What is your favorite series, other than YW

[Zirsta]

bookgirl: Yes, I've read Peter and the Starcatchers! I still have to read the third on though...

smile: I read The Princess Academy! Yes, the name inplies that it's a girl book, but it won Newbery, (is that how it is spelled?) and anyone could read and enjoy it. I read Magyk, Physik, etc. just a bit ago. I'm waiting for Queste to get to my house via Amazon, so until then I wait.

Just a tidbit of info:
I have not read Harry Potter. Anyone else out there who hasn't?

[Emi]

Zirsta: I've never read any of the Harry Potter books. Unfortunately. I want to start reading it now.

I want to start reading the Uglies series... is it any good?!?

Oh and for anyone who's read Blue Is For Nightmares by Laurie F. Stolarz, a new series is coming out next fall call the Touch series. It sounds like a really great story line. Can't wait.

[kk]

Yeah, the Uglies series is amazing! It has such violent beginnings and endings, that it throws you full force into the story, and then yanks you abruptly back out again! And as soon as you finish one, you immediately want to read the next one. And the one after that. Etc.

You can get a free download of the eBooks here.(you can also download it in a file that works on an ipod, just click "Download as iPod Notes")

[Zirsta]

Hey, m friend did a book report on Uglies. She said it was very good. Isn't it set in the far future? Like, several hundred years? Hmm.

Well to add to my ever increasing list f books, I also read Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke. Also I am reading up on mythology for a project I'm doing. I've gotten a lot, and I'm wondering if anyone has read any good mythology books. I especially like ones with really fantasic illustrations. They are more fun to read if there are good illustrations in my opinion. Well, I've got reading to do, so Dai stiho!

[smile]

I love Dragon Rider too

About mythology - I don't have any nonfiction books for you, but the Percy and the Olympian Series is heavily related. The first book is The Lightning Thief and I love them too

Percy is half immortal god, half human - a half blood. It's a great series.

Edit

Wow. I should've gone back to read the first page, I thought I did. Anyway...

Zirsta, guess you know about Percy

I love Warriors too! Except I haven't read all of the newer ones, mostly just the original.

Dai!

[Zirsta]

smile: Yes, I know about Percy, and the books are great! You should see the website, it's pretty cool. Did you know that they are making a movie? They haven't picked a cast or anything, but it's going to be released about this time next year. *checks on google* Yeah, November 13, 2009. Can't wait.

So by original you mean plain Warriors (Into the Wild, Fire and Ice, etc.)? Yeah, I'm a Warriors fanatic. I own all the Warriors related books by Erin Hunter, and am waiting for Power of Three book 5. I'm practically obsessed.

Anyone read Pendragon? I noticed the thread...

[Wiccangixie]

Magic or Madness trilogy by Justine Larbalestier; Wicked and Wicked 2 by Nancy Holder and Debbie Virgue; Beka Cooper by Tamora Pierce; The Faerie Path by Frewin Jones; Time of the Eagle by Sherryl Jordan; The Chronicles of Elantra (1-4) And a few others that I can't remember at the moment.

[Gwendi]

All the books I can think of

Here is a complete list of the books I can think of right now that I like.

Pendragon-D.J. MacHale

His Dark Materials-Philip Pullman

Inheritence Cycle-Christopher Paolini

Harry Potter-J.K. Rowling

Twilight Saga-Stephenie Meyer (I should've started with that one, because it's now my favorite, but too late to change it now...I'm lazy)

Uglies Trilogy(ish)-Scott Westerfeld

The Chronicles of Narnia-C.S. Lewis

The Bartimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud (I LOVE the footnotes, Bartimaeus is so funny!)

Ink trilogy (Inkheart, Inkspell, Inkdeath)-Cornelia Funke

Guardians of Ga'Hoole-Kathryn Lasky (I read it when I was in 3rd grade, haven't read them since, I probably should reread them...)

The Warrior Heir(whole trilogy, called the Heir trilogy, I believe)-Cinda Williams Chima

[Ace Ryn Knight]

The series that tops my favorites list really ought to be Potter, but currently I'm just head over heels for the Republic Commando books by Karen Traviss. They're out of the Star Wars Expanded Universe collection. Potter takes second, Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter Saga places third. With the Twilight quartet placing a close fourth.

