entry of almost serious thoughts

[minviendha]

...sort of. First of all, I finally went through and did a grand total stats toll of my deathfic. For the purposes of this count, Deathfic is defined as fic focused around or on the death of one or more major characters.

Total: 23

A Song of Ice and Fire: 6
Caliban Leandros: 1
Doctrine of Labyrinths: 2
The Silmarillion: 14
I would just like you to

Comments

[minviendha]

Unnnderstandably. I tend to like the gruesome, but by god, sometimes Gaiman just goes - whoaaaa hold on a second. Of course, so do a lot of my other favorite authors. I don't think this says anything good about my state of mind.

But I would be curious to hear your thoughts - especially on some of the Best Of stories. Those collections are good, I should really look into getting the next (most current) one...

Thank you for the recommendations! Iiii have read, I feel like, There Will Come Soft Rains - I need to reread, though. I actually forgot a bunch of stories I wish I'd put on here, lolfail, so I shall have to add those now...

I'm writing all these down and going to reeeed them. If you remember more, of course, I'm always open to recommendations.

[skaryma]

You totally made me want to recommend short stories to you now. Haha. Woo short fiction party. I'm not going to say much about them, because lots of them you just have to read if you haven't, but here are some of my all time favorites.

(In no particular order...)

"The Pedestrian" - Ray Bradbury
"All the King's Horses" - Kurt Vonnegut
"Skin" - Roald Dahl
"A Retrieved Reformation" - O Henry
"A Rose for Ecclesiastes" - Roger Zelazny
"The Last Defender of Camelot" - Roger Zelazny
"Down to the Scum Quarter" - Garth Nix (His parody of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. It's amazing.)
"Fire Watch" - Connie Willis
"Mama Gone" - Jane Yolen
"The Cask of Amontillado" - Edgar Allan Poe (A classic, but I couldn't not include my favorite Poe story)
"The Lottery" - Shirley Jackson
"Happy Endings" - Margaret Atwood
"All That You Love Will Be Carried Away" - Stephen King
"Murder Mysteries" - Neil Gaiman (Which I'm sure you've read, but I couldn't leave off)

That was hard, but fun! And now I'll have to hunt down those of yours I haven't read yet

[skaryma]

Yeees, "Lamb to the Slaughter" is totally tied with "Skin" for my favorite Dahl story.

[minviendha]

\o/ short fiction party! That's the best kind. Lately (like, the lasat week) I've been really on the short fiction bandwagon, so all these new recommendations are fantastic. Though I thought of more I forgot toda, and "The Lottery" was totally one of the ones I should have put down, damn. I'll go and look up the rest, though, which I do not recognize!

I'd be very intrigued to hear what you think of any of them...some of them I seem to be the only one to have read them. That I know, anyway.

[gargirl]

Great list, I have added some of those to my wishlists. ^_^ Thank you.

[elvenpiratelady]

For derivative Lovecraft I do like "I, Cthulhu" by Neil Gaiman, and "Jerusalem's Lot" by Stephen King is good creepy fun too. And then there's "The Pear-Shaped Man" by GRRM which gives me the creeping horrors - I honestly don't know if I could read it again. I also found a book of short stories called "Once Upon A Crime" which retold fairy tales as crime stories. "Heptagon" by Joan Hess is a retelling of Snow White, and "Harvest Home" by Elizabeth Engstrom is a retelling of Hansel and Gretel that gives me the shivers.

On the lighter side of short stories, we have An Old-Fashioned Unicorn's Guide To Courtship by Sarah Rees Brennan, which pokes fun at a lot of fantasy conventions. There are unicorn chaperones, it is amazing!

[minviendha]

Oh god, "I, Cthulhu" is brilliant. I haven't read any of the others, though, and now I want to! They all sound fantasticlicious. hmmmmnomnomnom.

And I'm running to read the unicorn one right now. I seem to like stories on one end or the other of the spectrum: dark as hell or silly as fuck. hmmm. I wonder what is the deal with that.

I need to make a proper list of these, though I'm not sure how I'm ever going to get all of them without checking out 290847859 books from the library.

ALSO, HOW'S IT GOING.

[elvenpiratelady]

I just love the ending, "we're going to feed the shoggoth" XD. I love love love "Unicorns" for the necrophilia jokes and maths and subverting all the fairy tale tropes and princesses behaving badly in general.

Hmmm, getting "Once Upon A Crime" may be hard because there's another anthology called the same thing, this one is edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H Greenberg. Or you might be better off googling the individual stories.

WE HAD A SLIGHT WEAPONS MALFUNCTION BUT EVERYTHING'S PERFECTLY ALRIGHT, WE'RE ALL FINE HERE NOW, THANKYOU, HOW ARE YOU?

[skaryma]

Oh my goodness, Unicorn's Guide to Courtship was the sweetest thing ever. Thank you for sharing it.

/unsolicited gush.

LOTS OF STORIES YAY

[grey_gazania]

"The Small Assassin" - Ray Bradbury