#if you want some good examples read the goblin emperor by Katherine Addison

[ostentenacity]

“hither” and “thither” are not just fancy ways of saying “here” and “there”, respectively; they are only used when referring to physical space. you can come hither or go thither! but to name one example, the set phrase “there is” is talking about existence, not space; it doesn’t make sense to say “thither is” a thing or concept unless you’re specifying that it’s far away or something.

also, -st and -(e)th are VERB endings. You use -st when talking to someone, and -th when talking about someone/thing. but only on verbs! “thoust”? for comedic effect, sure, but it reads as a contraction, “thou’st”, of “thou hadst” (“you had”). also, for any given action, you only need to use 1 -st or -th. “thou art speaking”, yes; “thoust art speaketh,” not so much.

this has been a PSA from your friendly neighborhood urianger enjoyer

[smalltownfae]

Hi! From the book rec ask game, if you want to answer any/all of these :)

16. a book you'd recommend to your younger self

41. a book about nature

55. a book with a satisfying ending

69. your favourite mythological retelling

70. your favourite poetry collection

117. your favourite anthology

Hello! Thank you for the asks :)

16. Depends on how young. I wish I had read certain old middle grade and YA books when I was a kid, but tbh most of them weren't translated or even sold here so that would be impossible to begin with. I am sad that I didn't have any Diana Wynne Jones books, for example. We did have translated Discworld books at some point though because I found some in my library (that is how I discovered the series), but I never saw them being sold around before. In my small city there weren't any bookshops when I was a kid so I got my books from supermarkets and I visited the library a lot (even if it only had really old books for the most part). That is how I ended up reading above my years and rereading fairy tales for the most part. Two shops that sold books popped up in my teens and they even sold some manga and a friend and I were so happy about it even though that kind of thing was a given in the capital hahah I visited the capital a lot in my teenage years too because I made most of my friends there. I have a kind of hate relationship with my hometown for all the things it didn't provide and things would have been so different had I grown up somewhere else. One of those things were the lack of books available which I still believe contributed a bit to everyone being so close minded around here. My first visit to the city trully blew my mind xD I was like sheep in the big city. Sorry for the personal anedocte, but the truth is I didn't even had the option to read the books that would have interested me as a kid and I am reading them now as an adult.

41. Upstream by Mary Oliver (which I am still reading...). Also a lot of Robert Frost poems.

“One tree is like another tree, but not too much. One tulip is like the next tulip, but not altogether. More or less like people—a general outline, then the stunning individual strokes.”

55. Howl's Moving Castle hahahaha it has a very nice happy ending, but I think I give this book as an answer way too much so I will try thinking of another one. I know satisfying doesn't necessarily mean happy but I always assume that is what that word means. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison has a pretty nice ending too.

69. I haven't read many of those at all so I will have to go with the cliché answer The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, which is the only book out of the 3 I read by her that I liked. I am not as interested in myth retellings as I am in reading the originals to be honest, but I am curious about The Silence of the Girls, which I only heard good things about so far.

70. I am only exploring poetry more this year so my options are limited. I am going through the complete poems by Robert Frorst and that book separates the smaller collections published before so I guess right now I would pick New Hampshire by Robert Frost, which has the most poems I like, including my favourite "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening". Collections are hard because I very seldom enjoy all the works included in the book and never at the same level when I do like all of them.

117. I do not read these either. I can only recall one anthology that I read from start to finish and that was The New Voices of Fantasy so I guess I have to say that even if it was just ok. Oh wait, this is a lie. I love "Histórias de Fantasmas" (Ghost Stories), but that is a portuguese one that has a selection of "ghost stories". I can tell which ones were included in it though. It's one of my favourite books and I did enjoy every story in it. Here's the list:

The Open Window by Saki

Afterward by Edith Wharton

The Ghost by Catherine Wells

Mr. Tallent's Ghost by Mary Webb

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Nr. 17 by E. Nesbit

The Voice of a God by Winifred Holtby

A Spirit Elopment by Clotilde Graves

[flowerflamestars]

Hey. I really like your writing. And your story-telling. It’s just really good. What are your favourite books? Any thing particular in the fantasy genre?

Hi, thank you so much!

I LOVE fantasy novels- most genre fiction, really- but I will say that my taste is definitely not for everyone. I tend to read things that fall into one of two categories: I Know What Will Happen but I am Loving This Anyway (see, any enormous novel about a chosen one, an empire, a magic cult? I eat that shit UP).

OR Yes, sure, things happen in this book, but really, This Is Just A Character Study.

In the latter category, you find my improbable favorite book: Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. I'm behind the times on this, but another (actually literally a better book) example would be: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. The Starless Sea, by Erin Morganstern. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

If you want something more classic, Le Guin's Earthsea books are just waiting to sink hooks into your soul. Sharon Shinn's Twelve Houses books are very fun (with found family!). I actually very much liked Tempests and Slaughter by Tamora Pierce (despite...let's say extremely uh, complex feelings about the books it is a prequel to). Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhouse for hitting every point perfectly: destiny! magic! politics!

More of a fairytale bent? The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden WILL NOT disappoint. Nor will SA Chakraborty's Daevabad Trilogy. I will love forever Uprooted by Naomi Novak.

Gothic? Gideon the Ninth and all of it's incredibly complex, vivid weirdness, tender as a bruise.

