Favorite Authors and Buying Books

Written 11/20/04

I enjoy reading. My favorite kinds of books are sci fi and fantasy. I have several authors who I read all or most of what they put out, even if it’s not in a genre I typically read in.

My favorite authors are Elizabeth Moon, David Weber, Sharon Miller and Steve Lee, and Christopher Stasheff.

Moon writes both sci fi and fantasy. My husband adores her fantasy, but won’t read her sci fi.

David Weber writes both, too. He even made up a new race to go with elves, dwarves, and halflings. I really like them. My husband says he’s too long winded and spends too much time telling you stuff. That’s true. But when I re-read the books, I skip those sections. And his stories are fun.

Miller and Lee write a series about a universe where the worlds are rebuilding after being almost totally destroyed about 2000 years before. The main characters are a scout (the best of the best militarily), a mercenary, an interstellar trader, and a psychic. There’s also a giant turtle, who’s really into art, and his extended clan. As far as I know, Miller and Lee haven’t written any fantasy that is book length, though they do have some short stories that are.

I prefer Stasheff’s fantasy stuff to his sci fi, although I like and own the full sets of all of his works to date.

You know, I had not realized before writing this that all my favorite authors write in both genres. Cool. I like learning new stuff. �

I told my husband and he said he didn’t know Miller and Lee wrote fantasy. He’s never read their short stories, although he loves their novels.

Miller and Lee wrote three books a long time ago; Conflict of Honors, Agent of Change, and Carpe Diem. When they were first published the publishing house didn’t do much to promote them and the series didn’t sell well. So they weren’t reprinted. Eventually the rights to the books reverted back to Miller and Lee. When they got on the internet and started a presence there, they found that there were lots of friends of Liad, their world. So they had the books printed again.

My husband and I bought two copies of each of them. My brother did as well. The books did well enough that Ace, a national publishing house, reprinted them as well as the two prequels. And there are two follow up books. I love every one of them. They are well written and fascinating. That series is just spectacular.

I went to a book sale and bought a bunch of sci fi and fantasy books for one of the contact groups that got on anysoldier.com and said that they wanted books. Since I like reading so much, I couldn’t bear to think of people wanting books to read and not having any. I also bought my favorite mystery authors books and a few other famous authors. I have enough for three reasonably sized boxes. That particular unit has 300 people, so I figure someone will want those kinds of books.