book meme!
Gacked from 
lotesse and
tree , because my f-list/reading circle rocks.
The book I am reading: Nothing at the moment, as it's finals week and I've finished all my essays. I just finished Jean Rhys and the Novel as Woman's Text for my research paper and, in my copious spare time, Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Cathy Tan and Sarah Wendell (aka the Smart Bitches: hint, it's awesome).
The book I am writing: AHAHAHA SO MANY. There's an as-yet-untitled quasi-autobiographical novel about The Asexual Experience. All I know is that the main character's name is Katherine (Katie) Conlon, making her already somewhat unlike me (I don't have nicknames apart from 'E' for
tulina and
hl , and that's a special dispensation for them especially: Mary Beth scarred me for life, apparently).
There's a millennia-spanning secondary-world sort-of-high fantasy that I've been working on since I was seven which includes dozens if not hundreds of stories. I can't even begin to sum it all up, so I'll just say that it's set in a culture where (1) everything runs on magic, (2) every single person is magical -- though power and breadth vary a lot, (3) magical power is the central preoccupation about which all lesser issues revolve, and (4) women, on average, tend to be more magically powerful in general, with exactly the results you might expect. Namely, raging misandry that has only recently settled down to more subtle forms of discrimination.
Let's see, there's one about four Regency women who get screwed over by the patriarchy in various ways -- e.g., there's Lady Henrietta, the only child of a duke inspired by the dukedom of Marlborough, which can pass directly to women and has actually done so. Her father resents her for having a uterus and she resents him for being an asshat and, also, she's a genderswapped version of Hal/Henry V, so there's that. Another is a former courtesan married to a very elderly, very persnickety ex-diplomat, mostly because he wanted to screw with the nephews and nieces who were just waiting for him to die and leave them everything. She's cool with that. There are also two others, and it's pretty much all about them being awesome.
There are three in an alternate universe where (comparatively) few people are living double lives as mages, and also there are lycanthropes and vampires and things who are assigned to the 'protection' of mages. One, c. the Regency, is about a pair of (magical) cousins, a male empath and a female telepath, who are best friends, each other's most important people, reasonably attracted to each other, but they're not in love romantically (though it's a very romantic friendship) and they don't get married, and they have crazy adventures as psychic Regency super-spies that their spouses know nothing about. Another one, around the same time, is about four kids (later adults) who get absorbed into the official organisation, the Magistry, that the former pair carefully stayed on the fringes of. The last of these takes place in the alt!present, which is a bit more sci-fi-y than our present, because telekinesis makes space travel and extraterrestrial colonization way easier, and is about a young Terran vampire and her even younger, very idealistic Keeper, who comes from the Europan colonies.
...yeah. For me there isn't really a significant difference between writing original fic and writing fanfic: namely, I rarely finish any of them, but enjoy coming up with characters and settings. I do more world-building with original fic, I guess. Sometimes.
The book I love most: ad;jfka;kdfja;kjdfk;jf. I guess Pride and Prejudice or Lord of the Rings. Or High Wizardry, Hogfather, Cotillion, The Blue Sword, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban -- grarrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Okay, it probably is down to P&P vs LOTR. Between of two of them, I ... guess I'd have to take P&P. By a smidgen.
The last book I received as a gift: Jane Austen: An Illustrated Treasury from my grandfather, for no particular occasion. He thought I'd like it. (I did! Shiny!)
The last book I gave as a gift: The new Thomas Covenant book, for my stepfather. I haven't read them but he likes them, and he stared longingly after the hardbook for like fifteen minutes before I dragged him away, so it seemed a good present.
The nearest book on my desk: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, Norton critical edition.
lotesse and
tree , because my f-list/reading circle rocks.
The book I am reading: Nothing at the moment, as it's finals week and I've finished all my essays. I just finished Jean Rhys and the Novel as Woman's Text for my research paper and, in my copious spare time, Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Cathy Tan and Sarah Wendell (aka the Smart Bitches: hint, it's awesome).
The book I am writing: AHAHAHA SO MANY. There's an as-yet-untitled quasi-autobiographical novel about The Asexual Experience. All I know is that the main character's name is Katherine (Katie) Conlon, making her already somewhat unlike me (I don't have nicknames apart from 'E' for
tulina and
hl , and that's a special dispensation for them especially: Mary Beth scarred me for life, apparently).
There's a millennia-spanning secondary-world sort-of-high fantasy that I've been working on since I was seven which includes dozens if not hundreds of stories. I can't even begin to sum it all up, so I'll just say that it's set in a culture where (1) everything runs on magic, (2) every single person is magical -- though power and breadth vary a lot, (3) magical power is the central preoccupation about which all lesser issues revolve, and (4) women, on average, tend to be more magically powerful in general, with exactly the results you might expect. Namely, raging misandry that has only recently settled down to more subtle forms of discrimination.
Let's see, there's one about four Regency women who get screwed over by the patriarchy in various ways -- e.g., there's Lady Henrietta, the only child of a duke inspired by the dukedom of Marlborough, which can pass directly to women and has actually done so. Her father resents her for having a uterus and she resents him for being an asshat and, also, she's a genderswapped version of Hal/Henry V, so there's that. Another is a former courtesan married to a very elderly, very persnickety ex-diplomat, mostly because he wanted to screw with the nephews and nieces who were just waiting for him to die and leave them everything. She's cool with that. There are also two others, and it's pretty much all about them being awesome.
There are three in an alternate universe where (comparatively) few people are living double lives as mages, and also there are lycanthropes and vampires and things who are assigned to the 'protection' of mages. One, c. the Regency, is about a pair of (magical) cousins, a male empath and a female telepath, who are best friends, each other's most important people, reasonably attracted to each other, but they're not in love romantically (though it's a very romantic friendship) and they don't get married, and they have crazy adventures as psychic Regency super-spies that their spouses know nothing about. Another one, around the same time, is about four kids (later adults) who get absorbed into the official organisation, the Magistry, that the former pair carefully stayed on the fringes of. The last of these takes place in the alt!present, which is a bit more sci-fi-y than our present, because telekinesis makes space travel and extraterrestrial colonization way easier, and is about a young Terran vampire and her even younger, very idealistic Keeper, who comes from the Europan colonies.
...yeah. For me there isn't really a significant difference between writing original fic and writing fanfic: namely, I rarely finish any of them, but enjoy coming up with characters and settings. I do more world-building with original fic, I guess. Sometimes.
The book I love most: ad;jfka;kdfja;kjdfk;jf. I guess Pride and Prejudice or Lord of the Rings. Or High Wizardry, Hogfather, Cotillion, The Blue Sword, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban -- grarrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Okay, it probably is down to P&P vs LOTR. Between of two of them, I ... guess I'd have to take P&P. By a smidgen.
The last book I received as a gift: Jane Austen: An Illustrated Treasury from my grandfather, for no particular occasion. He thought I'd like it. (I did! Shiny!)
The last book I gave as a gift: The new Thomas Covenant book, for my stepfather. I haven't read them but he likes them, and he stared longingly after the hardbook for like fifteen minutes before I dragged him away, so it seemed a good present.
The nearest book on my desk: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, Norton critical edition.