Definitely an important list to add to the watchlist! These all sound like interesting titles with Ace characters that I’m going to be looking forward to reading in this upcoming year~
Following up on my previous post about Asexuality in fiction, I wanted to list upcoming releases with Ace (asexual, gray-ace, demisexual, aromantic, etc) main characters.
This is just a reference list to keep track. If you know of an upcoming novel that features an ace main character, please drop a comment and let me know (and link if possible)! Doesn’t have to be a romance, just as long as one of the main characters falls under the ace umbrella.
Where possible, I have linked to Goodreads (GR) or other relevant post.
Fantasy author Neil Gaiman’s personal library is a book lover’s dream, stuffed to the gills with all manner of novels, reference books, and anthologies, with the occasional gargoyle or mounted stuffed head for good measure.
Literary social network Shelfari visited Sandman and Coraline author Neil Gaiman at his Minnesota home and snapped these pictures of his personal library. Gaiman’s basement is entirely filled with books, awards, and a handful of tchochkes. You can see more, larger images of the library here, but if you just want to know what books Gaiman keeps handy, Shelfari is in the process of creating a digital bookshelf based on the photos…
A heartfelt thank you to Magini @ Magic of books for nominating me. Such a pleasure. 😀
This is… I think, my third nomination for this award, so I’m keeping it brief this time~
Rules
Show the award on your blog
Thank the person that has nominated you
Share 7 different facts about yourself
Nominate 15 blogs of your choice YOU ARE ALL NOMINATED ❤
Link your nominees and let them know of your nomination
Facts about me
I have a very bad habit of not knowing what to say when someone asks the question, “So tell me about yourself.” Uhh… I dunno. I exist? (…..I think….)
Typically, I like to work on about three different computers/tablets/interfaces at the same time. (All doing different things, of course.) I’m definitely what you would call a “multitasker.” 😉
I’ve had the same car for over ten years. (Going strong! *knock on wood, fingers crossed*) I’ll not get rid of my babe. ❤
I prefer to sleep when it’s cold. I get better sleep that way. When it’s too warm or just plain boiling, I tend to get nightmares.
I HATE socks. …Except when I don’t. Then I love them. xD
I’m terrible at “keeping touch” with people. Like… I don’t even know what that means. Even those I really, REALLY like. I can barely muster a “hullo” once a month. Best case scenario, I see something I think someone might like and tag them in it like saying, “Hey. Heeey. So I thought of you. ❤ ❤ <3”
Plus, I’m utterlyhopeless at small-talk, too. There are many an awkward conversation to be had when I’m in the room and people just wanna chitchat. I need solid conversation material (preferably of the nerdy-geeky, gamer, anime/manga/yaoi/comic, or bookish kind) or I’m outta there.
Nominees:
I NOMINATE YOU ALL! You’re all wonderful just for being here. 😉
RECKLESS BEATS is a musical feature where I incorporate a little music into this bookish blog.
You have to give credit where it’s due. Simon and Garfunkel made some incredible music that lives in infamy to this day, and yet… there have been few others that’ve made covers of their music worthy of the name.
Driving to work one morning, I got a snippet of Disturbed singing Sound of Silence, and I thought it was atrocious. I didn’t know what was happening, but it just wasn’t working for me.
Then I got to work, PLAYED IT FROM THE BEGINNING, and THEN… the chills started. By the time the song was done, I’d had at least three eargasms in a row and was still shivering all over.
The intensity and building drama of the piece can only really be appreciated by listening to it FROM THE BEGINNING, not throwing you into it somewhere halfway. There’s definite drama there that needs to build up to its heartfelt crescendo. In a way, it reminds me of A Perfect Circle‘s cover of Imagine, which does a similar sort of thing, sounding dark and mysterious, with this heavy, beating rhythm that can only be really appreciated IF YOU LISTEN TO IT FROM THE BEGINNING. If you come in midway, it does nothing for you. In fact, you might even say, “What the fuck?” and turn it off.
Trust me when I say, these slowed down, darker renditions are killin’ it. But you gotta start from 00:00.
But don’t take my word for it. Give it a listen:
I give you Disturbed‘s Simon & Garfunkel cover of Sound of Silence!
LYRICS:
Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left it’s seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains within the sound of silence
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed
By the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs
That voices never share
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence
“Fools” said I, “you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence
And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made
And the sign flashed out it’s warning
And the words that it was forming
And the sign said
“The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls”
And whispered in the sound of silence
I hope you all knew how much the man loved his books.
In case you forgot (or — SHOCKINGLY — didn’t know), here’s a list of his Top 100 Must Read Books:
Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
Room At The Top by John Braine
On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
City Of Night by John Rechy
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Iliad by Homer
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
David Bomberg by Richard Cork
Blast by Wyndham Lewis
Passing by Nella Larson
Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Puckoon by Spike Milligan
Black Boy by Richard Wright
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
McTeague by Frank Norris
Money by Martin Amis
The Outsider by Colin Wilson
Strange People by Frank Edwards
English Journey by J.B. Priestley
A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
1984 by George Orwell
The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
Beano (comic, ’50s)
Raw (comic, ’80s)
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
The Street by Ann Petry
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
Last Exit To Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.
A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
The Bridge by Hart Crane
All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Teenage by Jon Savage
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Viz (comic, early ’80s)
Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler
Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg
So my question to all of you is: what do you think? It’s an impressive list, if I do say so myself. I’ve read a few of the titles on there, but a good many I’ve never even heard of. Sounds promising, don’t you think? Definitely something to get the brain going (and the wallet weeping, aha~)
If I didn’t know I’d go mad, I would have said I’d try to a portion of these this year… But I know that won’t happen. Maybe one or two, but a quarter? Or all? HA! Yeah, right.
Reckless Indulgence 