Not quite history? The Winner's Trilogy by Marie Rutkoski, the only woman in the game writing actual, emotionally realistic enemies to lovers.

Okay with some thorough violence? Try on for size The Poppy War by RF Kuang.

[zenosanalytic]

Hello! You seem to have interesting taste in books, esteemed viper. Would you have any recommendations for someone who enjoyed both Murderbot, Imperial Radch and The Locked Tomb (although the last one with a thesaurus, because not a native English speaker)? Thanks!

(Foreword: the links are to the first place that pops up on searches for me; not advocating you buy from these particular places, especially Amazon; if you want to buy rather than borrow from a library, Please do not buy from Amazon if you can at all help it. Like: There is no Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism, obviously, but even Barnes&Nobles is better than Bezos’s human-misery factory)

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin is REALLY good Axiom’s End, by Lindsay Ellis, starts rough, but improves ALLOT after the first act and finishes wonderfully. Also, The Subtext: The rich, Rich Subtext :3 :3 :3 The Teixcalaan Series by (Ascended Homestuck)Arkady Martine, two books out currently, is a Very Fun and Rare example of what you could call Hard-Political Sci Fi? VERY Much about Diplomacy, Bureaucracy, History, Culture and the, shall we say, “complications” of Empire for everyone involved(but mostly the ppl being Empired at). The first book, A Memory Called Empire, is VERY Good, though it’s got a weird flow where I felt it started strong, ended strong, but wobbled a bit in the middle. The 2nd book, A Desolation Called Peace is... It’s good in different ways, flawed in that the plotting generally feels more Convenient and less deeply Developed than in Memory, but I found I didn’t really care about the problems weighed against what I liked in it. The Temeraire Series, by Naomi Novik(remember that name: anybook wearing it is likely to be Good) is a WONDERFUL Historical-Fantasy series, set in a time period(The Napoleonic Era) woefully underserved in the Fantasy genre which asks the Very Important Question “What if Dragons Were Real?”, and then deconstructs European Empire and Imperial Imagination with the answers. It’s Great. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison is another wonderfully Political Fantasy book set in the Age of Sail/Steam, but with Airships. The Airships aren’t important though; the Clothes are. And the Politicking(which means Dinner Planning). And the Lifetime of Familial Truama. And the Engineering. And the Buff SwordFighting Girlfriends who will skewer anyone who so much as ruffles your Bueautiously Bedazzled Brow, even if they don’t particularly understand or care that much for your ideals. There’s apparently a 2nd book in the series, that I JUST found out about looking up this one, so I’m going to be getting on getting that >:| Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke, is not a book, but rather a Positive TOME. It’s big is what I’m saying. Magisterial would be an apt description, and you’ll need the thesaurus for this one too I assure you. It is ALSO set in the Napoleonic Era, which is kind of becoming a theme with this list isnt it, and it’s about Two Gentlemen(actually Four, and one Lady) of markedly different Romantic Literary Tropes bringing Magic back to the world(they used to have Magic, but then a Giant Crow ate it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). It is VERY Good but, like I said, HUGE, and it takes, like, a month to read(unless you’re insane like me, and dedicate every waking moment of, like, a week to reading it, which invariably happens when I open the dang thing). The author also has a new book out, Piranesi, which has won ALL The Praise, but I haven’t read it yet so’s I can nary say good nor bad about it, sadly :T She also wrote a book of short-stories, which I ALSO have not read, and ALSO Have Been Meaning To Read for, like, a decade now X| The Greta Helsing Novels by (Ascended Homestuck)Vivian Shaw, currently a Trilogy but I’m hoping maybe someday publishers will Wisen and we’ll get more it’d be a Wonderful counterpoint to the Dresden Files approach to pulp, is pretty much The Opposite of Strange and Norrell. They’re nice, Light, quick, fun reads, Competent and Workerly; the sort of thing ppl tend to call “summer” or “vacation” books. It’s about a human doctor who takes care of the undead, and the Shenanigans this gets her into. Shaw has a FANTASTIC brain, and she uses the series as an excuse to share&explore her knowledge on various esoteric subjects like Sewer Architecture, Nuclear Reactors, and Historical Divine Bureaucracy Headcanons :3 :3 Also, like, 80% of the characters in the series are taken from 1800s pulp horror fiction; It’s Gr8. IF you can find a collection of either of their works, which isn’t terribly likely, sadly, because Capitalism is Awful, Jack Vance and Fritz Leiber were probably the BEST writers of the Pulp Fantasy Era/Genre(think Conan or Lovecraft). Tales of the Dying Earth is basically the soil Adventure Time(and He Man, coincidentally, and basically the Whole subgenre of “Wait: This isn’t THE PAST!!!” scifi-fantasy) grew out of, and it’s also a pretty excellent transposition of The Odyssey into SciFi Fantasy. Of Leiber I have read only a comic rendition of SOME of his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, and a SINGLE TEASER PASSAGE from his actual writing, and both totally blew me away with their artistry, pathos, and naturalistic flow and dialogue. I dont know his works directly, though, so maybe the rest isn’t so great, or dabbles in the execrable gender- racial- and imperial-politics so common to white male sci-fi writers of that era.

Ok IM STOPPING THERE. Because I’m not Heartless and I think that’s Enough for now. If you like the taste exhibited by my posting, well, these are also parts of that taste so maybe you’ll like them too. I certainly hope so :>