Moonlake’s Reading List (1)

This is not an actual new serial that I’m not starting, merely a teaser/foreshadowing thread for the Moonlake’s Book Discoveries series that I had promised to do every three months.

I had just finished a non-fiction about falconry and Mongolia. It was really research for the fantasy novel based upon the Mongolians that I’m trying to write. It turned out differently from what I expected of the title but is a decent read.

I am currently reading:

  • Moby Dick, recommended by my beta-reader, for the way it is able to incorporate snippets about details of the underlying world into the story (that I just love to add in my story)
  • The Tower and Knife trilogy by Marzarkis Williams
  • Giant Thief by David Tallerman

I also have my eyes on:

  • A series by Ian Irvine starting with a book titled Vengeance. I’m not sure whether I’ll end up reading it or not since it is substantially longer than conventional novels- I’m waiting for feedback from my fellow Strolenati (if anyone interested in what that is, stay tuned for the 2nd post that will come up today)
  • Brandon Sandersen’s Mistborn trilogy, saw a copy in my local library and it was highly recommended by a Strolenati
  • Jacqueline Carey’s Imriel trilogy. To be honest, I think I had picked up one of her books on a windowshopping trip I made to a book shop and decided that it’s not my cup of tea from reading the back cover blurb. However, I chanced across the review of book 2 of this series from the following blog: http://nikihawkes.com/category/fantasy-books/ and what drew me was how apparently it “involved a lot of travel, with immersion into many different cultures”.

I won’t be able to finish all of the books listed here but just want to tell my readers roughly what they could be expected to hear about in terms of my book discoveries.

Moonlake’s Lyrics (2)

Another making-up-for-word-count post. This one is a little morose but I love it because it contains one-liners that touches on the human truism about choice and again, the theme of gain and loss. It’s another Chinese old song (truth be told, the lyrics of old songs appeal to me more. 90% of new songs are love/break up songs and I much prefer songs that are just about life in general).

 

*How could the interchange of coldness and warmth stop?

How many autumns have passed when I turn back?

Losing something that I’ve search over,

Having something in hand that I never expected.

Have I gained or not? There’s no way to explain gains, losses and missing things by mistake.

A change occurs after I’ve just seen and heard something for certain,

I do not know where I should go to seek the cause.

 

What is it that you desire throughout your life?

Always making judgements about giving up and possessing.

Using up the whole of my life, it already ran past me before I could lay hands on it.

What is it that you desire throughout your life?

Never been able to see through in my confusion.

I have not expected that what I lost

Is actually already all that I have.

 

Repeat *

 

What is it that you desire throughout your life?

I have made compromises as well as struggled hard.

When every single points of brilliancy in the dreams fades,

How can they be captured and stored?

What is it that you desire throughout your life?

Who is parsimonious over praises and curses?

I have not expected that what I lost

Is actually already all that I have.

Moonlake’s Lyrics (1)

I have quite a fetish for good song lyrics, so much so that I sometimes am taken with a song not because of the tune but purely because of the lyrics. For that matter, I actually prefer instrumentals to a song with meaningless/bad lyrics.

So I am starting a new series of posts titled Moonlake’s Lyrics.  These are lyrics I feel are inspiring, touching or just draw me with the language it uses. And today, I will be sharing the lyrics of an old Chinese song that I like, that talks about dealing with the ups and downs in life. The translation is done by me alone and while I’ve lived in Australia for a long time I can’t promise that they will have the same effect in English as in their original form but here goes:

I do not know whether there is an end to the sky,

All I know is that the time that went past will never turn back its head.

Unbeknownst to me, every inch of tears,

accompanied with each of the dreams, all slipped away.

Unconsciously passing through so many years in this circle,

I am only aware that I have gone through tides both for and against me within this circle.

I silently and stoicaly tolerate

Every one of the accompaniement of cruel gazes as well as friendly laughter.

Backs in those days I silently accept all the hardships,

not letting go despite all of the bitterness and acridness.

