
For non-fiction, it's even more all over the place. Hard science (astronomy, meteors, natural history). Medieval history, Elizabethan, some Civil War (Mosby's Rangers, Custer), the Napoleonic Wars. My favorite period is actually the Gilded Age through the Jazz Age and Prohibition, but I don't have a lot of material on hand. :( Egyptology is another favorite!
Plus a bunch of writing reference things, mostly to do with crime. D.P. Lyle's Forensics and Fiction & Murder and Mayhem are particular favorites. Lots of ghost and supernatural stuff, witchcraft. Oh, and art; I love art history, and especially the tales of thefts and forgeries. False Impressions by Thomas Hoving is a particular favorite.
Hmm. Yeah. Be careful inviting me to talk about books. I do get carried away. :)
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Date: 2012-04-21 05:24 pm (UTC)Well, I've just never been able to get into really dark, kinky stuff. I need hearts-and-flowers romance, even if there's some passionate and steamy stuff going on.
Yep, the site likes to push the boundaries! :) But my novel is probably more like what you described above. There's definite kink a heckuva lot of romance, too. :)
I find myself intrigued by the House Of Silence books.
I knew you would respond to this post! ;) I like your list. I could have named quite a few more, too, as I'm an avid reader. Though oddly enough I never read conventional romances like Regencies.
I love Fedora Fic! ;) Great noir makes for great books and films!
I'm glad that people are still reading though it's a shame that collecting books will become a specialized hobby in the future as everyone will be reading on electronic devices.
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Date: 2012-04-21 05:08 am (UTC)But talking about books and genres I like is too hard to resist...
They have some interesting looking stories over there. At some point I need to cave and get a Nook or a Kindle. Being stuck in the stone age and just reading from paper is starting to mean I miss out on a lot of stories by authors I like. One in particular (Christa Faust) has a new series for those only. And it looks like that site is the same unless I'm missing something.
Anyway, my preferred genre is pulpy, hard-boiled thrillers. Or, really, any kind of thriller. But hard-boiled is my favorite narrative style and the two blend so well. It's said that the thriller is just junk food for the brain, but I for one love a good book that I can read in one sitting and just really enjoy it. Something about the short length and the quick pacing really grabs me. It's gotten to the point where I almost can't read anything overly long if it's not quickly paced. I think thrillers are spoiling me. So far I've found that Duance Swierczynski has come closest to perfecting the genre, with fun characters and rapid-fire plot twists. Plus he's one of the few original authors I can find in the genre. His ideas are always really wild, usually the kind of thing I've either never read before, or never come across anything as good before. Christa Faust and Sara Gran are also favorites of mine.
Beyond that, I like sci-fi a lot, especially cyberpunk and near-future stuff rather than far-future hard sci-fi things. Cyberpunk tends to blend well with the thriller and noir structures so it's easy to see why I'm attracted to it. I think you could make anything noir and/or hard-boiled and I'd like it at least a little. Also, the bleaker the better. I'm this way with most stories (I love me some noir in any genre) but with sci-fi especially. I looooove dark, hopeless futures. K.W. Jeter's Noir is my favorite sci-fi world, and it's also the darkest I've come across so far.
Horror's fun when it's done well, but I find it's rarely done well. I want to find more good horror novels since most of the stuff I read isn't scary or even all that atmospheric. Horror is probably the single hardest genre to do well, by my standards. Lovecraft is always fun, although I really don't think any of his stories are all that scary. He's got the atmosphere, though. Despite the author saying it isn't a horror novel, the best example of horror I've ever read was The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan.
Fantasy can be fun but I'm not a big fan. I'm more into current/future settings than medieval-inspired ones, but I do like it on occasion. Despite being my least favorite of the genres I read, my favorite books (Matthew Stover's Acts of Caine series) are fantasy. Well, fantasy/sci-fi hybrid. I think fantasy is also one of the few genres with an example of an upbeat, fun series that I enjoy: the Princess Series by Jim C. Hines. Modern fantasy is a little more my speed, or just really creative stuff like Bone Song and Black Blood by John Meaney, which create this really fascinating world with lots of fantasy elements in something akin to modern day/near-future.