[Kathy Li]

My absolute favorite series is Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles/House of Niccolo series. Historical, and not for kids. The first series is six volumes, the second one is eight, and together they're really one big 14-book series, although it won't seem so for a good long while.

I love them because the language is gorgeous, rich, and rare. The plots are twisted beyond anything I've ever seen, and every time I re-read them, I get something new out of it. It's one of the richest and best-researched historical worlds I've ever had the privilege to read my way into, and my brain really needs to be in tip-top working order to get what she's telling me. And boy, does she rip your guts out with what she does to her characters. She's probably the most ruthless author I've ever read. And even when you know what's coming from knowing your history, she'll still get you.

You think it was just chance that I called [Harry Potter spoiler]that Snape was in love with Lily? No, no, no. After Dunnett, that was a cinch to see coming from three books back. She ubertrains you to pick up on clues. There's one laughing reference at the end of the sixth book that calls up an incident that happened about 3000 pages ago in the first book that you get. That's just how good Mrs. Dunnett was.

I tend to describe the series as Rafael Sabatini crossed with Dorothy Sayers, tweaked up to 11, but that doesn't help anybody who's never read Sabatini or Sayers. The easiest way is for me to simply link to an excerpt from the opening of the first book. For me, the killer line in that opening is "Only sometimes a woman's voice would say it with a different note, and then laugh a little."

The other series I love with a passion and a vengeance (and this one IS fantasy) is George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire." This is probably because I've been reading Martin as long as I've been reading Duane. Again, I have to caution that this is not a kids' series. Lots of terrible things happen to good people, and if you have a low bloodshed tolerance, this is not the series for you. But if you're a court intrigue nut, hooboy. Also heraldry. Also knights and dragons and wolves and swords. It's in the Tolkien-high-fantasy school, but again ol' Railroad knows how to write characters and plots like nobody's business, and he, too, can be absolutely ruthless with his characters, and will rip your guts out on a regular basis. Love it (especially since I'm an old enough fan to recognize the callouts to his science fiction writing buried in there). Again, here's an excerpt.

The fact that the first Dunnett book is called A Game of Kings and that the first GRRM is called A Game of Thrones is just a coincidence.

And for something completely different, I'd recommend Damon Runyon's short stories about New York gangsters in the '20s and '30s. Because they're always wonderful, often funny, fantastic reads, and because you'll need to know who he is for The Big Meow. Someone's put "Dancing Dan's Christmas" online. Seems appropriate to link to it, this month. Guys & Dolls is probably the easiest collection to find, thanks to the musical, but Blue Plate Special is my fave because it's got "Little Miss Marker" in it.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

You think it was just chance that I called [Harry Potter spoiler]that Snape was in love with Lily? No, no, no. After Dunnett, that was a cinch to see coming from three books back. She ubertrains you to pick up on clues. There's one laughing reference at the end of the sixth book that calls up an incident that happened about 3000 pages ago in the first book that you get. That's just how good Mrs. Dunnett was.

One wonders if J Michael Straczynski was a fan of hers, with the clues he sprinkled through early episodes of Babylon 5. :-)

And Diane, too -- Nita's precognition she set up in SYWTBAW coming back as a trainable ability in recent books. :-)

[alla]

My favourite series other than YW would have to include (but by no means be limited to):

*Song of the Lioness, by Tamora Pierce: I liked these books from the moment I started reading them. They, along with the YW books, rekindled a love for YA fantasy fiction, after I had been reading Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books for a couple of years (along with the occasional epic fantasy). They also inspired me to begin fencing, and along with everything else that I was reading at the time, inspired me to begin writing my own, just so that I would have something to read that was exactly what I wanted to.

*Tomorrow Series, by John Marsden (Tomorrow, When the war began and others): These are great Australian YA fiction, that falls into the short-term science fiction genre. The first couple of books are usually read in grade 10 English classes here, but my class didn't get to do them, so for me they're not spoilt by over analysis. I think they capture the attitude of Aussie teenagers faced with the unfaceable, and how they grow up through it, while also dealing with stuff that 'normal' teens face.