Today I do not care about intentional nit-picking,

just follow the wishes from within my own heart.

I do not believe that I can gain possession without first making sacrifices,

I only believe that I have gained what I desire through my own hands.

Every string of sweat in exchange for every one of my achievements

I have always seen through gaining and losing.

Random writing (5)

Same as last time, two posts for today to compensate for lack of length. After the conflicting emotion/facial expression series, I started using lyrics from Chinese songs as prompts. I would take a single passage at a time and then play the S+7 game on it, which basically replaces either all the verbs/nouns/adjectives with a word that located seven places before or after it in the Chinese version of the Oxford Dictionary (it just happens that that’s the copy I have at home). This basically gives me three other versions of this passage. Not every version makes sense but I would choose whichever one inspires and do impromptu writing based off it. Below is the first of the series.

 

Prompt used:

“Half lucid within my dress, I suddenly realise it’s so cold.

What is loyalty? Merely being among mourning winkles and bitter rakes.”

 

Half lucid within my dress, I suddenly realise it’s so cold. I sneer. What is the meaning of loyalty? You ask. I can tell you, oh yes, I can tell you all about it. It means being carried off by so-called loyal servants sworn to protect you with their lives and entrusted with all of your family’s massive wealth and in the blink of an eye, sold to a place where you get to keep the company of mourning winkles and bitter rakes. It means being told that you would forever be a protected jewel embedded in his heart and just when you have thrown away all in a headlong rush into bliss, you are told that all is but a lie, leaving you stranded, wandering listlessly in a desert.

Random writing (4)

Another 30+ degree day over in Australia so I’m going to be slack and re-cycle previous efforts i.e. share the products of my previous writing exercises. This is the last of my series of my conflicting facial expressions with emotions.

Topic: I have to cry whenever I feel angry….

I have to cry whenever I feel angry. It’s a way for me to work off the anguish in my system. As tears flow out of me, I can feel a tangible decrease in the weight nesting in my chest. Yes, my tears are heavy then, heavy with the intense anger suffusing my blood, choking me.

I have to cry whenever I feel angry else I will physically explode. I feel lava coursing through my veins at moments like that and I need an outlet. Yes, an outlet. That’s why I cry. Crying is my outlet….

I have to cry whenever I feel angry. It’s therapy to me, it soothes me like a lullaby soothes a baby.

Random writing (3)

To compensate for the shorter than normal post today, I will post the third of my conflicting facial expression with emotion random writing series.

Topic: I have to cry whenever I feel happy….

I have to cry whenever I feel happy. Good events are so few and far between in my life that I look upon each of them with gratitude. What expressions I wear for the rest of the times, you ask? None at all. I learnt to go without any expressions. You see, they become your weaknesses. Weaknesses that others could exploit. So yes, I go around expressionless. Expressionless when I’m depressed, expressionless when I’m angry, expressionless when I’m insulted, expressionless when I’m denied.

I have to cry whenever I feel happy. It’s the only expression I allow myself, in secret, in absolute solitude of course. I have to cry whenever I feel happy. It is a way for me to commemorate these few and far in-between occasions. As I cry, I absorb a part of these experiences to hold in my core in exchange for the floods pouring out of me.

Moonlake’s Book Tastes (5)

My light reading list covers the following that were not already discussed in previous posts of this series:

  • Robert Aspirin’s Myth Adventures series which is hilarious, covering the adventures of a magician’s apprentice after he had acquired a ‘demon’ that his master had summoned. It stands out because its main selling point is the introduction of anachronisms in an otherwise fantasy set up. For those who don’t know the word, anachronism is something that does not fit with a particular era. In this case, he introduces a lot of modern concepts into a fantasy world in a way that entices laughter.
  • Joel Rosenburg’s Guardian of the Flame series which is basically about a group of college students who participate in a fantasy role-playing game, and are magically transported to the world of the game by their game master. They then set about trying to eliminate the practice of slavery in this world. It is not aimed for hilarity like the Myth series but it has quite a bit of light-hearted moments.