Anyway, the one thing that all of these have in common is that they all borrow heavily from the pulp thriller, be it the pacing or story structure, the hard-boiled narration, and/or noir. And aside from a few very rare examples, all my favorite fiction is really dark.
I haven't read any romance novels, but I like romance short stories and of course erotica. (I think damn near all fanfic authors like erotica. Especially those who write it). BDSM stuff is always fun, and I really love the dark stuff.
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Date: 2012-04-21 05:29 pm (UTC)Thrillers and noir are great genres. Some of my favorites come from those. :)
As for FFP, I'm pretty sure they are going to offer the option of 'real' books instead of just e-books. E-books are definitely the primary resources but I think print books will be included. I know that my sister will opt for print if she can. :)
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Date: 2012-04-21 09:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 05:34 pm (UTC)It wasn't a case of romances generally being looked down upon by the literati that turned me off, just that I was heavily into slash at the time I was old enough to start reading them. :) And as soon as conventional wisdom puts down something, I defend it, anyway. :) I notice that since romances are considered a 'woman's genre' it's okay to bash it. Same with fanfic, written and read mostly by women.
I have a few copies of the Master And Commander series but never read them. I have a batch of books that I never got the time to read. *sighs* And in the past few years most of my reading seems to be fanfic! ;) But I'm going to dig out my academic study of Halloween/Samhain celebrations and finish that, for sure! ;)
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Date: 2012-04-21 04:50 pm (UTC)Ryotaro Shiba is good a non-fiction fiction author, too. He doesn't make history a chore to read. The Japanese classics like The Tale of Genji and Musashi are always good read, although trying at some times, haha!
Lately, I been reading some Sci-fi...well...mainly Samuel Delany. I've read They Fly at Ciron and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, and I find his use of personalized writing style as tool for depth fun.
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Date: 2012-04-21 05:42 pm (UTC)I look at my book collection and am happy to see eclectic tastes. I like variety and my faves stand out: Mary Renault and Marion Zimmer Bradley books, gay studies/novels, Egyptology/archeology books, American history, the detective/mystery novels, etc. I've got a good collection of Korean War novels and histories because of my dad's service during that war.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-24 11:50 pm (UTC)I will read just about anything that stands still long enough. With that - some of your favorites are some of mine too! MZB in particular - I've read to falling apart several copies of Mists Of Avalon and The Catch Trap is one I reread every so often. Mercedes Lackey is also a big one - I read just about all of her series. Robert Heinlein, Tom Clancy, Anne McCaffrey, Rita Mae Brown. I'm working my way through the Donald Strachey mysteries by Richard Stevenson. A lot of gay/lesbian fiction & erotica - if it has a SF/Fantasy bent, even better. In Conquest Born by CS Friedman is absolutely wonderful with it's portrayal of two completely different warring societies. Stephen King's The Stand is another I've read to falling apart. Bertrice Small is one of the few romance writers I read - she puts a lot of historical in her historical romances and they're usually pretty steamy too! Helen Hooven Santynmeyer's And Ladies Of The Club is a wonderful, HUGE novel about a women's book club in small town Ohio set after the Civil War - the characters are amazing. I love Diana Gabaldon's Lord John series - I have most of her Outlander series waiting for me but I have to get the first book first because I want to read them in order :) Naomi Novik's Temeraire, Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse, Margaret George's historicals. I've also been reading just about any Tudor related historical I can get my greedy little hands on.
Non fiction is just as varied - a lot of European WW2 for Hogan's Heroes research, Titanic, gay/lesbian history, cross-stitch & beading books, comedians like George Carlin, Dillinger era because I was doing reserarch for PE, Tudor England.
It's pretty safe to say that my apartment looks like a branch of the local library :)
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Date: 2012-04-25 11:03 pm (UTC)I've heard about And Ladies Of The Club. Didn't it take the author years to write and she published it in her eighties or something like that?
I've read Heinlein, McCafrey, Brown and Stephen King. Do you recall what books you read for your PE research?
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Date: 2012-04-26 12:06 am (UTC)PE - Public Enemies of course and Purvis' son's book Vendetta. And Purvis' book American Agent - I got lucky and found a pretty battered copy on Amazon awhile back. There was also one called Dillinger's Wild Ride that was pretty good.
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Date: 2012-04-26 12:29 am (UTC)All fine books for our wild boys! ;)