*Obernewtyn Chronicles, by Isobel Carmody: serious and fun at the same time, post-apocalyptic fantasy. Evil leaders to over throw, a prophecy and magical/mutant powers.

*Crystal Singer trilogy, by Anne McCaffrey: I like these ones, becasue they're a nice mix of geological and musical concepts, set in a cool universe. I actually like a lot of Anne McCaffrey's stuff, but I'm yet to get past the 8th or so book of DroP, because I keep getting distracted by other stuff of hers, while I wait to find a copy.

There are other ones on the list, but I can't list them all, I'd be here for a week .

I really enjoyed the Uglies books, too, though. Fast paced, good lessons, and a strange feeling that they're set in Australia...

[Not So Silent One]

Hmm

They are in no specific order so...
Inheritance, Harry Potter, Twilight Saga, of course YW.

I can't think of any more.

[bookgirl]

My absolute favorite series is Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles/House of Niccolo series. Historical, and not for kids. .

Can I ask what exactly makes them not for kids? Is it just blood and violence, or more uh, adult material? Because it sounds like a series that I might really enjoy. I can handle blood, but I'm not into books that have a lot of smutty stuff in it....

[Kathy Li]

Well, there are sex scenes, and they're not explicit, they do get... er... inventive in ways you may not be comfortable following. And the gore gets...equally inventive. It's not just the spatter factor so much as it's the imaginative cruelty of the way certain things happen. One friend of mine who's a cat owner basically has to skip one chapter in the Niccolo books--she says her scalp feels like it's peeling back when she reads that particular Bad Thing That Happens. We won't go into the torture. And some more-than-raunchy stuff (including same-gender sex) is implied, especially when Francis hits the dissipated French court. This really is something I'd slap a solid R rating onto.

The good news is, you would probably be just fine reading Rafael Sabatini or Dorothy L. Sayers. Rafael Sabatini was hailed as the Alexandre Dumas (pere) of his day. He wrote historical adventure fiction, and it's very very obvious that Dorothy Dunnett read tons of his books when she was in her teens. He was of Italian extraction, but wrote in English because he said that's the language all the best adventure stories were written in. He's fluent in about six languages, and he merrily works his way through a number of historical periods, although his real love was for the Italian Renaissance and the de Medicis. While his most famous titles are the ones Errol Flynn movies were based on (The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood), his first big hit was Scaramouche, which is a French Revolution tale and has the best opening line ("He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad..."). His heroes are good with a sword, but better with their wits. They tend to outsmart the foe. And his ability to create a historical setting is just outstanding. Plus, all the books he wrote prior to 1927 are available for free at Project Guteberg.

Dorothy L. Sayers is best known for her mystery detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. I know that Garrett's posted about this, so a search would yield up his earlier post. It's kind of obvious that Sayers read a ton of Sherlock Holmes (and Dickens, and Austen, and...) in her teens. Lord Peter is rich, noble, and a recovered/recovering WWI vet (he suffered shellshock and had a nervous breakdown, but he's better now), who solves murders with style. He's a little Bertie Wooster, a little Scarlet Pimpernel, and a whole lot of fun.

If neither of those is appealing, and you desperately need something historical, I'd also recommend Georgette Heyer, who is the author you go to when you've run out of Jane Austen and desperately need something else set in the Regency/Napoleonic era with a little tasteful romance. Her books run the gamut from historical adventure fiction ala Rafael Sabatini (The Masqueraders, The Talisman Ring, These Old Shades to drawing room domestic comedy (Sylvester or The Wicked Uncle, Friday's Child, which Garth Nix said was his favorite). Nearly everybody loves her stuff, and nearly everybody has a different favorite Georgette Heyer.

The last historical author you'll see recommended hither and yon (and Garrett beat me on this one, too, iirc) is Patrick O'Brian. Of the Aubrey/Maturin series. Just as Dunnett builds on Sabatini, O'Brian is building on C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower, and coming up with something far more complex and far more fun with a level of historical authenticity that's simply astounding. The first book in the series is a little hard to get through, but by the second, you'll be captivated. He apologizes charmingly for having gone through 1806 twice (iirc), but you really won't be able to catch him out very often on any historical details.