Ergh… and that is all in terms of light reading. And this concludes my serial post on my own book tastes.

I’ve decided that I will start a new serial post that recurs every 3 months that will be called Moonlake’s Book Discoveries now. So the first of this new series would be posted around on the first Monday of May. It won’t be a book review post per se, more a stock-take of what my experience across different authors and books had been for the past 3 months. So stay tuned for it, other book lovers and random pedestrians.

Moonlake’s Book Tastes (4)

So today I had promised to share some of the ‘unusual reads’ speaking from the perspective of my own tastes.

I’m not going by any order of personal preference but first up is….. Taiko by Eiji Yoshikawa. It is a historical fiction that tells the story of one man’s rise from a low starting point to the position of Taiko which I would have translated to Imperial General (although I’m not Japanese but Chinese so I’m really using the Chinese concept as the base) which was officially only less prestigious than the position of Emperor as I understood it (but in reality exceeding the Emperor’s power at the particular era covered by the book). I’m not a real history person but I was familiar with the range of characters covered by this book before I even read it through a RPG strategy game that I played on PC. I’ve read from some online book reviews that some thinks that it’s a bit hard to read this book because it contains a lot of characters and it’s hard to distinguish between Japanese names where both surname and name are at least 8-9 characters in length. But for me, this wasn’t a problem and it appealed to me because it read like an epic and I’ve already said that I’m really into epic fantasy.

Next comes the Black Jewels series and associated books written by Anne Bishop. She writes dark fantasy which is usually a niche I don’t touch (like horror) not because I’m squirmy but it’s just not really my thing. However, what she had done with the Black Jewel was a certainly good read. It was a dark fantasy because it contained sexual abuse and animal abuse but they were operating within the overall plot of the story so I don’t really mind them much. I’ve read the first two novels of her Ephemera world as well but did not like it and after reading an excerpt from her Tir Alainn series (which was centred around the Fae) I was not really interested. Oh, and I would recommend Anne Bishop only to female readers because well, in the Black Jewels, there are scenes of sexual abuse that might be uncomfortable for male readers to read about so experience it at your own risk.

In similar veins, I’ve taken to reading Sarah Pinborough’s very short novellas that rework fairy tales and bring in a dark twist. Basically, they are dark fantasy with romantic erotica thrown in. I’m not particularly taken with the genre nor too fond of her actual writing but I guess I read them more out of commending her effort in re-working old stories and also just feeling in the mood for light reading. She had written three of them that are using the Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Cinderella as the main story (titled Beauty, Poison and Charm respectively and should be read in this order, all three are inter-related) but each of them also contains snippets from other children stories including Beauty and the Beast, Rumplestiltskin, Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood, Aladdin, the Frog Prince, Hansel & Gretel and some more that I probably did not recognise. Then again, these others were not used as-is but rather adapted to fit the author’s purposes.

I’m also a follower of the Thursday Next series by Jaspar Fforde, the only urban fantasy series that I read. It’s again on my light reading list, being full of humour and some sarcasm. I also think that there’s something in it for book lovers, especially for those who have read the classics. But yes, definitely something for the book lovers and I won’t ruin it for those who haven’t read it by revealing what it is.

That’s all for unusual reads. The next and final instalment of my reading taste will reveal the authors and series on my light reading list except for ones already covered previously.

Moonlake’s Book Tastes (3)

Today, I’m going to change the tone slightly by talking about the mystery books that I’ve read and enjoyed. While not the main staple of my reading (mystery books to me are more like side dishes or desert, they serve as in-betweens for my trips into long serious fantasy epics), I do frequently read mystery which is more than what can be said for all other genres.

The only genuine love I have in this category is the original Sherlock Holmes series. Unusually for me, I actually bought The Complete Stories of Sherlock Holmes in one book. I’ve read Agatha Christie heavily as well although I’m not much taken with M. Poirot and haven’t actually read any Ms. Marple but I’m quite fond of her Tommy and Tuppence series (she hasn’t written that many books for the duo though).

I found that I’m so-so with contemporary mystery. I do follow a few authors including:

  • Patricia Cornwell and her Dr. Scarpetta series: unlike most mystery series, the heroine here is a chief coroner. It’s one of the rare mystery series that’s not on my light reading list. But I stopped following it after the lover of the heroine ‘died’ and then when I picked up the series again, another main character had split ways with the heroine so I discontinued with it.
  • Sue Grafton’s alphabet series: to be honest, I’m more taken with the quirky heroine rather than her writing but I have taken notice that she had been experimenting with new writing styles and perspectives in more recent books.
  • Janet Evanoich’s numbers series: to be honest, I found her writing really mediocre and her troupe of the heroine’s romance troubles got really old after a while. I think I stopped after 13 or something. But well, it’s light reading. Also, I think I prefer some of the books starring the same heroine as the numbers series but are standalones whose titles start off with the word Plum (the heroine’s surname) including Plum Spooky. Others I cannot remember offhand…
  • Richard Yancey’s Highly Effective series: this is a recent find actually and I’ve only read two books of the series. Definitely light reading material as the hero of the series is basically an inapt private detective. Actually, I haven’t really decided to follow him but well, I might come back to his work when I need a light reading in between my normal pursuits in reading

My personal recommendations are two authors and series that potentially appeal to both taste for fantasy and mystery. Basically, they star a religious figure in the medieval ages who solve mysteries. These are:

  • Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael series: it’s been a while since I read this series and I don’t know whether I had read all of it but certainly what was available to me through public library. I’ve already said why I liked it. It was my first encounter of such a work that bends the genre a little (to me, the attractiveness of fantasy was the fact it brought me into another world that is very different to what I’m experiencing in real life) and I’m finding that I’m quite fascinated with the presentation of what someone in a cloister experienced of life then in addition to the main mystery
  • Peter Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma series: quite a recent find. Besides the genre-bending thing, I like how the author seems very good at ending each Chapter with a cliff-hanger.

And that’s all for mystery. Next instalment would be on unusual books. Well, they are not that unusual really, just unusual from the angle of my tastes.

Moonlake’s Book Tastes (2)

So I am continuing with the authors and books that fall into my comfort zone but not necessarily brilliant by themselves. I am quite picky (if you had read the post before this, there are only two authors that I named as my favourites) so there are more substantial number of authors that I diligently follow for laziness of venturing for ‘new’ authors or sometimes just because I’ve grown attached to a particular character or underlying world and excused sometimes quite mediocre writing (I’m not saying every author in this category is mediocre but compared with what made it to my favourites, this category is simply massive so there’s bound to be one or two of the latter authors or books that made it to this category).

Egh… sorry for the long preamble again, I just can’t help myself. So continuing with the actual list, besides Margaret and the Forgotten Realms label, I also enjoyed the following works:

  • R.A Salvatore’s Cleric Quintet and Demonwars Saga (all right, I had already mentioned him in the first post but these are his work that actually drew me because of some specific part of his writing), particularly the first three books of the later series that present a somewhat different experience to most other fantasy books
  • David Eddings’s Belgariad, Mallorean, Elemium and Temuli, each of them a quintet. I read them while I was a teenager and I liked his humorous dialogue and how he was able to add in side-plots that kept one riveted even though I could always see his ending miles away. I also dislike how the main characters always come out on top because of some fundamental flaw in the ultimate villain in his book, which to me functions much like an anti-climax. In that sense, I’ve always felt like he was writing for the YA market but really he was an author before the rise of YA.
  • Tamora Pierce’s Immortal Quartet, The Trickster series and the Beka Cooper series, books on the Circle universe except the latest one called Battle Magic. She is another YA author. I find some of the ideas in her books refreshing but in general, I prefer a more in-depth exploration of more mature themes about life philosophies and human truisms in books so in this area she will never be able to satisfy me fully just by the virtue of her niche.

Okay, I have to stop here again and continue next time because today I just don’t feel in the writing mood much. It’s 30 degrees plus over here.